Читать книгу The Mills & Boon Stars Collection - Мишель Смарт, Cathy Williams - Страница 63

‘ISABELLA!’ screamed a female voice from the bottom of the stairs. ‘Can you get down here straight away?’

In her room at the top of the ugly, mock-Georgian house which stood in an ‘upmarket estate’, Isabella sighed. She was supposed to be off duty. Getting the rest which her body craved, and the doctor had demanded on her last visit to him. But that was easier said than done.

What did they want from her now, this noisy and dysfunctional family? she wondered tiredly. A pound of her flesh—would that be enough to keep them off her back for more than five minutes?

Wasn’t it enough that she worked from dawn to dusk, looking after the lively twins who belonged to the Stafford family? Au pairs were supposed to help look after the children and engage in a little light housework, weren’t they? And to have enough time for their own studies and recreation. They weren’t supposed to cook and clean and iron and sew and babysit night after night for no extra money.

Sometimes Isabella found herself wondering just why she put up with treatment which clearly broke every employment law in the book. Was she weak? Or simply a fool?

But it didn’t take long for her to realise exactly why she was willing to put up with such shoddy behaviour—one look in the mirror reassured her that she was not in any position to be choosy. The curve of her belly was as ripe as a watermelon about to burst, and Mrs Stafford—for all her faults—was the only prospective employer who’d agreed to take her baby on, as well.

Of course, there’d always been the option of going home to Brazil, or returning to the ranch. But how could she face her father like this?

When her furtively conducted pregnancy test had turned out to be positive, she’d been so stunned by disbelief that she hadn’t felt strong enough to present her father with the unwelcome news.

And the longer she put off telling him—the more difficult the task had seemed. So that in the end it had seemed easier to run to England. To Paulo. Never dreaming that her life-long infatuation with the man would render her too proud to tell him, either.

Coming to the Staffords had seemed the only decision which made any sense at the time, but she’d lived to regret it since.

Or maybe the regret had something to do with letting down the two men who she knew adored her.

‘Isa-bella!’

Resisting the urge to yell back at her boss to go away, Isabella levered herself off the bed and slipped her stockinged feet into a pair of comfortable slippers. If there was one thing she enjoyed about being pregnant—and so far it was the only thing she had enjoyed—it was allowing herself the freedom to dress purely for comfort. Elasticated waists and thick socks may have made her resemble an enormous sack of rice, but she felt too cumbersome to care.

‘Coming!’ she called, as she carefully made her way downstairs.

The twins came running out of the sitting room, their faces working with excitement. Charlie and Richie were seven year-old twins whose mission in life seemed to be to make their au pair’s life as difficult as possible. But she’d grown fond of these two boys, with their big eyes and mischievous grins and excessively high energy levels.

Rosemary Stafford’s methods of childcare had not been the ones Isabella would have chosen, but at least she was able to have a little influence on their lives.

She had tried to steer them away from the video games and television shows which had been their daily entertainment diet. At first, they’d protested loudly when she had insisted on sitting down and reading with them each evening, but they had grown to accept the ritual—even, she suspected, to secretly enjoy it.

‘You’ve gotta vis’tor, Bella!’ said Richie.

‘Oh? Who is it?’ asked Isabella.

‘It’s a man!’

Isabella blinked. Like who? ‘But I don’t know any men!’ she protested.

Richie’s mother appeared at the sitting room door. ‘Well, that’s a bit of an exaggeration, surely!’ she said in a low voice, looking pointedly at Isabella’s swollen belly. ‘You must have known at least one.’

Isabella refused to rise to the remark—but then she’d had a lot of practice at ignoring her boss’s barbed comments.

Ever since she’d first moved in, Rosemary Stafford had made constant references to Isabella’s pregnant and unmarried state, slipping easily into the role of some kind of moral guardian.

Isabella thought this was rather surprising, considering that Mrs Stafford had become pregnant with the twins while her husband was still living with his first wife!

She gave a thin smile. ‘Who is it?’

Mrs. Stafford was trying hard not to look impressed. ‘He says he’s a friend of the family.’

She could see Charlie and Richie staring up at her, but Isabella’s smile didn’t slip. Even though a thousand warning notes were playing a symphony in her subconscious. ‘Did he give his name?’

‘He did.’

‘And?’

‘It’s Paulo somebody-or-other.’

Isabella’s mouth froze. ‘Paulo D-Dantas?’ she managed.

‘That’s the one,’ said Mrs Stafford briskly. ‘He’s in the drawing room. You’d better come along and speak to him—he doesn’t seem like the kind of man who likes to be kept waiting.’

Isabella’s hand strayed anxiously to her hair. What was he doing here? And what must she look like? Her eyes flickered over to where the hall mirror told its own story.

Her thick dark-brown hair had been carelessly heaped on top of her head, secured by a tortoiseshell comb. Her face was pale, thanks to the English winter—a pallor made more intense by the fact that she wasn’t wearing a scrap of make-up.

‘Why on earth didn’t you tell me?’ hissed Mrs Stafford.

‘Tell you what?’

‘That a man like that was the father of your child?’

Isabella opened her mouth to protest, but by then her employer was throwing open the door to the sitting room and it was too late to do anything other than go in and face the music.

The room seemed darker than usual and Isabella wondered why, until she saw that Paulo was standing staring out of the window and seemed to be blocking out much of the light.

He turned slowly as she came into the room and she saw his relaxed pose stiffen into one of complete disbelief as he took in her physical condition. The exaggerated bulge of her stomach. The heavy weight of her breasts.

She saw his black eyes glitter as they hovered on the unfamiliar swell, and she tried to read what was written in them. Shock. Horror. Disdain. Yes, all of those. And she found herself wishing that she could turn around and run out of the room again or, better still, turn back the clock completely. Something—anything—other than have to face that bitter look in this sorry and vulnerable state.

‘Isabella.’ He inclined his head in formal greeting, but the low-pitched voice sounded oddly flat.

He was wearing a dark suit—as if he had come straight from some high-powered business meeting without bothering to change first. The sleekly cut trousers made the most of lean, long legs and the double-breasted jacket hugged the broad shoulders and chest. Against the brilliant whiteness of his shirt, his skin gleamed softly olive. She had never seen him so formally dressed before, and the conventional clothes seemed to add to the distance between them.

Isabella felt the first flutterings of apprehension.

‘Hello, Paulo,’ she said steadily. ‘You should have warned me you were coming.’

‘And if I had?’ His voice was deadly soft. ‘Would you still have received me like this?’

She saw from the dark stare which lanced through her like a laser that it was not a rhetorical question. ‘No. Probably not,’ she admitted.

Mrs Stafford, who had been gazing up at Paulo like a star-struck schoolgirl, now turned to Isabella with a look of reprimand. ‘Isabella—where are your manners? Aren’t you going to introduce me to your friend?’ She gave Paulo the benefit of a sickly smile.

Isabella swallowed. ‘Paulo, this is Rosemary Stafford—my boss. Paulo is—’

‘Very welcome,’ purred Mrs Stafford. ‘Very welcome indeed. Perhaps we can offer you a little refreshment after your journey? Isabella, why don’t you go and make Mr Dantas a drink?’

Paulo said, in Portuguese. ‘Get rid of her.’

Isabella felt inexplicably nervous. And certainly not up to defying him. ‘I wonder if you’d mind leaving us, Mrs Stafford? It’s just that I’d like to talk to my…friend—’ she hesitated over a word which did not seem appropriate ‘—in private.’

Rosemary Stafford’s pretty, painted mouth became a petulant-looking pout. ‘Yes, I expect you do. I expect you have many issues to resolve,’ she said, with stiff emphasis, and swept out of the sitting room, past where Charlie and Richie were hovering by the door, trying to listen to the conversation inside.

Paulo walked over to the door and gave the boys a slight, almost apologetic shrug of his shoulders, before quietly closing the door on them. And when he turned to face Isabella—she almost recoiled from the look of fury which burned from his eyes.

As though she were some insect he had just found squashed beneath his heel and he wished she would crawl right back where she had come from. But what right did he have to judge her? She thought of all she’d endured since arriving in England, and suddenly Paulo’s anger seemed little to bear, in comparison. She drew her shoulders back to meet his gaze without flinching.

‘You’d better start explaining,’ he said flatly.

‘I owe you no explanation.’

A pulse began a slow beat in his temple. ‘You don’t think so?’ he said quietly.

‘My pregnancy has nothing whatsoever to do with you, Paulo.’

He gave a hollow, bitter laugh. ‘Maybe in the conventional sense it doesn’t—but you involved me the moment you told your father that you were going to pay me a visit.’

She screwed her eyes up and stared at him in confusion. ‘But that was months ago! Before I left Brazil. And I did visit you. Remember? That day I came to see you in your flat?’

‘Oh, I most certainly do,’ he said, grimly resurrecting the memory he had spent months trying to forget. ‘I wondered then why you seemed so anxious. So jumpy.’ He had been intensely aroused by her that day, and had thought that the feeling was mutual—it had seemed the only rational explanation for the incredible tension between them. But he wasn’t going to tell her that. Not now. ‘I also sensed that you were holding back—something you weren’t telling me. And so you were.’ He shook his head. ‘My God!’ he said slowly.

‘And now you know!’

‘Yes, now I know,’ he agreed acidly. ‘I put your tired-ness down to jet-lag—when all the time…’ He looked down over at her swollen stomach with renewed amazement. ‘All the time you were pregnant. Pregnant! Carrying a baby.’ The word came out on a breath of disbelief. ‘How can this have happened, Bella?’

She met his accusing gaze and then she did flinch. ‘Do you really want me to answer that?’

‘No. You’re right. I don’t!’ He sucked in a hot, angry breath. ‘Don’t you realise that your father is worried sick about you?’

‘How can you know that?’

‘Because he rang me yesterday from Brazil.’

‘W-why should he ring you?’ she stumbled in confusion.

‘Think about it,’ he grated. ‘He asked me to come and see you, to find out what the problem is. Why your letters have been so vague, your phone-calls so infrequent.’ He shook his head and the black eyes lanced through her with withering contempt. ‘I certainly don’t relish telling him the reason why.’

‘So he still doesn’t know?’ she questioned urgently. ‘About the baby?’

‘It would seem not,’ he answered coldly. ‘Unless he’s a very good actor indeed. His main anxiety seemed to stem from the fact that he could not understand why you had chosen to flunk university to become an au pair.’

‘But he knew all that! I wrote to him—and told him that living in England was an education in itself!’ she protested.

She’d kept her father supplied with regular and fairly chatty letters—though carefully omitting to mention her momentous piece of news. As far as he knew, she would probably go back and repeat her final year at college. She hadn’t mentioned when she was going home and he hadn’t asked. And she thought that she’d convinced him that she was sophisticated enough to want to see the world. ‘I’ve been writing to him every single week!’

The chill did not leave his voice. ‘So he said. But unfortunately letters sent from abroad are read and reread and scoured for hidden meanings. Your father suspected that you were not happy, though he couldn’t put his finger on why that was. He asked me to come to see whether all was well.’ Another cold, hollow laugh. ‘And here I am.’

‘You needn’t have bothered!’

‘No, you’re right. I needn’t.’ His mouth curved with disdain as he gazed around the bland room, with its unadorned walls and rows of videos where there should have been books. Littered on the thick, cream carpet were empty chocolate wrappers. ‘My, my, my—this is certainly some classy hide-out you’ve chosen, Isabella!’ he drawled sarcastically.

His criticism was valid, but no less infuriating because of that. She struggled to find something positive to say about it. ‘I like the boys,’ she came up with finally. ‘I’ve grown very fond of them.’

‘You mean the two hooligans who nearly rode their skateboards straight into the path of my car?’

Isabella went white. ‘But they aren’t supposed to play with them in the road!’ How was she supposed to watch them twenty-four hours a day? ‘They know that!’

Paulo narrowed his eyes as he took a look at her pale, thin face, which seemed so at odds with her bloated body and felt adrenaline rush to fire his blood. He’d felt a powerful sense of injustice once before in his life, when his wife had died, but the feeling which enveloped him now came a pretty close second.

And this time he was not powerless to act.

‘Answer me one question,’ he commanded.

Isabella shook her head. This one she’d been anticipating. ‘I’m not telling you the name of the baby’s father, if that’s your question.’

‘It’s not.’ He almost smiled. Almost. He had somehow known that she would proudly deny him that. But he was glad. Knowledge could be a dangerous thing—and if he knew, then he might just be tempted to find the bastard responsible, and to…to…‘Is there anything special keeping you in this house, this particular area?’

‘Not really. Just…the twins.’

Which told him more than she probably intended. That the father of her baby did not live locally. Nor live in this house. It wasn’t probable—but it was possible. His mouth tightened. Thank God. ‘Then go upstairs and get your things together,’ he ordered curtly. ‘We’re going.’

It was one more bizarre experience in a long line of bizarre experiences. She stared at him blankly. ‘Going where?’

‘Anywhere,’ he gritted. ‘Just so long as it’s out of here!’

Automatically, Isabella shook her head, as practical difficulties momentarily obscured the fact that he was being so high-handed with her. ‘I can’t leave—’

‘Oh, yes, you can!’

‘But the boys need me!’

‘Maybe they do,’ he agreed. ‘But your baby needs you more. And right at this moment you look as if you could do with a decent meal and a good night’s sleep!’ He steadied his breath with difficulty. ‘So just go and get your things together.’

‘I’m not going anywhere!’ she said, with a stubbornness which smacked of raging hormones.

Paulo gave a faint, regretful smile. He had hoped that it would not come to this, but he could be as ruthless as the next man when he believed in what he was fighting for. ‘I’m afraid that you are,’ he disagreed grimly.

Suddenly she wondered why she was tolerating that clipped, flat command. She lifted her chin in a defiant thrust. ‘You can’t make me, Paulo!’

‘I agree that it might not be wise to be seen carrying a heavily pregnant woman out to my car—though I am quite prepared to, if that’s what it takes,’ he told her, a soft threat underpinning his words. ‘You can fight me every inch of the way if you want, Isabella, but I hope it won’t come to that. Because whatever happens, I will win. I always do.’

‘And if I refuse?’

Her eyes asked him a question, a question he had no desire to answer—but maybe it was the only way to make her see that he was deadly serious.

‘Then I could threaten to tell your father the truth about why you left Brazil. But the truth might set in motion all kinds of repercussions which you may prefer not to have to deal with at the moment. Am I right?’

‘You wouldn’t do that?’ she breathed.

‘Oh, yes. Be assured that I would!’

She stared back at him with helpless rage. ‘Bastard!’ she hissed.

‘Please do not use that particular term as an insult!’ he snapped. ‘It is entirely inappropriate, given your current condition.’ His eyes flickered coldly over her bare fingers. ‘Unless you have an undisclosed wedding to add to your list of secrets?’ He read her answer in the proud tremble of her lips. ‘No? Well, then my dear Isabella—that leaves you little option other than to come away with me, doesn’t it?’

It was far too easy. Far too tempting. But what use would it serve? Could she bear to grow used to that cold judgement which had hardened his face so that he didn’t look like Paulo any more, but some dark and disapproving stranger? ‘I can’t just leave without notice! What will the boys do?’

He refrained from telling her that her priorities were in shockingly bad order. ‘They have their mother, don’t they? And she will just have to look after them for a change. Does she work?’

Isabella shook her head. ‘Not outside the home,’ she answered automatically, as her employer had taught her to. In fact, Mrs Stafford had made leisure into an Olympic sport. She shopped. She had coffee. She lunched. And very occasionally she lay in bed all day, making telephone calls to her friends…

‘Run upstairs—’

She turned on him then, moving her bulky body awkwardly as the emotion of having borne her secret alone for so long finally took its toll. She blinked back the tears which welled up saltily in her eyes. ‘I can’t run anywhere at the moment!’ She swallowed.

He resisted the urge to draw her into his arms and to give her the physical comfort he suspected that she badly needed. It was not his place to give it. Not now and certainly not here. ‘I know you can’t—that’s why I’m offering to help you. If you go and pack, I will deal with your employer for you.’

‘Shouldn’t I tell her myself?’

He thought how naive and innocent she could look and sound—despite the very physical evidence to the contrary. He shook his head impatiently. ‘She’s going to be angry, isn’t she?’

Isabella pushed a dark strand of hair away from her face with the back of her hand. ‘Furious.’

‘Well, then—you can do without her fury. Let her take it out on me instead. Go on, querida. Go now.’

The familiar word made her heart clench and she had to put her hand onto the back of a chair to steady herself. She had not heard her mother-tongue spoken for months, and it penetrated a chink in the protective armour she had attempted to build around herself. She nodded, then did as he asked, lumbering up to her room at the top of the house with as much speed as she could manage.

She did not have many things to pack. She’d brought few clothes with her to England, and what few she had no longer fitted her. Instead, she’d bought garments which were suitable for this cold, new climate and the ungainly new shape of her body.

Big, sloppy jumpers, two dresses and a couple of pairs of trousers with huge, elasticated waists which she was currently stretching to just about as far as they could go.

She had been forced to buy new underwear, too—and had felt like an outcast in the shop. As if everyone knew she was all alone with her pregnancy. And that no man would ever feast his eyes with love and pride on the huge, pendulous breasts which strained against the functional bra she’d been forced to purchase.

She swept the clothes and her few toiletries into the suitcase and located her passport. On the windowsill stood a wedding-day photo of her parents and, with a heavy heart, she added it to the rest of her possessions.

And then, with a final glance round at the box-room which had been her home for the last five months, she quietly shut the door behind her.

At the foot of the stairs, a deputation was awaiting her. Towering over the small group was Paulo, his hair as black as ebony, when viewed from above. Next to him stood Rosemary Stafford, her fury almost palpable as she attempted to control the two boys.

‘Will you keep still?’ she was yelling, but they were taking no notice of her.

Charlie and Richie were buzzing around the hallway like demented flies—whipped up by the unexpected excitement of what was happening, and yet looking vaguely uncertain. As if they could anticipate that changes would shortly be made to their young lives. And correctly guessing that they would not like those changes at all.

Isabella reached the bottom of the stairs and Paulo took the suitcase from her hand. ‘I’ll put this in the car for you.’

She felt like calling after him, Please don’t leave me! but that would be weak and cowardly. Instead, she turned to Rosemary Stafford and forced herself to remember just how many times she had helped the older woman out. All the occasions when she had agreed to babysit with little more than a moment’s notice. And never complained. Not once. ‘I’m sorry to have to leave so suddenly—’

‘Oh, spare me your lies!’ hissed Rosemary Stafford venomously.

‘But they’re not lies!’ Isabella protested. ‘It isn’t practical to carry on like this. Honestly. The truth is that I have been getting awfully tired—’

‘Oh? And what about other, earlier so-called “truths”?’ Rosemary Stafford’s glossy pink lips gaped uglily. ‘Like your assurance that the father of your baby wasn’t going to turn up out of the blue and start creating havoc with my routine?’

Isabella was about to explain that Paulo was not the father of her baby—but what was the point? What could she say? The boys were standing there, wide-eyed and listening to every word. Trying to make two seven-year-old boys understand the reality of the whole bizarre situation was more than she felt prepared to take on right then.

Instead, she reached out an unsteady hand and ruffled Richie’s blond hair. Of the two boys, he’d been the one who had crept the furthest into her heart, and she didn’t want to hurt him. ‘I’ll write,’ she began uncertainly.

‘Take your hands away from him, and don’t be so stupid!’ spat out Mrs Stafford. ‘What will you write to a seven-year-old boy about? The birth? Or the conception?’

Isabella shuddered, wondering how Mrs Stafford could possibly say things like that in front of her children.

‘It’s time to leave, Isabella,’ came a low voice from behind them, and Isabella turned to see Paulo framed in the neo-Georgian doorway. His face was shadowed, the features so still that they might have been carved from some rare, pitch-dark marble. Only the eyes glittered—hard and black and icy-cold.

She wondered how long he had been standing there, listening, whether he had heard Mrs Stafford’s assumption that he was the father of her baby.

And her own refusal to deny it.

‘Isabella,’ prompted Paulo softly. ‘Come.’

Impulsively she bent and briefly put her arms round both boys. Richie was crying, and it took every bit of Isabella’s willpower not to join in with his tears, knowing that it would be self-indulgent to break down and confuse them even more. Instead, she contented herself with a swift and fierce kiss on the top of each sweet, blond head.

‘I will write!’ she reaffirmed in an urgent whisper, as Paulo took her elbow like an invalid, and guided her out to the car.