‘Of course. I was just being polite.’
‘Well, consider yourself relieved of that particular burden.’ His driver hurried around to the passenger door and pulled it open for him but, instead of getting into the back seat, he found himself leaning against the car door and looking down at her. ‘As far as I’m aware we’ve covered pretty much everything there is to say, wouldn’t you agree?’
‘Not everything, as a matter of fact.’
‘No?’ In a minute his car would be moved on. Traffic wardens were very hot in this part of London. Still, he found he continued to loiter, watching her derisively although he had told himself, at irritatingly frequent intervals over the past couple of weeks, that he was well rid of her.
‘Maybe we could go and grab a…a coffee somewhere…’ Jude offered, even though she had already had two cups after the meal and knew for the baby’s sake she really couldn’t have any more caffeine.
‘I’m trying to think of a single reason why I would want to have a coffee with you.’
Jude rested her hand on the open door. ‘Because I want to talk to you and it’s the very least you owe me.’
Cesar gave an incredulous laugh. ‘Run that by me again?’
‘You might just want to shove me out of your mind, but we…we’re going to keep meeting up every so often and we need to try and work out how we can do that without ignoring one another. If we ignore one another, Freddy and Imogen are going to start asking questions.’ It was the only thing she could think of to say because she wasn’t about to drop her bombshell on a busy road in central London with his driver waiting impatiently inside the car.
‘You’d better get in,’ Cesar said impatiently. ‘In a minute we’re going to cause a traffic jam.’
She ducked down past him into the back seat of the Bentley and shuffled over so that he could sit next to her. It was hard to tell whether he had decided to talk to her because what she had said made sense or whether he had just got fed up of standing outside his car, obliged to speak to her because clever positioning of her hand prevented him from getting into the car and slamming the door in her face.
‘I…I gather you and Freddy have reconciled your differences…’ Jude began hesitantly.
It seemed pitiful to be indulging in small talk when there was something far more important to discuss, but she wasn’t going to just blurt it out. If she could somehow get him to thaw just a little bit towards her, it would, she reckoned, make things a lot easier.
‘I was given precious little choice.’ Cesar leaned towards his chauffeur and instructed him to go to the restaurant, then he turned to look at her. ‘Presented with a fait accompli, I could either have stuck to my guns and deprived Fernando of his chance to prove himself or else release his trust fund and give him the independence he wanted.’ He shrugged elegantly. ‘If he were man enough to get a woman pregnant, and I gather that it was not entirely an unplanned event, then he will have to be man enough to handle his finances and raise a family.’
Everything was very civilised, but Cesar’s eyes remained cold and shuttered.
‘And…what about Imogen? Have you softened your opinion towards her?’
‘Is that why you wanted to talk to me? So that we could compare notes?’
Jude looked away, but it was difficult. His closeness, the intimacy of being in the back seat of the car with him, those deep, black, penetrating eyes—it affected her like a drug seeping into her veins and making her thoughts woolly.
‘I thought you would have been a lot less forgiving than you were.’
Cesar was loath to admit it, even to himself, but so had he. In all events, he had seen his brother distraught with worry at the hospital and then afterwards had seen them together, the way they looked at one another, and had grudgingly admitted to himself that maybe some things weren’t as black-and-white as he cared to think.
Furthermore, even in her weakened state, Imogen had managed to get him on his own and had suggested—no, insisted—that she sign a prenuptial agreement. She had also, to his surprise, on some paper, worked out a pretty accurate formula for what she thought his brother should be given from the trust fund and it roughly coincided with his own estimate. He had had to do a quick rethink on his preconceived ideas.
‘I will, naturally, be taking an active interest in my brother’s venture,’ was all he said, ‘at least until it’s up and running.’
‘Freddy says that you don’t know a huge amount about how clubs are run…’ she said with a little smile.
Cesar felt himself grudgingly descend from his polar iciness and he admitted drily, ‘It’s true. Fernando has discovered the one area of expertise in which I am fairly ignorant and he’s naturally revelling in the discovery. In fact, I think it’s made his day.’
‘Who can blame him? Living in your shadow must have been a tall order.’
‘I’ll take that as a compliment.’ He knew that this was how she had managed to get under his skin. Cesar, in his daily life, was surrounded by people who bowed and scraped and put themselves out to be included in the magic circle that surrounded him. Jude, albeit unwittingly, seemed to carry a metaphorical pin around with her, specifically designed to burst his rarefied balloon.
‘It is,’ Jude agreed readily. ‘I never thought I’d hear you say that you were ignorant about anything, so that means that there must be even more dimensions to you than I thought.’
‘Even more?’
The car pulled smoothly up in front of a small bistro, sparing Jude the embarrassment of having to explain her backhanded compliment.
After that brief respite her nerves were beginning to kick in again, but she forced herself to remain calm as they went in. Cesar was obviously a regular and they were treated to the best table in the restaurant, a small one tucked away at the back where the noise level was lower and two oversized potted plants gave the illusion of semi-privacy.
‘I can’t eat a thing,’ she said.
‘Can’t you? I didn’t notice you stuffing yourself at the reception.’
He’d noticed how much she had eaten?
‘I’ll just have some…some orange juice, I think.’ She snapped shut the menu and then stared down at it, as if in search of inspiration.
‘So…’ Order for some calamari and drinks placed, Cesar sat back in his chair, one arm loosely draped over the back, and looked at her. ‘Are we succeeding in this important mission of acting like civilised adults?’
‘Did you really mean it when you said that you thought I’d been involved in some sort of plot with Imogen to fleece your brother of his trust fund?’
‘Is that why you wanted to talk to me, Jude? Because you wanted to clear your name?’
‘Amongst other things,’ she mumbled.
‘Amongst what other things?’
‘Why don’t you answer my question?’
Cesar looked at her carefully. Hell, it was no skin off his nose if he told her the truth. Anyway, like it or not, she had a point. She and his brother’s wife were close friends and he envisaged that his relationship with his brother was set to improve. They were certainly going to be thrown into each other’s company more than they ever had been before, with this whole jazz club situation. Chances were high that he and Jude would bump into one another now and again. The baby’s christening, for a start, would be a big family occasion. It made sense to drop the hostilities.
And it had clearly been preying on her mind. That instantly made Cesar feel pretty good.
‘I confess I may have said one or two things that possibly weren’t entirely accurate, that being one of them.’
‘What were the others?’
‘Has this been worrying you?’ he asked casually. The calamari arrived, just the right amount considering he had eaten a hefty lunch only a few hours previously.
He imagined her losing sleep over what he had said, tossing and turning at night, unable to function by day and desperate for him to release her from her misery. His mood went up a couple of
notches. It made a pleasant change from that reception lunch when he hadn’t been able to miss the way she had leaned into his cousin, Jorge, practically draping herself around the poor boy and hanging on to his every word as though he actually had something other to talk about than football.
‘I just didn’t think it was right for you to walk out with such an unfair impression of me.’ Now that the moment had arrived, Jude discovered that she was dragging her feet, dreading when she had to tell him about her pregnancy.
‘Okay. I’ve had a chance to get to know your friend and I would be lying if I said that I could imagine the pair of you plotting to do anything. Are you satisfied now? It’s rare for me to be wrong about anything or anyone, but in this instance I may have reacted in fury. Don’t forget you were the one who contrived to keep something very important a secret.’
‘So did Freddy,’ she pointed out, fiddling with her glass.
‘Freddy had an ulterior motive.’
‘So did I. I was being loyal.’
‘You were my lover. Your loyalties should have been with me.’
‘What else?’
Cesar looked up with a speared piece of calamari on the way to his mouth. ‘What else…what?’
‘You said that you said one or two things that weren’t entirely accurate. Well, you’ve mentioned one thing. What’s the other?’
He took his time with this mouthful of food, then washed it down with some of the white wine. He had drunk nothing at lunch and the cold wine tasted good, especially when combined with his improving spirits.
‘I was enraged by what I considered your deception. I obviously still am, don’t get me wrong. However, I don’t consider you a gold-digger, not that I would sell my soul on that certainty. Face it, if you could lie once, you could lie a thousand times, but from what I’ve seen of you, I don’t think you are capable of using Freddy for his money. There. Consider your character suitably exonorated, an excellent basis for civil conversation between us in the future.’
‘Civil conversation…’
‘Correct. Why?’ He shoved aside the plate and leaned back in his chair so that he could look her squarely in the face. ‘Were you expecting more?’
Something akin to pleasure raced through his veins, making this unexpected meeting well worth the temporary inconvenience. For starters, he was enjoying her company, much as he didn’t care to admit it, even to himself. He wasn’t too big to acknowledge that she had had more of an effect on him than he had anticipated when he had walked out of her house.
That said, of course he wasn’t going to take her back. He had offered her a chance for involvement and she had blown it. Furthermore, she had proved to be a traitor.
However, he wasn’t going to deny that there was something satisfying about knowing that she was ready to come crawling back. Doubtless she had had time to really think about what he had said and ponder the truth, which was that isolating yourself from all contact with the opposite sex on the off chance that the right guy would come along with a ring in his hand and a marriage proposal on his lips was sheer lunacy. Dreams were all well and good but not when they interfered with day-to-day existence. Hell, he’d never had much time for idle dreaming, had he?
For a passing moment, the image of his brother flashed into his mind—his brother laughing with Imogen as they’d cut that little wedding cake at the reception. His eyes had been tender, loving, besotted and she had been smiling back at him with a similar expression.
‘No, of course not,’ she was saying awkwardly. ‘Why would I expect more?’
‘No idea, because there’s nothing more on the table.’ He signalled for the bill. Was it his imagination or did something resembling anxiety shadow her face?
‘Look, this is difficult for me but there’s something I need to tell you.’
Cesar stilled, sensing a level of urgency in her voice that went beyond some simple desire for them to try and get along for the sake of convenience. She was also fiddling like mad with the linen napkin on the table, although when she caught him noticing the nervous gesture she immediately stopped and placed her hands on her lap.
‘Go on, although I haven’t got all evening.’
‘No.’ She remembered that he probably had a date with a leggy blonde or some other model-type creature. He had pointedly refrained from telling her exactly what he had to do later which, in her head, could only mean one thing.
‘Do you remember…at the cottage? When we…made love…?’
The question came from nowhere and, taken aback, Cesar frowned. ‘Of course I remember, although I thought that we were both going to pretend that that had never happened.’
‘I did say that at the time, didn’t I…’
‘Have you since discovered that selective amnesia is a little harder to do?’
‘Virtually impossible.’
‘So you don’t want anything more than for us to just sit here chewing the fat…but by your own admission, you can’t get me out of your head…’
‘It’s not as clear-cut as that… I don’t know quite how to say this and you’re probably not going to like it but…Cesar, I’m pregnant.’
Cesar froze. The silence between them was so bottomless that, even with the dull clatter of noise around them, Jude felt that she would have been able to hear a pin drop.
‘You’re kidding, right,’ he said finally, but his voice was raw and he had gone slightly ashen.
‘I’d never kid about something like that.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Because I did a test two days ago. In fact, I did the test three times. Those tests are pretty much one hundred per cent accurate.’
‘You can’t be. You asked me if I remembered when we made love at your cottage. I do and I distinctly remember you telling me that you were protected.’
‘Yes, I know and I thought I was. I really did. I mean, I worked out when my period was due and I should have been perfectly safe but…’
Cesar was in a state of shock. When she had told him that they needed to talk, he hadn’t known what to expect. It hadn’t been this. Was that why she had been so desperate to know whether he had really believed her capable of using his brother? Because really she had needed to find out whether he thought her capable of using him?
‘Was this deliberate?’ he felt obliged to ask because nothing could be taken on trust, but he knew the answer already from the look on her face.
‘Of course not!’ Jude told him fiercely. ‘Don’t you think I was as shocked as you are now when I…when I did that test?’ She felt her eyes threaten to fill up again but she blinked the tears away and clenched her fists.
‘Okay. I believe you.’
She felt a wave of relief. From the various scenarios which had played in her head, most had featured an accusing and disbelieving Cesar, who saw her as someone who had intruded into his life and, having infiltrated, had used the situation to her own advantage.
At least that nasty possibility was out of the way, leaving her to face the stark reality, which was that she and Cesar no longer shared an intimate connection, that she had only ever been a sex object to him, easily and quickly disposable. Now that she was pregnant, nothing was destined to change but they would have to work out some sort of civil arrangement whereby they could deal with the situation.
In all her girlhood dreams, being pregnant by a man who didn’t love her had never featured. Plan A had always been to have children in a loving relationship. She now had to face some pretty harsh facts. She was on Plan B and she would just have to deal with it.
‘I haven’t come here to ask anything of you,’ she told him quietly. ‘I’m pretty realistic.’ She smiled sadly. ‘We had a very brief fling but there’s nothing between us now so we just need to sort out…well, what happens when the baby is born…’
‘What do you mean, what happens?’
‘About…visiting…I know it’s early days but…it’s probably better to deal with things now…or at least discuss th
em… I know this is a bombshell…’
‘That has to be the understatement of the year.’
‘Anyway, perhaps I could give you a few days to think about things, let it sink in…?’
‘Let it sink in? It’s already sunk in!’ He raked restless fingers through his hair and looked at her, imagining his baby in her tummy. Fatherhood had never been something he had contemplated. In fact, the concept was completely alien to both his way of thinking and his lifestyle.
‘Nothing has to change for you,’ she said quickly. ‘This is my situation.’
‘Your situation? What planet are you on, Jude? Whether you like it or not, this is fifty per cent my doing.’
‘But it’s my fault that I’m pregnant. I wasn’t careful enough. I should have thought.’
‘It’s pointless debating whose fault it is or isn’t. Right now we need to get out of here, go somewhere where we can talk privately.’ He stood up and beckoned for the bill at the same time. ‘My apartment’s just round the corner. We’ll go there.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
CESAR’S APARTMENT WAS literally a five-minute walk away. It made sense to be out of the restaurant, to go somewhere more private to talk, but Jude still felt nervous as they walked along in silence, she huddling into her coat while he seemed lost in his thoughts.
She reminded herself that he had now moved on from her, which made her think of his ruined date. The poor blonde was probably waiting at some table in some unknown restaurant, checking her watch and tapping her long scarlet fingernails impatiently as it dawned on her that she might have been stood up. Jude didn’t feel at all sorry about that. In fact, the thought provided her with a few moments of well-deserved amusement.
‘We’re here.’
She snapped out of her pleasant daydream and looked up at the sharp, clear lines of a four-storey Georgian town house with its neat black railings fringed by two impeccably groomed shrubs. It reeked of money and the impression was cemented by the array of flashy cars parked on either side of the wide street. Even in the darkness, this was clearly a part of London reserved for the immensely wealthy, a far cry from the cheap and cheerful hotel room she had reserved for herself for the overnight stay.
The Notorious Gabriel DiazRuthless Tycoon, Inexperienced Mistress Page 28
