by Lynne Graham
How could she ever have believed that she would find it possible to give her baby up to strangers? How could she ever have imagined that she could surrender all rights, hand over her own flesh and blood and agree never, ever to try and see her own child again? She had been incredibly stupid and immature. So she had run away from a situation which had become untenable, knowing even then that she would be followed and eventually traced...
As the ever-present threat of being found and called to account for her behaviour assailed Polly, her skin turned clammy with fear. In her own mind she was no better than a criminal. She had signed a contract in which she had promised to give up her baby. She had sat back while an unbelievably huge amount of money was expended on her mother’s medical care and then she had fled. She had broken the law, yet she had been wickedly and savagely deceived into signing that contract...but what proof did she have of that fact?
Sometimes she woke from nightmares about being extradited to the USA and put on trial, her baby taken from her and parcelled off to a life of luxury with his immoral and utterly unscrupulous father in Venezuela. Even when she didn’t have bad dreams, it was becoming increasingly hard to sleep. She was at that point in pregnancy when she couldn’t get comfortable even in bed, and she was often wakened by the strong, energetic movements of her baby.
And in her mind’s eye then, when she was at her weakest, she would see Raul. Raul Zaforteza, dark, devastating and dangerous. What a trusting and pathetic victim she had been! For she had fallen in love with him, hopelessly, helplessly, blindly in love for the first time in her life. She had lived only from one meeting to the next, frantically counting the days in between, agonised if he didn’t turn up and always tormented by the secret she had believed she was still contriving to keep from him. A jagged laugh was torn from her lips now. And all the time Raul had known she was pregnant. After all, he was the father of her baby...
An hour later, Polly headed to work. It was a cool, wet summer evening. She walked past the bus stop. She was presently struggling to save every penny she could. Soon she wouldn’t be able to work any more, and once she had the baby she would need her savings for all sorts of things.
The supermarket where she worked shifts was a bright beacon of light and activity in the city street. As Polly disposed of her coat and her bag in the rest room, the manageress popped her head round the door and frowned. ‘You look very tired, Polly. I hope that doctor of yours knows what he’s doing when he tells you that it’s all right for you to be still working.’
Polly flushed as the older woman withdrew again. She hadn’t actually seen a doctor in two months, but at her last visit she had been advised to rest. How could she rest when she had to keep herself? And if she approached the social services for assistance they would ask too many awkward questions. So she lived in a state of permanent exhaustion, back aching, ankles swollen, and if she pushed herself too hard she got blinding headaches and dizzy spells.
By the end of her shift on one of the checkouts Polly was very tired, and really grateful that she was off the next day. Tomorrow, she decided, she would pamper herself. Shouldering her bag, she left the shop. The rain had stopped. The street lights gleamed off the wet pavements and cars swished by splashing the kerbs.
Polly didn’t even try to close her coat. Only a tent would have closed round her swollen stomach, and the weight of her own body contributed to her fatigue. Not long now, she consoled herself. She felt as if she had been pregnant for ever, but soon she would be getting to know her baby as a separate little person.
Engaged in her thoughts of the near future, head downbent, Polly didn’t register the existence of a large obstacle in her path. Only at the last possible moment, when she almost cannoned into the impossibly tall and solidly built male blocking her passage, did she notice the presence of another human being and seek to sidestep him.
As she teetered dangerously off balance, a cry of dismay escaping her, a pair of strong hands shot out to catch her by the shoulders and steady her. Heart pounding with fright, she reeled as he held her there, her head tipping back from a view of her rescuer’s silver-grey silk tie to look up.
Raul Zaforteza gazed down at her from his great height, his facial muscles locking his staggeringly handsome features into a bronze mask of impassivity that was uniquely chilling.
In severe shock, Polly trembled, soft mouth opening and closing again without sound, a look of pure panic in her gaze as she collided with eyes that had the topaz golden brilliance of a tiger ready to claw the unwary to the bone.
‘There is no place in this whole wide world where you could hope to stay hidden from me,’ Raul spelt out in a controlled tone of immense finality, his rich, accented vowel sounds tingling in her sensitive ears, throwing up a myriad of despoilt memories that could only torment her. ‘The chase is over.’
CHAPTER TWO
‘LET me go, Raul!’ Polly gasped convulsively, her heart thudding like a trapped animal’s behind her breastbone, nervous perspiration beading her short upper lip.
‘How can I do that?’ Raul countered with level emphasis. ‘You’re expecting my baby. What sort of a man could walk away?’
Without warning, pain flashed in a scorching burst across Polly’s temples, provoking a startled moan from her parted lips. Her hand flew up to press against her throbbing brow. Nausea stirred nastily in her stomach as the overpowering dizziness washed over her.
‘Por Dios ... what is the matter with you?’ Raul tightened his hold on her as she swayed like a drunk, straining with every sinew to stay upright and in control.
In another moment he bent and swept her up into his arms, cradling her easily into the strength and heat of his big, powerful frame. As the street light shone on the greyish pallor of her upturned face, Raul emitted a groan and said something hoarse in Spanish.
‘Put me down...’ Polly was not too ill to appreciate the cruel irony of Raul getting that physically close to her for the very first time.
Ignoring her, chiselled profile aggressively clenched, Raul jerked his imperious dark head and the limousine parked across the street filtered over to the kerb. The chauffeur jumped out and hurried to open the passenger door. Raul settled her down on the squashy leather back seat, but before he could climb in beside her Polly took him by surprise and lurched half out again, to be violently sick in the gutter. Then she sagged back on the seat, pressing a tissue to her tremulous lips and utterly drained.
As she lay slumped on her side, a stunned silence greeted her. Momentarily, a dull gleam of amusement touched her. Raul Zaforteza had probably got to the age of thirty-one without ever having witnessed such a distasteful event. And she hated him for being there to witness her inability to control her own body. Although she was the kind of person who automatically said sorry when other people bumped into her, a polite apology would have choked her.
‘Do you feel strong enough to sit up?’
As she braced a slender hand on the seat beneath her, Raul took over, raising her and propping her up like a rag doll. Involuntarily she breathed in the elusive scent of him. Clean, warm male overlaid with a hint of Something more exotic.
‘So you finally ran me to earth,’ Polly acknowledged curtly, refusing to look at him, staring into space with almost blank blue eyes.
‘It was only a matter of time. I went first to the house where you’re staying. Janice Grey wasn’t helpful. Fortunately I was already aware of where you worked,’ Raul imparted flatly.
She could feel the barrier between them, high and impenetrable as toughened frosted glass, the highwire tension splintering through the atmosphere, the restive, brooding edge of powerful energy that Raul always emanated. But she felt numb, like an accident victim. He had found her. She had made every possible effort to remain undetected—moved to London, even lied to friends so that nobody had a contact address or phone number for her. And all those endeavours had been in vain.
As a spasm of pain afflicted her, she squeezed her eyes tight shut.
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‘What is it?’ Raul demanded fiercely.
‘Feel like my head’s splitting open,’ she mumbled sickly, forcing her eyes open again.
Raul was now studying the pronounced swell of her stomach with a shaken fascination that felt deeply, offensively intrusive.
In turn, Polly now studied him, pain like a poisonous dart piercing her bruised heart. His hair—black as midnight now, but blue-black in sunlight—the strong, flaring ebony brows, the lean, arrogant nose, the magnificent high cheekbones and hollows, the wide, perfectly modelled mouth so eloquent of the raw sensuality that laced his every movement. A devastatingly attractive male, so staggeringly good-looking he had to turn heads wherever he went, and yet only the most audacious woman would risk cornering him. There was reinforced steel in those hard bones, inflexible control in that strong jawline.
The baby kicked, blanking out her mind, making her wince.
His incongruously long and lush black lashes swept up, and she was pinned to the spot by glinting gold eyes full of enquiry.
‘May I?’ he murmured almost roughly.
And then she saw his half-extended hand, those lean brown fingers full of such tensile strength, and only after a split second did she register in shock the source of his interest. His entire attention was on the giant mound of her stomach, a strangely softened expression driving the tension from his firm lips.
‘May I feel my child move?’ he clarified boldly.
Polly gave him a stricken look of condemnation, and with shaking, frantic hands tried somewhat pointlessly to try and yank her coat over herself. ‘Don’t you dare try to touch me!’
‘Perhaps you are wise. Perhaps touching is not a good idea.’ Nostrils flaring, Raul flung himself back in the corner of the seat, hooded eyes betraying only a chilling glint of intent gold, his bronzed face cold as a guillotine, impassive now in icy self-restraint.
And yet Polly was reminded of nothing so much as a wild animal driven into ferocious retreat. He had never looked at her like that in Vermont, but she had always sensed the primal passion of the temperament he restrained. Then, as now, it had exercised the most terrifying fascination for her—a male her complete opposite in nature, an outwardly civilised sophisticate in mannerism, speech and behaviour, but at heart never, ever cool, predictable or tranquil.
‘Take me home,’ she muttered tightly. ‘I’ll meet you tomorrow to talk.’
He lifted the phone and spoke in fluid Spanish to his driver. Polly turned away.
She remembered him in Vermont, addressing Soledad in Spanish. She remembered the maid’s nervous unease, her undeniable servility. When Raul had been around, Soledad had tried to melt into the woodwork, too unsophisticated a woman to handle the cruel complexity of the situation he had unthinkingly put her in. In his eyes she had only been a servant after all. Raul Zaforteza was not a male accustomed to taking account of the needs or the feelings of lesser beings...and in Soledad’s case he had paid a higher price than he would ever know for that arrogance.
The powerful car drew away from the kerb and shot Polly’s flailing and confused thoughts back to the present. While Raul employed the car phone to make a lengthy call in Spanish, she watched him helplessly from below her lashes. She scanned the width of his shoulders under the superb fit of his charcoal-grey suit, the powerful chest, lean hips and long muscular thighs that not the most exquisite tailoring in the world could conceal.
‘I can’t touch you but every look you give me is a visual assault,’ Raul derided in a whiplash aside as he replaced the phone. ‘I’d eat you for breakfast, little girl!’
Her temples throbbed and she closed her eyes, shaken that he could speak to her like that. So many memories washed over her that she was cast into turmoil. Raul, tender, laughing, amber eyes warm as the kiss of sunlight, without a shade of coldness. And every bit of that caring concern aimed at the ultimate well-being of the baby in her womb, at the physical body cocooning his child not at Polly personally. She had never existed for him on any level except as a human incubator to be kept calm, content and healthy. But how could she ever have guessed that shattering truth?
‘You look terrible,’ Raul informed her tautly. ‘You’ve lost a lot of weight and you were very slim to begin with—’
‘Nobody could ever accuse me of that now.’
‘Your ankles are swollen.’
Polly rested her pounding head back wearily, beyond caring about what she must look like to him now. It scarcely mattered. She had been ten times more presentable in Vermont and he had not been remotely attracted to her, although she had only recognised that humiliating reality in retrospect. ‘You’re not getting my baby,’ she warned him doggedly. ‘Not under any circumstances.’
‘Calm yourself,’ Raul commanded deflatingly. ‘Anxiety won’t improve your health.’
‘It always comes first, right?’ Polly could not resist sniping.
‘Desde luego...of course,’ Raul confirmed without hesitation.
She winced as another dull flash of pain made her very brain ache. She heard him open a compartment, the hiss of a bottle cap released, liquid tinkling into a glass, and finally another unrecognisable sound. And then she jerked in astonishment when an ice-cold cloth was pressed against her pulsing brow.
‘I will take care of you now. Did I not do so before? And look at you now, like a living corpse...’ Raul condemned, his dark drawl alive with fierce undertones as he bent over her. ‘I wanted to shout at you. I wanted to make you tremble. But how can I do that when you are like this?’
Her curling lashes lifted. Defenceless in pain, she stared up into frustrated and furious golden eyes so nakedly at variance with the compassionate gesture of that cool, soothing cloth he had drenched for her benefit. Being kind to her was killing him. She understood that. Suffering that grudging kindness was killing her.
‘You taught me to hate,’ she whispered, with a sudden ferocity alien to her gentle nature until that moment.
The stunning eyes veiled to a slumberous gleam. ‘There is nothing between us but my baby. No other connection, nada más...nothing more,’ he stressed with gritty exactitude. ‘Only when you can detach yourself from your emotional mindset and recall that contract will we talk.’
Hatred flamed like a shooting star through Polly. She needed it. She needed hatred to race like adrenalin through her veins. Only hatred could swallow up and ease the agonizing pain Raul could inflict.
‘You bastard,’ Polly muttered shakily. ‘You lying, cheating, devious bastard...’
At that precise moment the limo came to a smooth halt. As the chauffeur climbed out, Polly gaped at the well-lit modern building with its beautifully landscaped frontage outside which the car had drawn up. ‘Where are we?’ she demanded apprehensively.
A uniformed nurse emerged from the entrance with a wheelchair.
In silence Raul swung out of the limo and strode round the bonnet to wave away the hovering chauffeur. He opened the door beside her himself.
‘You need medical attention,’ he delivered.
Her shaken eyes widened, filling with instantaneous fear. Not for nothing had she visited the library to learn all she could from newspapers about Raul Zaforteza’s ruthless reputation. ‘You’re not banging me up in some lunatic asylum!’ she flung in complete panic.
‘Curb your wild imagination, chica. I would do nothing to harm the mother of my child. And don’t you dare try to cause a scene when my only concern is for your well-being! ’ Raul warned with ferocious bite as he leant in and scooped her still resisting body out of the luxurious car as if she weighed no more than a feather.
‘The wheelchair, sir,’ the nurse proffered.
‘She weighs nothing. I’ll carry her.’ Raul strode through the automatic doors, clutching her with the tense concern of someone handling a particular fragile parcel. The mother of his child. Cue for reverent restraint, she reflected bitterly. Restraint and concern that the human incubator should be proving less than efficient. But, weak an
d sick from pain, even her vision blurring, she rested her head down against a broad shoulder.
‘Hate you,’ she muttered nonetheless, and would have told him that with her last dying breath because it was her only defence.
‘You’re not tough enough to hate,’ Raul dismissed as a grey-haired older man in a white coat moved towards them.
Raul addressed him in a flood of Spanish. Scanning her with frowning eyes, the doctor led the way into a plush consulting room on the ground floor.
‘Why does nobody speak English? We’re in London,’ Polly moaned.
‘I’m sorry. Rodney Bevan is a consultant who worked for many years in a clinic of mine in Venezuela. I can talk faster in my own language.’ Raul laid her down carefully on a comfortable treatment couch.
‘Go away now,’ Polly urged him feverishly.
Raul stayed put. The consultant said something quiet in Spanish. Raul’s blunt cheekbones were accentuated by a faint line of dark colour. He swung on his heel and strode out to the waiting area, closing the door behind him.
‘What did you say?’ Polly was impressed to death.
As the waiting nurse moved forward to help Polly out of her coat, the older man smiled. ‘You’re the star here, not him.’
The nurse took her blood pressure. Why were their faces so solemn? Was there something wrong with her blood pressure? Her body felt like a great weight pulling her down.
‘You need to relax and keep calm, Polly,’ the doctor murmured. ‘I want to give you a mild sedative and then I would like to scan you. Is that all right with you?’
‘No, I want to go home,’ she mumbled fearfully, knowing she sounded like a child and not caring, because she didn’t feel she could trust anybody so friendly with Raul.
The voices went away. Raul’s rich, dark drawl broke into her frantic barely half-formed thoughts. ‘Polly...please let the medics do what they need to do,’ he urged.
She forced her eyes open, focusing on him with difficulty, seeing those lean bronzed features through a blur. ‘I can’t trust you...or them...you know him!’
