by Holly Rayner
I’d been infuriated to see my design for the Angel Tower on the news, attached to Arlen Cooper’s name. It had taken me little time to deduce that Tanya was the only one who had had the opportunity to take photos of my model and get them out of the penthouse. I took no one else there. It was my sanctuary in the city. The place where I could escape my business or work on it as I pleased. No one else could have gotten those images out of there.
“She’s going to explain herself,” I muttered as I clicked the confirm meeting button in the email. “If nothing more, I deserve that much.”
I didn’t want to admit that I’d fallen for a private investigator sent by my biggest business rival to steal from me. I couldn’t have been so gullible, right? But then why did it hurt so much to even think about those few days with Tanya in Madrid? Why did I want to punch holes in walls every time I thought about her? And why did I have to hide tears from my daughter when she caught me after I’d been thinking of the woman who had stolen my heart and taken it with her back to New York.
Surely I couldn’t be in love with a conniving manipulator like that? Could I? Of course not. It didn’t help my state of mind that both Rey and Marco had jumped on board as her allies. Both of them believed I must have done something to drive Tanya away. Neither believed she’d lied to us all.
I snatched up my cell phone when it rang, smiling to see Rey’s photo on the screen. I’d caved and given her a cell phone for her birthday not long after Tanya had left. I wanted Rey to know she could reach me anytime, anywhere.
“Buenos días, mi corazón.”
“Buenos días, papi. How was your flight? Have you seen her yet? Is she coming home with you?”
“Now, Rey, I told you, Tanya would likely not see me on this trip. She definitely won’t be coming home with me.”
“Why not, papi? You love her. I know you do.”
“How do you know that?”
“I saw you cry. I’ve seen you stare out windows for no reason. And I saw you two together. If there are two people in this world who need one another, it is you and Tanya.”
“I told you, hija, grown-up relationships aren’t always as simple as they seem in books and movies. Tanya made her choice when she left us. I’m just here to get answers.”
“If you don’t love her, why do you need answers?”
That was a hell of a question, and one I didn’t have an answer for.
“Shouldn’t you be finishing your homework right now, hija?”
“Don’t change the subject, papi. I’m too old for that distraction to work on me anymore. You make sure you find out why you need answers before you ask for them, okay? I don’t want you to blow this.”
“How did you get to be so grown up?”
“You gave me books to read. I’ve gotta go. Nanny is tapping her foot. Please tell Tanya I miss her and I forgive her for whatever made her feel she had to leave.”
“I will make sure she knows you miss her, hija. I promise.”
“Te amo, papi.”
“Te amo, hija.”
I ended the call and clutched the phone in my hands. I considered what Rey had said about why I needed answers. It shouldn’t matter to me that Tanya had betrayed me beyond the desire to get some kind of retribution for the business betrayal, but I knew what I felt was much more than business-related. I was hurt, in my heart, over what she’d done because I had believed her, believed in her. I’d believed in her genuine pleasure the night of the opera. I’d believed in her genuine connection with my daughter, and so had Rey.
There was a part of me that couldn’t believe the woman I’d gotten to know in Madrid was just a money-hungry thief who had used my daughter and me to get a big payoff. Or at least that part of me wanted to believe. Because if that part of me was wrong, I was worse than a fool.
I spent the next few hours, while I awaited the time of our meeting, working on my laptop. When only fifteen minutes remained until the appointed time, I closed up my computer, locked it into the desk in the hotel room, and rode the elevator down to the lobby.
Arriving at the bar where we’d agreed to meet, I took a seat at the bar, then changed to one of the intimate booths lining the walls. I was standing to move back to the bar, afraid the booth was too intimate when she walked through the door.
I stopped, halfway between sitting and standing, unable to move. The sight of her was heart-stopping. She looked pale, and the dark circles under her eyes spoke to a lack of sleep I knew was reflected on my own face. Perhaps she wasn’t so heartless after all. Was it possible she’d felt bad about what she’d done? Could she have a viable reason for taking advantage of us? The time for the truth had finally come around.
I stepped down out of the booth and lifted a hand to get her attention. Tanya’s eyes widened when she saw it was me. I thought I’d been obvious enough, but perhaps she’d held out hope this request to meet was with a stranger and not with me. Regardless, she was walking toward me before I could change my mind about the seating.
Chapter 29
Tanya
There he was, all six feet, muscled frame, black hair and green eyes of him. Exactly as I remembered him from the last time I’d seen him. Raul waved a hand in a half-hearted measure and hesitated before retaking his seat in the booth on the left side of the room.
As I reached the booth, a server met me there.
“Welcome to Harry’s. What can I get for the two of you?”
Raul gave me a hard look.
“Tequila, Tanya?”
“No, thank you. I’ll have a lemon soda, please.”
“I’ll have the same, thanks. We won’t need refills, so don’t interrupt us again.”
I shot Raul a look, but the server seemed unaffected by the curt response. He smiled at us and moved off to get our drinks.
“That was rude,” I said, trying to take a little indignation and turn it into the strength to face what I needed to do here.
“High praise, coming from you, don’t you think?”
So that was how this was going to go? It would be all right. I really didn’t deserve anything less than his contempt, anyway.
The server left the drinks, and I toyed with my glass for several silent moments. Raul did the same until the silence seemed to grate on him too much, and he looked up and took a deep breath.
“Why?”
A single word and yet I knew exactly what he wanted, deserved, to know.
“Not for the reasons you might think,” I said.
“I think you did it for the money. That is what my private investigator told me. That the two of you are in the same line of work.”
“He was right. After I quit the NYPD, I got my PI’s license.”
“You were a police officer?”
“I was. So was my father. You might not know it, but widow’s benefits, even when the cop dies on the job, aren’t much.”
“What does that have to do with why you betrayed my daughter and me?”
I stopped for a moment, attempting to collect my thoughts into something that would make sense. I tried to meet his eyes, but I couldn’t. It was too hard to see those green orbs snapping with anger and disappointment. Instead, I focused on my hands where I’d wrapped them around my glass. I traced the sides of the glass, forcing water droplets to race to the table. When I was silent for too long, Raul reached out and took the glass from my hands.
“I deserve answers, Tanya. I’ve asked for them. Now don’t you think you owe them to me?”
“I do. It’s just hard to speak the words. I’m afraid they’ll mean an end to everything.”
I took a deep breath and let it out slowly.
“Until very recently, my mother lived in a third-floor walk-up in the Bronx. If she wanted to leave her building, she had to struggle with almost forty stairs each way. At her age, with bad lungs and a bad knee, she just wasn’t handling those stairs well anymore.”
Raul said nothing, so I went on.
“My company wasn’t doing well.
I was having trouble making my own rent on my office, so I couldn’t afford to move my mother from the rent-controlled apartment she and my father inherited to an assisted living facility where she could have round-the-clock care if she needed it and wouldn’t have to navigate stairs ever again. I couldn’t afford it, but she needed to move. I had nightmares about getting a phone call from the police that she’d fallen down those stairs.
“Then Arlen Cooper came to me and said he would not only pay me for a job, but also give my mother a position at the top of the waiting list at his assisted living facility in Manhattan. Ma would be closer, safer, and taken care of, but only if I did this simple job for him. He asked me to get him photos of your blueprints and model for the Angel Tower.”
“So you did,” Raul cut in. “You came to Madrid, insinuated yourself into my life, lied to me from the moment we met.”
“Yes, but I had to. Don’t you understand? This was for my mother. You would have done the same for Rey. I know it.”
“No, I would not have done the same.”
“You’re telling me that if your daughter needed a specialized place to live and you couldn’t afford it, you wouldn’t do everything in your power to see she had what she needed? I don’t believe you.”
My heart raced in my chest, and my head began to spin. I wanted to reach across the table and take Raul’s hands in mine. Beg him to forgive me. Beg him to let me come back to Madrid and prove to him that I loved him. That I hadn’t faked one part of my feelings for him.
“I’m not the one defending myself here,” he said coolly.
“I know. But please believe me that I didn’t do any of this with the intent to hurt you. I know now that my client intended to hurt you, but I didn’t. And I certainly didn’t intend to hurt Rey. I love…that little girl,” I said, catching myself before I admitted to more than I wanted to.
“You don’t deserve her.”
“I know that. Don’t you think I know that? I don’t deserve anything kind from either of you, but I’m begging you to at least forgive me before going on with your life.”
“Bah!”
Raul shot to his feet before leaning down on the table and thrusting his face close to mine.
“You say you did this to help your mother, but why should I believe that when everything else has been a lie?”
He spun on his heel and moved as though to leave. I couldn’t let him walk away from me now. Not before he said he forgave me. I stood up to follow him and my head spun dangerously.
The room turned sideways as I went down. Then the world went black.
Chapter 30
Raul
“I’m fine. Really. I don’t need to go to the hospital. I picked up some crazy stomach flu this week, that’s all.”
Tanya sat on the stretcher, arguing with the paramedics. I tired of her attitude very quickly and stepped in.
“We will go to the hospital now. Please don’t listen to her.”
“Sir, we really can’t take her to the hospital against her will,” the paramedic said.
I growled with frustration. “Is it normal for a healthy thirty-year-old woman to pass out in the middle of the afternoon simply because she stood up?”
“No, of course not, sir.”
“Then, can we stop arguing and go to the hospital, please?”
The paramedic looked to Tanya, who looked to me.
Why was I being so adamant about this?
“Will you please stop arguing with these people and let us take you to the hospital?”
“Fine. I’ll go.”
“Good. I’ll ride with you.”
“No, you really don’t have to come with me.”
“I can’t let you go to the hospital alone. I won’t hear anything more about it.”
The paramedics pushed the stretcher to the ambulance and I followed, wondering what I was doing. Why should I care if she were all right or not? I had no answer, but I knew I did care, and that was why I was climbing into the back of an ambulance and sitting next to a paramedic as the vehicle rocked down the road.
At the hospital, the paramedics rushed off with the stretcher, pointing to a waiting room as they passed it.
“You can wait there, sir. Someone will come out and give you information when there is more to be had.”
“Thank you,” I said, veering off to the waiting room and taking a seat against the wall near the door, where there seemed to be fewer ill people waiting to be seen.
When no one had come to see me after fifteen minutes, I walked to the desk where a harried woman seemed to be working to sort through the mass of humanity filling the waiting room.
“Señorita, I was wondering—”
“I don’t speak Spanish. Please have a seat and the nurse who does will be with you in just a moment.”
“But—”
“No speak español. Comprende?”
The woman turned her back on me and I was left staring at the back of her head, my mouth agape at her rudeness. I turned on my heel and strode out into the hallway.
“Sir, the waiting room really is the best place for you to wait—”
I held up a hand to stop the pretty young nurse from continuing her statement.
“I wish to speak to your administrator, please.”
“Sir, I’m sure we can help you here. If you’ll give us a moment to discover your problem and offer a solution.”
“You are very good at your job, but I need something more than you can authorize unless you are an administrator.”
Her eyes went wide. She nodded and pointed to a hallway behind her.
“Our administrative wing is that way. You’ll find the hospital administrator’s office at the end of the hall.”
“Gracias.”
I walked down the hallway until I reached a reception desk. The woman behind the desk looked up with a smile.
“How may I help you, sir?”
“I wish to speak to the administrator, please.”
“And what may I tell him your communication is in reference to?”
“It is in reference to the condescending way your employee spoke to me when I tried to request information about a patient I brought in.”
“Of course, sir. I’ll send him right out.”
The receptionist disappeared into an office. I heard the murmur of voices and then an older, white man stepped out of the office and approached me with his hand extended.
“I’m the hospital administrator. How may I help you?”
I shook the man’s hand and then explained my position.
“I brought a young woman here to your hospital after she fainted at a business meeting with me. When I attempted to inquire as to her state of being, the woman behind the counter insulted me and shooed me away because she claimed she didn’t speak Spanish. As you can tell, I speak perfect English, if she’d been bothered to listen.”
“I am very sorry, sir. I will have a word with the nurse in question. Now, if you’ll give me the name of the woman you bright to the hospital, I’ll be able to tell what her status is.”
I gave him Tanya’s name. He came back a few minutes later to tell me she was stable. There was no further information in his computer.
“I’d like to see her, please. And I want her moved to a private room immediately. If she’s not actually ill, I don’t want her to fall ill because she’s here.”
“I understand, Mister…”
“Jimenez. Raul Jimenez.”
Recognition widened his eyes. He blinked owlishly a few times before moving again.
“I’ll see to it that everything is made right for your friend, señor Jimenez. Please, feel free to make use of my office while I see to it.”
“Thank you. I appreciate your assistance.”
I stepped past the now-harried administrator and took a seat behind his desk. I checked my phone where I saw that Tanya had sent a message saying she was fine and would talk with me in a few minutes. I sent back that she should expect to be m
oved to a private room momentarily.
The administrator returned to his office, several subordinates in tow.
“Señor, your friend has been moved to our private maternity ward. You can visit with her in just a few minutes. My assistant will escort you to the third floor.”
“Did you say maternity ward? Why would she need to be…”
Understanding mixed with a touch of horror to create a sinking, swirling feeling in my gut. Tanya looked exhausted, her skin was glowing, she’d fainted, and she’d refused alcohol when we’d arrived in the bar.
Tanya was pregnant.
Chapter 31
Tanya
“I’m pregnant? How is that possible?”
The nurse gave me a look.
“I would assume the usual way,” she said with a wink.
“That’s not what I meant. Oh, never mind.”
Her expression softened.
“Is it not good news, honey?”
“It— It’s a long story.”
“Yes, it is,” Raul said, stepping into the room.
The nurse looked from him to me and back before stepping out, leaving us alone in the room.
“First, I am glad that you are okay,” Raul said. “Now, shall we start the story with who the father is?”
My mouth fell open. Where to start with all the crazy stuff that had been running through my mind since the emergency room doctor had given me the pronouncement of my impending peanut.
“You think someone else… That I had sex with… Dear Lord, how did I end up in this mess?”
I rubbed my temples while Raul paced in front of my bed.
“Tanya, I think I deserve to know who the father is.”
My head snapped up. “You are.”
He stopped pacing and stared at me. “Why should I believe you?”
“Because it’s the truth. I haven’t been with anyone but you in months. We had unprotected sex, and this is the result.”