Contract Baby. Lynne Graham
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chest, lean hips and long muscular thighs that not the most exquisite tailoring in the world could conceal.
‘I can’t touch you but every look you give me is a visual assault,’ Raul derided in a whiplash aside as he replaced the phone. ‘I’d eat you for breakfast, little girl!’
Her temples throbbed and she closed her eyes, shaken that he could speak to her like that. So many memories washed over her that she was cast into turmoil. Raul, tender, laughing, amber eyes warm as the kiss of sunlight, without a shade of coldness. And every bit of that caring concern aimed at the ultimate well-being of the baby in her womb, at the physical body cocooning his child not at Polly personally. She had never existed for him on any level except as a human incubator to be kept calm, content and healthy. But how could she ever have guessed that shattering truth?
‘You look terrible,’ Raul informed her tautly. ‘You’ve lost a lot of weight and you were very slim to begin with—’
‘Nobody could ever accuse me of that now.’
‘Your ankles are swollen.’
Polly rested her pounding head back wearily, beyond caring about what she must look like to him now. It scarcely mattered. She had been ten times more presentable in Vermont and he had not been remotely attracted to her, although she had only recognised that humiliating reality in retrospect. ‘You’re not getting my baby,’ she warned him doggedly. ‘Not under any circumstances.’
‘Calm yourself,’ Raul commanded deflatingly. ‘Anxiety won’t improve your health.’
‘It always comes first, right?’ Polly could not resist sniping.
‘Desde luego...of course,’ Raul confirmed without hesitation.
She winced as another dull flash of pain made her very brain ache. She heard him open a compartment, the hiss of a bottle cap released, liquid tinkling into a glass, and finally another unrecognisable sound. And then she jerked in astonishment when an ice-cold cloth was pressed against her pulsing brow.
‘I will take care of you now. Did I not do so before? And look at you now, like a living corpse...’ Raul condemned, his dark drawl alive with fierce undertones as he bent over her. ‘I wanted to shout at you. I wanted to make you tremble. But how can I do that when you are like this?’
Her curling lashes lifted. Defenceless in pain, she stared up into frustrated and furious golden eyes so nakedly at variance with the compassionate gesture of that cool, soothing cloth he had drenched for her benefit. Being kind to her was killing him. She understood that. Suffering that grudging kindness was killing her.
‘You taught me to hate,’ she whispered, with a sudden ferocity alien to her gentle nature until that moment.
The stunning eyes veiled to a slumberous gleam. ‘There is nothing between us but my baby. No other connection, nada más...nothing more,’ he stressed with gritty exactitude. ‘Only when you can detach yourself from your emotional mindset and recall that contract will we talk.’
Hatred flamed like a shooting star through Polly. She needed it. She needed hatred to race like adrenalin through her veins. Only hatred could swallow up and ease the agonizing pain Raul could inflict.
‘You bastard,’ Polly muttered shakily. ‘You lying, cheating, devious bastard...’
At that precise moment the limo came to a smooth halt. As the chauffeur climbed out, Polly gaped at the well-lit modern building with its beautifully landscaped frontage outside which the car had drawn up. ‘Where are we?’ she demanded apprehensively.
A uniformed nurse emerged from the entrance with a wheelchair.
In silence Raul swung out of the limo and strode round the bonnet to wave away the hovering chauffeur. He opened the door beside her himself.
‘You need medical attention,’ he delivered.
Her shaken eyes widened, filling with instantaneous fear. Not for nothing had she visited the library to learn all she could from newspapers about Raul Zaforteza’s ruthless reputation. ‘You’re not banging me up in some lunatic asylum!’ she flung in complete panic.
‘Curb your wild imagination, chica. I would do nothing to harm the mother of my child. And don’t you dare try to cause a scene when my only concern is for your well-being! ’ Raul warned with ferocious bite as he leant in and scooped her still resisting body out of the luxurious car as if she weighed no more than a feather.
‘The wheelchair, sir,’ the nurse proffered.
‘She weighs nothing. I’ll carry her.’ Raul strode through the automatic doors, clutching her with the tense concern of someone handling a particular fragile parcel. The mother of his child. Cue for reverent restraint, she reflected bitterly. Restraint and concern that the human incubator should be proving less than efficient. But, weak and sick from pain, even her vision blurring, she rested her head down against a broad shoulder.
‘Hate you,’ she muttered nonetheless, and would have told him that with her last dying breath because it was her only defence.
‘You’re not tough enough to hate,’ Raul dismissed as a grey-haired older man in a white coat moved towards them.
Raul addressed him in a flood of Spanish. Scanning her with frowning eyes, the doctor led the way into a plush consulting room on the ground floor.
‘Why does nobody speak English? We’re in London,’ Polly moaned.
‘I’m sorry. Rodney Bevan is a consultant who worked for many years in a clinic of mine in Venezuela. I can talk faster in my own language.’ Raul laid her down carefully on a comfortable treatment couch.
‘Go away now,’ Polly urged him feverishly.
Raul stayed put. The consultant said something quiet in Spanish. Raul’s blunt cheekbones were accentuated by a faint line of dark colour. He swung on his heel and strode out to the waiting area, closing the door behind him.
‘What did you say?’ Polly was impressed to death.
As the waiting nurse moved forward to help Polly out of her coat, the older man smiled. ‘You’re the star here, not him.’
The nurse took her blood pressure. Why were their faces so solemn? Was there something wrong with her blood pressure? Her body felt like a great weight pulling her down.
‘You need to relax and keep calm, Polly,’ the doctor murmured. ‘I want to give you a mild sedative and then I would like to scan you. Is that all right with you?’
‘No, I want to go home,’ she mumbled fearfully, knowing she sounded like a child and not caring, because she didn’t feel she could trust anybody so friendly with Raul.
The voices went away. Raul’s rich, dark drawl broke into her frantic barely half-formed thoughts. ‘Polly...please let the medics do what they need to do,’ he urged.
She forced her eyes open, focusing on him with difficulty, seeing those lean bronzed features through a blur. ‘I can’t trust you...or them...you know him!’
And even in the state she was in she saw him react in shock to that frightened accusation. Raul turned pale, the fabulous bone structure clenching hard. He gripped her hand, brilliant eyes shimmering. ‘You must trust him. He’s a very fine obstetrician—’
‘He’s a friend of yours.’
‘Si, pero...yes, but he is also a doctor,’ Raul stressed with highly emotive urgency.
‘I don’t want to go to sleep and wake up in Venezuela... Do you think I don’t know what you’re capable of when you’re crossed?’ Polly managed to frame with the last of her energy.
‘I’ve never broken the law!’
‘You would to get this baby,’ Polly told him.
The silence smouldered, fireworks blazing under the surface.
Raul stared