by Lynne Graham
She had tossed and turned half the night, worrying about that. Absently she rubbed at the nagging ache in the small of her back. It had begun annoying her- around dawn, presumably because she’d been lying in an awkward position. She felt like a water melon, huge and ungainly. She felt sorry for herself. She felt tearful. She felt that she might well be on the brink of making the biggest mistake of her life.
But Raul himself had put it in a nutshell for her. They were putting the baby first, and this way their baby would have two parents. That was very important to Polly, and she had with constant piety reminded herself of that crucial fact. There was just one cloud on the horizon...a cloud that got bigger and blacker every time her conscience stole an uneasy glance at it.
Raul didn’t want to many her. He had made no attempt to pretend otherwise. The occasional flash of sanity told Polly that that was all wrong, totally unacceptable as a basis even for a marriage of convenience. But what was the alternative? Polly couldn’t see any alternative. Only marriage could give them both an equal share of their child.
She stretched awkwardly, and used her fingers to massage the base of her spine. At that moment, Raul strode in.
‘Dios...let’s get this over with as quickly as possible,’ Raul urged impatiently as he reached down a strong hand to enclose hers and help her up off the sofa.
Thirty seconds later Rod Bevan arrived, accompanied by two other men. One was the registrar who would perform the ceremony, the other Raul introduced as his lawyer, Digby Carson. The service was very brief. When it was over, everybody shook hands and everybody smiled—with the exception of Raul. His cool impassivity didn’t yield or melt for a second.
In the midst of an increasingly awkward conversation, a sharp, tightening sensation formed around Polly’s abdomen. A stifled gasp was wrenched from her.
‘What’s wrong?’ Raul demanded, anxiety flaring in his stunning dark eyes.
‘I think we’d better forget the coffee and the scones,’ Rod Bevan concluded with a rueful smile as he showed the other two men out.
While he was doing that, Raul scooped Polly up in his arms and laid her down gently on the bed. The impassive look had vanished. His lean, proud face was full of concern. ‘The baby’s not due for another two weeks,’ he told her tautly.
‘Babies have their own schedule, Raul. I’d say this one has a pretty good sense of timing,’ Rod asserted cheerfully.
‘I’ll stay with you, Polly,’ Raul swore.
‘No, you will not!’ Polly exclaimed in instantaneous rejection. ‘I don’t want you with me!’
‘I’d like to see my baby born,’ Raul murmured intently, staring down at her with all the expectancy his powerful personality could command.
Dumbly she shook her head, tears of embarrassment pricking her eyes. She could not imagine sharing anything that intimate with a man she hadn’t even shared a bedroom with.
As he rang the bell for a nurse, she heard the consultant say something in Spanish. Raul’s response was quiet, but perceptibly edged by harshness. The door thudded shut on his departure.
‘He’s furious!’ Polly suddenly sobbed, torn by both resentment and an odd, stabbing sense of sharp regret.
‘No...he’s hurt,’ the older man contradicted, patting her clenched fingers soothingly. ‘For a male as squeamish as Raul, that was one hell of a generous offer!’
Polly gazed down in drowsy fascination at her baby and fell head-over-heels in love for the second time in her life. He was gorgeous. He had fine, silky black hair and big dark eyes, and a cry that seemed to be attached by some invisible string to her heart. He looked so small to her, but the midwife had said he was big—a whole ten pounds one ounce worth of bouncing, healthy baby.
As the nurse settled him into the crib, Raul appeared with Rod Bevan. Although medication had left Polly feeling sleepily afloat, and incapable of much in the way of thought or speech, she stared at Raul in surprise. His darkly handsome features were strained, his expressive mouth taut, his eyes shadowed. His tie was missing, the jacket of his suit crumpled and his white shirt open at his strong brown throat.
‘What’s wrong?’ Polly asked worriedly.
Broodingly, Raul surveyed his sleeping son and thrust a not quite steady hand through his already rumpled black hair. ‘He’s wonderful,’ he breathed with ragged appreciation. ‘But supremely indifferent to the danger he put you in!’
The consultant absorbed Polly’s frown of incomprehension. ‘Raul equates a Caesarean section with a near death experience,’ he explained with gentle satire as he took his leave in the nurse’s wake.
Faint colour overlaid Raul’s blunt cheekbones. He studied Polly’s weary face and frowned darkly. He reached for her hand and coiled long fingers warmly round hers. ‘I wasn’t prepared for surgical intervention...why didn’t you warn me?’
Polly slowly shook her head.
‘Rod tells me you’ve known for months that the baby would probably have to be delivered that way,’ Raul persisted.
‘It’s quite common,’ Polly managed to slur, her eyelids feeling as if they had weights driving them downward.
‘You’re so tiny,’ Raul muttered almost fiercely. ‘I should’ve thought—’
‘Bit late now,’ Polly incised with drowsy wit.
‘My son is beautiful,’ Raul murmured. ‘At least we got something right.’
‘Our...son,’ she mumbled.
‘We’ll call him Rodrigo—’
She winced.
‘Jorge?’
She pulled a face.
‘Emilio?’
She sighed.
‘Luis?’
A faint, drowsy smile curved her lips.
‘Luis...Zaforteza,’ Raul sounded thoughtfully.
Polly went to sleep.
Polly studied the four confining walls of her room and smiled. Tomorrow she was leaving the clinic. Her smile faded, her eyes apprehensive. They were to spend a couple of days in Raul’s apartment and then fly to Venezuela. Pulling on a luxurious thin silk wrap, she left her room. Every day Luis went to the nursery for a while to allow her to rest. Repossessing her son had become the highlight of her afternoon.
A slight frown line drew her brows together. The day Luis was born, Raul had seemed so concerned for her, so approachable, she reflected ruefully. But over the past five days the barriers had gone up again.
Raul’s fascination with his son was undeniable. Yet what she had believed might bring them closer together seemed instead to have pushed them further apart. Why was it that when Raul visited she often felt like a superfluous but extremely well-paid extra? Was it the fact that Raul never came through the door without some outrageously extravagant gift, which he carelessly bestowed on her in the manner of a rather superior customer bestowing a tip?
Day one, a diamond bracelet. Day two, a half-dozen sets of luxurious nightwear. Day three, a watch from Cartier. Day four, a magnificent diamond ring. It had become embarrassing. Raul was rich. Raul was now her husband. But it felt very strange to be receiving such lavish presents from a male so cool and distant he never touched her in even the smallest way.
As she turned the corner into the corridor where the nursery was, Polly was dismayed to see Raul talking with Digby Carson outside the viewing window. Neither man having heard her slippered approach, she ducked into an alcove out of sight. She was too self-conscious to join them when she was so lightly clad, and was thoroughly irritated that vanity had made her set aside her more sedate but shabby dressing gown.
‘So how do you feel about this...er...development?’ the older man was saying quietly, only yards away from her ignominious hiding place.
‘Deliriously happy, Digby.’
‘Seriously, Raul—’
That was sarcasm, not humour, Digby. My little bride is much smarter than the average gold-digger,’ Raul breathed with stinging bitterness. ‘She used my son as a bargaining chip to blackmail me into marriage!’
Rigid with shock at that condemnation, P
olly pushed her shoulders back against the cool wall to keep herself upright.
‘But whatever happens now I will keep my son,’ Raul completed with harsh conviction.
There was a buzzing sound in Polly’s ears. She heard the older man say something but she couldn’t pick out the words. Dizzily, she shook her head as the voices seemed to recede. When she finally peered out, the corridor was empty again.
Without even thinking about what she was doing, she fled back to the privacy of her room. A gold-digger...a blackmailer. Trembling with stricken disbelief at having heard herself described in such terms, Polly folded down on the bed, no longer sure her wobbly knees would support her.
The pain went deep and then deeper still. Raul despised her. ‘Whatever happens now I will keep my son.’ A cold, clammy sensation crawled down Polly’s spine. What had he meant by that? And this was the husband she was hoping to make a new life with in Venezuela? A husband who obviously loathed and resented her? In her turmoil, only one fact seemed clear. She could no longer trust Raul... and she couldn’t possibly risk taking her son to Venezuela without that trust.
Minutes later, a nurse wheeled in Luis’s crib. Seeing Polly already wearing her wrap and slippers, she smiled. ‘I see you were just about to come and collect him. Your husband said you were still asleep when he looked in on you earlier, but I know you like to feed Luis yourself.’
Alone with her child again, Polly drew in a shivering, steadying breath. Fear still etched in her shaken eyes, she gazed down at her son’s innocent little face, and then she got up in sudden decision.
From the cabinet by the bed she extracted her address book. Leafing frantically through it, she found the phone number her friend Maxie had insisted on giving her when they had parted after the reading of Nancy Leeward’s will. ‘Liz always knows where I am,’ she had promised.
Using the phone by the bed, Polly rang Liz Blake. As soon as the older woman had established who she was, she passed on Maxie’s number. When she heard Maxie’s familiar husky voice answering her call, Polly felt weak with relief.
‘It’s Polly...’ she muttered urgently. ‘Maxie, I need somewhere to stay...’
An hour after that conversation, having left a note of explanation addressed to Raul, Polly walked out of the clinic with Luis in her arms and climbed into the taxi waiting outside. The receptionist was too busy checking in new patients to notice her quiet exit.
CHAPTER FIVE
POLLY wheeled the stroller in from the roof garden. Threading back her spectacular mane of blonde hair with a manicured hand, Maxie Petronides bent to look in at a warmly-clothed Luis and exclaimed, ‘He’s so cute I could steal him!’
Polly surveyed her sleeping son with loving eyes. He was four weeks old and he got more precious with every passing day. Remorsefully aware that Raul was being deprived of their son, she had twice sent brief letters containing photos of Luis to Rod Bevan at the clinic, knowing he would pass them on.
The fabulous penthouse flat which she was looking after belonged to Maxie and her husband, Angelos, who used an even more spacious central London apartment. Polly was acting as caretaker for the property while the floors below were transformed into similar luxury dwellings. When the work was complete, Angelos Petronides would put the building on the market with the penthouse as a show home.
‘So how are you feeling?’ Maxie prompted over the coffee that Polly had made.
‘Guilty,’ Polly confessed ruefully, but she forced a smile, determined not to reveal the real extent of her unhappiness. Every time Raul came into her mind, she forced him out again. He had no business being there. He had never had any business being there. Learning to think of Raul only in relation to Luis was a priority.
‘You shouldn’t be feeling like that,’ Maxie reproved. ‘You needed this time alone to sort yourself out. This last year, you’ve been through an awful lot.’
‘And made some even more awful mistakes,’ Polly stressed with a helpless grimace. ‘I shouldn’t have married Raul. It was incredibly selfish and unfair. I still don’t know what got into me!’
‘Love has a lot to answer for. Sometimes you get so bitter and furious, you want to hit back hard,’ Maxie proffered, disconcerting Polly with the depth of her understanding. ‘And that just creates more strife. It’s only when it all gets too much that you suddenly simmer down and come to your senses.’
‘I wish I’d hit that point before I married Raul,’ Polly muttered wretchedly.
‘But Raul has made mistakes too,’ Maxie contended firmly. ‘He’s also sent out some very confusing messages about exactly what he wants from you. But if you’re honest with him when you contact him again, it should take some of the heat out of the situation.’
Polly tried to imagine telling Raul that she loved him and just cringed. Some excuse to give a man for forcing him into marrying her! That was what she had done, she acknowledged now. And admitting that even to herself still appalled her. But, whether she liked it or not, Raul had had grounds to accuse her of using their son to blackmail him into marriage. That wasn’t what she had intended, but that, in his eyes, had been the end result.
In the clinic she had brooded over the hurt and humiliation Raul had carelessly inflicted in Vermont. If she had never seen Raul again she would have got over him eventually, but being forced into such regular contact with him again had plunged her right back into emotional turmoil. She’d been too proud to face up to her continuing feelings for him...a woman scorned? She shuddered at that demeaning label. Whatever, she had been stubbornly blind to what was going on inside her own head.
She had still been so bitterly angry with Raul. Instead of putting those dangerous emotions behind her, before trying to seriously consider their son’s future, she had let herself glory in them that day at his apartment. Admittedly, Raul had provoked her with his refusal to even allow that she might be entitled to a life of her own. But marriage would only have been a viable alternative if Raul had been a willing bridegroom.
On their wedding day she had also become a new mother. That in itself would have been quite enough to cope with, but Raul’s subsequent behaviour had increased her anxiety about what their future together might hold. That overheard conversation had pushed the misgivings she had been trying to repress and ignore out into the open.
‘Initially Angelos wasn’t that fussed about getting married either,’ Maxie confessed, taking Polly by surprise.
‘Did he ever say he would sooner be dead than married?’
‘Well, no...’
Of course not. Angelos was besotted with his wife. And Maxie was besotted with her husband. But then Maxie was gorgeous, Polly reflected wryly, and naturally physical attraction had initially brought the couple together. Angelos hadn’t looked at Maxie and thought, I like her...she’d make a good surrogate mother. So why on earth had she tried to make a comparison?
After Maxie’s visit, Polly spent the rest of the day being extremely conscious of the presence of every phone in the apartment. She knew it was time to get in touch with Raul direct. It was now over three weeks since she had left the clinic on a surging tide of rage, pain and fear after hearing Raul’s opinion of her. But as that anger had subsided she had gradually come to appreciate that Raul had more right to be bitter than she had initially been prepared to admit.
And at least she now knew what had to be done about the situation, she reflected while she showered in the palatial en suite bathroom off the master bedroom. She was ready to humbly acknowledge her mistake, ready to talk to Raul about having their ill-judged marriage annulled. That would put them right back where they had started, but surely it would at least eradicate Raul’s hostility? Fearful of the response she was likely to receive, it was after nine that evening when she finally dialled the number Raul had given her weeks earlier in the clinic.
‘It’s Polly...’
Silence buzzed on the line, and then she heard some background noise she couldn’t identify. ‘Raul?’ she queried uncertainly.
‘I heard you,’ Raul finally responded, the dark, rich timbre of his accented drawl washing over her with a familiarity that almost hurt. ‘Where are you?’
‘I thought we should clear the air on the phone first,’ Polly admitted tautly. ‘Did you get my note?’
‘Three pages isn’t exactly a “note”.’
‘I was very upset when I heard you talking about me like that,’ Polly admitted tightly.
‘I did get that message. But I was letting off steam that day. It never occurred to me that I’d be overheard.’
Polly relaxed slightly.
‘Tell me about my son,’ Raul urged.
‘Could you...could you just once manage to say our son?’
‘That would be difficult.’
‘Why?’ Polly pressed.
“‘Our” suggests sharing...and right at this minute you are not sharing anything with me,’ Raul traded.
Polly paled, but she still coiled round the phone as if it was a fire on an icy night. ‘I didn’t mean...I didn’t plan to push you into a marriage you didn’t want,’ she told him unsteadily.
‘You just accidentally fell into that wedding ring, gatita? ’
Polly turned pink, scrutinising the narrow gold band where it sat in promment isolation on the coffee table, removed the same day she’d faced up to the fact that it was the symbol of a farce. ‘Where are you?’
‘In my car...you were saying?’ Raul prompted.
‘We don’t have to stay married!’ Polly rushed to make that point and redeem herself without touching on anything more intimate.
Silence greeted that leading statement.