CHAPTER TWO

      ‘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