His Brother's Son. Jennifer Taylor
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the kind of man who would simply disappear from her life because she wanted him to.
She frowned. Was that really what she wanted, though? Did she honestly wish that she would never have to see him again?
The answer should have been a resounding yes. Felipe was undoubtedly a threat to her and Josh, but her feelings towards him weren’t as clear-cut as they should have been.
Felipe couldn’t relax. For the past three hours he’d done nothing but pace his hotel room. Everything he’d learned kept whirling around inside his head and he couldn’t make sense of it.
Antonio had had a child with Rebecca Williams. A son. Was it true? Or was it another one of her schemes, another lie to add to the web of deceit that surrounded her?
He sank onto a chair and picked up the phone then sat and stared at it. He knew the number of the hospital by heart, but should he phone her or wait until she phoned him? He had to decide what he intended to ask her first. If she still maintained that the child—Josh, she’d called him—was Antonio’s son, surely he needed proof. Who knew how many men Rebecca Williams might have slept with? Any one of them could be the child’s father…
Only he had a gut feeling that wasn’t the case. Rebecca’s son was also his brother’s child, the only thing left on this earth that could provide a tangible link to Antonio. By heaven, he wasn’t going to sit there and phone her or wait for her to contact him. He was going to see her again, and this time he intended to find out exactly what was going on.
A thin smile curved his mouth. He only hoped that Rebecca wouldn’t try to lie to him because it would be a mistake.
Becky was late leaving the hospital because there had been a crisis when Danny Epstein had arrested. It had taken the combined efforts of the whole team to stabilise him and he had now been sent to Theatre to have two badly damaged heart valves replaced.
Whether he would survive the operation in his weakened state was in the lap of the gods, but it was his only chance and she applauded his parents’ decision to take it. It wasn’t easy being a parent, as she had discovered.
A smile tilted her lips as she hurried out of the main doors. She loved collecting Josh at the end of the day because he was always so happy to see her. The little boy had a wonderfully sunny nature, which had made him rather a pet of the child-minder who looked after him while she was at work. It was reassuring to know that he was being well cared for when she couldn’t be with him.
‘Miss Williams.’
She stopped dead when she recognised the voice that had called her name. She’d known that Felipe wouldn’t rest until he’d got to the bottom of this situation, but she’d hoped to have a little more time before she spoke to him again. Now, when she turned and saw the uncompromising expression on his face, she felt her heart start to race.
Would she be able to stop him finding out that she wasn’t Josh’s real mother? Everything hinged on her doing that.
‘I NEED to speak to you, Miss Williams. There’s a bar across the road—maybe we can go there.’
‘I can’t.’
Felipe frowned when he heard the anxiety in Rebecca’s voice. Although he understood how stressful this situation must be for her he couldn’t understand why she sounded so scared.
Once again the idea that she might have been telling him a pack of lies about the child being Antonio’s son filled his mind. After all, why hadn’t Antonio written and told him that he’d become a father? Despite that row they’d had before Antonio had left Mallorca, his brother had never been the kind of person to harbour a grudge. There was something about this situation which didn’t add up.
‘Can’t or won’t?’ he said tersely. ‘I’m having a great deal of difficulty understanding what is going on, Miss Williams. A few hours ago you told me that you and my brother had had a son and now you refuse to talk to me about the child.’
Her lids lowered, effectively hiding her eyes from view. ‘I’m not refusing to talk to you, Dr Valdez.’ She shrugged, but he wasn’t blind to the strain that was etched on her face when she glanced up. ‘However, I thought we’d agreed that I would telephone you and arrange a time when we could meet.’
‘We did, but I can see no reason why we cannot talk now and get this all sorted out.’ He went to slide his hand under her elbow, but she stepped smartly out of reach.
‘I’ve just told you that I can’t talk to you now. I have to collect Josh. I’m late as it is because we had an emergency, and the childminder will be wondering where I am.’
She started hurrying down the path, but if she thought that he was prepared to let her walk away, she was mistaken. Who knew what she might be planning? She claimed that she’d intended to phone him, but could he trust her? What if she took Josh and disappeared? How would he feel if his brother’s only child was left in the care of a woman like her?
He strode after her, his long legs swiftly bringing him level with her. He saw her glance round, saw her pretty mouth compress, but she didn’t say a word. They walked in silence down the path and across the busy London street. It was the middle of the rush hour and the traffic was horrendous, car after car belching out fumes.
He suddenly wished that he was back home in Mallorca, breathing in the fresh, salt-laden air as it blew in from the bay. Had Antonio really preferred to exchange all that beauty for this?
‘Antonio used to love the rush hour. He spent a lot of time looking out of the window when…when he became too weak to go out.’
He heard the catch in her voice and felt his heart ache. He had tried many times to imagine how his brother must have felt, knowing that he was dying. Suddenly, he needed to know how Antonio had dealt with it.
‘How was he toward the end?’ He heard the roughness in his voice and knew that she had heard it, too, but, oddly, he didn’t feel embarrassed. He cleared his throat, deeply disturbed by the thought. ‘It must have been difficult for him to come to terms with the fact that he was dying.’
‘I think by that time he had come to accept what was going to happen.’ She smiled gently. ‘He told me that he didn’t want to waste his last few weeks on earth by feeling bitter. And, of course, having Josh helped tremendously. Knowing that a little bit of him would live on after his death gave him strength.’
‘Did he see the child, then?’ Felipe asked, keeping his gaze averted because he was deeply moved by what she had said. He wasn’t embarrassed, but he was too private a person to feel completely comfortable about exposing his feelings.
The problem was that it was so hard to think about Antonio at the end of his life; he kept having flashbacks to when he’d been born. Felipe had been fifteen when his brother had arrived in the world. His parents had been shocked at first when they’d discovered they were having another child and delighted later when the baby had been born.
Antonio had brought great joy to his parent’s lives, great joy to his own life as well. After their parents had been killed in a car accident when Antonio was ten, Felipe had willingly taken over the task of raising him.
He had done his best to guide Antonio, but maybe he’d been too strict. If he hadn’t been so set on making Antonio do as he’d wanted him to, his brother might never have left Mallorca and certainly wouldn’t have ended up having a child with Rebecca Williams. How strange it was the way everything had worked out.
‘Oh, yes. Josh was born a few weeks before…well, before Antonio died. He was in a lot of pain by then and his medication had been increased because of it. He used to sleep most of the time, but once I brought Josh home from hospital Antonio refused to take more than the barest minimum of pain relief.’
He saw her dash her hand across her eyes and