Never in his life had he failed to use contraception.
Never had he lost control as he’d just done with Becky.
And never had he hated himself as much as he did right then.
Damn it all to hell.
‘Where are you in your cycle?’ He knew his tone was too rough, that he was behaving deplorably, but he was helpless to stop. He’d stepped into quicksand and was fighting to stop himself being swallowed up.
He sensed her flinch as she sat up.
‘I think you need to leave.’ Becky’s words were delivered with a curtness he’d never thought to hear from lips that were even softer to the touch than he’d imagined. Sweet and plump like a marshmallow. A temptation too far, even for him.
‘Don’t worry, I’m going. Just tell me how worried we need to be first.’
Becky stared at the muscular back, as rigid as it had been before his whole demeanour had changed and passion had overtaken them both, and wanted to curl into a ball and sob her eyes out.
In the space of minutes she’d gone from feeling as if she’d learned to fly to feeling as if she’d been dropped in the gutter. What had been the most incredible experience of her life had been ruined. Emiliano’s cruel belligerence made her want to scrub her skin clean.
If she’d ever thought about how it would be to face him straight after she would have expected bawdy humour before a subtle extraction from her bed, no promises but no recriminations either. Possibly a fleeting kiss and a wink before he said a nonchalant goodbye.
But she hadn’t faced him yet. The coward was still to look at her.
‘You have nothing to worry about,’ she said, snatching up her discarded T-shirt.
‘Don’t play games,’ he snarled. ‘If my failure to use a condom results in a baby then it is my problem. How worried do I need to be?’
Becky would have laughed if she didn’t feel so much like weeping. Her menstrual cycle had always been as regular as clockwork. She was exactly mid-cycle, the time of the month when signs of her fertility made themselves known. Tender breasts, a slight rise of body temperature...
Maybe that was why she’d been so receptive to Emiliano, she thought with only a minuscule amount of hope. It hadn’t been him so much, more a primal part of her acting as nature had designed.
‘Very.’ Shrugging the T-shirt over her head, she pushed the duvet off, jumped out of bed and headed for the door. ‘I’m going to take a shower. See yourself out.’
His head turned. There was one moment of eye contact, moment enough to make her heart leap into her throat, before she left the room, only to find his damp clothes in a heap on the bathroom floor. Holding her breath, she scooped them into her arms and flung them into the corridor, then locked the door.
Shaking, she stripped her T-shirt off but avoided looking at the mirror. She couldn’t bear to see her reflection.
* * *
Emiliano felt as if he’d been punched by a heavyweight with guilt. All he wanted was to crawl into his bed and sleep for a year. When he woke, he wanted this whole day to have been a nightmare he could shake off and forget about.
Becky must have turned the hallway light on for he suddenly became aware of illumination pooling into the room.
Unsteadily, he got to his feet. It suddenly seemed imperative that he be gone before she finished in the shower. He vaguely remembered leaving his clothes in the bathroom. If necessary, he would walk back to the villa wrapped in the bedsheets.
About to leave the room, he abruptly stopped and cast his gaze around it one last time...
What was that on the bedsheet?
Rubbing his hand over his mouth, he approached it cautiously, as if it were something that could leap off and sink its venomous teeth into his neck.
When he saw what it was, comprehension of what it meant hit him and the world began to spin.
He wished it had been something venomous.
On the bedsheet was a smear of blood.
CHAPTER FOUR
BECKY WAS ON her third coffee, her bags packed for the return journey to England, when a sharp rap on the front door announced Emiliano’s arrival.
She’d packed those bags debating whether to just run. Leave. Find someone to whisk her to the airport and never look back. Anything but face him in the cold light of day.
But to run would be too much like what her father had done when the divorce had been finalised a year ago. The way she felt towards both her parents meant she would never do anything from either of their playbooks. More than that, she couldn’t leave without saying goodbye to Rufus and Barney or leave Emiliano without care for them.
She needed to front this out. Only for another four weeks...no, three and a half weeks.
Heart lurching painfully, she pinched the bridge of her nose and took a deep breath before rising from the sofa to open it.
He stood at the doorway, stubble covering his jawline, eyes puffy, hair damp, casually dressed in black jeans and a white T-shirt that perfectly accentuated his gorgeous frame.
How she kept her features from crumpling she didn’t know. Memories of that lean frame naked and entwined with hers flew through her, not in pictures—it had been too dark for her to see him in anything but shadows—but as sensation.
Damn her heart for beating so madly to see him.
Damn her pulses for surging to meet his eye.
And damn him for still making her senses swirl despite looking as if he hadn’t slept a wink since leaving her bed six hours ago. Becky hadn’t slept either and knew it showed on her face too.
The awkwardness of their first contact was eased by Rufus and Barney bounding straight inside, tails wagging happily, the pair oblivious to the tension between their two favourite humans.
Wordlessly, she stepped aside to let him in.
‘Leaving already, are we?’ she asked dully.
‘No.’ He rammed his hands in his pockets. ‘We need to stay a few more days. Maybe a week.’
She shrugged. She wouldn’t ask why.
He nodded at the coffee pot. ‘May I?’
She shrugged again. ‘Help yourself.’
Picking up her own coffee cup from the counter, she opened the French windows and stepped into the empty staff garden. It was easier to breathe in the fresh air, safe from Emiliano’s freshly showered scent.
He followed a minute later, joining her at the outdoor table, the dogs racing outside with him. It was only nine a.m. and already the sky was a brilliant blue, the warmth of the sun falling gently onto them. In a few hours it would be hot enough to burn.
‘About last night...’ he began.
She cut him off. ‘I don’t want to talk about it. It happened. It won’t happen again.’
If she could, she would pretend it had never happened. But that wouldn’t happen until her skin stopped tingling. She could still feel the marks where his fingers had caressed her. She was having to fight her eyes from meeting his, terrified of the feelings that ruptured through her whenever she got caught in his gaze, terrified of the feelings erupting inside her at his closeness.
Jaw tight, he inclined his head. ‘We might have made a life.’
Her stomach dived. This was the one thing she’d refused to think about since he’d gone but his words opened the floodgates she’d suppressed and almost made her double over with fear.
Nature wouldn’t be so cruel, would it? She remembered a boy from school solemnly informing all the girls in their form that you couldn’t get pregnant if you did ‘it’ standing up or if it was your first time. She’d asked her mum, who’d still been a loving mum back then, who’d smiled widely and shaken her head. ‘Honey,’ she’d said, ‘don’t believe anything a man tells you when it comes to contraception. Take charge of it for yourself.’
To remember that tenderness from the woman who’d so recently cut her out of her li
fe was like prodding an open wound, but Becky had taken those nearly ten-years-old words of wisdom to heart. She’d believed that when she met the man she could build a relationship with they would take things slowly. She’d thought her first time would come after careful consideration and planning. She’d believed she would have time to protect herself.
And now she had to hope and pray that, despite everything she’d spent years learning about the human body, the boy from her form had been right. She needed all the divine intervention she could get.
Swallowing back the metallic taste in her throat, she said, ‘If you’re a man who believes in prayers, I suggest you put your hands together.’
He muttered something she didn’t need to be a linguist to understand was a curse.
Time stretched in silence before he said, ‘I’m sorry, bomboncita.’
She gritted her teeth against the surge of warmth that filled her. She’d always secretly liked it when he called her that. But that was before. Now, in the after, being called the name he must have called hundreds of women before her was just another reminder of Emiliano’s womanising ways and her own utter stupidity.
‘Don’t call me that. And I don’t want your apologies. We were both there.’
‘The way I spoke to you after...’ He breathed in heavily. ‘I was out of order.’
Oh, God, she was going to cry. ‘Agreed.’
‘Bom... Becky, what happened...’
‘I don’t want to talk about it.’ She blinked rapidly, doing her darnedest to stop the tears from spilling. ‘It’s history. I’ve already put it from my mind so I suggest you forget it too. If a baby’s been made then we’ll deal with it but, until that happens, I would thank you to never speak of it again.’
‘Were you a virgin?’
Mortification thrashed through her and she shoved her chair back violently and got to her feet. ‘I said I don’t want to talk about it.’
His face only became grimmer. ‘Answer my question first.’
‘What difference does it make? None at all.’
He banged his fist on the table, features twisting with anger. ‘Of course it makes a difference!’
‘Why?’ She threw her arms in the air and tried her hardest to keep a lid on the emotions crashing through her, so many of them: fear, anger, humiliation, despair and, worse than all that, awareness. For him. An awareness so strong that, should he touch her, she feared she would melt into him before she had the sense to smack him away. She’d guessed that making love changed a person but not like this. Whatever happened with the baby situation, Becky knew their night together had changed something in her, but for Emiliano...
She didn’t doubt that within weeks of her leaving his employ he’d struggle to remember her name.
‘Are you going to fake some chivalry?’ she demanded, her voice rising to match the rising anguish and panic. ‘Why should me being a virgin make any difference when it’s never made a difference to your treatment of women before? You love ’em and leave ’em regardless.’
His anger finally reaching tipping point, Emiliano jumped to his feet. Since leaving Becky’s bed he hadn’t slept a jot, the memories of their explosive lovemaking so strong that they vied with the despair his mother’s actions had evoked. But it was the evidence of Becky’s virginity casting the darkest cloud.
Had he hurt her? The mere thought sliced his heart. It hadn’t crossed his mind for a second that she could be a virgin. She was twenty-five years old! She should have had many lovers by now. If he could turn back time and stop himself from knocking on her door, he would do it in a heartbeat.
And if he could turn off the awareness still thrumming wildly in his blood and loins for her...
Dios, every inch of him ached to taste those plump lips again, then taste all the parts he hadn’t tasted in the explosion of passion that had taken them in its grip.
‘I might not be a saint but I’ve never treated women in the way you’ve just implied.’
‘You liar. You have no respect for women. We’re just a commodity to you, something to use when you’re in the mood and then discarded the next day.’
Something sharp stabbed his chest at this exquisitely delivered observation but he pushed it to one side. His past lovers had always known the score. He’d never lied to them. The only woman he’d slept with in the past decade without making the score clear beforehand was the woman who stood before him now, as many emotions blazing from her green eyes as he had curdling in his guts.
‘If that was true then tell me what the hell I’m doing here right now.’
‘Scared that your recklessness might have made a baby!’
‘My recklessness?’
‘You started it!’
‘And you, bomboncita, were a very willing participant...’ so willing his loins tightened to remember her breathless moans and the passion of her kisses ‘...so don’t try and twist this mess onto me. It was a mistake that you’ve already admitted we were both party to, so stop with the blame game and take some responsibility for your own actions.’
‘If I’m pregnant then it’s a responsibility I’ll bear for the rest of my life.’
‘And my life too.’
‘Oh, are you going to carry it and give birth to it and give up all your dreams for it?’ Her laughter had a strong tinge of hysteria. ‘The most you’ll have to do is chuck some money at it and then carry on sleeping your way around the world as if nothing’s changed.’
‘We don’t even know if you’ve conceived and already you’ve decided what my future actions will be? Your opinion of me is worse than I believed.’
‘If you didn’t want a reputation as a playboy you should have been choosier about who you shared a bed with!’
‘I didn’t hear any complaints last night,’ he said pointedly, stepping closer to her as if her body had a magnetic charge his responded to.
‘There wasn’t time,’ she retorted, the heat in her voice matched by the heat flushing over her cheeks.
‘Is that the voice of experience talking?’ he taunted. ‘How about a repeat performance so you can judge accordingly?’
Green eyes pulsed as her chin jutted defiantly. ‘If your first performance is the standard then I’ll pass.’
‘And you call me a liar?’ Snaking an arm around her waist, he pulled her flush to him and fused his mouth to hers. Her response was as immediate as it had been the night before, arms looping tightly around his neck, kissing him back with the same rabid hunger that controlled him.
Dios, she tasted so damn headily sweet, even more than he remembered, and when he gripped her delicious bottom to press her even more tightly against him, and she felt his excitement through the denim jeans they both wore, her moan only made him harder.
Pressing her against the table for support, he slipped a hand up her T-shirt and groaned into her mouth, feeling the silky softness of her skin, his groan deepening when he reached the underside of her breasts, frustratingly enclosed by a lacy bra.
There had been no time for him to even look at her naked when they’d made love. The need to be inside her had been too strong, too consuming, a need he’d never felt before. Virgin or not, Becky’s response had been every bit as fevered. She’d wanted it as much as he and, for all her taunts, her response right then was proof that fever still lived in her blood as much as it lived in his. Her thighs parted and a hand dived inside the collar of his T-shirt, nails scratching against his feverish skin.
Later, he would wonder how far they would have taken it in the staff garden if Rufus hadn’t decided that whatever the humans were doing looked like something fun he needed to join in with, and leapt at them.
In an instant, they pulled apart.
Becky scrambled to straighten her T-shirt but her hands were shaking so hard it took several attempts to get hold of the fabric then sink onto a chair, her boneless lim
bs struggling to support her weight.
Too mortified to look at him, she covered her face and fought to get air into her lungs. She wished the ground would swallow her up. Bad enough she’d melted into a puddle for him in the dark of night but to do the same in broad daylight when any of the live-in villa staff could be watching them...? Had she lost all her good sense and modesty along with her virginity?
She heard Emiliano sit heavily on the seat beside her. ‘Becky...’
‘Just go,’ she whispered from behind her trembling hands. ‘And please, find a replacement for me. Do it now. I’ll stay until you find someone or until my notice has been worked, and I’ll care for the boys as I always do but any communication about them can be done by phone. I don’t want to see you or speak to you unless it’s absolutely necessary.’
She heard his sharp intake of breath. It felt like forever passed before the sound of his heavy footsteps broke through the drumming of blood in her head.
She didn’t drop her hands until she heard the French windows close. When she opened her eyes she found Barney and Rufus sitting beside her, both gazing at her with mournful expressions.
* * *
Emiliano, slumped on his late father’s sofa, raised bleary eyes when his brother got unsteadily to his feet. They’d been holed up in their father’s study for six hours, drinking to his memory.
‘We need food,’ Damián slurred.
Emiliano hiccupped. ‘Eating’s cheating.’
‘What?’
‘That’s what the Brits say.’
‘Oh.’ Damián flopped back down, took another swig out of the bottle of Scotch then passed it over.
It suddenly occurred to him that he hadn’t seen anything of Damián’s lady friend since the party five days ago. ‘Where’s your Brit gone?’
‘Gone.’
‘Gone where?’
‘Home.’
‘Which home?’
‘Give me the bottle.’
He pressed the bottle against his chest. ‘Not until you tell me which home. One of yours or hers?’
The Cost of Claiming His Heir Page 4
