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“I want to have you for dinner. Mauri wants that, too. Bella can’t say no to either of us. So you’re safe.”
Admitting that it was easier to decimate a squad of armed-to-the-teeth black ops operatives unarmed than resist this tiny woman, he surrendered. “Tea, please. If you have any.”
“Bella has us stocked on every kind of tea on earth. It’s the only thing she drinks.”
It had been him who’d started her drinking tea, addicted her to it as per her admission. So she hadn’t stopped. Just as she hadn’t been able to stop her addiction to him.
He inhaled deeply, suppressing the acutely sensory memories that flooded his mind. “Earl Grey. Hot.”
Clapping her hands, Marta rushed away. “Coming right up.”
As she receded, Richard finally made a conscious comparison between her and her daughter.
She was much shorter and smaller, and her complexion, eyes and hair were darker. There were similarities in their features, but it was clear Isabella had taken after another relative, probably her father or someone from her father’s side.
Marta was also different in other ways. Though she’d evidently lived a troubled life, she seemed more carefree, more optimistic than Isabella, even younger in spirit. If he’d ever imagined having an older sister, he would have probably wished for someone exactly like her.
He frowned at the strange idea, shaking it off. And all other distractions fell off with it, releasing his mind, letting it crash in the wreckage-filled abyss of reality.
Isabella had given birth to his son.
She’d been pregnant as she’d run for her life.
When had she found out? Before or after she’d fled?
If before, she would have had to run anyway to hide another betrayal from Burton. Or would she have aborted Mauricio, if he hadn’t suspected her, to avoid his wrath?
That was a moot question. She’d had Mauricio, so she’d either discovered her pregnancy just as she’d run or afterward.
But why had she kept him? Had she wanted his child? Or had it all been about Mauricio himself? Had she wanted him?
That she’d had him proved it. Whatever she’d felt when she’d discovered her pregnancy, whatever dangers had been present, her desire to have him had trumped it all.
But she’d been on the run and pregnant, and hadn’t considered asking him for help. Even before she’d realized he’d been the cause of her predicament.
So why? If she hadn’t hated him then, why hadn’t she run from Burton to him? He’d waited for her to, had left all channels open hoping she would. For some reason he couldn’t fathom, she hadn’t.
But if she had, and had told him about Mauricio, what would he have done? He had no idea.
He still had no idea. What to think, let alone what to do.
And here he was, after an explosive reunion with her that had plunged him right back into the one addiction of his life, sitting in her land of overwhelming domesticity, waiting for her mother to bring him tea and her son his portfolio. Not only had every single plan he’d had coming here been vaporized, every other one in his life had been, too.
What the blistering bloody hell would he do now?
What could he do?
Nothing. That was what. Nothing but sit back and observe, and make decisions as he went along. For the first time in a quarter of a century he wasn’t steering everything and everyone wherever he wished. All his calculations had gone to hell the moment he’d laid eyes on her again. He expected them to remain there for the foreseeable future.
Making peace with that conclusion, he looked around the place. Murdock had said it had been turnkey, so he couldn’t use it to judge anything about her or who she’d become.
Or maybe he could. She had chosen the finished product after all. It indicated this was what she wanted for herself, for her family now. The total opposite of what she’d had when she’d been with Burton, a fifty-bedroom mansion with two ballrooms and an attached garage for thirty cars. The demotion to a six-bedroom house with street parking was quite drastic. At most, he estimated this place to rent for six thousand a month, and to sell for a couple of million. While this neighborhood, though elegant, could as well be a row of hovels next to the outrageous hundred-acre estate of her former residence.
So was this what she wanted? An undistinguished upper-middle-class life? A safe, comfortable neighborhood for her family with good public schools for her child? Had she really changed her life so completely around? It appeared so.
And it appeared it had all been for Mauricio.
Mauricio. A son he hadn’t known he had for seven years.
