alt="e9781459251656_img_8219.gif"/>Three months ago. She disappeared one day... Soledad went out shopping and left her alone,’ Raul confided grimly. ‘Do you realize that in three months I have hardly slept a night through? Day and night I have been worried sick—’
‘I suppose there is a strong possibility that she may have gone for a termination—’
‘Por Dios...’ Raul dealt the older man a smouldering look of reproof. ‘Polly wouldn’t abort my child!’
Content to have issued that warning, Digby didn’t argue.
‘Polly’s very soft, very feminine, very caring...she would never choose that option!’ Raul continued to argue fiercely.
‘You asked about your rights.’ Digby breathed in deep, straightening his shoulders to brace himself for the blow he was about to deliver. ‘I’m afraid unmarried fathers don’t have any under British law.’
Raul stared back at him with rampant incredulity. ‘That isn’t possible.’
‘You couldn’t argue that the girl would make a bad mother either. After all, you chose her,’ the older man pointed out ruefully. ‘You described a respectable girl, drawn into a surrogacy agreement only because she was trying to help her mother. As the rich foreigner who used his wealth to tempt her into making a decision which she later regretted, you wouldn’t look good in court—’
‘But she has reneged on a legal contract,’ Raul spelt out harshly. ‘Dios mio! All I want is the right to take my own child back to Venezuela. I haven’t the slightest desire to take this into a courtroom! There has to be some other way in which I can get custody.’
Digby grimaced. ‘You could marry her...’
Raul gave him a forbidding look. ‘If that was a joke, Digby...it was in the worst possible taste.’
Henry pulled out a chair for Polly to sit down to her evening meal. His mother, Janice Grey, frowned at the young woman’s shadowed blue eyes and too prominent cheekbones. At eight months pregnant, Polly looked drawn and ill.
‘You should be resting at this stage of your pregnancy,’ Janice reproved. ‘If you married Henry now, you could give up work. You could take things easy while he helped you get your godmother’s will sorted out.’
‘It would be the best move you could make.’ Solid and bespectacled, with thinning fair hair, Henry nodded in pompous agreement. ‘You’ll have to be careful that the Inland Revenue doesn’t take too large a slice of your inheritance. ’
‘I really don’t want to marry anybody.’ Beneath her wealth of rich, reddish brown hair, Polly’s delicate features were becoming stiff and her smile strained.
An awkward silence fell while mother and son exchanged meaningful glances.
Polly focused on her nicely cooked meal with a guilty lack of appetite. It had been a mistake to take a room in Janice’s comfortable terraced home. But how could she ever have guessed that her late godmother’s trusted housekeeper had had an ulterior motive for offering her somewhere to stay?
Janice and her son knew the strange terms of Nancy Leeward’s will. They knew that Polly would inherit a million pounds if she found a husband within the year and stayed married for at least six months. Janice was determined to persuade Polly that marrying her son would magically solve her every problem.
And, to be fair to Janice, calculating she might be, but she saw such a marriage as a fair exchange. After all, Polly was an unmarried mum-to-be and couldn’t claim her godmother’s money without a husband. Henry was single, and in a job he loathed. Even a small share of a million pounds would enable Henry to set up as a tax consultant in a smart office of his own. Janice would do just about anything to further Henry’s prospects, and Henry wasn’t just attached to his widowed mother’s apron strings, he was welded to them.
‘Babies can be very demanding,’ Janice pointed out when her son had left the room. ‘And, talking as someone who has done it, raising a child alone isn’t easy.’
‘I know.’ But at the mere mention of the word ‘baby’ a vague and dreamy smile had formed on Polly’s face. There was nothing practical or sensible about the warm feeling of anticipation which welled up inside her.
Janice sighed. ‘I’m only trying to advise you, Polly. You’re not in love with Henry, but where did falling in love get you?’
Polly’s blissful abstraction was cruelly punctured by that reminder. ‘Nowhere,’ she conceded tightly.
‘I’ve never liked to pry, but it’s obvious that the father of your child took off the minute you got pregnant. Unreliable and irresponsible,’ the older woman opined thinly. ‘You certainly couldn’t call my Henry either of those things.’
Polly considered Henry’s joyless and stolid outlook on life and suppressed a sigh.
‘People don’t always marry for love. People get married for all sorts of other reasons,’ Janice persisted. ‘Security, companionship, a nice home.’
‘I’m afraid I would need more.’ Polly got up slowly and heavily. ‘I think I’ll lie down for a while before I go to work.’
Breathless from climbing the stairs, Polly lay down on her bed in the prettily furnished spare room. She grimaced. Never in a million years would she marry Henry just to satisfy the terms of Nancy Leeward’s will and inherit that money.
She was too shamefully conscious that a craving for money had reduced her to her present predicament. Her late father, a strongly religious man, had been fond of saying that money was the root of all evil. And, looking back to the twisted, reckless decision she had made months earlier, Polly knew that in her case that pronouncement had proved all too true.
Her mother had been dying. But Polly had refused to accept the reality that the mother she had grown up without and had barely had time to get to know again could be dying: she hadn’t believed the hand of fate could be that cruel. Armed by that stubborn belief, Polly had gone that extra mile that people talked about, but she had gone that extra mile in entirely the wrong direction, she acknowledged wretchedly.
How could she ever have believed that she would find it possible to give her baby up to strangers? How could she ever have imagined that she could surrender all rights, hand over her own flesh and blood and agree never, ever to try and see her own child again? She had been incredibly stupid and immature. So she had run away from a situation which had become untenable, knowing even then that she would be followed and eventually traced...
As the ever-present threat of being found and called to account for her behaviour assailed Polly, her skin turned clammy with fear. In her own mind she was no better than a criminal. She had signed a contract in which she had promised to give up her baby. She had sat back while an unbelievably huge amount of money was expended on her mother’s medical care and then she had fled. She had broken the law, yet she had been wickedly and savagely deceived into signing that contract...but what proof did she have of that fact?
Sometimes she woke from nightmares about being extradited to the USA and put on trial, her baby taken from her and parcelled off to a life of luxury with his immoral and utterly unscrupulous father in Venezuela. Even when she didn’t have bad dreams, it was becoming increasingly hard to sleep. She was at that point in pregnancy when she couldn’t get comfortable even in bed, and she was often wakened by the strong,
