‘I’m lucky to have a roof over my head. And I won’t live here for ever. I’m saving each week to provide a better life—’
‘Pennies,’ he scorned. ‘You’re saving pennies a week as you work yourself to death. How will you care for a child when you’ve made yourself ill?’
‘The hotel is opening a crèche—’
‘A hotel crèche for my child?’
‘Why not, Lucas? It’s good enough for your staff,’ she blazed back.
For once, he couldn’t disagree, but he soon returned to his original point. ‘No child of mine is going to be brought up in one room.’
‘Why is your child so different from millions of others?’
‘I’m surprised you need to ask. If you’re carrying my child, you know I can offer it so much more than you can.’
‘More love than I can?’ As far as material things were concerned, he was right, but how much did a child really need in the way of luxury? Surely love and warmth and food was enough for any child?
‘I’m not talking about love,’ he said impatiently. ‘I’m talking about trying to bring a child up here at a hotel in the middle of nowhere.’ He shook his head angrily as he glanced around. ‘Not a chance any child of mine is going to be raised in a place like this.’
‘Strange, when I believe your ranch is in the wilds of Brazil.’ Iron will alone forced her voice to remain steady.
‘That’s different.’
‘How is it different, Luc?’
‘You would only have to see my ranch to know.’
It would be palatial. She could hardly imagine he lived in a broken-down shack. He would employ an army of staff, amongst whom there would be many only too pleased to care for Luc’s child. Everything about him screamed money and power, and, from what she’d heard, Luc had homes in London and New York, as well as the ranch. And there was a rumour racing around the hotel that he had just bought a castle in Scotland.
‘What are you thinking now?’ he demanded suspiciously. ‘Are you trying to tot up my worth?’
‘If that’s the only way you can put a value on yourself, I feel sorry for you, Luc. There’s a lot more to life than money and possessions.’
‘Says the chambermaid with nothing.’
‘Says the chambermaid who doesn’t want anything from you—who never has—and who, the more I hear you speak, cannot imagine that you have anything to offer me, or my child.’
‘Except several homes.’
‘So our child can be batted back and forth between them? I don’t think that counts as a plus. Do you?’
‘You don’t even know where you belong,’ he countered. ‘You left here for London, and now you’re back again you’re still not happy.’
Emma’s head snapped up. ‘That’s a cheap shot and you know it. The one thing I do know is that I can give my child a much better childhood than either of us had—’
‘What do you know about my life?’ He laughed.
‘Nothing. I can only imagine that it’s made you what you are today. My early life taught me self-reliance, while something about yours has made you bitter and cold, so I’m guessing there isn’t that much difference between us, whatever you say. And I don’t believe children care too much about the setting they’re brought up in, so long as they have the essentials of life, along with security and love.’
‘Can you even provide the essentials?’
‘Along with love and a lifetime of commitment?’ She raised her chin to stare him in the eyes. ‘Yes, I can.’
‘You’re deluding yourself, Emma, if you think I’ll let you take control of this situation.’
‘My child isn’t a situation. It’s a human being and I love it already. Just because my parents were addicts and criminals doesn’t mean I’ve grown up the same way. Or are you saying I’m just not the right sort? Is it my bank balance or my background that’s worrying you, Luc? Am I just not the type you’re used to meeting in the exalted circles in which you mix?’
For a moment he seemed genuinely perplexed. ‘I have never thought like that.’
‘Then don’t act like a jerk. Just because I don’t breathe the same rarefied air as you, it doesn’t mean I don’t have the same aspirations for my child.’
The silence was so sudden it rang in her ears until Luc said quietly, ‘Have you finished?’
‘I haven’t even got warmed up yet,’ she assured him, firming her jaw.
‘So you’re going to hide in Scotland, instead of continuing your training? And that, as we both know, can only benefit your child,’ he scoffed. ‘Know this, Emma. That isn’t going to happen.’
Lifting her chin, she glared into his eyes. ‘This is something we have to decide together.’
With an impatient shake of his head Luc growled, ‘Well, I won’t do that here.’
She relaxed a little. At last they agreed on something. Neutral territory would be better. They couldn’t stay here with the room ringing with their anger. ‘Where?’ she said, calming down. ‘I’ll meet you anywhere.’
‘Brazil,’ Luc stated coldly. ‘We’ll discuss this in Brazil.’
‘You can’t be serious.’
‘Why not? Brazil’s my home. That’s where I have decided to discuss this. You owe me that much, Emma. If nothing else, you should see the other side of your child’s heritage. If not for you, then for your baby.’
However much she fought against it, what Luc said made sense. She couldn’t deny there was another side to her baby’s heritage, but panic was already curling inside her at the thought of trekking halfway across the world with a man as hostile towards her as Luc. It had been hard enough going to London. She wasn’t an adventurer like Lizzie and Danny. She hadn’t been further away from home than Luc’s hotel, and even that time seemed a lifetime away. Once she was in Brazil she would be under Luc’s control. She’d have no friends, no one to call on.
‘We can talk here just as well,’ she insisted.
‘Let me put it another way,’ Luc suggested. ‘You come back to Brazil with me, or, if this child proves to be mine, I will have it taken from you when it’s born.’
‘You can’t do that.’
‘Are you willing to take that chance?’
She wasn’t willing to take any chances where her baby was concerned, and there was steely determination in Luc’s eyes. He had all the resources in the world to make good on his threat and she had none to fight him. And if by some miracle she could take him on, did she really want to put her child in the centre of its parents’ battleground?
‘If you can suggest an alternative plan, go right ahead,’ Luc said as he waited for her to speak.
‘My plan wouldn’t involve a trip to Brazil.’
‘Then your plan isn’t an option,’ he said flatly. ‘You’re very quick to tell me what you won’t do. Why don’t you try telling me what you will do?’
‘What every other single mother would do.’
‘But you’re not like them, Emma, because you put me in the frame.’
‘Are you saying I shouldn’t have told you?’
‘You didn’t say anything until I challenged you,’ Luc reminded her.
This was all going so badly wrong. She had thought she could stay in Scotland and work after the birth, safe in the knowledge that her child was close by in the hotel crèche. Beyond telling Luc he was the father of her baby, she hadn’t thought much further than that. She had never imagined he would want to be involved to this extent.
‘I’ll start making plans,’ he said, moving towards the door.
‘What sort of plans? I haven’t given you a decision yet.’
‘My plans to fly home to Brazil,’ he said, frowning. ‘You’ll come with me, of course. You’ll be informed when we’re leaving.’
‘No, Luc—’ She stopped. Th
e expression on his hard, autocratic face chilled her to the bone. What was she going to do? Say no to him? Did she really want a life for her child where its mother was always looking over her shoulder to see if Luc was coming to claim her baby, or was she going to sort this out now?
‘Anything more you have to say to me can be said in Brazil,’ Luc informed her.
‘I’m not going anywhere until we talk. This isn’t some business deal where you can reasonably request a change of venue. We’ll talk here, and then I’ll decide if I’m going to travel halfway across the world with you.’
‘I can’t force you into anything,’ he confirmed, ‘so if you’re happy to ignore all the things your child is going to benefit from in Brazil, I can’t do much about it.’ He shrugged. ‘But I would have thought that as a mother you would at least want to familiarise yourself with the country where your child is going to live.’
‘My child will live with me,’ she exclaimed, panic-stricken.
‘Which is why I intend to repeat my offer of a job,’ Luc informed her coolly. ‘And this time I suggest you listen carefully to my proposal before you turn it down.’
Her head was reeling. She couldn’t take it in. Just when she thought she had everything sorted out in her head, Luc threw a curveball. ‘You’re offering me a job in Brazil?’
‘I don’t know what else you think I could mean. You proved satisfactory in London, so why wouldn’t you prove satisfactory in Brazil?’
Satisfactory? Was he talking about her satisfaction rating as a chambermaid or in his bed? Luc’s stare didn’t waver. He had no intention of dressing it up. Whatever he was talking about, she was satisfactory, no more, no less.
‘Don’t you think you’d better go and start packing?’ he prompted impatiently.
‘I’ve got no intention—’ She stopped as he turned away to pick up the phone. Luc wasn’t even listening to her. He was arranging a flight to Brazil.
* * *
Bundled up warmly in coat, scarf and woolly hat, Emma waited outside the hotel for Luc with her single battered suitcase. He arrived, frowning like an avenging angel, looking, as always, as if he’d just stepped out of the pages of a magazine. Dark jacket. Blue jeans. Heavy boots.
‘Where were you? I looked for you inside.’ Turning away impatiently before she had a chance to answer, he tipped the man who had brought up his car. ‘Why did you carry your own suitcase?’ he demanded. ‘Why are you standing in the cold? There’s no need to make yourself a martyr, Emma.’
‘I’m not a martyr. I’m self-sufficient,’ she said, biting her tongue on everything else she would like to say. But Luc was right about the cold. It was freezing. The snow was drifting down and there were inches of ice beneath her feet, but she’d had to get out of the suffocating atmosphere of the hotel and breathe some clean, fresh air. She had left with a surprisingly good reference, and had been told she could come back at any time. Once again Luc had smoothed the path for her, whether she’d wanted him to or not. And now he took charge of her suitcase and helped her into the car.
He drove with confidence over the icy roads to the airport where his private jet was waiting. ‘Are you warm enough?’ he asked, as she hugged herself for comfort at the thought of the long trip ahead of her and its unknowable outcome.
‘Yes, thank you.’
Everything was happening so fast she felt as if the little control she still had was slipping away like sand through her fingers.
‘I’m surprised you’re not more enthusiastic,’ he commented as a fresh blanket of snow came tumbling down. ‘Rio,’ he murmured, as if landing in his own country couldn’t come fast enough for him. ‘Sunshine, samba and the best beaches in the world.’
Luc was a true son of heat and passion, Emma reflected, her stomach tightening on the thought, while she was better here in ice and snow, never allowing her passions to be roused. A thought that niggled at her when Luc went on to explain that she would be working at his flagship hotel, which was tempting, though she’d be right under his nose.
‘It’s a job with real prospects, Emma—a managerial position.’
‘What?’ She questioned this, feeling she wasn’t ready for such a responsible position. When she’d left London she had only been halfway through her training course. A job in management was still several years away for her.
Luc chose not to answer, and she thought she knew why. He’d moved on from telling her that she would never have to work again in her life to offering her a job suited to her position as the mother of his child. The owner of such a prestigious hotel chain could hardly be associated with a girl who scrubbed floors. But this proposition didn’t suit her any better than the last. ‘I’d rather be myself from the off,’ she said, ‘which means starting at the bottom and working my way up.’
‘If you’re having my child you’ll do as I say.’
‘It doesn’t work like that, Luc.’ But that was her only qualification for a job in management, Emma thought, biting her tongue on the angry words she couldn’t say to him now that Luc had stopped the car and got out. He had parked in front of the steps of his sleek executive jet. This was his life. Yes, and for a short time she’d be touching the fringes of it, and during that time she would make the best of every opportunity and work her socks off to win people over. She had always landed jobs fair and square in the past, and she had no intention of being paraded in public as Luc’s latest girlfriend, the woman he’d promoted above her capabilities just because she pleased him in bed.
‘What?’ he asked, as she hovered at the foot of the steps.
She glanced up into the unreasonably handsome face that she’d seen in so many different moods. There was only coldness and resolve now, laced with impatience as Luc waited for her to mount the steps. No one went against Lucas Marcelos. No one dared.
‘Hurry,’ he prompted. ‘I don’t know why you’re hesitating when you will have everything you need in Brazil.’
But would she have her freedom? Emma wondered.
CHAPTER EIGHT
NOW SHE WAS about to leave Scotland, it had occurred to her that once she set foot inside Luc’s jet she would be entering his world and leaving her world behind.
‘Let me help,’ he said.
His sudden solicitude wasn’t for any other reason than that he was as eager to leave Scotland as she was to stay. He was talking to her as he might talk to one of his brood mares on the pampas, a creature that must be soothed before it could be coaxed to go anywhere but a creature that would inevitably do exactly as he said.
‘What happens when I’ve given birth to our child?’ she asked quietly, still with her feet firmly rooted on Scottish soil.
Luc’s stare flickered. ‘Nothing. Not right away.’
So like that brood mare she would be allowed to wean her child, at which stage her baby would be taken away from her and she would be superfluous, and Luc would get rid of her. How different would that make her from her parents, who had never wanted her and who had passed her around? Was she going to let that happen to her own child? Or was she going to channel the grief she still felt at their wasted lives into a positive force for the good of her baby?
‘You can make your time in Brazil pleasant or not, Emma,’ Luc said, shifting position impatiently. ‘It’s in your hands entirely.’
Was it? As long as she made her mind up fast, she suspected, and in his favour, of course. Luc was shrewdly playing her, making it sound as if she would be in control, when they both knew it was he who held the reins. For now.
Seeing the cabin staff waiting patiently for them at the top of the steps, she asked the final question on her mind. ‘Will I be expected to share your bed in Brazil?’
For the first time since he’d found out about their baby a glimmer of humour flashed into Luc’s eyes. ‘Do you want to?’
She knew at o
nce he still wanted her. God help her, she wanted him too. There was no concern in his manner as he ran up the steps to greet the waiting crew. Luc was so sure of the eventual outcome, why would he feel any concern?
‘Emma. Come and meet everyone.’
She was surprised to be included in the warm greetings at the top of the steps, but was glad of it, and hurried to shake hands.
And so he had got her out of Scotland. It had been that easy, she realised ruefully as the friendly cabin staff ushered her inside the jet. She didn’t need to look at Luc to see the gleam of triumph in his eyes. She knew it would be there. Where persuasion had failed him, he’d used her innate good manners against her to achieve the result he wanted. As Luc left her to complete the preflight checks, his cabin staff ushered her to her seat, which looked more like a comfortable armchair than a necessary perch on a jet. It was flanked by a magazine rack, a drinks bar, a selection of tempting nibbles, and even a tray holding high-end beauty products for her to indulge in during the flight. Luc looked in on her briefly as she was trying to settle into her glitzy surroundings.
‘There are some new clothes for you in the bedroom at the back of the plane,’ he said, killing her smile. Nothing had been overlooked, it seemed, and she was slightly offended that the clothes she had chosen to wear didn’t pass muster, though she could accept that she hardly looked like managerial material in her beat-up coat. And it would be far too heavy to wear in Brazil, she reasoned, common-sensing herself out of the embarrassment.
‘There’s a bathroom too, so you can freshen up any time you want.’
‘Thank you.’
Luc stood framed in the doorway to the cockpit, watching her for a moment. His face was in shadow. His arm was resting on the door. She couldn’t read his expression, and had to remind herself that this wasn’t about her pride but about an unborn child. Their child. However incredible that seemed, she smiled up at the waiting cabin crew, accepted an orange juice, and slipped off her sale-rail coat. Handing it over to them, she settled back.
* * *
Brazil. The warm air, the scents, the smells, the light, the sounds—Emma was dazzled from the instant she stepped onto the tarmac. Even at the airport, there were the smiles of the people, the music of a samba blaring from a passing truck, and the unaccustomed sunshine. She couldn’t deny it was a happy start to an uncertain trip. They had landed at Santos Dumont airport in the centre of the city, with the jet seeming to scrape the top of the buildings as it came in to land. The famous landmarks—Sugar Loaf, the endless strip of ivory sand and the aquamarine sea—so familiar from postcards and travel programmes, had unfolded to her wide-eyed gaze beneath the brilliant white wings of the jet. And now she was here—
Brazilian's Nine Months' Notice Page 8
