style="font-size:15px;"> Elise attended physiotherapy after lunch, then José drove her across town for her appointment with the obstetrician. They arrived early, and she opted to check in rather than wait in the car.
The senior nurse greeted her warmly. ‘Doctor has a patient with him, Mrs Santanas. He won’t be long.’ Elise took a seat, selected a magazine, and began leafing through the pages. An article caught her eye, and she read it with interest.
Minutes later she glanced absently at another, and froze. Two frames featuring Savannah adorned facing pages, and with a tiny gasp of shock everything suddenly fell into place, almost as if someone had depressed a camera shutter, then released it to reveal a moving photograph to view.
With horrified fascination she watched it all unfold.
Dear heaven, no. No. The negation seemed to thunder inside her brain over and over as she desperately sought to stop the images appearing one after the other like a rolling reel of Technicolor film.
It wasn’t true. None of it. There was some terrible mistake. A shocking joke played by a devilish hand.
If she sat still, perfectly still, the images would disappear, and she could walk out of here without becoming an emotional wreck.
Her stomach churned as the impact of recurring memory took effect, and she only just made it to the powder-room in time.
Afterwards, she leaned her head against the cool tiles for several minutes as she stared sightlessly at the beautifully appointed bathroom.
She didn’t feel like facing anyone, much less a skilfully perceptive medical professional who would doubtless take one look at her pale features, note her elevated pulse-rate, and begin a line of questioning she had no wish to answer.
Elise wondered what sort of reaction she would generate if she simply walked out, slid into the waiting car, and bade José take her home.
Home. Hell’s teeth, how could she go there? How could she not? she decided dully. If she requested José to take her anywhere else, it would only be a matter of minutes before José alerted Alejandro, and then what? A confrontation?
She had so much anger to expel. Such a degree of inner rage.
With deplorable ease her mind slid back to the ill-fated dinner she had shared with Alejandro Santanas only hours after launching a personal appeal for him to stave off her father’s imminent fall into bankruptcy…
Elise arrived five minutes late and was escorted to Alejandro’s table where, within minutes of ordering iced water, she immediately launched a further attempt on Joseph Hansen’s behalf.
‘What inducement do you intend to offer me?’ He lifted one well-shaped eyebrow, his expression assuming world-weary cynicism. ‘Yourself, perhaps?’
It took mere seconds for his words to sink in, a few more for her to throw the contents of her glass at his face. She rose to her feet in white-faced fury, then stormed from the restaurant…only to have to return when she discovered that she had left her evening bag on the table.
When she reached for it, his hand closed over hers.
‘Sit down.’
‘I have nothing to say to you!’
‘Walk out on me a second time, and any chance you might have will be gone.’
Every instinct screamed for her to turn away from him, and it was only the image of her father that persuaded her to resume her seat.
‘You care for your father very much.’
‘If I didn’t,’ she responded flatly, ‘I wouldn’t be here.’
‘Enough to give your personal guarantee to investment from my private funds?’ His pause was deliberate. ‘Become part of the deal?’
She felt cold, and barely in control. ‘In what capacity?’ If he said as his mistress, she would tip the soup in his lap, then walk away. This time she would make sure she had her bag. And hell would freeze over before she would willingly exchange so much as a word with him should their paths meet again.
‘My wife.’
It was the last thing she had expected him to say. ‘You’re insane.’
He subjected her to a long, steady look before venturing in a hateful drawl, ‘Two million dollars as an unconditional gift in exchange for two years of your life.’
‘No.’
‘You sign a pre-nuptial agreement relinquishing any claim on my assets in lieu of the two million dollars I advance to your father on the day of our marriage,’ he continued as if she hadn’t spoken.
It was totally crazy. ‘No.’
‘Handsome recompense for an act of mercy.’
‘My father would never condone it.’
‘He need not know, if you act a part.’ His eyes never left hers. ‘You have twenty-four hours to reach a decision.’
She gave it, within mere minutes of his deadline.
The marriage of Elise Hansen and Alejandro Santanas took place a week later.
‘If it were not for my father,’ Elise vented with restrained vehemence as she attached her signature to the marriage register, ‘I would never have agreed to this diabolical arrangement.’
‘I have no doubt.’
‘What if I refuse you?’ she flung at him later that night when they retired to their hotel suite.
‘A no I should interpret as a maybe?’ Alejandro queried. ‘If my foreplay succeeds in arousing you to a state of sensual desire?’
‘You damned egotist,’ she spluttered.
Afterwards she hated herself, him, for proving that sex and love were two entirely different emotions.
It had taken only weeks to discover the existence of Savannah and learn that the glamorous model had been and, rumour had it, still was Alejandro’s mistress—a revelation deliberately designed to shatter her confidence. At the time, the vindictive gossip did not hurt at all. The pain came later.
Four months after her marriage her father suffered a heart attack, partly recovered, only to incur a second massive attack in a matter of weeks.
The night he lay so ill in hospital after the initial attack she forgot to take the Pill. By the time she realised the implications of her lapse it was too late, and her worst fears were confirmed when a home pregnancy test showed positive. A doctor’s appointment merely verified it.
For two weeks she suffered the tortures of the damned. Then, early one morning, soon after Alejandro left for the office, she simply threw a few clothes into a bag, slid in behind the wheel of the Porsche Carrera and headed north.
Ironically, she had only cleared the outer suburbs when another car ran through a ‘Stop’ sign.
She
