Читать книгу The Maid's Spanish Secret - Dani Collins, Dani Collins - Страница 12

POPPY OPENED THE GATE and set it aside, leaving Rico to continue feeding his daughter.

He had watched Sorcha and Cesar do this countless times with their sons. He’d always thought it a messy process best left to nannies, but discovered it was oddly satisfying. His older nephew, Enrique, had reached an age where he held conversations—some that were inadvertently amusing—but babies had always struck Rico as something that required a lot of intensive care without offering much in return.

Sorcha had pressed her sons onto him over the years, which had achieved her goal of provoking feelings of affection in him, but, like his parents, he viewed children as something between a duty and a social experiment. Even when he had briefly believed Faustina had been carrying his heir, the idea of being a father had only been that—an idea. Not a concept he had fully internalized or a role he understood how to fulfill effectively. Fatherhood hadn’t been something he had viewed with anticipation the way other creative projects had inspired him.

But here he sat, watching eyes the same color as his own track to the doorway where Poppy had disappeared. A wet finger pointed. “Mama.”

“She’ll be right back.” He imagined Poppy would actually spend a few minutes talking to her grandmother in private.

Lily smiled before she leaned forward, mouth open.

Damn, she was beautiful. It wasn’t bias, either. Or his fondness for the nephews she resembled. She had her mother’s fresh snowy skin and red-gold lashes, healthy round cheeks and a chin that suggested she had his stubbornness along with his eyes.

A ridiculous swell of pride went through him even as he reminded himself that he didn’t know conclusively that she was his. The DNA test off the cup had been a long shot and hadn’t proved paternity either way.

Nevertheless, he’d been propelled as much by the absence of truth as he would have been by the presence of it. From the time Sorcha had revealed her suspicion, a ferocious fire had begun to burn in him, one stoked by yet another female keeping secrets from him. Huge, life-altering secrets.

He hadn’t wanted to wait for more tests, or hire lawyers, or even pick up the phone and ask. He had needed to see for himself.

Who? a voice asked in the back of his head.

Both, he acknowledged darkly. He had needed to set eyes on the baby, whom he recognized on a deeply biological level, and on the woman who haunted his memories.

Poppy had seemed so guileless. So refreshingly honest and real.

He thought back to that day, searching for the moment where he’d been tricked into making a baby with a woman who had then kept her pregnancy a secret.

He remembered thinking his mother wouldn’t appreciate him popping a bottle of the wedding champagne—even though she’d procured a hundred cases that had been superfluous because the wedding had been called off.

Rico had helped himself to his father’s scotch in the billiards room instead. He had taken it through to the solarium, planning to bum a cigarette from the gardener. It was a weakness he had kicked years ago, but the craving still hit sometimes, when his life went sideways.

It was the end of the day, though. The sun-warmed room was packed to the gills with lilies brought in to replace the ones damaged by a late frost. The solarium was deserted and the worktable in the back held a dirty ashtray and a cigarette pack that was empty.

“Oh! I’m so sorry.”

The woman spoke in English, sounding American, maybe. He turned to see the redheaded maid who’d been on the stairs an hour earlier, when Faustina had been throwing a tantrum that had included one of his mother’s Wedgwoods, punctuating the end of their engagement. He would come to understand much later what sort of pressure Faustina had been under, but at the time, she’d been an unreasonable, clichéd diva of a bride by whom he’d been relieved to have been jilted.

And the interruption by the fresh-faced maid had been a welcome distraction.

Her name was Poppy. He knew that without looking at the embroidered tag on her uniform. She stared with wide doe eyes, the proverbial deer in headlights, startled to come upon him pilfering smokes as though he was thirteen again.

“I mean...um...perdón.” She pivoted to go back the way she’d come.

“Wait. Do you have a cigarette?” he asked in English.

“Me? No.” She swung back around. “Do I look like a smoker?”

Her horror at resembling such a thing amused him.

“Do I?” he drawled. “What do we look like? The patriarchy?”

“I don’t know.” She chuckled and blushed slightly, her clear skin glowing pink beneath the gold of filtered sunlight, like late afternoon on untouched ski slopes. “I, um, didn’t know you smoked.” She swallowed and linked her hands shyly before her.

Ah. She’d been watching him, too, had she?

His mother’s staff had been off-limits since his brother’s first kiss with a maid before Rico had even had a shot at one. He didn’t usually notice one from another, but Poppy had snagged his attention with her vibrant red hair. Curls were springing free of the bundle she’d scraped it into, teasing him with fantasies of releasing the rest and digging his hands into the kinky mass.

The rest of her was cute as hell, too, if a bit skinny and young. Maybe it was her lack of makeup. That mouth, unpainted, but with a plump bottom lip and a playful top was all woman. Her brows were so light, they were almost blond, her chin pert, her eyes a gentle yet very direct dark ale-brown.

No, he reminded himself. He was engaged.

Actually, he absorbed with a profound sense of liberation, he wasn’t. Faustina had firmly and unequivocally ended their engagement, despite his mother’s best efforts to talk her back on board.

His mother had retired with a wet compress and a migraine tablet. He had come in here because he couldn’t go home. His house was being renovated for the bride who was now refusing to share her life with him. Driving all the way to his brother’s house to get blind drunk had felt like an unnecessary delay.

“I don’t smoke.” He dropped the empty pack and picked up his drink. “I rebelled for a year or so when I was a teen, but it seemed like a good excuse to talk with Ernesto about football and other inconsequential topics.” He was sick to death of jabbering about weddings and duty and the expected impact on the family fortune.

Her shoulders softened and her red-gold brows angled with sympathy. “I’m really sorry.” She sounded adorably sincere. “I’ll, um, give you privacy to...”

“Wallow in heartbreak? Unnecessary.” Faustina’s outburst had been the sum total of passion their marriage was likely to have borne. “I don’t want to chase you away if you’re on your break.”

“No, I’m done. I know we’re not supposed to cut through here to get to the change rooms over the garage, but I was hoping to catch Ernesto myself. He gives me a lift sometimes.”

“Are you American?” he asked.

Her strawberry blond lashes flickered in surprise, her expression growing shy. Aware.

An answering awareness teased through him, waking the wolf inside him. That starved beast had been locked inside a cave the last six months, but unexpectedly found himself free of the heavy chain he’d placed around his own neck. The sun was in his eyes, the wind was ruffling his fur and he was picking up the scent of a willing female. He was itching to romp and tumble and mate.

“Canada.” She cleared her throat. “Saskatchewan. A little town with nothing but canola fields and clouds.” She shook her head. “You wouldn’t have heard of it.”

“How did you wind up here?”

“I’d tell you, but I’d bore you to death.” Despite her words, a pretty smile played around her mouth and a soft blush of pleasure glowed under her skin.

“I came out here to smoke. Clearly I have a death wish.”

After a small chuckle, she cautioned, “Okay, but stop me if you feel light-headed.”

Definitely not bored, he thought with a private smile. She wasn’t merely a first cigarette years after quitting, either. To be sure he was drawing in this lighthearted flirting with avid greed, but he found himself enjoying her wit. He was genuinely intrigued by her.

“I saved up to trek around Europe with a friend, but she broke her ankle on the second day and flew home.” She folded her arms, protective or defensive, maybe. “I tagged along with some students from a hostel coming here, but a few days after we arrived, one of them stole everything I had.” She slapped a what-can-you-do? smile on it, but the tension around her eyes and mouth told him she was still upset.

He frowned. “Did you go to the police?”

“It was my fault.” She flinched with self-recrimination. “I gave him my card to get some cash for me one morning. He must have made a copy or something. Three days later he’d syphoned all of my savings and was gone. I had my passport, a bag of raisins and my hairbrush. Losing my camera gutted me the most. It was a gift and my memory card was still in it, not that I’d had the chance to fill it. It was a huge bummer.” She summed up with philosophical lightness.

“You’re a photographer?”

“Not anymore,” she asserted with disgust, then shrugged it off. “At least I had prepaid for a week at the hostel. I asked around and got on with a temp agency. I was brought in to help clean the pool house and guest cottage. Darna liked my work and asked me to stay on full-time in the big house. I’ve been saving for a ticket home ever since.”

“How much do you need?” He reached into his pocket.

“Oh, no!” She halted him, horrified. “I have enough. I just worked it out with Darna that today was my last day. She thought she would need me through the rest of June for—” She halted, wincing as she realized who she was talking to.

Rico let the awkwardness hang in the air, not to punish, but because he was finding her candor so refreshing.

“It seemed like the wedding was going to be really beautiful.” She sounded apologetic. “I’m sorry it didn’t work out.”

He wasn’t. That was the naked truth, but he deflected by saying, “I’ve heard that Canadians apologize a lot. I didn’t believe it.”

“We do. Sorry.” She winked on that one.

Was she sorry?

Rico came back to the tap of a dirty spoon against the back of his knuckles.

Poppy had been twenty-two, disillusioned after being shortchanged on chasing her dreams, yet willing to come home to fulfill family obligations. He had understood that pressure and had confided his own reasons for going along with family expectations.

That affinity had led to a kiss and his feet had somehow carried her to the sheet-draped furniture hidden amongst the jungle of fragrant lilies.

Since learning about Lily, he’d been convinced Poppy had somehow tricked him the way Faustina had, for her own nefarious ends.

That suspicion wasn’t playing as strongly now that he was here. Her home was unpretentious, dated and showing signs of age, but neat and well cared for. Her bond with her grandmother and daughter seemed genuine and from the reports he’d commissioned, she was this side of financially solvent. She didn’t even have a speeding ticket on her record.

He’d picked up two on his way here, but that was beside the point.

In the past, he had seen what he wanted to see. He couldn’t allow himself to be so credulous again.

He made himself take a cool moment to watch Lily’s concentrated effort to touch the end of her spoon into the soup and bring the taste to her mouth. She grinned as she succeeded, spoon caught between her tiny white teeth.

He had no proof, but he was convinced she was his. He had to claim her.

As for Poppy, he was still absorbing the impact she continued to have on him. He still reacted physically to her. One look at her in jeans and a loose pullover and his mouth had started to water. No makeup, hair gathered into a messy knot of kinks on her head, wariness like a halo around her, yet he’d had to restrain himself from reaching for her. Not to grab or take possession, but simply to touch. Fill his hands with the textures of her.

Was her skin as smooth and soft as his erotic dreams replayed? Would her nipples tighten if he licked then blew lightly again? Did her voice still break in orgasm and would that sound once again send pleasurable shivers down his back?

That chemistry was a weakness, one that warned him to keep his guard up, but it didn’t deter him from his plan one iota.

In fact, it stoked a fire of anticipation deep in the pit of his belly.

* * *

Poppy’s tension remained through dinner, even though Rico went on a charm offensive against her grandmother, breaking out levels even Poppy hadn’t realized he possessed, asking after her health and offering condolences over Gramps.

“I’m very sorry to hear you lost him. I remember Poppy saying he wasn’t well, just before she left Spain.”

Poppy released a subtle snort, suspecting he only recalled that detail because she had reminded him of it an hour ago.

He frowned with affront. “I asked you why you weren’t using the money you’d saved to see more of Europe. You said your grandparents needed help moving into a care facility.”

For one second, she saw glints of blue and green in his irises, telling her he remembered everything about that day.

A spike of tingling heat drove sharp as a lance through her. She crossed her legs, bumping her foot against his shin in the process and sending a reverberation of deeper awareness through her whole body.

“We were talking about moving,” Gran said, forcing Rico to break their eye contact. “I couldn’t look after Bill myself, but having Poppy here bought us an extra year in our home.” Gran squeezed her hand over Poppy’s, the strength in her grip heart-wrenchingly faint. “He would have faded all the faster if we’d been forced to leave this house. I’ll always be grateful to her for giving us that. I don’t know what I would have done if she hadn’t been here in the months since he’s been gone, either. She’s been our special blessing her whole life.”