always wanted to be a mother. Not in the vague, one day it would be nice, mentally picking out cute names way that her girlfriends seemed to view motherhood, but with a deep, unfathomable yearning that was intrinsically a part of who she was.
Maybe her own dysfunctional upbringing had made her realise that being a mother was the most important job of all and, rather than putting her off having children, had instilled in her a longing do it right. There was no doubt that when she had discovered she was pregnant with Rafael’s baby it had flooded her with euphoric exhilaration. This was her chance to be the sort of mother she had always wanted, rather than the one she had had.
As the only child of a woman who, frankly, had had better things to do than pander to the whims of an annoyingly childlike child, Lottie had been largely raised by au pairs or home helps or whatever neighbour happened to be around. This had left Greta free to indulge in her real passion: travelling. Or, more specifically, cruising the world on luxury liners while Lottie had lived in a perpetual state of terror that one day there would be nobody to meet her at the school gates at all.
Funded by Lottie’s much older father, who had thoughtfully taken out a comprehensive life insurance policy before he’d dropped dead when Lottie was still only seven, Greta had become addicted to the glamour of the cruising lifestyle: the handsome stewards in their crisp white uniforms, the perma-tanned dance hosts, the dashing captains. Eventually she had ended up in dry dock with one of the latter, when she had remarried and made a new life in Argentina.
But the other slash of Rafael’s sword... Lottie screwed up her eyes against its searing pain, at the realisation that he’d got it so wrong. ‘It was never me that you wanted... The baby was the only thing that mattered.’ Was it possible that he actually believed that? That she had really done such a good job of fooling him? And, if so, why did it make her feel so hollowed out with sadness?
Taking a deep breath, she pushed herself up against the feather pillows and gazed at the room around her. It was the same bedroom she had shared with Rafael—well, half of it, at any rate. The huge double doors across the middle of the room were now firmly closed, like a metaphor for their marriage.
How different would things have been if they hadn’t lost Seraphina? If there had been no accident? If everything hadn’t gone so disastrously wrong? Their daughter would have been three now, running around this crusty old mausoleum, breathing fresh life into it, maybe even joined by a little brother or sister.
But it had happened, and the sequence of events afterwards had happened, leading to her going back to England, starting a new life in London and putting the past behind her. Even if that new life had meant studiously avoiding babies of all descriptions—babies in buggies, baby adverts on the television—and even turning away from babies smiling gummily at her over their mothers’ shoulders on the bus.
But she had never lost her yearning to have a baby, Rafael’s baby. And she had never forgotten their last remaining embryo. The tiny blob of shared cells stored in a tank of liquid nitrogen represented the last vestiges of their relationship and it was always there, locked away deep in her subconscious. Occasionally she would find herself fantasising about the sort of child it might grow into, before hurriedly pushing the thought back in its box and turning the key once more.
And now...now the embryo was being offered its chance of life. Never in her wildest dreams had she imagined that circumstances would bring about a possibility like this. It was a mad, crazy, ridiculous idea.
Wasn’t it?
* * *
Rafael paced up and down the length of the grand formal dining room, pausing only to check his watch once again. Where the hell was she? She knew that dinner was to be served at eight-thirty and she was now an hour late. Was she deliberately taunting him?
It was half an hour since he had gone up to find her, when the sudden, irrational fear had gripped him. He’d pounded his feet along the corridor to her room, convinced that she had gone—run away as she had before. He’d rapped sharply on the door, and the thirty seconds of silence before he had heard her moving about had seemed like an eternity.
But then the door had opened and there she’d been—all sleepy eyes and tousled hair, straight from a rumpled bed still warm from her body. And the sight of her, and that bed, had twisted a coil of lust deep inside of him.
Now that she still hadn’t appeared he could feel the same fear spreading through him again. Ten minutes, she had said—just enough time for a quick shower. Pacing back towards the head of the table, he told himself to calm down, get a grip. Stop behaving like an idiot.
He was glaring at the heavy panelled door when it finally opened and Lottie hurried in, all breathless apologies and pointed lack of eye contact. Reaching behind him for the bell that rang down in the kitchens, he waited in cold silence as she walked the interminable length of the table to join him. He watched from beneath the sweep of lowered lashes as she carefully sat down, sliding long legs under the table, shaking open her napkin to cover her lap.
Tearing his eyes away, he seated himself beside her at the head of the table, steadfastly refusing to acknowledge just how adorable she looked. Her hastily washed and dried hair had resulted in a cloud of tumbling blonde curls that she had loosely twisted into a knot on top of her head, and already escaping tendrils were framing her delicate features. A short jersey dress, its colour a darkest purple, hugged her slender curves in a way that already had the blood racing around his veins.
Lifting a heavy crystal decanter, he started to fill Lottie’s glass, watching as her slender fingers curled nervously around the stem. Then, raising his own glass between them, he saw Lottie automatically doing the same. What exactly were they toasting? With her meltingly clear blue eyes mercilessly trained on him he felt for the bedrock of bitterness to help him counter their effect and found it in the pit of his stomach, where it had sat ever since she had left him.
‘Your good health.’
It was hardly the warmest of toasts. Lottie looked at his darkly glowering face over the rim of her wine glass. She knew he was angry that she was late for dinner; he had already been in a bad mood when he had woken her up from her unexpected nap, banging on her bedroom door, demanding to know what was keeping her. But her promise of ten minutes had proved impossible to achieve and, torn between nervousness at keeping him waiting and a desire to make herself look at least half decent, the latter had won.
Though now she wondered why she had bothered. It would appear that her hastily applied makeover had simply darkened Rafael’s already coal-black mood.
‘Yes—salute.’ After taking a small sip, Lottie put down her glass and concentrated on straightening the already straight silver cutlery, wondering just how she was going to get through this ordeal.
Almost immediately two waiting staff appeared, and in the flurry of dishes being revealed from under domed silver lids and food being expertly served onto their plates Lottie was able to ignore, at least for the moment, the ill-tempered man at her side.
When the staff finally left he pointedly waited for her to pick up her knife and fork before doing the same.
‘I suggest we eat this now, before it is completely ruined.’
He really was determined to be relentlessly bad-tempered, wasn’t he? This evening was going to be horrendous.
But the meal was delicious and, seated beside Rafael in this magnificent cavernous room, drinking mellow red wine from the ancient, vaulted cellars beneath them, Lottie could feel herself being transported back to the life of wealth and privilege that she
