What power did Catia have, that she could so easily make Diogo come at her beck and call? “I don’t want to go.”
“We leave in five minutes. Be ready.” Opening the sliding glass door, he walked back into the house without another glance.
A few minutes later, Ellie was dressed in a loosely fitting white shirt and khaki pants. Feeling desperately sad, she departed the beach house as a trio of laughing maids entered to clean it. Ellie cast one last wistful glance at the bed as the maids stripped the bedlinens. The beach house would soon be immaculate again. As if his wedding night with Ellie had never existed.
Within a day, this beautiful place would be ready to host Diogo’s next conquest.
Choking down her bitterness, she followed Diogo toward a waiting helicopter on a flat cliff on the edge of his estate. He barely looked back at her as they walked the hundred yards. Her knees suddenly tottered, and she stopped, hand over her mouth.
As if he somehow sensed her feelings, he turned back. He went immediately at her side. “What is it? Are you sick?”
There was no point in denying it. Not when she likely was green. “I think… I think I’m just hungry. And thirsty. I made some toast, but I didn’t eat it…”
Diogo barked out orders to one of his bodyguards. By the time Ellie was seated in the plush leather seat of his Sikorsky helicopter, a maid had brought a freshly made ham-and-cheese baguette, an apple and a bottle of sparkling water.
“Have a good flight, senhora!”
The maid’s respect and obvious admiration for Ellie made it clear that she thought Mrs. Serrador very grand—and very fortunate. If only the girl knew the truth!
“If you’re still thirsty, there is juice and milk,” Diogo said loudly over the noise-muffling earphones. As the helicopter lifted off the ground, he pointed at a small refrigerator. “And cookies and chips and dried fruit in that box. Once we are home, Luisa will be glad to prepare you a full meal of whatever your heart craves.”
“Thank you,” she whispered, but there was only one thing her heart truly craved, and he had already turned away from her. For the duration of the short helicopter ride to Rio, he took notes on his laptop, taking business calls on his phone. How could he be so solicitous and kind one moment, then so cold the next?
Because he only cared about the babies, she realized. He wanted Ellie to be comfortable for their sake, but he cared nothing about her feelings. If he had, he wouldn’t have abruptly ended their honeymoon after one night to rush back to his mistress!
All the promises his body had made her in bed, every whisper of love in his touch, had been a lie.
She stared down blindly at the passing earth as the helicopter traveled back to Rio. The jungle disappeared, the landscape became more barren. Finishing her sparkling water and apple, she leaned back against her seat and wondered again about the woman. Catia. What kind of woman could hold such power over Diogo?
For the year Ellie had worked for him, Diogo had been known as the uncatchable playboy, the man who would never, ever commit to any woman. The gossipy junior secretaries had kept a gleeful tally of his conquests. The longest record for his undivided attention was held by a Swedish swimsuit model who strutted around Manhattan wearing nothing but hot pants, six-inch heels and teensy-tiny halter tops—in December. And even she had only managed to keep his interest for eight days!
If someone like Ebba Söderberg could only last eight days, what qualities must this Catia possess, that with a single phone call she could cause Diogo to bolt across Brazil?
She had to be beautiful… that went without saying. But to capture Diogo, she would have to be more. Sophisticated. Smart. Powerful. She probably had a master’s degree in business, spoke five languages, owned a company and traveled in her own jet.
And, of course, she was a wicked temptress in bed. Not like Ellie, who’d only had two nights of sexual experience in her life, both with the same man!
Catia was sexy beyond belief with a perfect figure—not like Ellie, who was rapidly gaining weight and looking lumpier with every passing day of her double pregnancy.
How could Ellie compete with such a perfect woman?
She couldn’t.
Turning blindly to look out the window, she folded her arms as a rush of emotion threatened to choke her.
Obviously, she’d been delusional on pregnancy hormones to think that because Diogo made love to her, because he’d made her explode with joy, she meant anything to him at all. She’d been crazy to think that because he’d made her his wife, she meant anything to him beyond his children’s mother and his own occasional bed warmer.
To him, she was just a knocked-up former secretary who’d never even finished high school, was clueless about designer clothes and had long forgotten her junior-high Spanish. To him, she was simply another possession.
Now that he’d completed his hostile takeover of Ellie, he was already bored and looking for a new challenge.
While she…
As the helicopter descended into Rio, Ellie sucked in her breath.
She was in love with him.
One day as his wife, one night in his arms, and Ellie had fallen in love with Diogo all over again. And though their life together had barely begun, already it was killing her to know that he valued her so cheaply that he would insult and humiliate her like this on the second day of their marriage.
She was still trembling with the realization as they landed on the top of Diogo’s office building and took the elevator to the street, where Guilherme waited with the Bentley.
“Leblon,” Diogo ordered his chauffeur.
Leblon? As they drove south from the business center of the city, Ellie felt her heart clench. He’d visited that ritzy Rio neighborhood before. During their business trip in February, Diogo had abruptly cancelled a meeting and told the chauffeur to drop him off alone on the Rua João Lira. Distracted with juggling paperwork and her growing attraction for her boss, Ellie hadn’t paid attention. She’d been relieved to be left alone for a night at the Carlton Palace to organize the English-language contracts. But now…
Even in February, he’d been seeing this other woman. Catia.
And Diogo cared about Ellie’s feelings so little he couldn’t even be bothered to hide it.
Her eyes filled with tears as she stared out at the Cariocas playing volleyball across Copacabana Beach. They traveled east into the Ipanema neighborhood past the southern tip of the Lagoa Rodrigo de Freitas. She saw happy young mothers pushing strollers along the edge of the lagoon. Passing into Leblon, all the houses and shops were sleek and gorgeous and new.
But directly behind the new buildings, the slums of the favelas packed onto a hillside, casting a shadow over Leblon’s bright beauty.
Diogo was just like Rio. So seductive. So brutal. Did he really expect that she would be so thrilled to be his wife that she’d be willing to turn a blind eye to the ugliness of constant infidelities?
The chauffeur pulled the Bentley to the curb. “Estamos aqui, senhor.”
Diogo looked at Ellie for the first time since they’d left Bahia. “Guilherme will take you home.”
Ellie looked up at him and fire burned through her, leaving her eyes hot with unshed tears. “Don’t leave like this. Please.” Her throat felt tight. “Don’t go to her.”
He looked down at her, his handsome face devoid of expression. “Go home, Ellie.”
And he closed the car door behind him.
The chauffeur pulled the Bentley back into the busy Rio traffic. Turning around, Ellie looked through the back window as they drove away. She saw Diogo go up a flight of stairs to knock on the bright red door of a town house. A beautiful brunette flung open the door with a beaming smile. Taking his hand in her own, she pulled him inside.
And cold rage such as Ellie had never felt in her whole life swept through her. Fury swept through her body, freezing her heart into stone, congealing her spine into steel.
How dare he?
“Stop this car.�
� Turning to the chauffeur, she said more loudly, “Stop this car!”
“No, Senhora Ellie,” he replied, giving her a nervous smile in the rearview mirror. “The senhor, he ordered me to take you home—”
Her heart was pounding so furiously she thought she’d explode if she didn’t tell Diogo exactly what she thought of him—and that little brunette of his, too. All right, so maybe Ellie wasn’t the most glamorous or wealthy or well-educated woman in the world, but she didn’t deserve to be tossed aside like a bag of chips!
“Fine,” she growled. “Don’t stop!”
As the car still moved, Ellie flung open her door. With a horrified gasp, the chauffeur slammed on the brakes in the crawling rush-hour traffic.
She ran through the honking cars for the curb. Panting, red-faced with anger, she ran up the exact same stairs she’d seen Diogo climb.
She pounded on the door.
Once.
Twice.
The door opened. The same beautiful brunette answered. She was every bit as lovely, mysterious and irresistible as Ellie had feared.
She spoke with an upper-crust British accent as she looked Ellie up and down scornfully. “What do you want?”
“You must be Catia.” Ellie drew herself up with all the blue-collar pride of the generations of steel workers and coal miners that ran in her veins. She stalked past her husband’s mistress with her chin held high. “Tell Diogo Serrador that his wife is here.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“ELLIE.” DIOGO’S FACE became instantly angry as he rose to his feet. He’d been sitting back on the sofa, looking far too comfortable in the brunette’s cozy little house. As if this place were his home!
“I won’t share you!” she ground out. “I won’t!”
His brows lowered furiously. “Maldição, I won’t be spied on like this—not by you or anyone!”
“You expect me to just accept whatever story you give me?” she demanded, perilously close to tears. “You think I should be quiet and grateful and put up with you cheating on me? I won’t!” Her hands clenched into fists. “I’m your wife, I have feelings, and I expect you to—I expect—”
What did she expect?
I expect you to be true to me as I’m true to you.
I expect you to love me, as I love you.
God, she was a fool!
“Damn you,” she whispered, sinking into the couch as she struggled to hide her sobs. “Damn you to hell.”
In an instant, he crossed the room. He held her in his arms with unexpected tenderness. He kissed her temple softly, stroking her hair.
“She’s not my mistress, Ellie,” he said. “She’s not.”
“But—”
His eyes were dark with emotion. “I would not have married you if I intended to betray you.”
She looked at him, afraid to believe the words she desperately wanted to believe. “Then what are you doing here?”
He shook his head, tightening his jaw. “I didn’t want you to know. I was… ashamed.”
“Ashamed?” she gasped. “Of what?”
“Know this.” Raising her chin, he forced her to meet his eyes. “When I forced you to take my name, I gave you my loyalty. I will never break my promise. Never.”
She shook her head tearfully. “But it’s not a real marriage.”
Lowering his lips, he kissed her, a hot embrace that made fire rush through her veins.
“Tell me that’s not real,” he demanded.
Ellie heard a startled squeak from the doorway. Dazed, she looked up to see the brunette standing in the doorway holding a tray. The woman was staring daggers at Ellie. If she wasn’t Diogo’s mistress, she obviously wished to be.
Ellie turned back to Diogo. “So why—Why are you here with Catia,” she asked in a small voice, wanting desperately to believe, “if she’s not your mistress?”
“Ah.” He followed her gaze to rest on the brunette. “Her name is Angelique Price. She’s a nanny.”
“Nanny?” she repeated numbly. As if on cue, she heard a sharp, rhythmic bang against the hardwood floor as a little girl, about five years old and holding a doll, ran into the room. She stopped, looking at Diogo with big, frightened eyes.
“What are you doing here?” the little girl said in tremulous English, clutching her doll. “Go away. I don’t want you here!”
Diogo rose steadily to his feet. “Hello, Catia.” He took a step toward her. “I’ve missed you, minha pequena. Angelique called and said you were asking for me. I came as quickly as I could.”
“No! I don’t want you! Go away!”
Diogo picked the child up in his arms. Her doll dropped with a crash to the floor as he hugged her close, whirling her around the room, but instead of bursting into childish squeals of laughter, she howled, “No! Put me down! I don’t want you here, don’t want you!”
She was not a pretty little girl, except in the sense that all children are beautiful. Her hair was mousy brown. She wore thick glasses, her teeth were crooked, and she was far too thin and serious for a five-year-old child. Ellie’s heart went out to the girl.
Then her plain brown eyes fixed on Ellie.
“Who is that?”
He stroked her hair tenderly. “That is Ellie. My wife.” He turned. “Ellie, I’d like you to meet Catia,” he said quietly. “She’s my daughter.”
An hour later, after the little girl went into the kitchen to have lunch with her nanny, Ellie and Diogo sat on the sofa in the front room. The visit between Catia and her father had not improved, in spite of all Diogo’s trying.
The more he’d attempted to charm and please the little girl, the more she’d howled and pushed him away.
“I hired Angelique through an agency. I never even knew I had a daughter till this past Christmas,” he told Ellie, rubbing his head wearily with his hands. “Maldição, she lived in Rio all these years, but I never knew.”
“Where is her mother?” she asked softly.
His dark eyes looked haunted. “She’s dead.”
“Dead?”
He clenched his jaw. “Yasmin was a dancer—so passionate, so full of life. When I met her, I was building a new mine in Saskatchewan. We only had a few dates a few weeks apart. On our third date, she asked me to marry her. I thought she was a gold digger trying to pin me down. So I didn’t ask questions. I just left her.” He looked away, staring at the gleam of the hardwood floor. “When I told her she meant nothing to me, she said she was done with me. She said she loved someone else too much to waste any more time with me. It never occurred to me that she might be pregnant.”
She stared at him, her mouth agape. “Oh, Diogo,” she whispered.
“After I found out about Catia, I couldn’t stand the thought that I’d unknowingly abandoned my daughter for five years. I had to make sure that no other woman could get pregnant without my knowledge…”
“So you had a vasectomy.”
He nodded wearily.
She swallowed. It all made sense. “What happened to Yasmin?”
He clawed his hair back. “She tried to support her baby alone, but couldn’t do it after she got injured. I found out later she tried to contact me when Catia was six months old. She sent me a letter. But I never got it. Wright saw to that. He threatened her.”
Her jaw dropped. “Timothy?”
His lips flinched into a humorless smile. “Yes.”
“Timothy?” she gasped. “Threatened the mother of your child?”
“When I found out at Christmas, he told me he was protecting me. He wrote Yasmin a letter informing her that if she ever tried to contact me again, he would have her arrested for extortion.” He clenched his jaw grimly. “Instead, he offered to buy the baby from her for ten thousand dollars.”
She gaped at him. “Ten thousand dollars!”
“She was terrified he would steal her child from her, so she never tried to contact me again. But with no family or means of support, she ended up working in Rio as a high-class hooker.” He loo
ked up at her with hollow eyes. “And that’s how she died. One of her clients beat her to death at Christmas.”
Ellie sucked in her breath, hardly able to comprehend the horror of it. “And Catia?”
He shook his head. “Yasmin always sent her to a babysitter when she entertained clients. Catia knows that her mother is dead, but not how she died.”
“Thank God,” Ellie said devoutly. “That poor child…”
It was all such a tragedy. Ellie had worked herself into a jealous frenzy over a beautiful mistress who had just been a figment of her imagination.
All along, her rival had been a motherless child.
“Don’t worry,” Diogo said coldly, misreading her pause. “I understand that Catia is my child, not yours. Whatever you think of my unreasonable expectations of a bride, I do not expect you to help me raise her.”
Ellie straightened on the sofa.
“Nonsense,” she said crisply. “She’s your daughter. She must live with us.”
His eyes widened.
“You would… do that?” he said stiltingly.
“Of course!” She frowned. “What I don’t understand is why she’s still living in this house with a nanny. Why hasn’t she been living with you since you got custody?”
“I work such long hours, and travel so often to New York. I thought it better to let her stay in her home…”
She stopped him with a look. “In the home where her mother was beaten to death?”
“You’re right, you’re right.” He clenched his fists, pressing them against his eyelids. “The truth is, I want her with me. Every day. But she refuses to leave this place. When I try to pack up her things to take her, she screams bloody murder and clings to Angelique.”
“I don’t like that woman, Diogo. I don’t trust her.” She wants you for herself, she added silently.
“Catia has lost her mother. She doesn’t know me. And I just can’t get through to her.” He leaned his head in his hands. “I thought if I gave her a few months to grieve, she would be willing to accept her new life as my daughter. Now I’m at the end of my rope. I don’t know what to do. Aside from inviting Angelique to live with us, as well.”
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