Contract Baby

by Lynne Graham

  ‘The calls will wait. I’ll do the guided tour,’ Raul slotted in smoothly, his attention darkly fixed to his animated and chattering companions.

  Polly risked a glance at Raul. Brooding tension had hardened his lean, dark face. In receipt of a smouldering look, she flushed. ‘Are you sure you can spare the time?’ she pressed anxiously.

  Disconcertingly, Raul dropped a casual arm round her taut shoulders. ‘Why not?’

  ‘Did I say something wrong back there?’ Polly asked as he walked her away from the younger man.

  ‘You talked more in two minutes to a complete stranger than you have talked to me in three entire days,’ Raul delivered silkily. ‘However, I would advise you to maintain a certain formal distance with Patrick.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Don’t be misled by all that boyish charm. Patrick is a serial womaniser.’

  Polly blinked. ‘He seemed very nice. He was so interested in Luis.’

  ‘It was just a light word of warning,’ Raul drawled dismissively, his blunt cheekbones accentuated by a slight darkening of colour as she frowned at him in patent confusion over why he should have found it necessary to give that warning.

  He changed the subject ‘Actually, I thought you would’ve been down to the stables long before now. Country-bred Englishwomen are always mad about horses. They even take their ponies to boarding school with them!’ He laughed with husky appreciation. ‘I expect you ride pretty well yourself.’

  Conscious of the approving satisfaction he didn’t attempt to conceal in his assumption that she was used to being around horses, Polly muttered, ‘Er...well—’

  ‘I’ve never met an Englishwoman who didn’t,’ Raul confided, making her tense even more. ‘And, as horses are a major part of my life, that’s one interest we can share.’

  ‘I’m probably a bit rusty...riding,’ Polly heard herself say, when she had never been on a horse in her entire life. But any wish Raul might express to share anything other than a bed deserved the maximum encouragement.

  A split second later, she realised that she had just told a very stupid lie which would be easily exposed, but she had been so delighted at his talk of wanting to share his love of horses with her that she hadn’t been able to bring herself to disappoint him. She would teach herself to ride, just enough to pass herself. It couldn’t be that difficult, could it? In the meantime, all she had to do was make excuses.

  He showed her round the stables. She copied every move he made with the horses poking their heads out over the doors. Mirroring worked a treat. Just about everything he told her went right over her head, because her knowledge of horseflesh began and ended with a childhood love of reading Black Beauty.

  ‘It’s all so fascinating,’ she commented with a mesmerised smile while he talked about polo—an incomprehensible commentary on chukkas, throw-ins and ride-offs. His lean brown hands sketched vivid impressions to stress the fast and furious action. It occurred to her that even if he had been talking in Spanish she would still have been utterly hooked. His sheer enthusiasm had a hypnotic effect on her.

  Registering the glow in her dark blue eyes as she listened to him, Raul smiled. ‘You look happier today, querida.’

  The silence that fell as he uttered the endearment seemed to thump in time with Polly’s hopelessly impressionable heart. The tip of her tongue snaked out to dampen her dry lower lip. His stunning dark golden eyes homed in on the tiny movement and her tummy simply flipped. In the hot, still air, a storm of such powerful desire engulfed Polly that she quivered with embarrassment.

  A slow smile curved Raul’s beautiful mouth. Striding forward with confidence, he reached for her, a sudden burning brilliance blazing in his gorgeous eyes. ‘You’re trembling...’

  And he knew why. He radiated an answering sexual heat that overwhelmed her every attempt to conceal her own reactions. And when he hauled her close with hungry hands, and plunged his mouth down passionately hard on hers, she felt as if the top of her head was flying off with excitement, and she simply went limp, eyes sliding shut, struggling to breathe, heart pounding like a manic triphammer.

  ‘Oh, boy... she gasped, as Raul lifted his imperious dark head again, pressing her shaken face against his shoulder. Feverishly she drank in his hot, clean scent, torn by a devouring need for him that was shatteringly intense.

  But it was balanced by an awareness of his hunger, the jerky little shudder racking him as he snatched in a fractured breath. The barriers had come down, she sensed. He was touching her again. She was no longer off limits, like an ornament sheltering under a glass bell jar. And he wanted her, oh, yes, he wanted her, and this time that was going to be enough, she told herself urgently.

  As he set her back from him, brilliant eyes veiled, Raul murmured lazily, ‘I’ll pick you up for a picnic lunch around three. Leave Luis at home.’

  A little fretful squalling cry erupted like a comical complaint from the stroller. Raul burst out laughing. Surveying his wakening son’s cross little face with a luminous pride he could not conceal, he sighed, ‘We made a wonderful son together...I just wish we had made him between the sheets.’

  Polly blushed, but she was touched that he should think along the same lines as she had done. ‘Not much we can do about that.’

  ‘But we’ll do it the normal way the next time,’ Raul asserted with amusement, and before she could even blossom at that reassuring implication that they would have another child some day, he added with deflating practicality, ‘One of the grooms will run you back to the ranch. You shouldn’t be out in this heat without a hat. Sunstroke is not a very pleasant experience.’

  When she walked into her bedroom, two of the maids were hanging a rail of unfamiliar new garments in the wardrobe. Polly hovered, fingering rich fabrics, recognising wildly expensive designer tailoring. Dear heaven, Raul had bought her clothes. No asking, What do you like? No suggestion that she go and choose for herself. She eased a sleek dress in a smoky shade of blue from a padded hanger and held it against herself. Lordy, she’d never worn anything that short in her life!

  But she was smiling, because she was already walking on air. Next time. Two little words that told her that Raul regarded their marriage as a lasting development. She put on the blue dress and then tracked down the housekeeper and asked for the keys of the curious little turreted building on the south boundary of the gardens. She had a couple of hours to kill, and yesterday had peered in through the shrouded windows and found the doors securely locked.

  ‘No one goes there now, señora.’ The older woman muttered something anxious in Spanish about el patrón, her kindly face strained as she finally passed over the keys with marked reluctance.

  The staff might be superstitious about the place, but Polly was unconcerned by that troubled reference to ‘el patrón’. Raul wouldn’t give two hoots if she went and explored. This was supposed to be her home now, and that picturesque building intrigued her.

  She opened the Gothic front door and walked into a splitlevel, surprisingly spacious room with dust-covered furniture. The walls were faded and stained, the curtains in an advanced state of disintegration. She wandered through silent rooms, coming on a dated kitchen layered with dust before she walked up the cast-iron staircase.

  There was a large bedroom, a bathroom, and then one other bedroom. She stopped in the doorway of the third room. It was a child’s room, with little rusty cars still sitting on shelves, yellowing photos curling up on a noticeboard, as if the little boy had just gone away and never come back. It was eerie.

  She peered at the photos. One she recognised as Raul’s father. There were two portraits at the ranch that she had assumed were of Raul’s parents. Eduardo, who bore a marked resemblance to Raul, and Yolanda, a regal blueeyed blonde, who resembled him not at all. She didn’t recognise the laughing brunette with the exotic tigerish eyes, although those eyes reminded her of...Raul’s eyes?

  The sounds of steps on the metal stairs sent Polly hurrying back out onto the landing. It
was Raul, still dressed in his riding gear, breathing shallowly as if he had been hurrying.

  ‘What are you doing poking around in here?’ he demanded rawly, a savage glitter in his golden eyes, harsh lines of strain bracketing his sensual mouth.

  Polly was thoroughly disconcerted by his reaction. ‘I wasn’t “poking around”...I was just curious. Who lived here? I didn’t realise anyone had actually lived here until I came inside.’

  Raul studied her fiercely and then finally lifted a wide shoulder in a jerky shrug of grudging acceptance. ‘I thought you knew. Everyone knows... My family background has been exhaustively dug up and raked over by the media.’

  A sense of foreboding touched Polly then, her stomach muscles clenching tight. Raul was reacting like someone in shock, his eyes flickering uneasily over their surroundings and then skimming away again, a far-away look of grim vulnerability in his eyes until he shielded them, his facial bones ferociously prominent beneath his bronzed skin.

  ‘I lived here with my mother until I was nine,’ Raul told her flatly.

  ‘Your parents separated?’ she asked in bewilderment.

  Raul vented a hollow laugh. ‘My mother was my father’s mistress, Polly, not his wife!’

  Floundering in shock, Polly stammered, ‘B-but the blonde woman in the picture in the hall—?’

  ‘My father’s wife, Yolanda. Our lifestyle was somewhat dysfunctional.’

  With a mistress in a flamboyant little house at the foot of the garden? He wasn’t joking.

  Raul explained in a very few words. His mother, Pilar, had been the daughter of a llanero, who’d worked on a neighbouring tenant’s ranch. Pilar had already been pregnant with Raul when Eduardo Zaforteza married his beautiful oil heiress bride.

  ‘When Yolanda found out about my mother, she locked the bedroom door, and my father used that as his excuse to bring us here to live,’ Raul shared tautly. ‘After my mother’s death, he gave Yolanda half of everything he possessed to agree to my adoption.’

  ‘What age were you when your mother died?’ Polly muttered.

  ‘Nine. There used to be a swimming pool out there. She drowned in it when she was drunk. She was frequently drunk,’ Raul admitted flatly. ‘What my father called “love” destroyed her...in fact it destroyed all our lives.’

  ‘Yolanda never had any children?’

  ‘Frequent miscarriages...sí, the bedroom door was unlocked eventually.’ Raul grimaced. ‘I think my father enjoyed having two women fighting over him. When it became a hassle, he just took off and left them to it for a while. He and Yolanda died in a plane crash almost ten years ago.’

  Nausea was stirring in Polly’s sensitive stomach. All of a sudden she was seeing and understanding so much, but recoiling from a vision of the distressing scenes which Raul must have witnessed as he grew up. An unhappy mother with a drink problem. No normal family life, no secure childhood, nothing but tangled adult relationships and constant strife.

  She was imagining how much the wronged wife must have loathed Raul and his mother, and didn’t even want to consider what it had been like for Raul to live in the same house with Yolanda from the tender age of nine. An embittered woman, who had forced her husband to pay for the right to adopt his illegitimate son. Little wonder Raul found it a challenge to believe in love or the deeper bonds of marriage.

  ‘You should have this place cleared out.’ Polly strove for a brisk tone.

  ‘I haven’t set foot here in years. It was my father who insisted it stay as it was. He liked to come here when he felt sentimental,’ Raul said with lethal derision.

  Polly was frankly appalled by what he had told her, but working hard to hide it. She was annoyed that she had blundered in to rouse such unpleasant memories, and exasperated that she hadn’t had more interest that long-ago day at the library in learning about Raul’s background rather than about the women in his life. She started down the curving staircase, eager to be out in the fresh air again.

  ‘I’ll have this place emptied, then...OK?’ Polly pressed, seeking agreement for what she saw as a necessary act.

  Raul shrugged with comforting unconcern. The distant look had gone from his eyes as he scrutinised her appearance and his mouth quirked. ‘So the clothes have arrived... I chose them when I was in Caracas. At least you’ve got something decent to wear until you do your own shopping,’ he pointed out, for all the world as if she had been walking around in rags.

  Half an hour later, they got into a four-wheel drive to head out for the picnic he had promised. They left the asphalt lanes that criss-crossed the vast spread of the ranch buildings to hurtle down a dusty trail and then out across the grassy plains. All sign of modern civilisation was left behind within minutes. Yellow poplars, gum trees and the ubiquitous palm grew in thickets on higher ground, where the floodwater hadn’t reached. Great flocks of exotic multi-coloured birds rose from the trees with shrill cries as they passed.

  The sky was a clear, cloudless turquoise over the sun-drenched savannah. It was a strange and unfamiliar terrain to Polly, yet the Ilanos, teaming with wildlife in their isolation, had a haunting, fascinating beauty.

  ‘Where are we going?’ she finally asked.

  ‘Wait and see,’ Raul advised lazily.

  He brought the car to a halt and sprang out. As she followed, all she could see was a dense line of trees. Raul pulled a hamper out of the back seat. They walked under the trees, and then she caught her breath. In a gently sloping hidden valley below them, a waterfall tumbled down over ancient weathered rocks into a reed-edged lagoon.

  ‘Once a tributary of the Orinoco river ran through here...this is all that remains.’ Raul set the hamper down on the lush grass in the shade of the coconut palms.

  Polly was enchanted. ‘It’s so peaceful.’

  ‘My mother brought me here as a child. This place was special to her,’ Raul confided. ‘I suspect I might have been conceived here.’

  ‘Don’t you have any family left alive?’ Polly asked as she sat down.

  Raul swung round to look at her, his fabulous bone structure tensing, dark eyes sombre in the sunlight. ‘My grandfather, Fidelio.’ Raul shrugged. ‘He disowned my mother. He’s a very proud old man, and still refuses to acknowledge our relationship, but I told him about Luis last week.’

  ‘I’m sorry I’ve been so prickly and awkward,’ Polly said abruptly.

  Raul gave her a slanting smile as he sank down beside her. ‘I’ve been awkward too. This...you and I...it’s all new to me.’

  That rueful smile touched something deep inside her. Rising up on her knees, Polly took her courage in both hands. Planting her palms against his chest, she pushed him flat.

  Startled, Raul gazed up at her, and then a wolfish grin slashed his face. ‘And I was going to be a gentleman, gatita. I was planning to wait until you’d eaten! But, since we are both of one mind...’ Raul murmured, taking pity on her as she hovered above him, uncertain of what to do next, and reaching up to slowly draw her down to him.

  He sent his hands skimming down to her slim hips and eased her into the cradle of his long, muscular thighs with an erotic suggestiveness that was as bold as it was unashamed. Melded to every virile line of his powerful body, Polly turned boneless. He undid the zip on her dress and tipped it down off her shoulders.

  Her firm breasts rose and fell inside the delicate cups of her lace bra. He unclipped the bra and curved appreciative hands over the pale, pouting curves that tumbled out. She gave a muffled gasp as he tugged at her straining nipples and arched her back, excitement seizing her in its hold.

  Raul flipped her over gently onto her back. Vaulting upright, he proceeded to remove his clothes with a lack of cool that only excited her more She lifted her hips, tugged down the dress, sat up to shyly dispose of her remaining garments—but all the time she was covertly watching him. As that superb bronze body emerged she was enthralled, mouth bone-dry, pulses accelerating.

  A delicious little quiver of anticipation made her ache. Ju
st looking at him, seeing the potent evidence of his desire for her, stole her breath away. He was so aroused she could feel herself melting into a liquid pool of submission. And when he returned to her she was already on fire, the swollen pink buds of her breasts begging for his attention, a sensation of damp heat throbbing almost painfully between her thighs.

  His stunning eyes read the message in hers. He came down to her and kissed her breathless with a force of hunger that overwhelmed her own. ‘I feel wild...’ he groaned with a ragged laugh. ‘One more night watching you across the dining table and I would’ve pulled you under it!’

  ‘It didn’t show.’

  ‘Infierno...I get as hard as a rock just being in the same room with you,’ Raul growled rawly. ‘I don’t think I have ever been so frustrated in my life! I was tempted to take you into the stables earlier and..’ As her dark blue eyes widened in open shock at that series of blunt revelations, he compressed his lips, a dark rise of blood emphasising his cheekbones. ‘I just want you so much I can’t think of anything else right now.’

  Polly was dazed by that almost apologetic conclusion. She had never once dreamt that Raul might come to desire her to such an extent. Colliding with devouring golden eyes, she shivered. He meshed a not quite steady hand into her hair.

  ‘That’s all right,’ she mumbled, mesmerised by his intensity but even weaker now with wanton longing. ‘I want you too.’

  Heat flooded her as he kneed her legs apart. He had said he felt wild, and what he did to her was wild. Nothing could have prepared her for the storm of powerful need he released. He took her hard and fast, and then so slowly and so agonisingly sweetly that she was plunged into a mindless glory of acute pleasure, afterwards savouring every precious moment of satiated contentment in his arms, certain that they had turned a corner to forge deeper bonds.

  She slept for a while then. She wakened, feeling ridiculously shy, to focus on Raul, where he lay fully dressed again in a careless sprawl, an unusually peaceful aspect to his stillness. Assuming he was asleep, she sat up. His lashes were as lush as black silk fans, his sensual mouth relaxed in repose, dark stubble already outlining his stubborn jawline. She could not resist running a loving finger down gently over one proud cheekbone.