‘I never did anything to harm Matty,’ she said sharply. ‘The day nursery he attends is excellent—the staff adore him, and he seems quite happy there.’ It was she who was miserable when she left her baby each morning, and she frequently spent the train journey to work trying to hold back her tears.
She clutched the towel to her when Ramon set her on her feet. He pulled open a drawer in the bedside cabinet and handed her a gossamer-fine peach silk nightgown that definitely did not belong to her.
‘You were so ill when we left your flat that I had to carry you down to the car, and I forgot to pack you any clothes,’ he told her. ‘I’ve ordered new things for Mateo, and a few items for you, but you’ll have to shop for more when you are feeling better.’
‘That won’t be necessary,’ Lauren said tensely. ‘Matty and I won’t be staying long. You can’t make us stay here,’ she cried, when Ramon’s face hardened.
‘I intend to do what is best for my son,’ he said ominously. ‘Why do you want to uproot him from his home, separate him not just from me but from his grandmother and the extended family he has already bonded with?’
‘His home is in England,’ Lauren choked.
‘But regrettably most of his waking hours are spent in daycare.’
Ramon strolled over to the window, and while his back was turned Lauren hurriedly donned the nightgown, dismayed to find that her hands were trembling. There was a comb on the dressing table and she tugged it through her hair’s wet tangles before blasting it with a hairdryer.
She jumped when Ramon came up behind her, took the dryer and began to run his fingers through her hair to aid the drying process. It was soothing, and evocatively intimate, and she had to fight the urge to close her eyes and lean back against him.
‘Does it have to be a battle?’ she pleaded. ‘We both want to do the best thing for Matty. Can’t we come to an amicable agreement on how we should care for him?’
His eyes met hers in the mirror. ‘I think that is possible—as long as we both put Mateo’s needs first.’ He swung her into his arms before she had time to protest, and carried her back over to the bed. ‘You need to rest. You’ve been very ill, and it will be a few days yet before you fully regain your strength.’
‘I want to be with Matty,’ Lauren argued. ‘Who is looking after him?’
‘My mother has taken him for a walk in the gardens.’ Ramon glanced at his watch. ‘If he follows the pattern of the last few days he will fall asleep, and then my dear madre will watch over him like a hawk until he wakes. She is utterly smitten with her new grandson,’ he added dryly.
It was ridiculous to feel jealous of this new woman in Matty’s life, Lauren told herself, but her eyes blurred with tears all the same. ‘I miss him,’ she said thickly.
‘He’s missed you too. The only way we could settle him at night was to lie him beside you in your bed. Once he was asleep I carried him to the nursery.’
Ramon’s jaw tightened. If he had needed proof that his baby son needed his mother, the sight of Mateo curled up against Lauren while his sobs gradually subsided had surely been it. The close bond between mother and son was undeniable—but Mateo needed his father too, and to Ramon’s mind there was only one logical solution that would allow his baby to be brought up by both his parents.
‘I’ll bring Mateo up to see you after his nap.’
He paused and studied Lauren, his eyes drawn to the rounded contours of her breasts and the slightly darker skin of her nipples, visible through the sheer fabric of the nightgown. She had run such a high fever while she had been ill that it had been necessary for him to strip her and sponge her naked body on several occasions. He had done so with clinical efficiency, his libido kept firmly under control. But now she was awake, watching him with her cool grey eyes, he was unbearably tempted to join her on the bed, peel the wisp of peach silk from those creamy breasts and take each rosy nipple in his mouth.
How could he still desire her when she had callously deprived him of his son for almost a year? he asked himself angrily, swinging away to stand by the window in the hope that she would not notice his powerful arousal. When he had first discovered that she had kept Mateo from him he had hated her, but during the days and nights that he had nursed her through her illness his anger had cooled, and he had forced himself to consider his own behaviour.
Lauren had accused him of being a playboy who had only wanted her for sex, and he could not deny the truth of that accusation. During their affair he had never considered a long-term relationship with her. His future had been mapped out: marriage—eventually—to a Spanish woman from his own elite social circle, who would provide him with the next Velaquez heir.
And yet, although he had refused to admit it, Lauren had got to him in a way that none of his numerous previous mistresses ever had.
‘Who is Donny?’ he asked her abruptly.
Lauren gave him a startled glance. ‘He’s my father,’ she said after a moment. ‘His name is Donald. When I was a child I used to call him Donny, instead of Dad, and his pet name for me was Laurie. It was just a silly thing between us.’ She hesitated. ‘Why do you ask?’
‘You kept muttering his name when you were ill.’
Lauren had a vague memory of dreaming about her father. He had been walking down the garden path, holding a suitcase. It had been a dream re-enactment of the day that Donald Maitland had walked out on his wife and daughter. She had been crying and tugging on his sleeve, begging him not to leave her. She prayed she hadn’t wept in her sleep. It was embarrassing to think that Ramon might have seen her crying. Impossible to glean anything from his shuttered expression.
So Donny wasn’t her lover. But that wasn’t to say that Lauren did not have a lover back in England, Ramon brooded. The idea of some unknown man staying at her flat, possibly taking on the role of stepfather to Mateo, made him want to smash his fist into the wall.
‘When you found out that you were pregnant you should have told me—for Mateo’s sake,’ he said harshly, unable to control his anger. ‘It would have been far better for him if you had given up your job and been a full time mother. I would have looked after both of you…’
‘I didn’t want your money,’ Lauren said sharply.
‘Perhaps you didn’t, but it would have been in Mateo’s best interests if you had involved me,’ he said inexorably. ‘Because of your selfishness Mateo was denied his father for the first months of his life, and he has spent far too much time in the care of nursery staff when he could have been here with his family.’
Her selfishness! Lauren was struck dumb by Ramon’s accusation. She had been selfless. She had devoted her life to Matty. Did Ramon think she enjoyed leaving her baby every day?
But her conscience prickled with the knowledge that there were some grains of truth in what he had said. Ideally she would have liked to have been with Matty constantly for his first year, but one of the reasons she had not told Ramon he had a son was because of her stubborn pride. He had made it clear that she meant nothing to him, and so she had doggedly chosen to bring Matty up on her own—even though that had meant returning to work when he was only a few months old.
The guilt that had so often racked
