Alandra had pushed him away when he’d tried to take her in his arms. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. I can’t go through with the pregnancy,’ she’d snapped. ‘For one thing, getting fat will ruin my career. But, more importantly, Emilio will know it is not his child because he has been abroad for months.’
Cortez had felt as though a lead weight had dropped into his stomach. ‘Who the hell is Emilio?’
‘He’s my fiancé.’ Alandra gave another shrug. ‘He has moved to Canada, where he has a good job, and I’m waiting for a visa so that I can join him in Toronto. I was bored and you were a little light entertainment,’ she’d told Cortez. ‘But it has to end now.’
He had tried to persuade her to keep the baby. ‘Marry me and I’ll take care of you and our child,’ he’d begged.
At first she had laughed at him. ‘You don’t earn half as much as Emilio, and I don’t want his baby, so why would I want yours?’ Eventually she had agreed, and he had been overjoyed, but days later Alandra had called him and said she had never been serious about accepting his proposal and she had got rid of his baby before flying to Canada to be with her fiancé.
* * *
Cortez snapped his thoughts back to the present. Elin had to be lying because if she’d really had his child why wouldn’t she have told him before now and demanded money? Alandra had ripped his heart out when she’d got rid of his baby, and he refused to give credence to the idea that he could be the father of Elin’s child when the chances were frankly negligible.
‘I don’t have a son,’ he snapped. He swung away from her and moved towards the front door, but she came after him and put her hand on his arm.
‘Please, Cortez...’
Please, Cortez. He pictured her sprawled on a bed with her scarlet dress awry. He heard her soft voice urging him on, inciting his hunger, his desperation to sink between her soft white thighs. She had made him feel out of control a year ago and she was threatening his self-control now. He wanted to haul her back to the sofa in the library and slide her elegant black dress up to her waist to bare her to his hungry gaze. He wanted her more than he’d ever wanted any other woman, and his need infuriated him and at a deeper level it shamed him. Cortez Ramos did not need anyone. Certainly not a social butterfly who, if only half the press stories about her were true, was a trollop.
He stared at her hand on his arm while the silence in the hall simmered with tension. She was standing so close that he breathed in her perfume, a light floral fragrance with underlying sensual notes of jasmine, and the beast inside him roared. He brought his other hand up and snapped his fingers around her wrist to jerk it away from his arm.
‘If you ever repeat your unfounded accusation that I am the father of your child I will sue you for slander,’ he said grimly. ‘We had protected sex on one occasion. It would be too convenient from your point of view if you had conceived my child, but I don’t believe you did.’
He pulled open the front door and the cold March air stung his nostrils as he dragged in a breath. ‘It is not wise to play games with me, Elin. Unlike you, I did not enjoy a privileged upbringing. When I was a boy my mother often could not afford to buy food for us, but the hunger in my belly fired my determination to succeed and escape the poverty of my childhood. I’ve heard that Ralph Saunderson had a reputation for being ruthless and, I warn you, in that respect I take after my father.’
ELIN WATCHED CORTEZ ease his tall frame into the low-slung sports car parked on the drive and slammed the front door shut as if she were shutting out the devil. She released her breath on a shuddering sigh and leaned against the solid wooden door for support while she replayed the unbelievable scene in the library over in her mind.
She did not know what was most shocking: Ralph’s will which stipulated that she must marry before she could claim her inheritance, or that Ralph’s natural son and heir was Cortez Ramos—the father of her baby son, who had been conceived as a result of her night of shame.
Harry was the innocent one in all of this. With a low cry, she ran across the hall and up the sweeping staircase. Her suite of rooms, including the nursery, were in the east wing of the house. Cuckmere Hall had been her home since she was four years old and the possibility that Cortez might turn it into a hotel felt like another stab of a knife into her already mortally wounded heart.
The sound of her son’s cries drove every other thought from her mind as she flew across the nursery and lifted him out of his cot. ‘It’s all right, sweetheart. Mummy’s here,’ she crooned softly, feeling a familiar clench of emotion when Harry buried his face in her neck and his cries subsided to little snuffles.
‘I was just preparing his next feed,’ the nanny explained, hurrying into the room from the private kitchen. ‘Do you want me to give it to him?’
‘No, I will.’ Elin held out her hand for the bottle of formula and quashed a flicker of jealousy of the nanny. Barbara Lennox had proved to be invaluable and she had also become a trusted friend.
Elin had not planned to hire a nanny. But she had been desperately ill after giving birth to Harry and when she had finally left hospital and returned to Cuckmere Hall with her newborn son, Jarek had told her that he had employed Barbara temporarily while Elin regained her strength. Suffering a life-threatening haemorrhage moments after the birth had been a terrifying ordeal and, despite having been given two blood transfusions, she’d still felt weak and exhausted. To make matters worse, she’d then developed a serious kidney infection and had been too ill to be able to take care of her baby.
Barbara had turned down another job offer to stay and help look after Harry. It occurred to Elin that she would no longer be able to afford to employ a nanny now that Ralph had left her nothing in his will. She hadn’t felt a sense of entitlement, as Cortez had implied, but for twenty-two years she had regarded Ralph as her father and she was deeply hurt by the evidence that he had not cared about her.
She settled herself in a chair and felt a pang of guilt when Harry nuzzled his face against her breast and tried to suckle. ‘Here you are,’ she murmured, offering him the teat of the bottle. It was a lasting sadness that she had been unable to breastfeed him because of the strong antibiotics she’d had to take to fight the kidney infection, but Barbara had assured her that Harry was thriving on formula milk.
He was now just over three months old and he had a surprisingly strong grip when he curled his chubby fist around her finger. She couldn’t resist kissing his downy cheek and silky black hair. He stared up at her with his big eyes that were already changing from dark blue to an even darker brown flecked with gold that reminded her of Cortez’s eyes.
She could insist on a DNA test to prove that Cortez was Harry’s father, but what would be the point? she thought wearily. Cortez did not want his son and she would not demean herself by pursuing him through the courts for a maintenance pay-out. Harry was her responsibility and she was prepared to bring him up on her own. At least she would have somewhere for them to live. Rose and Ivy Cottages were tucked away on a remote part of the Cuckmere estate. She knew Jarek would insist she took ownership of whichever cottage was in the best condition. He rarely came to east Sussex and when he was in England he stayed at his London penthouse apartment, but most of the time he lived in Japan, where he worked as head derivatives trader for Saunderson’s Bank.
She would have to look for another job. Elin chewed on her lower lip as the harsh reality of her situation
