by Lynne Graham
‘No, it’s not… I mean, I’m working and Lydia’s asleep and it’s just not convenient,’ Sophie broke into an enervated surge of protest.
‘I appreciate that but I have nothing else to do in this locality while I wait. I’m also understandably eager to meet my niece,’ Antonio responded without apology. There was a brooding coolness in his decisive scrutiny as he suppressed the absurd spark of desire she always generated. He could only think she had the deceptive allure of the unfamiliar for him. ‘May I come in?’
Feeling ridiculously flustered, Sophie edged back into the trailer’s small lounge area and surreptitiously moistened her dry mouth. He strolled up the steps and took up what felt like every square inch of space.
‘You’ll have to wait until Lydia wakes up from her nap.’
Impatience tautened Antonio’s striking bone structure. ‘Meeting her uncle should be rather more fun than sleeping. I haven’t got much time to spend in the UK. I’d be grateful if you tried not to make matters more complicated than they need be.’
By the end of that little speech Sophie was breathing a little heavily. She had put Lydia down for a nap so that the baby would be less tired when Antonio made his visit. His early arrival had thrown that schedule into chaos. Her small, slight body stiff with annoyance and concern, she bent her curly head and pinned her lips tight on the tart comments eager to flow from her ready tongue. Antonio Rocha, Marqués of Salazar, was loaded. The solicitor had treated him like royalty and had treated her like trash to be tolerated. The warning was clear: she could not afford to make Antonio a bitter enemy. If push came to shove, he would always win the upper hand by virtue of his wealth and status. Therefore, even if it choked her, she had to be polite for Lydia’s sake and swallow Antonio’s every demand with as much grace as she could manage.
‘Lydia will be a little cranky if we waken her before she’s ready,’ Sophie said hesitantly.
‘I want to see my niece now,’ Antonio decreed, having decided that Sophie responded best to firm authority.
After a pause for consideration, Sophie nodded, for she wanted to be fair. There had been a lot of little boys and girls at Belinda’s wedding and her sister had once told her that the Spanish were particularly fond of children. Antonio was obviously accustomed to babies and confident of being able to handle his niece. She pushed open the door of the narrow bunkroom where she had stowed Lydia to sleep undisturbed in her little travel cot.
Antonio gazed down at the small hump under the blanket, which was topped by a fluff of light brown curls. His niece looked worryingly tiny. Both Pablo and Belinda had been tall. On the other hand Sophie barely reached the top of Antonio’s chest, so it was perfectly possible that the baby was naturally undersized and still quite fit. He reminded himself that when he took Lydia back to Spain she would be checked over. The family doctor, who was an old friend, had suggested that giving the baby a full medical examination would be a wise precaution: one or two babies in the most recent generation had been born with heart murmurs.
Mastering his own reluctance, Antonio decided to show an appropriate level of interest in the child by lifting her out of the cot for a closer inspection. He brushed back the blanket and scooped the baby up.
Almost instantly, the baby went as stiff as a tiny steel girder and looked up at him with enormous stricken brown eyes. Her mouth opened wide enough to treat him to an unwelcome view of her miniature tonsils and a yell that would have roused a graveyard exploded from her. Her face turning scarlet, the baby shrieked blue murder as if she were being attacked. Antonio stared down at his niece in paralysed horror.
‘What’s wrong with her?’ he demanded.
‘Have you ever been snatched out of bed by a stranger and dangled in mid-air like a toy?’ Sophie asked fiercely, resisting the urge to haul Lydia from his inept and unfeeling hands.
Hearing Sophie’s voice, Lydia twisted her little head round. The baby squirmed like mad and stretched out her hands towards her aunt in a movement that was as frantic as it was revealing.
‘Perhaps you should have made the effort to introduce us first,’ Antonio censured, and without further ado he deposited the screaming bundle into Sophie’s waiting arms.
His sculpted mouth curling, his ears still ringing from that appalling bout of shrieking, he watched his tiny niece clamp onto Sophie’s shoulder like a limpet restored to its favourite rock. An immediate and very welcome silence fell. While the baby clung with what he considered to be quite unnecessary drama, Sophie rewarded that show of extreme favouritism with an enormous amount of petting and kissing and soothing whispers.
‘I had no idea that the child would be quite so attached to you,’ Antonio admitted flatly.
‘I’ve been looking after Lydia since she was born.’ Restless with tension, Sophie moved out of the bunkroom and back into the lounge. ‘Belinda was ill at first…and then later, well, there were reasons why she wasn’t able to spend as much time as she would have liked with her daughter.’
‘What reasons?’ Antonio prompted.
‘Belinda started seeing a bloke who wasn’t fussed about kids and when she moved in with him, Lydia stayed on with me,’ Sophie explained grudgingly.
‘Here…in this place?’
‘We should be so lucky.’ Sophie loosed an uneasy laugh. ‘This is a luxury holiday home. The one I live in is at least twenty years older and without frills.’
Antonio spread his attention round the confines of a room that he found claustrophobically small. Frills? What frills? The décor was abysmal and so jazzy and cheap it offended his eyes. This was what she called luxury? He bit back an incredulous comment.
‘If you don’t live in this, why are you here?’
‘I’m cleaning it for the holiday-makers coming to stay tomorrow.’
Appalled by that admission, Antonio stared at her with concealed disbelief. ‘You are employed on the park as a cleaner?’
Sophie curved Lydia even closer to her taut length. ‘Have you got a problem with that?’
His strong jaw line squared, for he had hoped she had been joking. ‘Of course not. You said that my brother robbed your sister. Did you lose money too?’
‘I’ve never had money to lose,’ Sophie answered in surprise, and then, realising that he did not understand why that should be the case, she sighed and surrendered to the inevitable. ‘There’s a skeleton in my family cupboard and Belinda didn’t like me to talk about it. Belinda and I may have had the same mother but we had different fathers. I didn’t meet my sister until I was seventeen.’
‘All families have their secrets,’ Antonio murmured, relieved to finally have some explanation on that score. ‘Let us be candid with each other.’
Sophie tensed again. ‘I wasn’t going to tell you any lies.’
Picking up on her anxiety, Lydia lifted her head and loosed an uneasy little cry.
Antonio spread expressive lean brown hands. ‘I do not want to argue with you.’
‘Good…but between you and me and the wall there, you and I would always argue.’
‘I don’t accept that.’ Antonio angled a smile at her, dark golden eyes cool and confident. ‘A child’s future is at stake here and after what you’ve undergone in recent months, it is natural that you should be under stress.’
‘I haven’t undergone anything,’ Sophie asserted tightly. ‘I love Lydia and I enjoy looking after her. Worrying about what’s going to happen now that you’re in the picture is all that’s stressing me out.’
Two pairs of eyes, one green, one brown, were anxiously pinned to him, both fearful. For the first time in his thirty years of existence, Antonio felt like the wolf in the fairy tale, guilty of terrorising the innocent and the vulnerable. At the same time being treated like the bad guy infuriated him and stung his strong pride. He decided that it was time to drop the diplomatic approach. If he made his intentions and his expectations clear there would be no room for misunderstandings.
‘Why should you worry about what’
s going to happen now that I’m here to help? I must assume that you intend to insult me—’
‘No, I didn’t intend that!’ Sophie interrupted in dismay at that interpretation of her words.
Lean, strong face hard, Antonio dealt her a stony appraisal. ‘My intervention can only be of advantage to my niece when she is currently living in appalling poverty. You have done your best in most trying circumstances and I honour you for your efforts on the child’s behalf and thank you for your concern,’ he drawled smooth as glass. ‘But Lydia’s best interests will be met only when I take her back to Spain and ensure that she receives the care and privileges which are hers by right of birth.’
As he spoke every atom of colour slowly drained from Sophie’s shattered face. ‘We don’t live in appalling poverty—’
‘On my terms, I’m afraid that you do. I do not wish to offend you but I must speak the truth.’
‘You can’t take her away from me…and back to Spain,’ Sophie breathed shakily, feeling so sick at that threat she could hardly squeeze out sound. The very idea of losing Lydia hit her as hard as a punch in the stomach, winding her, driving her mind blank with gut-wrenching fear.
‘Why not?’ Antonio quirked an ebony brow. She was white as snow and clutching the baby to her like a second skin. A mixture of frustration and anger gripped him, for he knew that his intentions were pure and his solution the only sensible one. ‘I can see no alternative to that plan. If you love the child, you won’t stand in her way. I will give her a much better life.’
Sophie took a step back as if she could no longer bear to be that close to him. ‘I honestly think I will die if you take her away from me,’ she framed unsteadily. ‘I love her so much and she loves me. You can’t just throw me out of her life as though I’m nothing just because I’m poor.’
Antonio stilled. Faint dark colour illuminated the spectacular slant of his carved cheekbones. He was severely disconcerted by the tears swimming in her eyes and her raw emotion. She had abandoned all pride, dropped her tough front. She looked like a tiny teenager striving to stand up to a bully. The baby, evidently picking up on her aunt’s distress, was sobbing into Sophie’s slight shoulder.
‘It is not a matter of throwing you out of her life…This is the language of emotion, not of intellect,’ Antonio censured in exasperation.
Sophie dragged in a deep, tremulous breath and treated him to a look of fierce condemnation. ‘I’m not ashamed of that…as far as I’m concerned love would win over money every time—’
‘According to what I understand, you’ve never had any money, so are scarcely qualified to make such a sweeping statement—’
‘I love her…you don’t!’ Sophie launched at him.
‘If you love her why don’t you restrain your temper and stop scaring her?’ Antonio asked with lethal effect.
Sophie gave him an anguished look and turned away, soothing the anxious child in her arms.
Antonio decided that it had been a definite mistake to try to cut to the baseline as if he were dealing with a business issue. There was nothing businesslike about Sophie. Nothing practical, nothing sensible, nothing controlled. In fact he had never seen a woman betray that amount of emotion and the freedom with which she showed it held an almost indecent fascination for him. She was a powder keg of passionate feeling. Sexual curiosity threatened to seize him and he fought it off, angry with her, angry with himself. But even anger could not make him unaware of a very powerful urge to just grab her up and flatten her to the nearest bed. Scarcely an appropriate response to her distress, he acknowledged. He despised the primitive reactions she had always stirred in him.
‘I want you to think over what I’ve said,’ Antonio continued, deciding that attempting further discussion in the current atmosphere would be unprofitable. ‘I’ll come back tomorrow morning at eleven. If you need to talk to me before then, you can reach me at this hotel.’ He passed her a card. ‘Tell me where you live.’
‘In the blue van at the far end…the one parked right by the field,’ Sophie told him chokily.
‘I have no desire to sound like an actor in a bad movie but I can improve your life as well as Lydia’s. You don’t need to live at this level.’
‘Oddly enough, I’ve never met any baby thieves living like this, only decent people who don’t think money and social status is the be-all and end-all of life!’ Sophie tossed back accusingly.
Antonio decided to prove his maturity by not responding to that taunt. ‘I think it would be less upsetting for the baby if she was…resting when I call tomorrow.’
‘Perhaps you’d like to think about how much Lydia will be upset if I suddenly vanish out of her life,’ Sophie retorted thickly.
Antonio was sufficiently impressed by that warning to glance at the baby. He could not evade the suspicion that his brother’s child had inherited Sophie’s overly emotional temperament and was more sensitive than most. He had only lifted the child and it had gone off like a burglar alarm on hyper alert. For a split second he imagined carrying the baby away with both Sophie and the baby screaming and sobbing at high volume and he barely managed to repress a very masculine shudder.
Discovering a depth of imagination that he had not known he possessed, he even considered the risk of tabloid headlines and interference. Baby thief. No, he would be careful to do nothing likely to rouse such hysterical publicity. He was, he reminded himself, a highly intelligent and shrewd businessman. He was renowned for his logic and subtlety and his willingness to consider fresh and innovative approaches to find workable solutions. He was confident that he would find a way to persuade Sophie to accept the inevitable with good grace.
‘You don’t care about how I feel or how she feels, do you?’ Sophie accused as she thrust wide the front door, descended the steps and proceeded to buckle Sophie into her buggy.
‘I care enough to want to ensure that my niece does not grow up with your disadvantages.’
Shooting him a shocked glance from pain-filled green eyes, Sophie lifted her head high. ‘Isn’t it strange that even with all your advantages—your money and title and education and success—you are a ruthless bastard with no consideration for anyone’s feelings but your own?’
Hot temper unleashing, Antonio surveyed her with thickly lashed eyes that shimmered a biting gold. ‘But then I’m not a hypocrite. I know that you’re not the fragile little flower that you look, querida. You’re the same sleazy little liar who told me she was ill and then went out to get drunk and shag some loser on the beach,’ he reminded her with icy derision. ‘What you could never grasp about a guy like me is my good manners.’
‘Excuse me? You? Good manners?’ Sophie slung back at him in a hissing undertone selected to bypass Lydia’s hearing.
‘You said you were unwell. Naturally I went to see you to offer you my assistance.’
‘Nah…that wasn’t good manners, Antonio. You didn’t trust me, so you called round to check up on me and you couldn’t wait to jump to the wrong conclusions about me!’ Sophie hurled with the bitterness she had never managed to shake off. ‘Well, for your information, I told a polite lie to avoid embarrassing you with the truth of why I couldn’t see you that night. And by the way, that loser you refer to was Terry, the son of my father’s girlfriend, and he might have been very tall for his age but he was only fourteen years old! Not my lover, not my anything, just a scared kid worried sick about his mum!’
Having delivered that final rebuttal with spirit, Sophie stalked down the path with the buggy. To Antonio’s eyes, she seemed to dance as she moved. Her golden corkscrew curls bounced and tumbled round her shoulders and down her narrow back. The worn fabric of her jeans accentuated the suggestion of a pert swing to her small, heart-shaped derrière. She did not have much of any particular attribute, but what she did have had an explosive effect on his libido. He was not proud of his base instincts. Willing his inappropriate arousal to hell and back, Antonio breathed in very slow and deep.
But he still wanted
to haul her back and voice his scorn for that foolish story that only an intellectually challenged male would swallow. He wanted to ask her where she got off speaking to him in that impertinent tone. He wanted her to listen to his every word when he spoke to her. He wanted to teach her respect. He wanted to drag her into his arms and demonstrate sexual skills that he had never practised on a beach…at least, not a public one. Being who he was, however, and proud of his tough self-discipline, he chose instead to watch her walk away. He could no longer ignore the obvious: shameful though it was, it could only be her sluttish qualities that attracted him.
CHAPTER THREE
ANTONIO was planning to take Lydia from her and bring her up in Spain, Sophie reflected in agonised panic. How dared he start telling her how the baby that she loved should be brought up?
Frantically determined to keep herself busy so that she did not have time to fret, Sophie fed Lydia and put her to bed. She tidied up the static caravan that had been her home for over three years. She would make an early start tomorrow to finish that mobile home. She opened the box of cardigans the mail order firm had sent her to be embroidered and sat down to begin work on the intricate flowers.
How was she supposed to fight Antonio? A real live aristocrat? Was her lifestyle really one of appalling poverty? They had a secure roof over their heads and enough to eat. Admittedly the mobile home could be rather cold in winter and their clothes were rarely new, but Lydia was a happy, thriving child. How was she supposed to demand equal rights over her niece when Antonio could offer so much more in every material way?
Norah Moore called in at nine that evening. As soon as the older woman realised that Antonio was returning the next day, she offered to take care of Lydia while he was there. ‘That way you’ll be able to talk in peace. Where did you say this Antonio was staying?’
‘I didn’t say…the card’s on the table,’ Sophie mumbled, dimly wondering why the older woman wanted to know.
‘Quite a way away…the hotel looks very fancy,’ Norah remarked. ‘You should take yourself off for a walk along the beach. That always calms you down. I’ll mind Lydia.’