Duarte's Child

And, worst of all, wouldn’t Duarte have grounds to argue that she had virtually pulled the same stunt on him? Jamie was six months old and his own father had yet to meet him. What right did she have to keep them apart? An agony of conflict and guilt in her gaze as she questioned what she was doing, Emily pulled out of the lane on to the twisting country road that lay beyond.

Duarte would attempt to follow her but she was at an advantage for she knew the area. How could she take the chance of trusting Duarte when he might take Jamie away from her? She would be lucky to ever see her child again. Where she was concerned, her estranged husband would not be feeling the slightest bit sympathetic or reasonable. Why, oh why, oh why had she waited this long before acknowledging that it was past time she sorted out the whole mess?

Rounding a corner on the road, Emily had to start immediately slackening speed. A shaken laugh shorn of any humour was torn from her tight throat. The railway crossing lay ahead. The warning lights were flashing and the automatic barriers were coming down signifying that a train was about to pass through. She was trapped for a good five minutes by the very train she had promised Jamie he would see as a treat. By the time the express finally thundered past the barriers, Emily was studying her driving mirror and watching the silver limo appear behind her on the road. Caught! Fate had not been on her side. In a gesture of frustrated defeat, Emily lifted one of her hands from the steering wheel and struck it down on the dash board.

She felt a prick like a sharp stinging needle in the side of her hand. Blinking, she glanced down and gaped in dawning horror at the big bee crawling away. It wasn’t the season, a little voice screamed inside her, it wasn’t the season yet for bees! She hadn’t replaced her allergy kit when she had mislaid it over the winter. She dropped her hand down to open the driver’s door. Already she felt like she was moving in slow motion; already she could feel the sensation of her heartbeat starting to race.

She lurched out of the car. She struggled to focus on the formidably tall and dark male striding towards her but she raised her hands to her face instead, feeling the tenderness and the heat there, knowing that her skin had probably begun to swell and redden. ‘Sting…bee!’ she framed jerkily.

‘Where’s your adrenaline kit?’ Duarte demanded, instantly grasping the crisis and reacting at speed.

With enormous effort she blinked and connected momentarily with stunning dark golden eyes that she would never have dared to meet had she been in full control of herself. ‘Lost…’

‘Meu Deus! The nearest doctor?’ Duarte caught hold of her as she doubled over with the pain piercing her abdomen and vented a startled gasp. ‘Emily…a hospital…a doctor?’ he raked down at her with raw urgency. ‘Where?’

It was such an effort for her to concentrate, to speak. ‘Village through the crossing,’ she wheezed.

She was conscious of movement as he carried her, the roar of car engines and raised voices in Portuguese but she was in too much pain to try to see what was happening. She opened her swollen eyes with a grimace of discomfort, for her whole body was hurting. She registered that she was lying in Duarte’s arms inside an unfamiliar car and was suddenly terrified that everyone had forgotten about her baby. ‘Jamie…?’

‘He will be OK…’

Even in the state she was in, the sense that she was now hearing his voice from the end of a long dark tunnel, she picked up on that stress. She might not be OK. She had been fifteen years old when it was impressed on her after an adverse reaction to a bee sting that she must go nowhere without her adrenaline kit. She had been too scared not to be sensible but, as the years passed without further incident, she had gradually become rather more careless. ‘If I die…’ she slurred with immense difficulty because the inside of her mouth and her tongue were swollen, ‘You get Jamie…only fair—’

‘Por amar de Deus, you are not going to die, Emily,’ Duarte cut in savagely, lifting up her head, rearranging her with careful hands because she was starting to struggle for breath. ‘I will not allow it.’

But before she lost consciousness, all she could think about was that it would be only fair if Duarte got Jamie. It was a punishment for her to be near Duarte again. It made it impossible for her to evade her own tormenting memories. Eleven months ago, one instant of hesitation had cost Emily her marriage—Duarte had found her in the arms of another man.

She’d let Toby kiss her and she still couldn’t explain why, even to herself. At the time she had been desperately unhappy and Toby had astonished her when he had told her that he loved her. In her whole life, nobody had ever told Emily that they loved her and she had never expected to hear those words. Certainly, she’d given up hope of ever inspiring such high-flown feelings in her gorgeous but essentially indifferent husband.

While she’d been frantically wondering what she could say that would not hurt Toby’s feelings, Toby had grabbed her and kissed her. Why hadn’t she pushed him away? She’d not been attracted to Toby, nor had she wanted that bruising kiss. Yet she’d still stood there and allowed him to kiss her. She’d been unfaithful to her husband and there was no justifying that betrayal of trust to a male as proud and uncompromising as Duarte. In the aftermath, she’d been so distraught with shame that she had made a total hash of convincing her husband that that single kiss had been the only intimacy she had ever shared with Toby. Convinced that she’d been having an affair, Duarte had demanded a separation, even though she was four months pregnant with their child.

Emily’s eyes opened and she snatched in a great whoosh of oxygen to fill her starved lungs.

The injection of adrenaline brought about an almost instantaneous recovery but she was severely disorientated and she didn’t know where she was. As she began to sit up, scanning the unfamiliar faces surrounding her and recognising a nurse in her uniform, she gasped, ‘What…where?’

‘You just had a very narrow escape. You were in anaphylactic shock.’ The older man gave her a relieved smile. ‘You’re in the cottage hospital. I’m the duty doctor. We administered the adrenaline jab in the nick of time.’

‘Take it easy and lie down for a minute,’ the nurse advised. ‘Do you feel sick?’

As Emily rested back again, she moved her swimming head in a negative motion. After that initial buzzing return of energy which had revitalised her, she now felt weak as a kitten. She was on a trolley, not a bed, and as the cluster of medical staff surrounding her parted because the emergency was over she saw Duarte looming just feet away. She raised trembling hands to her still tender face, felt the swelling that was still there and knew that she had to look an absolute fright. In addition, the very minute that foolish thought occurred to her, she became aware of her own demeaning vulnerability.

For a split second, it was like time stood still. Her dazed aquamarine eyes wide above her spread fingertips connected with his spectacular dark golden gaze. His eyes were rich as the finest of vintage wine but utterly without expression. She could feel her heartbeat quicken, the wretched inescapable burst of liquid heat surge between her slender thighs. He came, he saw, he conquered, she misquoted, shaken to her depths by her own helpless response. From the first moment it had been like that with Duarte.

There had been a wild uncontrollable longing that had nothing to do with sense or caution. Something that had come so naturally to her, something that had been rooted so deep in her psyche that only death could have ended her addiction to him. He’d drawn her like a magnet and, what was more, he had known it from the first instant of their eyes meeting.

But their marriage had been a disaster for both of them, she reminded herself miserably. The more she’d loved him, the more she had become agonised by his inherent indifference. Impervious to her every attempt to breach that barrier, he had broken her heart. She had even been hurt by his satisfaction when she fell pregnant, for it was a satisfaction he had never shown in her alone. The old sick shame filled her as she recalled that fatal kiss which had cost her everything that mattered to her. She had finally broken through Duarte’s reserve only to discover that all she could touch was his pride and his honour.

‘I could strangle you for your carelessness, Emily…’ Duarte breathed in a curiously ragged undertone.

‘What you need is a good cup of tea. You’ve had a nasty shock too,’ the middle-aged nurse informed Duarte in a brisk and cheerful interruption. Unaccustomed to being addressed as if he was a large child, he looked sincerely startled.

A porter began to wheel out the trolley on which Emily lay. As the nurse had spoken, Emily had finally recognised the ashen quality of Duarte’s usually vibrant skin tone and the sheen of perspiration on his sculpted dark features. She closed her eyes, acknowledging the truth of the older woman’s assurance. She had almost died on him. Evidently, he was relieved that she had survived. Maybe he did not hate her quite as much as she had assumed he did.

But then hatred meant a strong emotion where the target was concerned, didn’t it? And Duarte had never felt any particularly strong emotion in her direction. A pain that felt almost physical enclosed her and she shut her eyes in self-defence. She knew that she had never had the power to hide her feelings from him and she had not the courage to meet his eyes levelly.

‘Your husband has had the fright of his life,’ the kindly nurse soothed her in a small empty side ward. ‘When your child runs out in front of a car, you shout at him afterwards because you’re angry and afraid that you almost lost him.’

‘Yes…’ Emily was rolled gently into a bed. She did not like to say that Duarte’s most likely feeling now was one of complete exasperation and contempt. In her position, he would never have made the mistake of being without that life-saving adrenaline kit.

‘Why am I being put to bed?’ Emily asked, finding herself being deftly undressed.

‘The doctor wants us to keep you under observation for a few hours just to be sure that you have no adverse reactions.’

Helped into a hospital nightdress in a faded print and left alone, Emily lay back against the pillows, anxiously wondering who exactly had charge of Jamie and how her baby was coping with her sudden disappearance. Almost at the same moment as she was thinking that the nurse reappeared, cradling Jamie, who was howling at the top of his lungs. ‘I believe this little soul is yours and he wants his mum!’

Emily opened her arms and Jamie grabbed on to her the instant he was brought within her reach. ‘Who was looking after him?’

‘The older man, who arrived just after your husband brought you in. He doesn’t speak any English. He was out at Reception trying to calm your little boy down.’

Mateus Santos, she assumed, a committed bachelor who was probably pretty useless with young children. Jamie snuffled into weary silence against her shoulder just as Duarte appeared in the open doorway. He stilled when he saw the child in her arms and the nurse slipped out, leaving them alone.

Her tummy twisting, her eyes veiled, Emily muttered awkwardly, ‘Have you seen Jamie yet?’

‘No…Mateus brought him here in your car. My time was taken up tending to you,’ Duarte admitted curtly.

Jamie had a death grip on her. He was going through that stage of disliking strangers that many babies went through around his age. He resisted being turned round and pushed his dark head under her chin. He’d had quite enough of excitement and strangers for one morning. It was anything but the best moment for Duarte to meet his son for the first time.

‘Duarte…I’m so sorry!’ Emily heard herself admit with her usual impulsiveness, a sob catching in her aching throat. ‘I am so very sorry for everything…’

‘That cuts no ice with me,’ Duarte responded with eyes that were as hard and bright as burnished steel, cold derision etched in every line of his starkly handsome features as he studied her shaken face. ‘How dare you drag my son round the countryside in a caravan like a gipsy? How dare you put me in the position where I have to answer to the police merely because I attempted to see my own child? And how dare you look at me now and insult my intelligence with that pathetic excuse of a word, “sorry”?’

CHAPTER TWO

‘THE…police?’ Emily stammered even more aghast.

‘Since I married you, you have brought me only shame and dishonour.’ Duarte breathed starkly, his controlled lack of volume far more dramatic than any shout.

‘The police?’ Emily whispered again shakily, her sensitive tummy tying itself into sick knots.

‘Your employer, Mrs Barker, reported your great escape from her property and my natural pursuit. She expressed concern for your safety. Two police officers are now waiting outside for my explanation.’ Duarte drew himself up to his full imposing six-foot-four-inch height and squared his broad shoulders with all the fierce pride of his ancestors in his bearing, but sheer outrage glittered in his condemning gaze.

‘Duarte—’

‘If you dare to lie and suggest that I have abused you or mistreated you in any way whatsoever, I will fight you for custody of my son! Is that quite clear?’

As crystal. Chilled to the temperature of ice by that announcement, Emily trembled. Her arms wrapped more tightly still round Jamie. Impervious to that old chestnut that children were always disturbed by maternal tension, Jamie had dropped off to sleep against her shoulder. With that single threat, Duarte had deprived Emily of voice, breath and hope that their differences could be resolved. She was in shock and could not have said why. After all, if Duarte had been prepared to separate her from her child the instant he was born, he could only be even keener to do so after the months that had since passed.

But then, eight months ago, Duarte’s words of threat had not been spoken to her face. It was only thanks to her friend, Bliss that Emily had learned of Duarte’s plans. Bliss had overheard Duarte state his punitive intentions to his lawyer and had forewarned Emily of her estranged husband’s intentions.

Now quite unable to dislodge her arrested attention from Duarte, she scanned his fabulous bone structure for some sign of softening and found none. He meant what he was saying. Standing there straight and tall and unashamed and more beautiful than any male had the right to be. Like a dark angel. Even emanating aggressive vibrations, he was absolutely gorgeous, possessed of the kind of sleek, dark, bronzed good looks that turned female heads wherever he went. Why the heck hadn’t she smelled a rat the size of the Titanic when he proposed marriage to someone as ordinary as she was? And why on earth had he neglected to mention his tragic first marriage? For any heart that Duarte ever had was buried in the grave with his childhood sweetheart.

‘Is that understood, Emily?’ Duarte prompted lethally.

Dully she nodded, dredging her attention from him in shrinking apprehension. To think that on several occasions recently she had anxiously wondered if she had misjudged him! No, there was no room to suspect now that Bliss might have misunderstood what she’d overheard or that Emily herself had overreacted to something said in anger and never ever intended to be acted upon. After the way she’d behaved, Duarte did not believe she deserved to have their child.

‘Yes…’ Emily turned her pinched face away and rested her cheek against Jamie’s soft, sweet-smelling baby skin to comfort herself. Every which way she looked, she had done wrong, and there was no point offending even more by seeking to defend herself.

‘I have no wish to part you from our son,’ Duarte stated in a grim undertone. ‘He needs you very much.’

‘Do you really think that?’ she whispered shakily.

‘I say nothing that I don’t mean. Give me Jamie now that he is asleep,’ Duarte urged moving forward. ‘Mrs Barker followed my security team here. She has offered to take care of our son until you are released from hospital. I understand she is familiar to him.’

Taut with suspicion, Emily held fast to Jamie’s precious weight, but then she saw Alice appearing in the doorway with a look of discomfiture on her face. The older woman was carrying Jamie’s baby bag. ‘I’ll look after Jamie, Emily. It’s the least that I can do.’

‘I will leave you both and deal with the police,’ Duarte delivered coolly.

Alice grimaced and sank down at the foot of the bed. ‘How was I to know he was your husband? I thought Mafia hitmen were descending on us and I was really frantic when they took off after you!’

‘You didn’t know what was happening…and I was totally stupid,’ Emily groaned in remorse. ‘I made things even worse by trying to run again. I just panicked and then I got stung—’

‘And your husband, whom I thought was a dead ringer for the Godfather at his most glamorous, saved your life.’ Alice winced. ‘I feel so awful now for calling in the police and now they won’t go away until everyone’s explained themselves about twenty times over.’

‘It’s OK… It’s all my fault. I always do the wrong thing,’ Emily mumbled heavily. ‘Particularly around Duarte—’

‘Not much of a husband if he makes you feel like that. Maybe, to make me feel a little more relaxed about all this, you could tell me that he is really wonderful.’

‘He is… I was the one who wrecked everything.’ Emily sighed.

By wanting more than Duarte had ever offered, she’d made herself unhappy. She’d had a hunger to be loved and, if not loved, at least needed. But Duarte had not needed her either. She had just felt like another one of his many possessions with no true existence or purpose without him. She had never had much confidence but, flung in at the deep end of a world so very different from her own, she had sunk like a stone, becoming even more shy and awkward. By the time of their separation, she’d gone from having low self-esteem to having no self-esteem at all.

Alice left with Jamie. Then a very weary-looking police sergeant made a brief visit to Emily’s bedside to confirm that she had no complaint to make against her husband. Having made that assurance while cringing at the thought of what Duarte must have undergone, Emily fell asleep and did not awaken until lunch arrived on a noisy trolley. The doctor called in to have a brief word with her and tell her that she was free to leave. As she had no appetite for food, she slid straight out of bed. Removing her clothes from the cabinet, she got dressed again.

Mateus Santos was waiting at Reception to escort her out to the limousine.

Duarte was seated in the back of the limo. Emily climbed in and sat down at the furthest point from Duarte that she could contrive. ‘What now?’ she asked tightly.

‘We’ll pick up Jamie and then we’re going home.’

The silence lay between them, deep as a swamp and twice as treacherous.

Emily swallowed hard. Going home? She had not yet given him a direct look. Now she turned her head, her throat tight, her sea-green eyes strained. ‘Just like that?’

‘Just like that,’ Duarte confirmed, skimming her a veiled glance from his dark, deep-set eyes. ‘I had your possessions cleared from the car and the caravan and packed. I also told Mateus to dispose of both vehicles as you will have no further use for them.’

That was the moment that Emily appreciated that she now possessed only the clothes she stood up in. Her fingers closed over the ragged cuffs of her old sweater in an effort to contain an almost overwhelming sense of being trapped. ‘It would have been nice if you had asked me what I wanted to do with them.’

‘But then, all that concerned me was what I wanted,’ Duarte murmured with velvet soft cool, reaching forward to sweep up the car phone as it buzzed.

Going home? He was taking them straight back to Portugal. From below her lashes, she studied him, nervous as a cat on hot bricks. The hard smooth line of his high cheekbones in profile, the classic perfection of his arrogant nose, the tough angular jawline slightly blue-shadowed by the hint of returning stubble. He was incredibly good-looking and sexy and she found it very difficult to resist the urge to stare when his attention was distracted from her. She listened to him talk in Portuguese, as smooth and cool as if he had not just dramatically reclaimed his runaway wife and child. No, indeed, it might have been any ordinary day and she might have been any woman.

‘Duarte…’ she framed jerkily as soon as he had replaced the phone. ‘I’d like to stay in England—’

‘That’s not possible unless you insist on a divorce.’

Emily did not feel that she was in a position to insist on anything. Duarte had slaughtered all the protest in her the very instant he had threatened to fight her for custody of Jamie. She’d already spent far too many months fretting about how poor a parent she might seem in comparison to him in any courtroom. Her evident lapse in fidelity, her flight to England, her fear-inspired failure to deal with matters like an adult which had forced Duarte to mount a search. Nothing that she had so far done would impress a judge. Nor would her case be helped when it came out that she had been raising Jamie in a caravan while she roved around taking casual employment. In a Portuguese court, she had not the slightest doubt that Duarte would win custody of their child.

She curved her trembling hands together to steady them. ‘I thought you would want a divorce.’

‘Not at present.’

Emily wanted to scream. He was shutting her out. He had always done that, depersonalising every encounter, holding her at a distance…except in bed. Her fair complexion reddened to ferocious heat at that inadvertent thought. Just then, she could not bear to recall the physical intimacy which she had once cherished as evidence that he must care for her to some degree. Now it pained her to recall her own humiliating naivety. They had had separate bedrooms from the start. Sex had always seemed to have a faint aura of the forbidden. But it also had been wildly exciting…for her. The only time she had dared to touch him had been in the privacy of her own bed. In daylight, Duarte had been way too intimidating.

In a fierce struggle to control her wayward mind, Emily made herself focus on the child’s car seat anchored opposite. Jamie’s seat. Duarte was taking them both back to Portugal. Duarte was not thinking of a divorce. Duarte was not currently planning to deprive her of her son. Those facts were the only facts that mattered right now, she told herself urgently. She was tired of running and exhausted by living on her nerves. All these months, she had had no real life. What lay ahead could surely be little worse than what she had experienced in the past…

‘Are you going to have other women…again?’ Emily heard herself ask and almost died on the spot because that dreadful question had just come out of nowhere and leapt on to her unguarded tongue.

The silence seemed to flex like a stranglehold ready to tighten round her slender throat.

Slowly, Emily looked up, aquamarine eyes aghast.

Duarte gazed back at her as if she had just dropped down through the car roof, a fully fledged alien with two heads. ‘What do you mean by…again?’ he prompted very softly.

Emily connected with electrifying dark golden eyes and gulped. ‘I didn’t mean anything…I…I just wondered.’

‘You made an accusation,’ Duarte contradicted with razor-edged cool. ‘A specious feminine attempt to justify your own behaviour by implying that I played away—’

Emily was backtracking so fast she was literally into full-throttle reverse. Not because she was a coward but because she could not afford to antagonise Duarte, lest he change his mind and decide that Jamie did not need his mother as much as he believed he did. ‘No, I didn’t…I didn’t—’