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Everything looked beautiful for Rafael’s birthday dinner tonight. Every room was filled with flowers, autumn roses from the garden supplemented with pepperberry stems and dark orange Asiatic lilies. As this was his first dinner party at his home in Istanbul, Louisa had planned it with care, choosing a menu rich with the exotic flavors of the city. Even now, the Turkish cook, who’d fortunately recovered from his earlier illness, was rushing around the kitchen and barking orders to his assistants to prepare the midye dolmasi, mussels stuffed with spiced rice, the sea bass stew, lamb kebabs and a variety of fruits and pastries for dessert.
She herself had made one of the desserts. It was not a traditional Turkish recipe, so it did not fit in with the menu, but she knew it was Rafael’s favorite and so she’d made it that morning anyway. For his birthday. Because she loved him. It had taken her an hour, but she’d carefully prepared her specialty dessert, caramel macadamia brownies with white chocolate chips.
She’d wanted to make his first dinner here special. But since he intended to put the house on the market tomorrow, it would also be his last. Now, looking around her, she felt a lump in her throat.
She’d wanted everything to be perfect for him. She’d made his home beautiful, made his life comfortable and full of ease. She’d sacrificed her every need for his. And now it was over. Now it was done. Once she told him she was pregnant, she would lose everything.
The job she loved. The man she loved.
Where would she go, without him to be both her albatross and her star? What would she do without him, all alone?
Slowly, heavily, she started to go up the stairs to her room. As she passed the study, she heard one of his assistants say, “Mademoiselle Lepetit is on the phone for you, sir.”
Louisa froze on the stair.
Dominique Lepetit was a beautiful French starlet famous mostly for her time spent pouting while topless, posing for the paparazzi during the Cannes Film Festival. Blond, curvaceous and cruel—she was everything that most men seemed to want in a woman.
“Tell her I’m busy,” came Rafael’s curt reply, and Louisa exhaled. She hadn’t realized until then how very much, in spite of everything, she wanted him to be faithful to her.
Rafael Cruz, faithful to any woman? She mocked herself as she climbed slowly up the stairs to her room. Had the pregnancy hormones kicked in already? She must really be out of her mind!
But he’d refused Dominique Lepetit’s phone call. Could a man change?
Could he understand that sometimes fate changed people’s lives in unexpected ways—for the better?
When she reached her room, she closed the door behind her, leaning against it for strength. She looked down in wonder, putting her hands on her belly as a new realization occurred to her.
Pregnant. A new life was growing inside her—Rafael’s child. A smile lifted her lips. A baby. A sweet-smelling baby to cuddle in her arms, to love forever. Her parents had died long ago, and she’d been estranged from her younger sister for five years. But with this baby, she would finally have a family of her own. A reason to create a real home, after so many years alone.
Had Katie felt like this when she’d first found out she was pregnant?
Louisa pushed away the unbidden thought. She didn’t want to think about Katie. Didn’t want to think about the niece or nephew she’d never met. The child must be almost five now, probably with brothers and sisters. And Matthias Spence as their father…
She’d tried not to think about Matthias for years. But to her surprise, the thought of him no longer hurt her the same way. Because she’d never really cared about him? She’d worked for him for only a few months before he’d proposed to her. She hadn’t known him half so well as she knew Rafael.
Or perhaps it was because her relationship with Matthias seemed so laughably in the past, the crush of a schoolgirl long ago, compared to the enormity of
being pregnant with Rafael’s baby.
How could she tell Rafael the news?
Straightening her shoulders, Louisa went to her closet. She pushed through all the plain, serviceable clothes and pulled something out of the back, covered by plastic. Taking it out, she stared down at a sexy black bustier dress.
The last time she’d worn this, she’d been an engaged woman. Her sister had been visiting for a month from college, and had insisted they go shopping. “You’re so lucky,” Katie had said wistfully. “Going from a live-in housekeeper to a rich man’s wife.” “I love him,” Louisa had replied, smiling. But she’d allowed Katie to talk her into spending an entire paycheck in one splurge on the dress for their engagement party. Louisa had hoped to look pretty for Matthias, and try her best to impress his friends. Then a few weeks later, an hour before their engagement party began, her nineteen-year-old sister had asked to speak to her privately.
“How could you?” Louisa had gasped a few moments later. “You’re my sister. How could you do this to me?”
“I’m sorry!” Katie had cried. “I never meant to get pregnant. But I can’t believe you even love him. If you did, you wouldn’t have kept him at arm’s length, refusing to sleep with him until you were married! Who does that anymore?”
“I do,” Louisa had choked out, and grabbing her purse, she’d run from the house. She’d run as far away from Miami as she could, all the way to Paris.
She’d nearly thrown the dress in the trash five years ago. But instead, for some reason, she’d kept it. Now, the sexy black dress was the one item of clothing from her old life, before she’d been afraid of love, before she’d disappeared from the world to walk the earth like a ghost.
As she put on the dress, Louisa told herself she had no illusions that Rafael would love her; he would certainly never marry her. She only prayed he might love and accept their coming child. And that was the reason—the only reason!—that she put it on.
It was a little loose from her weight loss over the last few years, all the time she’d spent without time to exercise or sit down and eat meals or take care of herself properly. But when she added a belt, the dress still looked nice. She brushed her dark hair, leaving it tumbling and lustrous down her shoulders. She took off her black-rimmed plastic glasses and put in contact lenses. She was out of practice after wearing glasses for so long. She added some mascara to her lashes and some deep red lipstick on her mouth, then surveyed herself in the mirror for the effect.
After so many years, she almost didn’t recognize herself.
