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As the only child of a woman who, frankly, had had better things to do than pander to the whims of an annoyingly childlike child, Lottie had been largely raised by au pairs or home helps or whatever neighbour happened to be around. This had left Greta free to indulge in her real passion: travelling. Or, more specifically, cruising the world on luxury liners while Lottie had lived in a perpetual state of terror that one day there would be nobody to meet her at the school gates at all.
Funded by Lottie’s much older father, who had thoughtfully taken out a comprehensive life insurance policy before he’d dropped dead when Lottie was still only seven, Greta had become addicted to the glamour of the cruising lifestyle: the handsome stewards in their crisp white uniforms, the perma-tanned dance hosts, the dashing captains. Eventually she had ended up in dry dock with one of the latter, when she had remarried and made a new life in Argentina.
But the other slash of Rafael’s sword... Lottie screwed up her eyes against its searing pain, at the realisation that he’d got it so wrong. ‘It was never me that you wanted... The baby was the only thing that mattered.’ Was it possible that he actually believed that? That she had really done such a good job of fooling him? And, if so, why did it make her feel so hollowed out with sadness?
Taking a deep breath, she pushed herself up against the feather pillows and gazed at the room around her. It was the same bedroom she had shared with Rafael—well, half of it, at any rate. The huge double doors across the middle of the room were now firmly closed, like a metaphor for their marriage.
How different would things have been if they hadn’t lost Seraphina? If there had been no accident? If everything hadn’t gone so disastrously wrong? Their daughter would have been three now, running around this crusty old mausoleum, breathing fresh life into it, maybe even joined by a little brother or sister.
But it had happened, and the sequence of events afterwards had happened, leading to her going back to England, starting a new life in London and putting the past behind her. Even if that new life had meant studiously avoiding babies of all descriptions—babies in buggies, baby adverts on the television—and even turning away from babies smiling gummily at her over their mothers’ shoulders on the bus.
But she had never lost her yearning to have a baby, Rafael’s baby. And she had never forgotten their last remaining embryo. The tiny blob of shared cells stored in a tank of liquid nitrogen represented the last vestiges of their relationship and it was always there, locked away deep in her subconscious. Occasionally she would find herself fantasising about the sort of child it might grow into, before hurriedly pushing the thought back in its box and turning the key once more.
And now...now the embryo was being offered its chance of life. Never in her wildest dreams had she imagined that circumstances would bring about a possibility like this. It was a mad, crazy, ridiculous idea.
Wasn’t it?
* * *
Rafael paced up and down the length of the grand formal dining room, pausing only to check his watch once again. Where the hell was she? She knew that dinner was to be served at eight-thirty and she was now an hour late. Was she deliberately taunting him?
It was half an hour since he had gone up to find her, when the sudden, irrational fear had gripped him. He’d pounded his feet along the corridor to her room, convinced that she had gone—run away as she had before. He’d rapped sharply on the door, and the thirty seconds of silence before he had heard her moving about had seemed like an eternity.
But then the door had opened and there she’d been—all sleepy eyes and tousled hair, straight from a rumpled bed still warm from her body. And the sight of her, and that bed, had twisted a coil of lust deep inside of him.
Now that she still hadn’t appeared he could feel the same fear spreading through him again. Ten minutes, she had said—just enough time for a quick shower. Pacing back towards the head of the table, he told himself to calm down, get a grip. Stop behaving like an idiot.
He was glaring at the heavy panelled door when it finally opened and Lottie hurried in, all breathless apologies and pointed lack of eye contact. Reaching behind him for the bell that rang down in the kitchens, he waited in cold silence as she walked the interminable length of the table to join him. He watched from beneath the sweep of lowered lashes as she carefully sat down, sliding long legs under the table, shaking open her napkin to cover her lap.
Tearing his eyes away, he seated himself beside her at the head of the table, steadfastly refusing to acknowledge just how adorable she looked. Her hastily washed and dried hair had resulted in a cloud of tumbling blonde curls that she had loosely twisted into a knot on top of her head, and already escaping tendrils were framing her delicate features. A short jersey dress, its colour a darkest purple, hugged her slender curves in a way that already had the blood racing around his veins.
