Duarte's Child

by Lynne Graham

  'He is... I was the one who wrecked everything.' Emily sighed.

  By wanting more than Duarte had ever offered, she'd made herself unhappy. She'd had a hunger to be loved and, if not loved, at least needed. But Duarte had not needed her either. She had just felt like another one of his many possessions with no true existence or purpose without him. She had never had much confidence but, flung in at the deep end of a world so very different from her own, she had sunk like a stone, becoming even more shy and awkward. By the time of their separation, she'd gone from having low self-esteem to having no self-esteem at all.

  Alice left with Jamie. Then a very weary-looking police sergeant made a brief visit to Emily's bedside to confirm that she had no complaint to make against her husband. Having made that assurance while cringing at the thought of what Duarte must have undergone, Emily fell asleep and did not awaken until lunch arrived on a noisy trolley. The doctor called in to have a brief word with her and tell her that she was free to leave. As she had no appetite for food, she slid straight out of bed. Removing her clothes from the cabinet, she got dressed again.

  'Mateus Santos was waiting at Reception to escort her out to the limousine.

  Duarte was seated in the back of the limo. Emily climbed in and sat down at the furthest point from Duarte that she could contrive. 'What now?' she asked tightly.

  'We'll pick up Jamie and then we're going home.'

  The silence lay between them, deep as a swamp and twice as treacherous.

  Emily swallowed hard. Going home? She had not yet given him a direct look. Now she turned her head, her throat tight, her sea-green eyes strained. 'Just like that?'

  'Just like that,' Duarte confirmed, skimming her a veiled glance from his dark, deep-set eyes. 'I had your possessions cleared from the car and the caravan and packed. I also told Mateus to dispose of both vehicles as you will have no further use for them.'

  That was the moment that Emily appreciated that she now possessed only the clothes she stood up in. Her fingers closed over the ragged cuffs of her old sweater in an effort to contain an almost overwhelming sense of being trapped. 'It would have been nice if you had asked me what I wanted to do with them.'

  'But then, all that concerned me was what I wanted,' Duarte murmured with velvet soft cool, reaching forward to sweep up the car phone as it buzzed.

  Going home? He was taking them straight back to Portugal. From below her lashes, she studied him, nervous as a cat on hot bricks. The hard smooth line of his high cheekbones in profile, the classic perfection of his arrogant-nose, the tough angular jawline slightly blue-shadowed by the hint of returning stubble. He was incredibly good-looking and sexy and she found it very difficult to resist the urge to stare when his attention was distracted from her. She listened to him talk in Portuguese, as smooth and cool as if he had not just dramatically reclaimed his runaway wife and child. No, indeed, it might have been any ordinary day and she might have been any woman.

  'Duarte...' she framed jerkily as soon as he had replaced the phone. 'I'd like to stay in England—'

  'That's not possible unless you insist on a divorce.'

  Emily did not feel that she was in a position to insist on anything. Duarte had slaughtered all the protest in her the very instant he had threatened to fight her for custody of Jamie. She'd already spent far too many months fretting about how poor a parent she might seem in comparison to him in any courtroom. Her evident lapse in fidelity, her flight to England, her fear-inspired failure to deal with matters like an adult which had forced Duarte to mount a search. Nothing that she had so far done would impress a judge. Nor would her case be helped when it came out that she had been raising Jamie in a caravan while she roved around taking casual employment. In a Portuguese court, she had not the slightest doubt that Duarte would win custody of their child.

  She curved her trembling hands together to steady them. 'I thought you would want a divorce.'

  'Not at present.'

  Emily wanted to scream. He was shutting her out. He had always done that, depersonalising every encounter, holding her at a distance...except in bed. Her fair complexion reddened to ferocious heat at that inadvertent thought. Just then, she could not bear to recall the physical intimacy which she had once cherished as evidence that he must care for her to some degree. Now it pained her to recall her own humiliating naivety. They had had separate bedrooms from the start. Sex had always seemed to have a faint aura of the forbidden. But it also had been wildly exciting...for her. The only time she had dared to touch him had been in the privacy of her own bed. In daylight, Duarte had been way too intimidating.

  In a fierce struggle to control her wayward mind, Emily made .herself focus on the child's car seat anchored opposite. Jamie's seat...Duarte was taking them both back to Portugal. Duarte was not thinking of a divorce. Duarte was not currently planning to deprive her of her son. Those facts were the only facts that mattered right now, she told herself urgently. She was tired of running and exhausted by living on her nerves. All these months, she had had no real life. What lay ahead could surely be little worse than what she had experienced in the past...

  'Are you going to have other women...again?' Emily heard herself ask and almost died on the spot because that dreadful question had just come out of nowhere and leapt on to her unguarded tongue.

  The silence seemed to flex like a stranglehold ready to tighten round her slender throat.

  Slowly, Emily looked up, aquamarine eyes aghast.

  Duarte gazed back at her as if she had just dropped down through the car roof, a fully fledged alien with two heads. 'What do you mean by...again!' he prompted very softly.

  Emily connected with electrifying dark golden eyes and gulped, 'I didn't mean anything...I...I just wondered.'

  'You made an accusation,' Duarte contradicted with razor-edged cool. 'A specious feminine attempt to justify your own behaviour by implying that I played away—'

  Emily, was backtracking so fast she was literally into full-throttle reverse. Not because she was a coward but because she could not afford to antagonise Duarte, lest he change his mind and decide that Jamie did not need his mother as much as he believed he did. 'No, I didn't...I didn't—'

  'Don't try it again,' Duarte warned steadily, shimmering eyes resting on her like a slowly uncoiling whip lash.

  Turning away in turmoil to stare fixedly into the middle distance, Emily only then appreciated that the car had already pulled up outside Alice's farmhouse. The chauffeur opened the passenger door and she leapt out like a rabbit with a fox on her tail. The older woman was already coming outside with Jamie clasped in her arms. 'Will you and Duarte join me for coffee?'

  Emily reclaimed Jamie, her heart beating very fast. She didn't want to get back into the limo. She wanted to run again and she knew that this time there was no place to run. 'I'll ask Duarte if we've got time—'

  But Duarte was right behind her. He greeted Alice with a courteous charm which Emily had only got to enjoy briefly during their even more brief courtship. Emily stared at her husband, marvelling at the tone of regret he contrived to employ as he refused an invitation he could not have had the slightest desire to accept. She said goodbye in a dulled little voice and got back into the car to fix Jamie into his seat.

  'Stop cringing around me,' Duarte instructed grittily as the chauffeur closed the door on them again.

  At least the previous unfortunate subject which she had opened was forgotten. But she noted that he had given her no answer. Not that she cared any more, she told herself. They would hardly be living together again but wasn't it peculiar that he wasn't talking about what they were going to be doing? Or was exerting that kind of power over her part of the punishment?

  Becoming only slowly aware of the silence, Emily turned her head. Only then did she recall that Duarte was really only now having his first meeting with his son. Duarte was studying Jamie with an intensity she could feel. Jamie was kicking his feet, smiling and in the mood to be admired. Emily watched Duarte. T
he tension etched in his bold bronzed features, the movement of the lean brown hand he semi-raised and then settled back on a long powerful thigh again.

  He wanted to touch Jamie. He wanted to connect; naturally he did. Her throat thickened in the weighted quiet. She slid Jamie's little blue teddy towards Duarte, nudging his braced fingers with the toy. 'You could give him that—'

  'When I need your advice, I'll ask for it.' Lean strong face clenching hard, Duarte dealt her a flaring glance of bitter hostility. 'It's not a lot of fun wondering whether my own child will scream if I try to touch him.'

  Emily paled. 'I know...I'm sorry—'

  A tiny muscle pulling tight at the corner of his hard jaw-line, Duarte thrust his broad shoulders back against the seat. 'I've got plenty of time to get to know him. I'll do it without an audience.'

  He was so incredibly proud. Had she not seen the yearning in Duarte's body language as he contemplated his infant son, she might have believed that he felt nothing.

  'I was scared to get in contact with you...I was scared of losing him—'

  'I'm not about to discuss your behaviour in front of him. You're his mother. You sound distressed. Look at your son...he's listening to your voice and watching your every move and you're scaring him,' Duarte condemned.

  Emily saw the truth of that censure in Jamie's anxious air and her strained eyes stung, forcing her to blink rapidly. She compressed her lips on all the words that wanted to spill out of her but which Duarte did not want to hear. And could she really blame him? She was making excuses again. Right at that moment, Duarte's sole interest was in his son. She was just an adjunct, along for the ride because Jamie needed her. However, it was painfully obvious to Emily that Duarte was barely tolerating her presence.

  From the instant they entered the crowded bustling airport, Emily became conscious of her scuffed shoes, faded jodhpurs and ancient sweater. The outfit had been practical for the long drive she had expected to have but she felt like a tramp beside Duarte, immaculate in a charcoal grey suit exquisitely tailored to his tall athletic physique.

  'I could have done with getting changed,' she said uneasily. 'But I don't really have anything suitable.'

  She had left all her expensive clothes behind in Portugal. Not that that much mattered, she conceded ruefully, for that wardrobe had rejoiced most in fashion accidents. If she got the colour right, she invariably got the style wrong. Growing up, she had been a tomboy, living in jeans and riding gear. Her attempt to experiment with a more feminine look had been squashed in her sensitive teens by her sisters' scorn. It had been poor preparation for marriage to a rich man and entry into a daunting world in which her appearance really seemed to matter.

  'You can buy an outfit here and change,' Duarte pointed out.

  To Emily those words were confirmation that she looked an embarrassing mess. Her throat thickened and her eyes stung and she reddened fiercely for she had no money either. She hovered over Jamie's buggy with a downbent head..

  Through swimming eyes, Emily focused on the gold credit card extended in silence by her husband. The most enormous bitterness and pain seemingly rose out of nowhere inside her and she whispered helplessly, 'You should've married some fancy model, a real fashion plate...not someone like me!'

  'It is a little late now.' Duarte's deflating tone was more than equal to capping even the most emotional outburst. 'And this is not the place to stage an argument.'

  Emily swallowed hard. When had she ever had the nerve to argue with him? Yet it was odd how much she now wanted to argue but she was far too conscious of being in public where angry words would be overheard. Accepting the credit card without looking at him, she released her hold on the buggy and headed for the closest dress shop. There she scanned the packed displays. Choose really bright colours, Bliss had once advised Emily, saying that such shades flattered Emily's pale skin tone and balanced her red hair. Emily sped over to a rack of cerise dresses but they were way too plain in design to conceal a figure that Bliss had gently pointed out was more boyish than lush. Browsing at speed, she picked a jazzy orange handkerchief top with bell sleeves and a big glittery lime green motif on the front. Nobody was likely to notice her lack in the bosom department under that, Emily thought gratefully. She teamed the top with a long orange skirt that had the same fancy hem.

  Both garments matched in colour and style, she reflected with relief, thinking that that should definitely ensure a presentable appearance. She picked up a pair of high-heeled leopard-print mules because she knew they were the height of fashion. Her purchases made, she made harried use of a changing cubicle. Emerging from the shop again, hot and breathless, she saw Duarte and his security men standing around Jamie's buggy in the centre of the wide concourse.

  Mateus and the rest of his team focused on her and momentarily stared before lowering their heads. Then Duarte glanced in her direction and froze. Not a single betraying expression appeared on his darkly handsome features but he seemed to breathe in very deep and slow. And she knew right then that she had got it wrong again. Her heart sank right down to the toes of her horribly uncomfortable mules and she despised herself for her own weakness, her pathetic attempt to please and win his approval in even the smallest way.

  'Sorry I took so long,' she mumbled, reclaiming the buggy without glancing back up at him but conscious of his brooding presence with every fibre of her wretched being.

  'No...problem,' Duarte sighed.

  In the VIP lounge, she caught an involuntary glimpse of herself in a mirror and she was startled. She looked like a fluorescent carrot, she decided in stricken recoil. Flinching, she turned away from that mortifying reflection. Sitting down, she tried to disappear into herself and her own thoughts in the manner she had begun to practise within months of marrying Duarte. He never had been any great fan of idle chatter. She just wanted to sink into the woodwork, sitting there in an outfit that he most probably thought was ghastly. So why did she care? Why did she still care?

  Emily had always been conscious that she was neither pretty nor beautiful. Her mother and both her sisters were tall shapely blondes with classic bone structures. Even in appearance, she had not fitted her family. At the age of ten, she had asked her mother[where her own red hair came from in the family tree as even her father was fair. Her mother had dealt her a angry look as if even asking such a question was offensive and had told her that she owed her 'unfortunate' carroty curls to the genetic legacy of her late grandmother.

  Seeing no point in bemoaning what could not be altered, Emily hadn't ever really minded being short, red-haired and small in the chest and hip department. But the same moment that she first saw Duarte Avila de Monteiro, she had started minding very much that she would never have what it would take to attract him. Of course, it had not once occurred to her that a male of his calibre and wealth would look twice at her anyway but she still remembered her own foolish feelings of intense sadness and hurt that it should be that way. That Duarte should be so utterly detached from her when her own senses thrilled to even his presence a hundred feet away.

  And she still recalled the very first moment she had laid eyes on Duarte and very much doubted that he did...

  CHAPTER THREE

  BY THE time she was nineteen, Emily had qualified as a riding instructor.

  Her two older sisters had found lucrative employment in their father's wine-importing business but Emily had not been offered the same opportunity. Indeed, urged by her mother to leave home and be independent long before she was earning enough to pay a decent rent, Emily had finally given up on the job she loved. She had taken work as a live-in groom at Ash Manor, Duarte's English country house.

  The stable manager had hired Emily and, working at the manor, she had had an interesting insight into the lifestyle of a super-rich and powerful banker. Aside from his private jet, his fleet of helicopters and luxury cars, Duarte owned half a dozen palatial homes, superb horseflesh and a priceless art collection. He was the guy with everything, the target of endless
awe, speculation and envy. But the one thing Duarte Avila de Monteiro did not have, it seemed, was the precious time to enjoy his innumerable possessions.

  It had been weeks before Emily actually saw her wealthy employer in the flesh but she had already been told what he was like. Cool, polite, distant, formal, not the type to unbend with lesser beings, very much the product of a Portuguese aristocratic lineage said to stretch back to the thirteenth century.

  His incredible silver sports car pulled up one afternoon while Emily and another female groom were cleaning tack. The stable manager hurried from his office to greet Duarte.

  "That car's a MacLaren Fl, worth six hundred grand,' Emily's companion groaned. 'And just wait until you see him. When I first came here, I assumed the banker boss was some old geezer, but he's only twenty-eight and he's pure sex on legs. If you got him on his own without his bodyguards, you'd lock him in your bedroom and throw away the key!'

  Even more than two years on, Emily still remembered that first shattering sight of Duarte. Sunlight gleaming over the luxuriant black hair stylishly cropped to his proud head as he climbed out of his car, a crisp white shirt accentuating his bronzed complexion but most of all she had noticed his stunning eyes, deepset and dark as sable at first glance but tawny gold as a hunting animal's the next. She was shocked and bemused by the unfamiliar leap of her own senses and the quite ridiculous stab of loss which assailed her when he turned away to open the passenger door of his car.

  In place of the beautiful woman she had expected to see in Duarte's passenger seat was an absolutely huge shaggy dog curled up nose to tail into the smallest possible size.

  The other groom backed into the tack out of sight. 'I'm not going to get stuck with that monster again. That dog's as thick as a block of wood, won't come when you call it and it's as fast on its feet as a race horse!'

  Before the other girl even finished speaking, the stable manager called Emily over and told her to exercise the dog.