Her Boss's One-Night Baby (HQR Presents)

by Jennie Lucas

  He stared at her, feeling numb.

  She took a deep breath, trying to smile. “Our baby will have your name when she’s born. You can see her anytime you want, no matter what the post-nup says.”

  “Hana,” he choked out.

  Her beautiful eyes were luminous in the shadows of their bedroom, as if her heart was breaking. “Goodbye, Antonio.”

  She left without looking back.

  * * *

  There was a flash of lightning outside the bedroom’s windows. Antonio felt numb. As thunder rumbled across the sky a moment later, he felt a gut-wrenching pain.

  How could Hana leave him? She had no right. He would not allow it. She was his.

  And yet...he felt a strange trickle down his spine. His body was reacting strangely. Beneath the anger, he felt pain, yes. But also, buried in the cracks, another feeling he couldn’t understand. One that made no sense. Relief.

  Finally.

  He’d always known this would happen. Even in their happiest moments. Even when he’d been making love to her on a pink sand Caribbean beach on their honeymoon, part of him had always known he’d lose her. No, even before that. On their wedding day in Tokyo, when Ren Tanaka had told him he wasn’t worthy of his bride. And someday soon, Hana will know it, too.

  That day had finally come.

  His eyes fell on the end table. All he could see, all he could feel, was the small paper that Hana had left there. His mother’s address. Her phone number. The answers to everything he’d feared most.

  Turning, he fled the room.

  Antonio went downstairs to his study to try to work, but he couldn’t concentrate on his laptop. Words and figures swam incomprehensibly in front of his eyes. He thought of how he’d judged Horace Lund so harshly at the restaurant in New York, and wondered if he himself would soon be muttering wild-eyed over cannoli about the woman he’d lost.

  He hadn’t lost Hana to a yoga instructor. Not even to Tanaka, who though he still hated him, Antonio grudgingly had to admit he had a certain unwilling respect for.

  No. Antonio had lost her on his own. Because of his fear to learn the truth about his own darkest flaws.

  Pushing his laptop aside in disgust, he left the study and went down the hall, nearly walking into an antique suit of armor. That was what Hana deserved, he thought. A knight in shining armor. A man who wasn’t so deeply cracked at the core.

  Going back to his bedroom, he yanked off the business suit he’d worn flying across the Atlantic, back when he’d thought he could still save their marriage. He put on exercise shorts, gym shoes and a thin T-shirt that stretched across his hard-muscled chest, then went back downstairs, past the kitchen, where he could hear Manuelita talking to her assistant and pounding the dough for bread. Going down the hall to his home gym, he turned on the light.

  The gym was empty, gleaming, pristine. He pushed a button that lifted the automated blinds, filling the room with weak gray light.

  I know the reason you were left on those church steps the day you were born.

  Guzzling down some water from the cooler, he climbed on the treadmill. He set the speed faster and faster, trying to outrun his thoughts.

  There’s not much time left. Your mother’s sick. Dying...

  Going to the punching bag, he hit it without gloves. Once. Twice. He pounded it until his knuckles were raw.

  I’ve tried everything I can to help heal you. But if you don’t want to be healed, there’s nothing I can do.

  Antonio fell against the punching bag, wrapping his arms around it as his knees swayed beneath him.

  Loving you isn’t enough. I can’t love you if you won’t love yourself.

  “Stop,” he whispered aloud.

  He didn’t need her love. He had his business empire. His airline that allowed him to escape anywhere, anytime. He was a citizen of the world, beholden to no one and attached to nothing. He could replace Hana instantly. He...

  Closing his eyes, Antonio leaned his hot cheek against the cool leather punching bag. He suddenly didn’t care about his empire.

  Money—what did that matter without being able to spend it on her?

  Power—what kind of power could he ever have, if he didn’t even have the power to be with her?

  Sex—what appeal could meaningless hookups ever have, after the ecstasy of holding Hana in his arms?

  His wife had tried to heal him. Ridiculous. Even she, with all her warmth and care, didn’t have that power. He still couldn’t believe Hana had tracked down the doctor and gone to speak with his mother.

  There’s not much time left. Your mother’s sick. Dying...

  A shudder went through him and he opened his eyes bleakly.

  For the first time since he was a boy, he tried to picture his mother. Tried to imagine why she’d abandoned him. Was Antonio so awful as a newborn? Had he been colicky, crying for hours? Had she hated the man who’d impregnated her?

  Had he been conceived, not in love, but out of some horrific act like rape?

  It was his greatest fear.

  Antonio thought of his childhood, of not even knowing who he was or why he’d been abandoned, of being sent back to the orphanage whenever he’d dared hope he’d found someone to love him, of getting beaten by the older kids for crying. He’d simply learned to stop feeling anything at all, just to avoid pain. He thought of the time he’d imagined himself in love with Isabella, giving his heart away so eagerly, only to have it thrown back in his face. Money is what matters. Money is what lasts. You’re young. You’ll learn.

  But Hana hadn’t cared about money. She’d only cared about him. Helping him. Healing him.

  Loving him.

  Antonio shuffled wearily out of the home gym. He stopped outside the doorway of the grand salon, a gracious, high-ceilinged room, in this palace once owned by a nobleman. The decor was elegant, with all the prestige money could buy. He’d done this to prove to everyone that he was no longer the pathetic orphan he’d been. But there was one person he’d never been able to convince: himself.

  I can’t love you if you won’t love yourself.

  Suddenly, Antonio knew he had to make a choice. One choice now that would separate his life forever onto two different paths.

  Which would it be?

  Gripping his hands at his sides, he looked out the wide windows toward the orange trees in the rainy courtyard. Would he keep the life he’d had? Where he felt nothing, and controlled everything—most of all, his own feelings—out of fear?

  Or would he take a risk?

  Suddenly, he was tired of being afraid.

  He’d lost Hana. What could be worse than that? What more did he have to fear?

  Antonio stood totally still. Then his chin lifted, his jaw set.

  He would no longer be enslaved by his worst fears about his past. About himself.

  His spine snapped straight, and he turned on his heel. Going up the staircase, he went into his bedroom. He picked up the piece of paper Hana had left. He saw his mother’s name, Josune Loiola. An address. A phone number.

  Grabbing his phone, he started to dial, then stopped. No. He couldn’t do this on the phone. He had to see the woman in person, to see her face, to demand why she’d left him as a baby, helpless and alone, in a basket on those church steps.

  He dialed Garcia instead. “Gas up the jet.”

  “Back to New York, señor?”

  “No,” he told his bodyguard. “North. Tell the pilot to find the closest airport to a village called Etxetarri.”

  It was early evening when Antonio got into the car that awaited him on the tarmac of the tiny private airport on the northern coast. Getting into the car, he left Garcia and his pilot behind.

  He had to do this alone.

  Antonio’s hands tightened on the wheel as he drove along the coastal road, following the directions of
his GPS. The rain was thick here, and as the sun starting to lower toward the western horizon, a mist rolled in from the glassy gray sea.

  Antonio felt butterflies in his stomach as he drove into the tiny fishing village with houses clinging to cliffs. Finally, he reached his destination, a squat stone building overlooking a bay filled with battered boats. And he blinked.

  It was a hospice.

  Its colorful shutters were bright against the gray stone and a profusion of flowers hung beneath the windows. Nervously, he parked his anonymous sedan behind the hospice and went inside. His clothes were anonymous as well, just a black T-shirt and dark pants. He didn’t want this woman—this stranger—to imagine that he was trying to impress her. But his knees were shaking as he went inside.

  “Who are you here to see?” the receptionist said, not looking up from her magazine.

  “Señora Loiola.”

  “Her third visitor in two days,” the girl murmured in surprise. “So many visits!” She looked up. “Are you expected, señor...?”

  “Delacruz.” Antonio saw the exact moment the receptionist recognized him. All those years he’d spent as the playboy billionaire of Madrid had apparently reached even this far north. “And no. She’s not expecting me. We’ve never met.”

  “You’re a friend?”

  “Apparently—” he gave a hard smile “—I’m her son.”

  The young woman’s jaw dropped. She rose hastily to her feet. “I’ll show you to her room, Señor Delacruz.”

  Going down a short hallway, which was lit too brightly and smelled of antiseptic, she knocked on a door and peeked in. “Are you available for visitors, señora?” He couldn’t hear the softly murmured reply. “There’s a gentleman here who says he’s your son.”

  The receptionist turned to him with a big, artificial smile. “Please. Go in.”

  Antonio hesitated, then squaring his shoulders, he turned to the door. From the corner of his eye he saw the receptionist surreptitiously taking his photo with her phone.

  Inside, the room was dark, and filled with shadows. It took a moment for his vision to adjust.

  Then he saw a small pitiful figure in the bed.

  The woman was younger than he’d expected, perhaps in her midfifties, dark-haired and slender, with big dark eyes that seemed too large in her sunken, gaunt face. Especially now, when those eyes were glowing with almost painful hope.

  “Is it really you?” she whispered. She took a shuddering breath. “My sweet boy?”

  Antonio looked down at those dark eyes, so much like his own. And all of the air in his chest went out with a whoosh.

  He’d come here to confront her, to accuse her of abandoning him as a baby, to berate her for what she’d done.

  But he’d never once considered what might have happened to her.

  He came forward into the shadowy room. On the table beside her, he saw a vase of fresh, vibrant flowers. Hana, he thought. It would be so like her to bring flowers to someone who was dying. Even a stranger.

  “I’m Antonio,” he said slowly. His voice cracked a little. “Delacruz is the last name the nuns gave me, when I was left on the steps of a church in Andalusia.” He couldn’t keep the recrimination from his voice.

  The woman blinked fast. “I’m Josune,” she whispered. “And I only learned yesterday that my baby lived. The baby I had thirty-six years ago.” Tears were welling in her dark eyes. Her voice was almost too quiet to hear. She took a shuddering breath. “I was sixteen when you were born, and they told me you were dead. They told me—”

  Her voice cut off.

  He looked down at her.

  His voice was strangely uncertain. “You...you didn’t abandon me?”

  “Abandon you!” Her black eyes blazed in her fragile face. “I never abandoned you, never!” She clasped her hands over the blanket in her lap. “Dr. Mendoza, my father, they both told me you died at birth. They wouldn’t let me see your body. They said it would give me nightmares.” She looked away sharply. Tears streaked down her face as she whispered, “If I’d known you were alive, if I’d ever even guessed...”

  Antonio felt a razor blade in his throat. His voice was low and harsh. “Why would they tell you I was dead?”

  She faltered, licking her cracked lips. “Your father was a backpacker from America. He’d come here to walk the Camino.” She bit her lip. “I was very sheltered, and...”

  Antonio could not breathe, looking down at her. His voice was a croak as he spoke his darkest fear. “He forced himself on you.”

  “Forced?” She snorted. “He romanced me. I wanted it to be love, but within the week, he was gone. He’d told me his name was John Smith. John Smith! Even my father could not find him, though he tried.”

  Antonio found himself sitting on the edge of her bed. “What happened?”

  “My parents were ashamed their only daughter was pregnant and unwed. For a woman to have a child alone is ordinary now. Back then, it was not.” She sighed. “Especially in a small village.”

  He glanced out the window, at the tiny stone village clinging to the cliffs above the sea. “But you still stayed here all your life.”

  “I’d shamed my family. Lost my baby. What else was I to do? My mother was sick. She needed me. She died a few years later, my father last year.”

  “But you could have married—had other children—”

  Josune shook her head, her eyes full of tears. “I loved a man once, and he abandoned me. I had a child I loved. I lost him, as well.” She looked away, toward the wild sea. “I couldn’t ever face that pain again. Especially when I knew it was my fault.”

  “Your fault?”

  Tears streamed down her sunken cheeks as she choked out, “When you died, the day you were born, what else could it be but my fault? I did something wrong. I wasn’t good enough to be your mother.” Looking away, she whispered, “I wasn’t worthy of that kind of joy.”

  I wasn’t worthy of that kind of joy.

  Emotion gripped Antonio’s heart. He thought of how he’d pushed Hana away. How he’d felt unworthy of her. How he’d tried not to love her, because he’d known he would only lose her.

  “But yesterday your wife came to me,” Josune said, her hand trembling as she reached toward the fresh flowers. “I could hardly believe it when she told me you were alive. I called Dr. Mendoza in a panic. He came to see me and confessed everything. My baby boy had been born healthy, but my father convinced him it would be better if they said you were dead. He took you to Andalusia, where no one in my village would hear of the baby who’d been found there.” Her dark eyes lifted to his. “Yesterday I didn’t know what to think, feel. It was as if all my dreams had come true—and my nightmares.”

  He could see the desperate question in her gaunt face. He said slowly, “Dr. Mendoza came to see me in Madrid recently. Why didn’t he tell you about me then?”

  “He said he didn’t want to hurt me.” Her lips turned up bitterly. “He was afraid, if you refused to see me, that it would only stir up new pain as I was already dying.” She looked down at her slender hands, held together tightly on the blanket. “Even your wife wouldn’t tell me her last name. She said the choice had to be yours.” Lifting her gaze to his, she breathed, “I didn’t think you would come, even as I prayed for it every moment. When I learned you were alive, I knew you must hate me...”

  It was true, Antonio realized. He’d hated her every day. And hated himself for whatever had made them give him away.

  “Just tell me you were happy,” she begged. “Tell me you were adopted by a family who loved you, as I would have loved you every day. I would have called you Julen.” Her gaze wandered to the window, overlooking the misty coast. “Waking up, I’d think, today my son would have been three. Today he would have been six. Today he would be eighteen, and a man.” She looked back at him, and her dark eyes shone with tears li
ke rain. “When I learned yesterday you were alive, it was almost too amazing to believe. But now, all I can think is that I should have known. I should have sensed you were alive, and come for you.” Her voice broke as she said, “Please just tell me you were happy.”

  Antonio closed his eyes.

  When he was young, he’d imagined what he would tell the parents who’d abandoned him, if he ever had the chance. How he’d destroy them with guilt. And he saw, in this moment, how easy it would be to destroy Josune. All the pain and anguish of his childhood was pounding in his memory as he opened his eyes and took a deep breath, knowing he could take his revenge just by telling her the truth.

  “I was happy,” he lied in a low voice. “I was loved.”

  She exhaled in a rush of tears, covering her face with her hands as she choked out a sob. “Thank you.” She wiped her eyes. “But your wife is not with you today? You are expecting a baby. You said you live in Madrid?”

  Antonio stared at her. She had no idea who he was, he realized. She wasn’t asking about his fortune, or his airline. She wasn’t looking at his net worth to determine his value. She was asking about what really mattered. His family.

  And in a flash, things clicked into place.

  Antonio had always thought he was different. That he, alone on earth, was unworthy of being loved. It had driven him to build a worldwide company, a billion-dollar fortune, to prove everyone wrong. To escape his worst belief about himself.

  But the truth was, far from being a monster, he was exactly like everyone else. Flawed. Making the best decisions he could, and sometimes failing. Sometimes being wrong. So wrong.

  But all along, he’d been loved, though he hadn’t known it, every single day by his mother, who’d mourned him. And he’d been loved by Hana, even as he’d tried so hard to push her away.

  “Can you ever forgive me, mi hijo?” Josune whispered.

  Reaching out, he took his mother’s trembling hands in his own. “There’s nothing to forgive, mama.”

  With a cry, she reached her arms around her much taller, broad-shouldered son. He leaned forward to hug her, and for a moment, they held each other. Then finally, he pulled back.