Читать книгу: «The Mills & Boon Stars Collection», страница 44

CHAPTER SIX

‘BED!’ Paulo insisted, just as soon as they arrived home.

‘But—’

‘Bed!’ he repeated grimly. ‘From now on we obey the doctor to the letter. He said you needed rest—and that’s what I intend to make sure you get.’

One look at his expression told her that to put up a fight would be a waste of her time and energy, so she crept away to her room, where the bed was almost as welcoming as his embrace in the shop had been. The pillow felt soft against her cheek, and as sleep enfolded her, she remembered the way he had held her, with concern softening the brilliance of the dark eyes.

He brought her soup and toast and fruit for supper, and afterwards she slept on. As if her body was greedily sucking up every bit of relaxation it had been denied during her stay at the Staffords’.

She slept right through the night still tantalised by the memory of that hard, beautiful face and awoke to the sound of silence, which made her think that perhaps the flat was empty. But when she had showered and dressed, she found Paulo lying stretched out on the sofa in the sitting room.

He looked more relaxed than she had ever seen him, his dark hair all rumpled as it rested against a silken cushion. A newspaper was spread out over his bent knees and the jeans clung like syrup to his muscular thighs. Her heart crashed painfully against her ribs and the baby kicked against her, as if objecting. She took a deep, calming breath.

‘Hello, Paulo.’

He glanced up from the newspaper, thinking how warm and soft she looked, all breathless and sparkly eyed. And how that innocent-looking white blouse provided the perfect backdrop for the thick, dark curls. He found himself wishing that he could reach out and untie the ribbon which confined them and let the whole damned lot tumble down and spill like satin around her shoulders.

‘Well, good morning,’ he said thickly, and put the paper down. ‘Or should I say good afternoon?’

Her breath seemed to have caught somewhere in her throat. ‘I overslept again.’

‘That’s good.’

‘Have you eaten breakfast?’

‘Not yet. I was waiting for you. Then I started reading and forgot about it.’ He stretched his arms and stood up. ‘I’ll make it.’

‘Where’s Jessie?’

‘She’s gone shopping,’ he replied, without missing a beat. He had sent the housekeeper out over an hour ago. There were a few things he was planning to say to Isabella today, and he wanted to do so in private. And if Jessie were there she would inhibit him. Because for the first time since Elizabeth’s death, he had felt a tiny bit crowded by the woman who had worked for him for so long and so tirelessly. And he couldn’t quite decide whether it was all tied up with Isabella’s presence, or by the fact that Jessie now had a man.

Jessie’s attitude had changed. And it wasn’t so much the things she said—more the things she didn’t say. The pursed lips. The raised eyebrows. The knowing smiles. As if she knew some mysterious secret that she was keeping from him. And he was damned if he was going to ask her what the hell it was.

Isabella glanced at the newspaper headlines, but the drama of world news held little interest for her. She supposed it was the same for all women at this stage in their pregnancy—her world had telescoped right down into this baby inside her.

It was almost lunchtime by the time they sat down to eat, and Paulo waited until she had munched her way through a pastry before delivering the first part of the little lecture he intended to give, no matter how much she fluttered those big amber eyes at him.

‘I want to talk to you about yesterday, Bella.’

Her coffee suddenly lost all its appeal. ‘What about it?’

‘You were in a virtual state of collapse in the shop,’ he accused, looking at her as fiercely as if she had set out deliberately to do it!

‘It won’t happen again, I promise.’

‘Damned right it won’t! Because there will be no more all-day excursions, that’s for sure! Dr Cardoso has agreed he will see you here at the house in future.’ He pushed a dish of fruit across the table towards her and, to avoid a lecture on supplementing her diet with vitamins, she obediently took an orange.

‘I should not have trailed you halfway around London the way I did,’ he snapped.

Isabella slowly began to peel her orange, tempted to point out that he hadn’t had to drag her screaming, but one look at his face told her not to bother. ‘Finished?’

‘No. Not yet.’ He watched her pop a juicy segment in between her lips and swallowed down a sensation which came uncomfortably close to lust. ‘In future, you will rest when I think you need to rest, and you will eat properly.’

She met his eyes with amusement. ‘Oh, will I?’

‘Yes, you will,’ came the silky promise. ‘You’d better make the most of this enforced leisure, Bella—God only knows it will be over soon enough!’ His eyes were deadly serious now. ‘Are you listening to me, Bella? Do you understand what I’m saying?’

‘Of course I do.’ She lifted up the jug. ‘Coffee?’

‘Please.’ He hadn’t finished yet, but he let her attempt to distract him.

She poured him a cup, thinking that this was what living with a man must be like. The small intimacies. The shared breakfasts. Her eyes strayed to the triangle of flesh at his neck which was exposed by an open button and she found herself wondering what it would be like to slowly unbutton that shirt, to lay bare the skin beneath and touch its silken surface with the tips of her fingers…And she wondered, too, whether it was madness or just depravity to yearn for someone while she carried another man’s child. ‘More toast?’ she asked, her cheeks going pink with guilt.

‘No, thanks,’ he said, knowing that she was studying him, and liking it—even though he was uncomfortably aware of the irony of their situation. He wasn’t in the habit of having breakfast with women. He had always insisted on eating the first meal of the day alone, or with his son, no matter who he had spent the night before with—or how wonderful it had been. It had been a strict rule, necessary to his son’s well-being and security. His girlfriends hadn’t liked it—but none of them had been willing to risk making a fight of it.

He found himself studying her, his gaze mesmerised by the full, tight swell of her breasts.

Sitting there, with her white cotton blouse straining across the bump of baby and without a scrap of make-up on her face, she looked the antithesis of the glamorous women who had passed through his life after the death of his wife. The cool, pale-blonde beauties with their enigmatic smiles.

And if anyone had suggested that he might find himself physically attracted to a woman who was pregnant with another man’s child, he might have seriously questioned their sanity.

So how was it that he found he wanted to run the tip of his tongue all the way along that deep cleft which formed such an erotic shadow between her ripe, swollen breasts? He tried to quash the slow, sweet burn of desire as he met her expectant golden eyes but his mouth felt sandpaper-dry.

He glittered her a look of warning across the table. ‘Today you must speak to your father—you can’t put it off any longer. And the truth, Bella—because nothing else will do. He needs to know that you’re going to have a baby and that in a couple of weeks time he will become a grandfather.’

A segment of orange slipped unnoticed from her hand. ‘Paulo, I told you—I can’t!’ She couldn’t bear the inevitable hurt—the disappointment which would surely follow. She loved her father and the bond between them was close. Or had been.

‘You can’t put it off any longer, I know that,’ he said grimly. A combination of frustration and a sudden irrational fear that something might happen to her during the birth made Paulo’s temper begin an inexorable simmer towards boiling point. ‘Why can’t you? What’s stopping you? Are you frightened of his anger? Is he such a tyrant that you daren’t tell him? What is the worst thing that could happen, Bella?’

‘Let me spell out the stark facts for you,’ she whispered. ‘I am an only child. The only daughter. All my father’s hopes and dreams rest with me—’

‘I know all this.’

‘Then surely you can understand that I can’t just let him down?’

He hardened his heart against the misty blur of her eyes. ‘It’s a little late in the day for that, surely?’

‘Your will is very formidable, Paulo,’ she told him quietly. ‘But even you can’t impose it on me.’

He pushed his chair back and stood up. ‘No, you’re right—I can’t,’ he said coldly. ‘But if you won’t tell him today, then I will. I’ve told you what I think. End of subject.’ He began to move towards the door.

She looked up in alarm. ‘Where are you going?’

‘Anywhere, just so long as it’s out of here and away from the crazy thinking that masquerades as logic inside that head of yours!’ he snapped. He saw her soft mouth pucker, irritated by the way the little movement stabbed at his conscience. ‘Call me if you need me—I’ll be working in my study. You know where the phone is!’ With that he left the room, closing the door behind him with an exaggerated softness.

Left on her own, Isabella was restless. She cleared away their breakfast things and then wandered around aimlessly, putting off the inevitable moment. It was a huge, sprawling house and yet the walls closed in on her like a prison. She forced herself to curl up on the sofa and channel-hopped the TV stations for a while, but nothing grabbed her attention enough to draw her in. There just seemed to be inane game-shows and cookery programmes which didn’t seem to teach you anything about cookery.

She found herself looking out of the window at the rain which lashed relentlessly against the pane and a deep, aching part of her knew that Paulo was right. That a baby was not a secret you could keep hidden for ever.

She should ring her father. Take all her courage and tell him.

Pity there were no books you could study to prepare for moments such as these. What should her opening line be? ‘Papa, you know you always used to talk about becoming a grandfather—’

She shook her head and went back over to the sofa, glancing at her wristwatch. It would be lunchtime now at home, and her father would be tucking into a large plate of beans and rice and meat with vegetables. She dampened down a sudden pang of homesickness. Not a good time to ring. She would try later—after the siesta.

She must have drifted off to sleep herself, because she was woken up by the sound of a distant ringing, and then the click of a door opening, and when she opened her eyes it was to see Paulo standing looking down at her, his face tight and white and strained with an unbearable kind of tension.

She opened her eyes immediately. ‘Paulo? What is it? What’s happened?’

‘I think you’d better come and speak to your father.’

She blinked at him, still befuddled. ‘Did he phone?’

‘Bella! This has gone on for long enough. You’ve got to start some kind of dialogue with him—and you can start right now!’

She levered herself up with difficulty.

‘I’m waiting until after his siesta,’ she yawned. ‘I’ll ring him then.’

He shook his head and his voice sounded odd. Quiet and controlled, but odd. ‘I don’t think you understand. You’re too late. We’ve moved beyond the stage of being hypothetical. Your father is on the telephone, waiting to speak to you.’

‘He can’t be!’

‘I can assure you that he is.’

The urgent pitch of his voice told her something else, too. ‘He knows about the baby?’ she asked him tonelessly.

‘What do you think?’

She rose to her feet, putting her hand out onto the arm of the sofa to steady herself. ‘You told him, didn’t you?’

His gaze was steady. ‘I had to.’

‘Oh, no, you didn’t!’ she breathed in disbelief. ‘You were just playing God, weren’t you? You decided! You just went straight ahead and did exactly what you thought best—’

‘Isabella.’ He interrupted her with an icy clarity which stopped her in her tracks. ‘Your father was worried sick—wondering why you hadn’t got back to him. He asked me explicitly whether anything was wrong. So what did you want me to do? Compound what is going to happen anyway with a lie? How would that make me look?’

‘That’s all you care about, is it? How you look?’

He shook his head. ‘Believe it or not, I care about you—I always have done. Why else would I have brought you back here?’ he put in drily. ‘But try putting yourself in my shoes and you’ll realise you’re not being fair. I owe it to your father, after all he has done for me, to tell him the truth! How could I look him in the eye if I had done otherwise? I am thinking only of your welfare, Bella, truly.’

He paused for a moment to let the impact sink in, aware that he was hurting her—maybe even frightening her—but even more aware that it was time she faced up to facts. ‘You are acting like a child. It is time to face the music, querida.’ He gentled his voice. ‘Now, your father is waiting, impatient for the answers to his questions. I suggest you go along to my study and provide them for him. Go on.’

She knew then that she could not put this off any longer. She was beaten. And ashamed. She had let them both down—more than that—her stubborness and her cowardice had made a difficult situation even worse.

She stared up into Paulo’s eyes, searching for something…anything. Some sign that she was not all alone, and the faint black gleam of empathy there was the only thing which gave her courage to do as he said.

Walking tall and very straight, she went into his study, where the telephone receiver was lying amidst the heap of paperwork which littered his desk. She picked it up with a hand which was oddly steady.

‘Papa?’ she breathed.

It was her father as she had never heard him before, his voice distorted with a kind of dazed disbelief.

‘Bella, please tell me this isn’t true,’ he began.

‘Papa,’ she swallowed, but that was all she could get out.

‘So it’s true!’ There was a short, terse exclamation, as if her inability to speak had damned her. ‘You’re pregnant,’ he accused in a low voice.

There was no place left to go. No hiding place. The steel door of the prison clanged shut behind her. ‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘Yes, Papa—I’m afraid I am.’

In the seconds it took to confirm his fears, his voice seemed to have aged by about ten years. ‘Meu Deus,’he said heavily. ‘I should have realised that something was the matter! Your explanation why you wanted to leave college never really convinced me, not in my heart. You were doing so well. I should have realised!’

‘Papa, I didn’t think—’

‘No!’ He cut across her words with uncharacteristic impatience. ‘It is me who didn’t think—me who has let your poor, dear mother down and failed as a parent.’

This was worse than unbearable. ‘That’s not true and you know it! You’ve been the best father there ever could have been.’ She sucked in a painful breath. ‘Papa, I’m so sorry.’

There was a short, strained silence and she could almost hear her father struggling to gain control over his composure.

‘You’re sorry?’ The voice changed. ‘But you are not the only one who is to be held accountable, are you, Bella? What of the…father—’ he bit the word out with difficulty ‘—of your baby?’

‘What about him?’ A shadow fell over the desk, and she looked up into a silent black stare and the hand which was holding the receiver began to shake. ‘I don’t want to talk about him.’

Her father ignored her. ‘Well, I do.’

‘Papa—’

‘What does he say about all this?’ he persisted. ‘Has he offered to marry you yet?’

‘No, he hasn’t. And even if he had I wouldn’t want to. Women don’t have to do that these days if they don’t want to.’

‘Please don’t tell me what women “want”!’ he snapped. ‘Maybe your own wishes should not be paramount—you have a baby to think of, in case you have forgotten!’ There was a pause. ‘Put Paulo on.’

‘Paulo?’

‘Is he there?’

‘Yes, he’s here.’ Wordlessly, she handed the phone to the man who towered over her, but whose body language was so distant that he might as well have been a million miles away.

She stayed exactly where she was, because this wasn’t what you could ever term a private conversation. She had every right to hear what they were saying about her.

‘Luis?’ Paulo kept his voice impassive, suspecting that Isabella’s father would be angry at him for having kept her secret for so long.

‘Paulo, how could you do this?’

‘I’m sorry, Luis,’ he said, genuinely contrite.

‘A little late in the day for that, surely?’ asked the older man, then sighed. ‘I should have realised what was happening. Everyone else seemed to.’ There was a moment’s silence. ‘Maybe it was inevitable—she always worshipped the ground you walked on—’

‘Luis—’ said Paulo, as alarm bells began to ring inside his head. But the older man sounded as if he was in therapy—talking through a problem in an effort to solve it.

‘Maybe it was fate. I’m her father and even I thought you looked good together.’ Another sigh, heavier this time. ‘Still, these recriminations won’t help now. These things happen in the old and the modern world. You’re together now and that’s all that matters. But I need a little time to get used to the idea. You understand. The last thing Bella needs at a time like this are harsh words. Tell her I’ll call in a day or so, will you?’

‘Sure,’ said Paulo evenly.

‘Goodbye, Paulo.’

‘Goodbye, Luis.’

He replaced the receiver very slowly, and stood looking at it for a moment. And when he raised his head, his eyes were filled with a cold fire which sent a tremor of apprehension shivering its way down her spine.

‘What is it?’ she whispered.

‘Sit down,’ he said.

‘Paulo?’

‘Sit down,’ he repeated.

She slid into the chair he was indicating, placing her knees together like a schoolgirl in a class photo. Which was a bit how she felt. ‘OK. I’m sitting.’ There was an air of seriousness about him that she had never seen there before and her heart picked up a beat. She braced herself for the worst. ‘What did he say?’

He stared at her. The way she had lifted her chin—the slightly defiant gesture not quite hiding the very real fear and confusion which lurked at the back of the amber eyes. He guessed there was no easy way to tell her.

‘Paulo—what did he say?’

He laughed, still reeling from the irony himself. ‘That I am the father of your baby.’

There was a moment of disbelief, followed by a stunned silence. ‘But that’s crazy!’ she said, shaking her head in furious denial. ‘Crazy! I’ve never heard anything so—’

‘Isabella,’ he interrupted, seeming to choose his words with enough care to bring them slamming home to her. ‘Just think about it.’ He slid into the chair opposite hers, so that their knees were almost touching and even in the midst of her jumbled thoughts, her body still registered his proximity.

‘I am thinking about it!’ It was the most bizarre thing she had ever heard. How could she be pregnant by a man she had never even kissed? ‘I mean, we haven’t even…even…’ Her words faded away to an embarrassed whisper.

‘Had sex?’ he supplied brutally, quashing the guilty thought that indeed they had not…just in the fevered bed of his imagination and maybe it was about time he started turning fantasy into reality. ‘No, we haven’t. How very right you are, Bella,’ he murmured. ‘It’s a sickener, isn’t it—to be blamed for something you haven’t actually done?’

‘So how can he possibly believe it to be true?’

‘He isn’t the only one, is he?’ he snapped. ‘That Stafford woman thought I was responsible. So did the doctor. Even Jessie secretly believes it—no matter how much I deny it!’

‘But why?’

‘I believe it’s called circumstantial evidence,’ he clipped out. He moved his face closer to hers, his voice low and urgent. ‘Point one—you have steadfastly refused to reveal the true father’s identity.’

‘But—’

‘Point two,’ he interrupted coldly. ‘As soon as you found out you were pregnant, you left Brazil and came rushing straight to England—to me. Didn’t you?’

‘Well, what if I did?’ she croaked. ‘That on its own doesn’t make you the most likely candidate, does it?’

His smile was forced. ‘On its own, no—it doesn’t. But add that to the fact that your father noticed a certain frisson between the two of us, back in February. A chemistry which was apparently remarked on by most of the people there at the time.’ He paused, and frowned, because this was puzzling him. ‘Which was almost nine months ago.’

The final damning piece of evidence fell into place and made the whole picture clearer—except that it was not the true picture at all, merely an illusion. ‘Oh, my God!’

‘Precisely,’ he snapped, and his face grew hard. ‘Now I’m not going to deny the attraction which fizzed up between us, because only a self-deluding fool would do that.’ His mouth twisted in tandem with the convoluted line of his thoughts. ‘But nothing more than wishful thinking happened on my part. I did not have sex with anyone during my trip to Brazil. I can’t speak for you, of course.’

She couldn’t look at him, her gaze falling miserably to her lap. She knew what his eyes would accuse her of. That she had lusted after him, but had fallen into the bed of someone else almost immediately. And when it boiled down to it—wasn’t that the awful truth?

‘Now, the facts may be stacked up against me, querida—but just in case your father comes after me with a shotgun in his hand I want you to tell me one thing.’

She knew what his question would be, even before his lips had started to coldly frame the words. A question she had evaded for so long now that evasion had become almost second nature.

‘Just who is the father of your baby?’