her baby into her arms and pressed tender kisses to his satin-soft cheek. ‘Hello, my angel,’ she murmured and was rewarded with a sleepy smile from her little son that filled her with the sweetest joy.
She turned to find that Cortez had followed her over to the pram and he was standing next to her with a tense expression on his face, as if he feared she might drop Harry, she thought furiously. His next words shocked her more than anything else he had said.
‘When you discovered you were pregnant, why did you decide to go through with it?’
Elin was counting Harry’s eyelashes and only half paying attention to Cortez. ‘What do you mean?’
His breath hissed between his teeth. ‘Did you consider not having your child?’
She jerked her eyes to his face as his meaning sank into her stunned brain and she felt sick. ‘Oh, my God! You think I could have done that? What have I done to deserve your foul accusations? I thought when you suggested I could give away my baby for financial gain that you could not be any more insulting. But I was wrong.’
Something indecipherable glittered in Cortez’s eyes. ‘It was not an unreasonable question. You said you felt scared when you found out you were pregnant and faced being a single mother.’
Elin shook her head. ‘I loved my baby from the minute I knew that a miracle was happening inside me,’ she told him fiercely. ‘At my ultrasound scan when I was told I was expecting a boy, I felt sad that he wouldn’t have a father because I know from my own childhood that a child needs to have security provided ideally by both its parents. A child needs to feel loved. Nothing else is as important.’
She whirled around and walked over to the door with Harry held tightly in her arms. ‘I know something else,’ she said, turning back to stare at Cortez with disgust in her eyes.
He looked...stunned was the only way she could describe the expression on his face. His skin appeared to be drawn tight over his razor-sharp cheekbones. The first time she had seen him at her party a year ago he had reminded her of a wolf, and she should have followed her instincts and fled from him while she’d had the chance, she thought grimly.
‘I know that your wealth does not mean you will be a good father. You can’t buy your son. What Harry needs is a father who will always be there for him, but you weren’t around when I was in Intensive Care after his birth.’ Her voice shook. ‘Thankfully my brother spent hours in the hospital nursery with my son. And of course Harry was looked after by the nurses, but he did not have either of his parents with him, just like I didn’t have my parents when I lived at the orphanage.’
Cortez frowned ‘Why were you in Intensive Care?’
‘I bled heavily soon after giving birth.’ Elin swallowed hard. It was only three and a half months since Harry had been born and the memories of what had happened in the delivery room—when the euphoria of her son’s birth had rapidly turned into a scene from a horror film—were vivid in her mind.
‘The medical term is a postpartum haemorrhage. I was terrified I would bleed to death,’ she admitted. ‘I was rushed into Theatre and given a general anaesthetic, and I don’t remember anything after that. But I was told afterwards that I had emergency surgery and a blood transfusion. If the crash team had not been able to stop the bleeding they would have had to perform a hysterectomy, which you probably know is an operation to remove the womb. But luckily the doctors were able to save my life without ending my chances of one day having another child.’
She looked down at her infant son and blinked away her tears that always welled up whenever she thought of how close Harry had been to being motherless and fatherless. ‘I’m grateful to my brother for saying he would have adopted my baby if I had died. But at the crucial time when Harry needed his father, you weren’t around. So don’t preach to me that I am not a suitable mother, because I fought to stay alive for my son and I will fight to the death to keep him.’
FROM THE WINDOW Cortez watched Elin walk across the lawn holding Harry in her arms. She had swept out of the study, leaving him reeling from what she had told him. He went cold at the thought that she could have bled to death following Harry’s birth, and guilt knotted in his stomach as he acknowledged the damning truth that if Elin had died he would never have known about his son.
The gazebo next to the swimming pool offered shade from the midday sun, which was strong even in March. Elin sat down on a garden chair and held the baby against her shoulder. Even from a distance Cortez could see the gentle expression on her face as she cradled her son.
A lioness protecting her cub.
The vehement words she’d flung at him a few minutes ago echoed inside his head. ‘I fought to stay alive for my son and I will fight to the death to keep him.’ Cortez thought of another woman who had been fiercely protective of her child. His mother had brought him up without any support from his father. Marisol Ramos had been shunned by her family and by many of the villagers, who had judged her for being an unmarried mother. She had worked day in, day out at her small vineyard to earn money to feed and clothe him.
He remembered the recent discovery he had made while he’d been at Cuckmere Hall and had sorted through some of Ralph Saunderson’s private papers. He had found an old bank statement which proved that his father had given his mother money when she’d told him she was pregnant. But Marisol had not spent the money to make her life easier, and the only explanation Cortez could think of was that she had saved the money to pay for him to go to university.
A good education had given him the means to escape the poverty of his childhood, and it could be argued that he owed his success partly to Ralph’s financial contribution. He had been shocked to discover that his father had not completely abandoned him. Like he had abandoned Elin. The knot of guilt in his stomach tightened.
But if Elin loved Harry as much as she insisted, why was she a drug-user? She had furiously denied that she was a drug addict and Cortez conceded it was possible that the tabloid stories about her having a drug habit were exaggerated. But in London the nanny had not been unduly surprised when Elin had been incapable of caring for Harry. He had assumed that Elin had been semi-conscious on the flight to Spain as a result of something she had taken, but could there be a different explanation? For his baby son’s sake he had to find out the truth about Elin, and his first step would be to talk to the nanny.
Barbara was in the nursery, unpacking the latest delivery of baby clothes and toys that Cortez had ordered for his son. ‘Harry will have to be dressed in two new outfits a day if he is going to wear all these lovely clothes before he grows out of them,’ she said as she folded a cute sailor suit and placed it in a drawer.
‘I’m sorry to give you extra work,’ Cortez murmured, glancing at the boxes strewn across the floor. He spied a wooden train set and wondered how old Harry would be before he became interested in toys. He was looking forward to watching his son grow up and he was determined that he would be around when Harry took his first steps and spoke his first words. There had been many times when he was a boy that he’d wished he had a father like the other boys at school. His son would never doubt that his father loved him, Cortez vowed.
‘To be honest, I like having something to do,’ Barbara told him. ‘I often feel guilty that I am paid to do very little.’
‘Caring for a baby must be a full-time job.’
‘Yes, but Elin
