CHAPTER NINE

      ELIN’S ESCAPE PLAN had seemed easy in theory. But in practice she struggled to strap Harry’s baby seat into the car when her hands were shaking. She consoled herself with the thought that she would not have to drive Cortez’s powerful sports car that roared like a savage beast and would no doubt have woken the entire household. Recently he had bought a family estate car for her to use, but she’d never driven on the right-hand side of the road and she had been glad when he’d sat beside her to give her confidence on her first outing to a nearby village. Now she was planning to drive some twenty kilometres to the airport in Jerez de la Frontera in the dark, and her stomach was knotted with nervous tension.

      She waited until midnight before she took Harry in the baby carrier downstairs and collected the car keys from the utility room. The car’s engine purred quietly as she drove out of the garage. The main gates at the bottom of the driveway were activated by number plate recognition and should have swung open as the car approached them, but Elin’s heart sank when they remained shut.

      ‘Open, damn you,’ she muttered. She had spent hours of soul-searching before she’d made the decision to leave Cortez and take Harry back to England, and now that she had got this far with her plan she did not want any delay. She was not going to deny Cortez a role in Harry’s life, but it could not only be on his terms.

      She switched off the engine and checked that Harry was still asleep before she got out of the car and walked up to the gates with little hope that she would be able to open them manually. To her surprise, when she leaned against one of the gates, it moved. She pushed both gates fully open and stood on the road outside the grounds of the house. Above her the moon was a silver disc in the black sky. She stared up at the stars that glittered as brilliantly as the diamonds on her engagement ring that she had left in Cortez’s study with a note explaining her reasons for leaving.

      There was nothing to stop her getting into the car and driving away from La Casa Jazmín—except for her conscience. She tried to imagine how Cortez would feel when he discovered that she had taken his son. He would be devastated because he loved Harry. The truth struck her like a lightning bolt. From the moment Cortez had received proof that Harry was his, he had constantly shown that he adored his baby son. With brutal honesty, Elin acknowledged that she’d felt a little bit jealous of the attention Cortez paid to Harry and his love for his son that was so obvious.

      Behind her she heard a faint click and she spun round to find that the gates had smoothly and silently closed and she was locked outside Casa Jazmín’s grounds, while the car with Harry inside was on the other side of the gates. Frantically, she tugged the gates but they would not budge. Her heart thudded painfully in her chest. The moon had disappeared behind a cloud and the darkness seemed menacing as the horror of her situation sank in.

      She could not understand how the electronic gates had started working again. But when the moon reappeared and cast a ghostly gleam along the driveway, the answer stood before her in the form of a six foot four, furiously angry man.

      ‘Cortez.’ Elin swallowed as she waited for him to speak. The moonlight slanted over his harsh features and his anger was evident in the rigid set of his jaw. But he said nothing as he lifted the baby seat out of the car and walked back towards the house with Harry.

      She rattled the metal gates, fear cramping in her stomach. ‘Cortez, please let me in.’ He carried on walking as if she hadn’t spoken, as if she did not exist. ‘Please...’ A sob tore through her. ‘You can’t take my baby.’

      ‘You were going to take him away from me.’ Finally he halted and turned around. His voice was as dark and menacing as the night. ‘By chance I went into my study to look for some paperwork, and when I found your note I deactivated the electronic gates. But if I hadn’t been in time you would have driven off with Harry. Dios, I trusted you, Elin. Something I vowed never to do with any woman,’ he said bitterly. His temper exploded. ‘How dare you repay my trust by attempting to steal my son? How dare you try to separate me from him and deprive Harry of a father who loves him more than anything on this earth?’

      ‘I wasn’t going to go.’ Desperation made her voice unsteady. ‘I swear I’d changed my mind and I was going to turn the car around.’

      He gave a grim laugh. ‘There’s no chance I’d believe a word you say. And there is even less chance that a court will award you custody of Harry after you were willing to risk his safety by taking him in the car when you are inexperienced at driving on roads in Spain.’

      Cortez’s voice was icy with disdain. ‘My first opinion of you was correct and you are unfit to be his mother. The best place for Harry to be right now is in his nursery, safely asleep in his cot, and that is where I am going to take him.’

      Elin beat her fists against the gates. She was crying so hard that she could barely speak. ‘You seem to love Harry, but for how long will you love him?’ she choked. ‘When the novelty of fatherhood wears off will you lose interest in your child, the same as my adoptive father grew bored of me?’

      She watched Cortez walk into the house and collapsed onto her knees in despair. Every ragged breath she dragged into her lungs hurt. ‘If you take my son away from me you might as well cut my heart out,’ she cried after him. ‘He is all I have. Please.’

      * * *

      Violent rage coursed through Cortez. Elin should consider herself lucky that she was on the other side of the locked gates because if he could get his hands on her he’d be tempted to shake some sense into her.

      But he would be tempted to do much more than shake her, he acknowledged with furious self-derision. Even though he had proof that she was an untrustworthy, deceitful bitch he still wanted her. She was a fever in his blood and a constant clamouring hunger in his gut. He thought about her all the time and there had been many nights in the past month when he’d resorted to using his hand to alleviate the throbbing ache of his arousal.

      He resented the power she had over him. After Alandra he had assured himself that he would never allow a woman to affect him. But Elin had fooled him with her sweet smile, while all the time she had been plotting to steal his son. Ten years ago Alandra had told him that she did not want his baby and had ended her pregnancy. Sometimes when Cortez saw a child of roughly the same age as his child would have been he was still haunted by a deep sense of loss and regret. Now he had a son and he was fiercely determined that Elin would not deprive him of his right to be Harry’s father.

      In the nursery he carefully transferred Harry from the baby carrier to the cot. ‘Te amo, mi hijo,’ he whispered as he leaned over the cot rail and kissed the baby’s velvety soft cheek. Cortez hadn’t known he could feel like this—so fiercely protective that he would kill anyone who tried to hurt his child. Harry needed his father, but he was not yet five months old and the inescapable truth was that he needed his mother too.

      Cortez’s jaw clenched when he walked over to the window that overlooked the driveway and saw Elin was where he had left her, slumped on her knees behind the locked gates. How long would she remain there? The answer felt like a punch in his gut. She would never abandon her son. Over and over again he had seen evidence of Elin’s love for Harry. Her words echoed inside his head.

      When the novelty of fatherhood wears off will you lose interest in your child, the same as my adoptive father grew bored of me?

      Both he and Elin had suffered from Ralph Saunderson’s failures as a father, Cortez brooded. Elin had not known her real parents, and although Ralph had adopted her and given her a home he had not given her the attention and love she had desperately needed. It was not hard to understand why Elin had trust issues. And he had not helped in that respect, Cortez acknowledged. Dios, he had taken her innocence and then turned his back on her. Cursing beneath his breath, he abruptly swung away