The Paternity Claim. Sharon Kendrick
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tried to lift the coffee cup to her lips but now her fingers were shaking so much that she was obliged to put it down with a clatter. ‘He says to say hello to you.’
‘Say hello back,’ he said evenly, but it was difficult to concentrate when that shaky movement made the lush curves of her body move so uninhibitedly beneath the T-shirt.
Isabella wondered if she was going mad with imagining, or had his gaze just flickered over her breasts? She wondered how much he had seen—and Paulo was an astute man, no one could deny that. Had he begun to guess at her secret already? Unobstrusively she glanced down at herself.
No, she was safe. The hot-pink T-shirt was relatively loose and the matching jeans were far from skin-tight. Nothing clung to the contours of her body. And besides, there was no visible bump yet. Nothing to show that there was a baby on the way, bar the aching new fullness of her breasts and the sudden nausea which could strike her at any time. And frequently did.
She tried a smile, but felt it wobble on her lips. ‘I expect you’re wondering why I’m here.’
At last! ‘Well, the thought had crossed my mind,’ he said, managing to turn curiosity into a teasing little comment. ‘People don’t just turn up from Brazil unannounced—not as a rule. Not without phoning first. And it’s a pretty long way from Vitoria da Conquista.’
Isabella turned her head to glance out of the uncur-tained window into the rain-lashed sky. It certainly was. Back home the temperature would be as warm as kisses, the land caressed by a soft and sultry breeze.
‘And shouldn’t you be at college? It’s still term-time, isn’t it?’
She started to tell the story, though not the whole story. Not yet. ‘Actually, I’ve dropped out of college.’
His body shifted imperceptibly from relaxed to watchful. ‘Why?’ he drawled coldly. ‘Is that what every fashionable student is doing this year?’
She didn’t like the way his mouth had flattened, nor the chilly displeasure in his eyes. ‘No, not exactly.’
‘Then why?’ he demanded. ‘Don’t you know how important qualifications are in an insecure world? What are you planning to do that’s so important that it can’t wait until the end of your course?’
She opened her mouth to tell him about her dreams of travelling, of seeing a world outside the one she had grown up in—and then she remembered, and hastily shut it again. Because that would never happen now. She had forfeited her right to do any of that. ‘I had to…get away.’
Paulo frowned. Her anxiety was almost palpable, and he leaned forward to study her, finding his nostrils suddenly filled with the warm, musky note of her perfume. He moved out of its seductive and dangerous range. ‘What’s the matter with you, Bella?’ he asked softly. ‘What’s happened?’
Now was the time to tell him everything. But one look at the disquiet on his face, and the words stuck in her throat. ‘Nothing has happened,’ she floundered. ‘Other than the fact I’ve left.’
‘So you said.’ He felt another flicker of irritation and made sure that it showed. ‘But you still haven’t come up with a good reason why—’ A pause, while the black eyes bored into her. ‘Mainly, I suspect, because you don’t have one.’ Normally, he wouldn’t have been so rude to her—but then this was not a normal situation. ‘So, Isabella,’ he said silkily. ‘I’m still waiting for some kind of explanation.’
Tell him. But, faced with the iron disapproval in the black eyes, she found that her nerve had crumbled again. ‘I was bored.’
‘You were bored.’ He tapped the arm of his hair with a furious finger.
‘OK, stressed then.’
‘Stressed?’ He looked at her with disbelief. ‘What the hell has a beautiful young woman of twenty got to be stressed about? Is it a man?’
‘No. There is no man.’ And that was the truth.
‘For God’s sake, Bella—it isn’t like you to be so fickle! I can’t believe that an intelligent girl—woman—’ he corrected immediately and a pulse began a slow, rhythmical dance at his temple, ‘like you should throw everything away because you’re “bored’! So what? Stick it out for a few months more—because believe me, querida,’ he added grimly, ‘There’s nothing quite so “boring” as a dead-end job—which is all you’ll get if you drop out of college!’
And suddenly she knew that she couldn’t tell him. Not now. Not in ten minutes’ time—maybe not ever. How could she risk the contempt which would follow as surely as night followed day? Not from Paulo, whom she’d adored as long as she could remember.
‘I wasn’t looking for your approval,’ she said woodenly.
‘You don’t seem to be looking further than the end of your nose!’ he snapped. ‘And just how are you planning to support yourself? Expecting Daddy to chip in, I suppose?’
She glared at him. ‘Of course not! I’ll take whatever I can get—I’m young and fit. I can cook. I’m good with children. Fluent in English and Portuguese.’
‘A very commendable CV,’ he remarked drily.
‘So you’d recommend me for a job, would you, Paulo?’
‘No, I damned well wouldn’t!’ His voice deepened into a husky caress. ‘But I would do everything in my power to make you change your mind.’ There was a pause, and then he spoke to her with the ease and affection which had always existed between them, until temptation had reared its ugly head.
‘Go home, Bella. Complete your studies. Come back in a couple of years.’ His eyes glittered as he imagined what two years would do to her. ‘And then I’ll find a job for you—on that I give you my word.’
She glanced down at her hands, unable to meet his eyes as his voice gentled. In a couple of years her world would have altered out of all recognition, in a way that she still found utterly unimaginable. ‘Yes, you’re probably right,’ she lied.
‘So you’ll go back to college?’
‘I’ll…think about it.’ She made a pantomime of looking at her watch, affecting a look of surprise. ‘Oh, look—it’s time I was going.’
‘You’re not going anywhere,’ he protested. ‘You’ve only just arrived. Stay and see Eddie—he’ll be back soon.’
‘No, I don’t think I will.’ She rose to her feet, anxious now to get away. Before he guessed. ‘Maybe another day.’
‘Where are you staying?’
‘Just down the road,’ she said evasively.
‘Where?’
‘At the Merton.’
‘At the Merton,’ he repeated thoughtfully.
He walked her to the front door just as they heard the sound of a key being slotted into the lock, and for some reason Paulo felt extraordinarily guilty as the door opened and there stood Judy—so cool and so blonde, wearing something soft and clinging in pale-blue cashmere, and a faint look of irritation on her face. Next to her stood his son, and the moment the boy saw Isabella his dark eyes lit up like lanterns.
‘Bella!’ he exclaimed, and immediately started speaking in Portuguese as he hurled himself into her arms. ‘What are you doing here? Papa didn’t tell me you were coming!’
‘That’s because Papa didn’t know himself,’ said Paulo, in the same language. ‘Bella just turned up unannounced while you were out!’
‘Are you coming to stay with us?’ demanded Eddie. ‘Please, Bella! Please!’
‘Eduardo, I can’t,’ answered Bella, her smile one of genuine regret. She had bonded with Eduardo from the word go—maybe because they had both had motherless childhoods.