Rags To Riches: His Wish, Her Command: The Last Summer of Being Single / An Enticing Debt to Pay / A Navy SEAL's Surprise Baby. Annie West
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fact. And move on.’
Her mouth dropped open. ‘Move on? How do you propose I do that when I have a six-year-old little boy to take care of? If you want to feel sorry for someone, save your sympathy for Dan. He is the one who will never know his dad!’
She was shaking now, her voice harsh and angry despite being little more than a whisper. ‘Dan needs me to be strong for him. I’m all he has.’
Seb reached forward and clasped her hands in his, before she could move them out of reach. ‘How old was Dan when his father died?’
Ella looked into Seb’s eyes and the tenderness and caring in them almost broke her. ‘Eighteen months. No more than a baby really. We were living in Barcelona with his parents back then. Chris was in Mexico on tour when his taxi was broadsided by a truck. No brakes. He died instantly.’
A photo of the crash flashed into her mind and she instantly closed her eyes and squeezed them together to block out the terrible images, suddenly angry with Seb for making her see it again. For taking her back to those dark days of oblivion and pain when she was so very, very alone.
‘It must have been horrible for the whole family. His poor parents!’
‘Oh, yes, his poor parents!’ Ella replied with so much venom in her voice that she pulled her hand away from Seb’s grasp and slapped it over her mouth.
Horrified by what she had said, Ella spun her legs over the edge of the sofa and tried to stand, only to fall back dizzily, light-headed, her heart pounding.
Instantly Seb was holding her upright in his arms, supporting the back of her head with one hand as his other held her firmly against him, close enough for her sobs to be soaked up by the fabric of his shirt.
‘Oh, that was so unfair! Please forget I just said that. I am a horrible person for even thinking that way!’
‘No.’ Seb’s reply was muffled by her hair. ‘You are not a horrible person. Far from it. But something happened to upset you. You have come this far, Ella. You can tell me. Why is there such a rift between you and the Martinez family?’
Ella felt Seb lift up her chin so that she could see him smile down at her as his hand caressed her lower back, holding her in his arms, taking her weight. Supporting her. Those strong arms giving her the strength she needed to tell him the truth.
‘They.’ And she swallowed down hard and clamped her eyes shut as she clutched Seb even closer. ‘They tried to take Dan away from me. And they almost succeeded.’
SEB pulled the collar of Ella’s fleece jacket a little higher to ward off the chill wind that was still howling outside the kitchen door. The skin at the back of his fingers lingered just a little too long at the base of her neck as he flicked the hair from under the collar and smoothed down the soft, cosy fabric.
And he sealed it with a gentle touch of his lips to the hollow just below her ear.
His reward was a smile as warm as the steaming tea he set before her on the kitchen table. A ring of beeswax candles lit up the centre of the kitchen, their flickering flames creating an intimate dome of light, just bright enough to light the gas ring without accidents.
‘You don’t need to tell me anything else, Ella. I know that you are a wonderful mother. You’ve made a life for yourself and Dan. That’s all that matters.’
Ella nodded and sipped her tea. ‘That’s true. But it’s okay, I want to tell you.’ She looked at him with such trust and innocence that he slid back onto his seat and waited for her to begin.
The confident and joyous woman he had admired only a few hours ago was starting to return. And if telling him the truth made it easier, then he would listen. ‘I haven’t talked about this to anyone. Not even Nicole or Sandrine. But I have to go back to Barcelona with Dan next week, and maybe it is time to sort out what happens to Dan in the future.’
She sighed once, then gritted her teeth as painful memories hit hard.
‘After Chris died in the accident.well, I was a mess, Seb. So when Chris’s parents offered me a home with them for as long as I wanted, I was truly grateful. I really was. Everything was such a blur. My parents came to Barcelona for a few weeks but they had already given up the jazz club in London and bought a motor home to help with their touring. It was not designed for a young baby. As the months went by I started to feel…I don’t know. Trapped, I suppose. I like Barcelona, it is a beautiful city with a wonderful live music scene. But that made me yearn so much for my old life on the stage.’
‘And perhaps a little desperate to get your life back on track?’ Seb added, wanting her to know that he understood, only too well, how it felt when your world was turned upside down because of events you felt powerless to control.
She shrugged. ‘I did something stupid, and booked a gig at one of the local jazz festivals Chris and I used to go to together with our musician friends. It was just a couple of hours on a lovely July afternoon.’ Then a smile crept back onto her mouth and Seb realised just how much he had missed that. ‘Dan slept through the whole thing at the side of the stage under the fierce protection of my Spanish friend and her mother.’
Ella closed her eyes and her smile dropped. ‘The fallout was horrendous. I was accused of being irresponsible and, well, a poor mother, for taking an infant into that sort of environment. I tried to explain that he had the best babysitters in the city and I could see him the whole time, but it was no good. As far as they were concerned I could not be trusted to look after their grandson.’
Her hands clamped tight around the beaker of steaming tea. ‘So they called their lawyers. Who took me to the cleaners.’
Ella focused on the flickering shadows from the candlelight and her voice was harsh now. ‘You can imagine the kind of picture their lawyers painted.’
She sighed and half smiled up at Seb. ‘Until I got married I had basically lived most of my life as a nomad. Apart from a few years of formal education in London I had been educated and had grown up on the road. Touring from town to town. Making a living as we went.’
She lifted her hands and pointed from finger to finger. ‘I don’t have any formal qualifications, even if I do speak several languages and can sight-read, play and sing just about any piece of music first pass. No savings, of course. No pension. No insurance. And no way of earning a living to support myself and my son. Oh—and I had no home to go to.’
She dropped her hands onto her lap. ‘Put that all together and any judge is going to think very hard about whether the child’s grandparents should have custody instead of this flakey, messed-up girl sitting in front of him.’
Seb took her hands in his so that their faces were only inches apart.
‘What did you do to change their minds?’
A warm and coy smile beamed back at him. ‘I did something I had never done before. I fought back. It was tough.’ She snorted. ‘Make that very tough. My parents helped with professional references and somehow I managed to convince them that I could support myself without handouts. But it was still hard.’
She looked down at Seb’s hands and turned them over so that she could trace the life line across his palm with a fingertip. He sucked in air as delicious shivers moved up his arm and into the part of his heart he had thought was closed off from the world and all it had to throw at him—closed off with the barriers of work and a relentless drive to succeed. Now this seriously amazing little woman was doing a pretty good job of tearing them down.
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