Hot Nights with a Spaniard (Mills & Boon M&B) (Mills & Boon Special Releases)

by Carole Mortimer

  Sighing, Lily paused at the top of the steps and took the mobile phone from her bag and dialled his number. Waiting for him to answer, she pictured him sprawled across the bed in some lavish hotel, a sultry beauty lying with her head on her chest, her dark hair spilling over the rumpled sheets. As the ringing continued she imagined him reluctantly disentangling himself from the long, tanned limbs of the beautiful woman and cursing quietly as he searched through the pile of hastily discarded clothes on the floor for his mobile …

  ‘Hello?’

  Lily’s heart rocketed as his voice reached her ear; dark, rich, husky. She felt the heat flood her face. Her face, and her body.

  ‘Tristan, it’s me. Lily.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Oh, yes. Yes, of course.’ She closed her eyes, willing the surge of stupefying need that just hearing his voice had aroused to subside again. ‘Look, I’ve just arrived at Dr Alvarez’s office for my scan. He has this high-tech equipment that means that you can see it on the Internet …’ She felt her throat tighten. ‘I just thought … if you’re anywhere near a computer …’

  There was a long pause.

  ‘Tristan? Are you still there?’

  ‘Yes.’ She thought she heard him sigh, but it could have been static on the line. ‘I’ll connect my laptop now.’

  It sounded so easy, Tristan thought as he switched on the computer and waited to see if there was any chance that the wireless connection was going to play ball today. The things that people took so much for granted in the modern world, like electricity or phone signals, were erratic and unreliable in Khazakismir, which was almost more difficult to deal with than if they hadn’t been available at all.

  The health centre’s small office was currently doubling up as a storeroom to house the massive influx of basic medicinal supplies that Tristan had demanded on the day of the village raid all those months ago, meaning the desk was pushed right up against the window in the corner. Since that time things had been quieter here, and the rhythm of day-to-day life—never smooth or easy—had gradually been restored, giving them a chance to finish off the building and recruit and train some more staff from the local population. The health centre was still full, still struggling to cope, but the cases they were dealing with were the effects of the harsh winter and poor nutrition; influenza, pneumonia, sheer exhaustion from the grinding stress of living in poverty, rather than the bloody aftermath of deliberate violence. Today the cries that echoed through the corridors were not those of the maimed and bereaved, but of a woman giving birth.

  Things were running fairly smoothly now, and the staff Tristan employed via the charitable trust had proved to be competent and courageous beyond anything he could have hoped. He didn’t need to be here at all.

  And yet he kept coming back.

  Kept running away.

  Swearing softly, he stared at the screen of the small computer, until the little hourglass danced in front of his eyes. He remembered Lily telling him about the scan a while ago, and about the latest technology that enabled absent fathers to view their babies over an Internet connection, but he had pushed the information to the back of his mind.

  Or maybe he hadn’t.

  Maybe that was why he had flown out here two days ago, on the private mental pretext of dealing with a missing consignment of supplies, which, if he was honest, was never likely to be recovered. Maybe it was because all the red tape and tightrope negotiations with volatile local government officials was easier than being at his wife’s side and getting a first glimpse at his unborn child.

  Straightening up he slammed his fist down on the desk, making the laptop bounce alarmingly. A second later the screen changed, signalling that the elusive Internet connection had finally been established.

  From down the hallway the woman in labour gave a low cry, like an animal in pain. Tristan’s mobile phone rang.

  ‘Señor Romero? It’s Dr Alvarez’s secretary. Are you ready to be put through to the scan room?’

  For a moment there was nothing to be seen but a grainy moonscape of grey, broken by a paler crescent of white. Tristan straightened up and exhaled, realising only then that he had been holding his breath, mentally bracing himself against whatever he might see. But this he could deal with. The screen in front of him showed a picture like television static, a tiny white arrow racing across meaningless ghostly shapes in the snowstorm, clicking and measuring.

  Measuring what? His chest lurched as he wondered if, whatever they were, the measurements were OK.

  And then suddenly the screen split, and on the right hand side another window opened up onto a sepia-toned underwater world. For a moment Tristan wasn’t sure what he was looking at as the sonogram moved around and the image swirled and billowed, but then the screen stilled and the picture resolved itself, and he was looking at his baby’s face.

  It was astonishingly clear, astonishingly real. The baby was in half profile, its eyes closed, a tiny, perfect hand pressed against one rounded cheek. As he watched a frown flickered across its face and the hand moved, the delicate fingers stretching and uncurling like fronds of coral as the baby opened its rosebud mouth wide and gave a restless movement of its head, as if it were looking for something. And then a second later it stilled again as the thumb of the small, flailing hand found its place in the tiny mouth.

  Tristan was dimly aware of the ache in his back, but it was only when the screen flickered and went blank that he realised he had half risen to his feet and was leaning forward, gripping the edge of the desk, every muscle taut as wire. He straightened up, blinking fast, balling his hands into fists as the blood returned to his fingers and the drumming in his ears subsided.

  He felt dizzy, as if the weight of the responsibility he had been keeping so distant had suddenly come crashing down on him, crushing him. The walls of the small, cluttered office seemed to inch inwards, closing in on him and he looked around wildly at the stacks of boxes and files of paperwork and the whiteboards on the walls filled with scrawled updates about roadside patrols and rebel movements.

  None of it made sense.

  He had thrown himself into this project, ploughing money, time, energy into it under some ridiculous illusion that he was being completely altruistic. His way of putting back some of the wealth his family had taken from those who needed it most over the years. His way of making amends, living with himself, sleeping at night. He had taken on despotic dictators, violent warlords, disease and hunger simply to avoid having to confront the real things in his life. The things that really scared him.

  That he might not be a good father. That if he got close he would pass on the legacy of his father to his child. But as he snatched up the laptop and shrugged into his coat Tristan knew that it wasn’t the weight of responsibility he could feel pressing the air from his lungs, or fear that was making his heart pound.

  How stupid of him not to have realised earlier that it was love.

  ‘The heartbeat is just a little accelerated, but it’s nothing to worry about. Probably the bambino’s excitement at being on camera. Go home and take it easy. Get an early night, and, above all, don’t worry.’

  That was easier said than done, Lily thought as she lay down her book with a sigh. She had followed the rest of Dr Alvarez’s advice to the letter, and being in bed at just after nine o’clock was a record even for her, but the not worrying had proved impossible. Rearranging the bank of pillows behind her, she sighed and turned out the light.

  Dr Alvarez’s words seemed to echo a little more loudly, a little more ominously in the darkness of the silent apartment. The heartbeat is just a little accelerated … He had looked worried when he’d said that, hadn’t he?

  She switched the light back on and sat up.

  ‘I’m being silly,’ she said aloud, her voice cracking slightly from not having spoken to anyone since she’d left the surgery all those hours ago. ‘Auntie Scarlet would say I need to get out more.’

  She hadn’t spoken to anyone visible, she amended
with a rueful smile as she wearily got out of bed and padded into the kitchen to make a cup of chamomile tea. Talking to the baby was something she did automatically; naturally. Sometimes she wondered if it was normal. Mostly she didn’t care. She had to talk to someone.

  Anyway, who was to say what was normal any more?

  In the kitchen she poured boiling water onto a teabag to produce something that looked and smelled like pondwater. She felt a tug of pain, deep inside her. Normal would be having a husband here to bring her tea in bed, rub her back, tell her she was worrying about nothing. Normal would be being able to phone him, just to hear his voice, just to share her concerns and have him reassure her …

  She got back into bed and looked wistfully at the phone for a second, her fingers tingling with the overwhelming urge to pick it up and dial his number. She wanted to talk to him, to ask him if he’d been able to see the scan pictures. What had he thought? Had he been as blown away by them as she had?

  The ache inside her intensified as the unwelcome answer to that question presented itself in her head. Turning out the light, she curled up, pulling her knees up tight against her and feeling the baby press against her thighs.

  She sighed.

  ‘Goodnight, little one,’ she said sadly. ‘I love you.’

  She was woken by a tearing pain that seemed to grip her whole body, making it feel as if huge, cruel hands were grasping at her flesh, twisting it without mercy. For a mute, horror-struck moment she didn’t move as doors in her mind seemed to clang shut, trying to close out the terrible, nightmarish truth.

  But it was like trying to hold back the sea. It burst in, smashing the light from her world.

  ‘No, no, no …’ She was saying it out loud, her voice rising in a crescendo of screaming panic as she struggled from the bed and tried to stand up.

  Her legs buckled beneath her and she fell to the floor, still clutching at the duvet. It slithered off the bed to show sheets that were red with blood.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  THE light filtering through the slats of the blind was thin and grey, but to Lily it felt as if someone were shining a spotlight on the inside of her skull. Squeezing her eyes tightly shut, she tried to turn over to face the other way, to shut it out for ever.

  Ten thousand red-hot razor blades of pain bit into her, brutally dragging her back into consciousness, and jagged terror snagged in her brain.

  Blood.

  Blood everywhere. She remembered sticky warmth running down her legs … remembered putting her hand down to touch it, and the terrible jewel-bright redness on her fingers. Clumsily now she tried to lift her hand to see if she had dreamed it, but the movement sent a guillotine of pain slicing through her arm.

  ‘Shh … Lie still.’

  Tristan’s face swam in front of her, grave and perfectly still, as if it had been carved in granite. Lily felt the pain recede a little as he brushed the hair back from her forehead and stroked his fingers down her cheek. He was here, and the sheer strength of his presence soothed her. Whatever had happened, Tristan could make it all right again.

  With his hand still warm against her cheek, Lily let herself be pulled back down into blissful oblivion.

  So this was his punishment.

  Tristan felt the ache of exhaustion bite into his bones and scream along the muscles and nerves of his arm. Lily was asleep again now, her exquisite face as pale as milk from all the blood she had lost, but still he forced himself to go on stroking her hair, her cheek. As a gesture of comfort it was so pitifully small, so very inadequate, but it was all he could do.

  All he could bloody well do.

  He had promised to protect her, to keep her safe and he’d failed. Spectacularly. He had offered her security, and thought that that was nothing more than a luxurious home. A name.

  And in the end that name had counted for nothing. A title and a bloodline and all the Romero riches hadn’t kept their baby safe, because the only thing that could have done that was Tristan himself.

  And he wasn’t there.

  A baby girl, the doctor had told him. His jaw set like steel and he kept his eyes fixed unblinkingly ahead, refusing to look down at the fragile figure in the bed. Her peacefulness was like a deliberate reproach, because he knew that soon he would have to shatter it when he tried to explain to her just what she had lost. Outside a watery winter dawn was breaking over Barcelona, filtering into the room through the slats of the blind. They seemed to Tristan like bars of a prison.

  A prison of guilt, in which he would serve a life sentence.

  ‘You’re here.’

  Her voice was a whisper—barely more than a breath—but it made Tristan jump just as if she’d shouted. He forced himself to look down at her, but suddenly found that his throat had closed around and he couldn’t speak. Yes, I’m here. Where I should have been all along.

  He nodded.

  ‘I thought I’d dreamed it earlier,’ she said softly.

  ‘No. You didn’t dream it. I’m here.’

  ‘That’s good, but …’ Her eyelashes fluttered down over her cheeks for a moment and her brows drew together in a frown. When she looked back up at him her eyes were clouded with anxiety. ‘But that means I didn’t dream the rest either, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Yes. I’m afraid so.’

  Her face was ashen and she spoke through bloodless lips. ‘What happened?’

  Tristan stood up abruptly, turning his back on her and going over to the window. It was early afternoon, and a pale winter sun had broken through the leaden clouds and was now making the wet city streets gleam like polished silver. Finding the words, speaking them without breaking down, was going to be the hardest thing he had ever done, but he had to be strong for her.

  He had done so little else, after all.

  ‘It was something called a …’ He stopped, ruthlessly slashing back the emotion that threatened to crack his voice. ‘… a placental abruption. That’s what caused the bleeding. By the time I found you, you had lost a lot of blood, and the baby …’

  He squeezed his eyes very tightly shut for a second, as if that could dispel the image of what he had found when he’d finally let himself into the apartment late last night. But there was a part of him that knew already that it would always be there in his head, a lifelong reminder of his culpability. Savagely he thrust his clenched fists into his pockets and turned around. Dios, he had to at least look at her when he said this.

  ‘The baby had died already.’

  The only movement she made was to close her eyes. Apart from two small lines between her fine brows her paper-white face was completely composed, so that for a moment he thought she might have slipped back into her morphine-induced slumber. And then he saw that tears were running down her cheeks and into her hair in a steady, glistening river.

  He stood, stony and utterly helpless in the face of her silent, dignified suffering. Slowly he approached the bed and sat down beside her again, picking up her hand from the sheet. It felt cold, and his chest contracted painfully as he looked down and saw how very pale and fragile her fingers looked against his.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ His voice was a low, hoarse rasp.

  Almost imperceptibly she nodded, but her eyes stayed closed, shutting him out of her private grief. It was hardly surprising, he thought bitterly. It was his fault. How on earth could he expect her to forgive him when he would never be able to forgive himself?

  Especially when she eventually found out the rest, and understood the devastating extent of her loss: that by the time he had found her she had lost too much blood, and they hadn’t been able to stop it coming and had had to operate to remove her womb …

  That she had not only lost this baby, but any chance she might have had of having any more.

  Because he hadn’t been there.

  After a few more minutes he got up and very quietly left the room. She didn’t open her eyes, so she never saw the tears that were running down his face.

  Steadily the room filled up wit
h flowers, exotic fleshy blooms sent by Scarlet and Tom and Maggie and the cosmetics company and all the crew from the perfume advertisement shoot, which made the air turn heavy with their intoxicating hot-house scent. Nurses came and went, some silent and compassionate, some brisk and matter-of-fact. Lily was indifferent to them all.

  She felt hollowed out and as insubstantial as air. All the feelings that had nagged at her before that fateful night at Stowell—of emptiness and futility—came back now; swollen to huge and grotesque proportions, ballooning inside her until there was no space for anything else.

  Which was good, she thought distantly, watching a nurse change the bag of fluid that had been dripping into her arm, because at least it stopped her from thinking about Tristan. Longing for him.

  She wondered where he was; if he had gone back to wherever he had been once he had broken the news about the baby. The image of his set, emotionless face as he told her what had happened kept coming back to her, and the carefully controlled way he’d said, ‘I’m sorry.’

  It must have been hard for him, she recognised that. So hard for him to keep his relief from showing, but typical of him to try so dutifully.

  The nurse smiled kindly, folding back the heavy hospital blankets to check the dressing covering Lily’s scar. ‘Your husband rang, señora,’ she said in her cheerful, sing-song Catalan. ‘To ask how you are and to see if he might come back to see you this afternoon?’

  Lily turned her head away, biting her lip as several explanations for Tristan’s desire to see her flashed into her brain; none of them good.

  ‘I … I’m not sure … I …’

  She looked down. The nurse had peeled back the gauze dressing to show the livid scar that cut across her pitifully flat stomach. Lily felt her insides turn cold with horror, everything in her recoiling from the square of torn and deflated flesh and what it meant.

  The nurse seemed pleased.

  ‘Healing nicely,’ she said with a complacent smile, dabbing iodine onto Lily’s skin as if she were glazing pastry. ‘You will be able to go home in no time.’