exotic dancer and disappeared to Brazil with her. He cut off all contact with me, and I haven’t seen or heard from him since.’
Ramon heard the bitterness in her voice. Fifteen was such an impressionable age, and he sensed that she had been deeply hurt by her father’s actions. ‘That must have been tough,’ he murmured. ‘Did you have a good relationship with him before he left?’
‘I adored him, and I thought he loved me—but presumably I meant nothing to him.’ Lauren swallowed.
Even after all this time her father’s desertion still hurt, and her sense of abandonment was as strong now as when she had been a teenager.
‘The day he left was the worst day of my life,’ she said bleakly. ‘Dad was a barrister, and he worked long hours, but he always made time for me, and I was closer to him than to my mother. He taught me to play chess, pretended to like the music I liked, and most weekends he would drive me to gymkhanas so that I could compete on my pony.’
She stared down at her hands, ferociously blinking back her tears. ‘He was my world, and I still can’t believe he went away and left me. I’ve never even received a birthday card from him. It’s as if I never existed to him—but I don’t understand why. Even if he didn’t want to be with Mum any more, why did he reject me?’ She swallowed. ‘I guess the truth is that he just didn’t love me enough to want to keep in contact.’
‘Did you have any idea that there were problems in your parents’ marriage?’ Ramon asked gently.
‘No—they seemed perfectly happy to me. Mum was always busy with the WI and her bridge club—and, as I said, my father spent a lot of time at work. But they used to hold dinner parties and things, and people used to comment on what a strong marriage they had. I found out afterwards that it was all a façade,’ she said heavily. ‘Apparently Dad had been unfaithful for years, and had had dozens of affairs before he went off with his Brazilian pole-dancer. My mother put up with his infidelity because she was terrified that if she objected Dad would divorce her, and she would lose the house and the wealthy lifestyle she was used to. In the end that’s what happened anyway. Unbeknownst to Mum, Dad had remortgaged the house, and he took all the money from their joint bank accounts before he jetted off to South America.’
‘It must have been hard for your mother to suddenly become a single parent and have to support a teenage daughter. How did she manage?’
‘She didn’t.’ Lauren sighed. ‘The truth is Mum had some sort of breakdown. She had never had a job or earned her own money, you see. Her parents had been well-off, and she’d married my father straight after she left finishing school. But with no income to pay the mortgage the house had to be sold, and I had to leave my private school and transfer to the local comprehensive. Most of Mum’s friends from the bridge club didn’t want to know her any more, and she took to drowning her unhappiness in gin and tonic.’
‘Dios!’ Ramon frowned. He had always assumed that Lauren had enjoyed a comfortable middle-class upbringing, but the truth was clearly very different. ‘What happened to you? You were little more than a child.’
‘I had to get a job—well, three jobs actually—that fitted around going to school. I worked in a shop and did cleaning—anything to earn a bit of money to pay the rent on our flat and buy food. Luckily I was able to keep up with my school work, and I managed to get to university. I was determined to have a good career. You wonder why I want to retain some measure of independence?’ she said fiercely. ‘Well, the reason is that after what happened to my mother I vowed that I would never be reliant on another person, as Mum was on my father. When Dad left I was forced to grow up fast. I learned to get on with things, and now when problems occur I prefer to manage on my own rather than seek help from anyone.’
‘Including bringing up your child on your own,’ Ramon said slowly.
He had never really understood why Lauren had kept Mateo’s birth a secret from him. It seemed such a cruel and vindictive thing to do, and that had puzzled him, because he knew she was not a cruel person. Her words gave him a sudden insight into why she had behaved as she had.
‘Is that the reason you did not tell me you were pregnant?’ he demanded.
She nodded. ‘You regarded me only as your mistress, and I honestly believed you would not want our baby. But I was afraid you would feel an obligation towards your child, and I couldn’t bear the thought of Matty growing up wondering why you did not love him, as I have wondered all these years why my father did not love me. I was scared at the prospect of being a single mother,’ she admitted, looking away from him so that she missed the flare of anger in his eyes. ‘But I had a good job, I knew I could cope, and so I decided to just get on with it.’
‘You should not have had to cope alone,’ Ramon said roughly, but his anger was directed solely at himself.
If he had been more open with Lauren during their affair, instead of allowing her to believe in his playboy reputation, she might have turned to him for help when she had needed it most, and he would not have lost the first precious months of his son’s life.
From Ramon’s tone it was clear that he had not been able to forgive her for keeping Matty from him, Lauren thought bleakly. She saw every day how deeply he loved his son, and she bitterly regretted the decision she had made when she had discovered that she was pregnant. But she couldn’t change the past. It still hung between her and Ramon, and with a flash of despair she realised that it would always define their relationship.
‘I thought that if you didn’t know about Matty you would be free to choose a bride better suited to being a duquesa.’ She hesitated. ‘Someone like Pilar. Juanita told me that everyone expected you to marry her,’ she muttered when Ramon frowned.
‘My sister has always allowed her tongue to run away with her,’ he said tersely.
But, like a dog with a bone, Lauren found that she could not drop the subject. ‘You can’t deny that with her aristocratic background Pilar would have been an ideal wife and an ideal duquesa.’
Ramon shrugged. ‘Perhaps so. But I didn’t marry Pilar. I married you.’
He did not sound overjoyed by that fact, and Lauren was unaware that his mind was reeling as he tried to assimilate all that she had told him.
His jaw was tense when he picked up the suitcase and strode over to the door. ‘To quote the words you used earlier—we just have to get on with it. I’ll be back in a couple of days,’ he told her curtly, and walked out of the room without a backward glance.
He phoned several times while he was away, but their conversations were stilted and entirely about Mateo.
‘He’s fearless,’ Ramon said, laughing, when Lauren recounted one day how she had caught their daredevil son trying to climb out of his cot.
The mixture of pride and love in Ramon’s voice tugged on her heart, and she felt a wistful longing that he would love her even half as much as he loved Matty.
He had said he would be home the following day, but when at midnight he hadn’t arrived, or even called her, Lauren went to bed, made a half-hearted attempt to read a book, and finally buried her face in the pillows and wept silent tears.
He wasn’t worth crying over, she told herself angrily, when she sat up to blow her nose. Her mother had cried constantly after her father had left, and she had vowed then that she would never allow any man to mean that much to her.
