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‘I’m a patient man, meu anjo.’
They both froze at his use of the endearment. Nora’s heartbeat seemed to thump in the region of her ears.
After a prolonged silence she mumbled that she would go and get packed before quickly turning away from the haunting amber gaze that saw far too much.
Duarte walked out onto the terrace and made a quick call to order a helicopter from one of his trusted private firms. Paranoia had his head snapping up at every small sound.
He sat down heavily in the nearest deckchair and rubbed a hand down his face, feeling the dull pain still throbbing in his shoulder. His skin seemed to be on fire after that surprising embrace and the revelations that had followed.
He closed his eyes, remembering the softness of Nora’s hands on his skin.
They had been lovers.
The faint memory of their connection had come to him the moment her lips had first touched his. He’d seen her underneath him...over him... Everything else was still in the shadows, as though the way his body had responded to her wouldn’t let him remember anything else.
The moment she’d admitted the truth he’d immediately thought of the child. But unless she’d had a year-long pregnancy, the dates didn’t match. The boy had even been born early, he reminded himself. He should have been relieved, but something within him had been quietly furious at the thought of her finding pleasure with another faceless man and conceiving a child.
The image of her fiery passion being given to someone other than him made his fists clench painfully. He briefly considered asking his team to find out who the man was, simply so he could land a punch on the bastard’s face for abandoning his pregnant lover...
Duarte might have spent most of his twenties enjoying women in all their forms and wonders, but he had always used protection. And if by chance one of his lovers had ever become pregnant he would have done his duty and cared for his own flesh and blood.
Nora was a mystery to him in so many ways still, but this new knowledge of their intimate history together had changed something within him. He no longer felt adrift and lost in his own body. That single kiss seemed to have created a tether between them, from his solar plexus to hers, reaching out across the house and pulling her towards him. He could feel her presence like a moth being drawn repeatedly to the warmth of a burning flame.
He knew it was a bad idea to want her. He knew there was a chance she would refuse to tell him the truth of how she’d ended up in the shipping yard with him. And yet still he imagined having those soft curves underneath him once more. He imagined hearing her cry out her pleasure in real time and seeing if the vague memory he had did it any justice.
He didn’t know how long he sat, staring out at the blackness of the night sky, but by the time the distant sound of rotor blades sounded around him he had made his decision.
He would have her in his bed again.
As the helicopter began to descend over the small coastal town of Paraty, Nora tried to quell the roiling anxiety in her stomach. In her arms, her son slept peacefully, completely unaware of the upheaval taking place around him.
When they touched down on a sprawling property on the beachfront outside of town, she watched as Duarte set about ordering his guards to secure the perimeter while he escorted her inside. This reminder of the danger she had been in back at his villa made her begin to tremble all over again.
She knew that Duarte’s protection was the safest thing for her and Liam right now, but it was only a matter of time before he figured out that she was hiding far more than just her brief relationship with him.
Nora barely registered her surroundings as he showed her to the large master suite of the house, explaining that his cousin and her husband lived on this historically preserved property year-round, in a separate groundskeeper’s cottage, and sometimes gave guided tours to tourists. He quickly added that the house would be secured and closed for their use for the duration of their stay.
Nora eyed the sumptuously inviting pillows on the large four-poster bed and felt all the tiredness and exhaustion of a sleepless night hit her.
‘Get some sleep.’ Duarte followed her gaze to the bed, his eyes darkening for a moment before he exited the double doors of the suite and left her alone.
Nora felt raw inside, as though all her emotions had been swept up into a swirling storm within her. Liam still slept soundlessly, his cherubic face so serene and innocent she felt her throat tighten with emotion.
She was fast beginning to entertain the idea that Duarte wasn’t as cruel and ruthless as he’d shown himself to be all those m
onths ago. She thought back to that night in her father’s home, when she had arrived to overhear them together, using her as a pawn in the game they’d played.
Her father had told her that Duarte had been playing her all along. That his interest in her had been an attempt at getting inside information on the organisation.
Nora had refused to believe it. She’d fallen in love with a kind-hearted, creative soul. They’d talked about her dreams of travelling as a freelance architect, once she graduated. They shared a passion for design and he’d promised to take her to Europe, to show her some of the beautiful buildings she’d only ever seen in books. It had been real...or at least she’d thought it had been real.
She’d felt sick as she stood there outside the dining room, listening to her father threatening to have her punished for the affair unless Duarte agreed to marry her. And telling him that a stipulation of the marriage contract would be that the Avelar Foundation signed a certain piece of land over to Novos Lideres.
When Duarte had flatly refused the contract, her father had been furious. He’d revealed his ace in the hole, threatening to have Duarte’s jet-setting playboy image ruined by bringing him up on charges of sexual assault. Her own father had told him that he had friends who would enjoy giving Nora some nice big bruises to create photographic evidence, saying that hopefully they wouldn’t get too carried away with their task now that they knew their princess had been deflowered.
Nora had almost fainted with terror and disgust.
She had waited for Duarte’s outrage, waited for him to swear to defend her from such violence, but the silence had been deafening. Then Duarte had dialled a number on his phone and three police officers had entered. The men had been listening to the entire conversation. He’d smiled and spat that nothing would make him marry a mobster’s daughter or hand over his land to such a crook.
