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As the car drove north on Madison Avenue, Eduardo’s eyes looked past the baby to Callie on the other side. He’d once thought she was the only person he could really trust, but the joke was on him.
She’d lied to his face for years.
And not just to him. A few hours after the birth, Callie had called her family to tell them about her new marriage and new baby. White-faced and trembling, she’d refused to speak to her sister then started crying as she spoke to her mother. When Eduardo had heard her father yelling on the other line, leaving Callie in tearful, pitiful sobs, he’d finally snatched the phone away. He’d intended to calm the man down. But it hadn’t exactly turned out that way.
He scowled, remembering Walter Woodville’s angry words. Setting his jaw, Eduardo pushed the memory aside. The man was clearly a tyrant. No wonder Callie had learned to keep things to herself. His eyes narrowed.
Then he looked back at his sleeping daughter, and his heartbeat calmed. For the past two days he hadn’t been able to stop staring at her tiny fingers. Her plump cheeks. Her long eyelashes. The way she unconsciously pursed her tiny mouth to suckle, even while she slept.
Eduardo took a deep breath.
He had a child. A family of his own.
He had a wife.
He’d married Callie to give their baby a name, he reminded himself, then he scowled. And yet she was still nameless.
He glared at his wife and bit out, “María.”
Callie looked back sharply, her vivid green eyes glinting like emeralds sparkling in the sun. “I told you no. My baby will not be named after your Spanish dream wife. No way.”
He exhaled, regretting he’d ever told his trusted secretary that he wished to marry María de Leondros, the young, beautiful Duchess of Alda. They’d only met socially once or twice, but marrying her would have been a satisfying way to prove how far he’d come since the days he’d stolen ice creams. “María is a common name,” he said evenly. “It was my great-aunt’s name.”
“Bite me.”
“You’re being jealous for no reason. I never even slept with María de Leondros!”
“Lucky her.” She folded her arms, glaring at him. “My daughter’s name is Soleil.”
Irritated, Eduardo set his jaw. Was it so s
trange that he wished to name his child after his Tía María, who’d brought him to New York, who’d worked three jobs to support him? María Cruz had encouraged him to see his high-school job pumping gas in Brooklyn not as a dead-end, but a place to begin. After she’d died, he’d gone from driving a gas truck, to owning a small gasoline distribution business, which he’d sold at twenty-four to become a wildcatter. His first big find had been in Alaska, followed by Oklahoma. Now Cruz Oil had drilling operations all over the world.
Yet Callie stubbornly refused to be reasonable. Instead she pushed for the name Soleil, which meant nothing personal to anyone—she’d just found it in a baby name book and liked the sound! He set his jaw. “You are being irrational.”
“No, you are,” she retorted. “You’re already giving her a surname, and I chose her name months ago. I’m not changing it because of your whim.”
He lifted his eyebrows incredulously. “My whim?”
“Soleil is pretty!”
“Did it, too, come from your mother’s favorite telenovela?”
“Go to hell,” she said, turning to stare out the window as they drove through the city. Silence fell in the backseat. Eduardo took a deep breath, clenching his hands into fists. His wife’s stubbornness exceeded common sense! Because of her, they’d had to leave the hospital without yet filing a birth certificate.
His jaw set grimly, he turned back to her. “Callie—”
But her eyes were closed, her cheek pressed against the car window. He heard the rhythm of her breathing, and realized to his shock that she’d fallen asleep in the middle of their argument.
He looked at her beautiful face, against the backdrop of Central Park, the vivid green trees and lawn reminding him of her eyes. Her light brown hair fell in soft waves against her roses-and-cream complexion. As usual, she wore no makeup, but no ingénue on Broadway could hold a candle to her natural beauty. She wore the baggy knit pants and long-sleeved T-shirt his staff had brought to the hospital, but he knew the hidden curves of her generous figure would put any scrawny swimsuit model to shame.
For months he’d tried not to remember her beauty, but being this close to her, the reality overwhelmed him. His wife was the most desirable woman on earth. Even with those dark hollows beneath her eyes.
A sharp edge rose in his throat. Turning, he looked out at the brilliant dappled early evening light glowing gold through the trees. Callie had given birth to their child without anesthesia. He still couldn’t comprehend that kind of bravery, that kind of strength. For the last two nights, as he’d slept in a chair beside her bed, Callie had barely slept at all. The baby had had some difficulty learning how to nurse, and Callie had been up almost every hour. He’d offered to help, and so had the nurses, but she’d insisted on doing everything herself. “She’s my baby,” Callie had whispered, her face pale with exhaustion. “She needs me.”
Looking at Callie now, asleep with her face pressed against the window, Eduardo was forced to acknowledge feelings he’d never thought he’d feel for her again.
Admiration. Appreciation. Respect.
