Page 27 of Claiming His Baby At The Altar

‘Why not?’

He shrugged. ‘Never thought it would be my thing.’

‘Then why take me there?’

‘Because I know how much you enjoy it.’ His phone rang. He pulled it out of his suit jacket pocket and sighed. ‘My Vegas lawyer. My apologies. I left before we could get everything wrapped up. Let me take this and then I’ll turn it off.’

While he took his call, Flora gazed out of the window at the late summer sun fading to a pink ember on the horizon, and thought back to the time he’d bought her tickets to the ballet before.

It had been a present for her twenty-first birthday.

She hadn’t expected a gift from him as he’d offered to host the party in one of his Mayfair hotel casino’s function rooms free of charge. She hadn’t wanted to accept his generous offer or invite him to it, but her mum had been recently diagnosed with cancer and her mum considered Ramos a second son. So she’d felt obliged.

She’d been obliged to kiss his cheek in greeting, as she had everyone else too, when he’d arrived with her brother. Her lungs had filled with the spicy scent she so hated. Hated because it was wonderful. It was one of the many things she’d hated about him as an adolescent; hated the near-constant urge to trail in his wake and sniff him.

She could smell it now. Every inhalation came with a dose of his scent.

She remembered how her friends had flocked to him like a pack of gulls around a discarded sandwich. She’d wanted to smack the lot of them, something that hadreallydisturbed her.

And she remembered catching his eye from the other side of the function room. He’d been in mid-conversation with her brother and he’d cut himself off from whatever he’d been saying and just stared at her. It was the first time in her life Flora had met Ramos’s stare and held it...held it because she’d been unable to drag her gaze away. She’d been trapped. That awful sticky sensation had crashed through her, her breaths shallowing to nothing.

For all she knew, she might still be there now, spellbound in his gaze, if her friend Molly hadn’t thrust a drink in her hand.

He’d approached her a short while later and asked her to dance.

The excitement that had thrummed through her veins and the rapid pounding of her heart...she’d never experienced anything like it. It had been the single most frightening moment of her life, and she’d danced stiffly and held her breath to stop his spicy scent filling her lungs for the entire song, then walked away without a word, all without looking into his eyes. She’d known she must never make that mistake again. Never.

In the morning, the day of her actual birthday, there had been a knock on the door of the suite Ramos had put her and her mum in. A bellboy had handed the gift box to her with birthday wishes from the owner. In the box had lain tickets for that evening’s performance ofCinderellain Paris. Included were first-class return flight tickets for her and her mum, and a note stating a suite had been reserved under her name in his Parisian hotel.

His generosity had thrilled her mum but terrified Flora, who’d still been able to feel the imprint of his arms around her from when they’d danced. It had been a generosity that couldn’t go unacknowledged though, and she’d handwritten a short letter from her Parisian suite after the performance, thanking him.

‘I have been thinking,’ Ramos said, breaking through the memories and putting his phone back in his pocket, ‘and now that you are rejoining the world, it is time for us to employ a nanny. Madeline is happy to babysit for us tonight but she has her own family and it is not fair to expect her to extend her duties.’

‘Getting a nanny seems a bit excessive for just the odd night out,’ she said doubtfully. Flora had only been comfortable leaving Benjamin in the housekeeper’s care because Benjamin was comfortable with her and, for all that Flora had issues with Madeline, she didn’t doubt she would look after her baby as well as she would her own flesh and blood.

‘It will be more than the odd night out and it will make life easier to have someone on site. I am thinking of you too. I know you haven’t said anything about starting your business up again, but I remember how much you got from it and if you feel you want to start it up again at some point in the future—we can turn one of the guest rooms into a studio for you—then you won’t have to worry about him.’

She met his stare, wishing her heart weren’t swelling again for him.

Flora ran a small business from the home she’d bought herself with her share of her mother’s inheritance, designing and creating bespoke embroidery patches that could be ironed onto clothing and creating embroidery prints from clients’ photographs. Her website currently informed potential customers that she was taking a sabbatical.

Since Benjamin’s birth she felt that all her creativity had deserted her and she’d hardly given any thought to starting up again. But Ramos had. Already that sharp brain was thinking ahead to the day she might feel ready to give her creativity an outlet and was making plans to accommodate it for her.

Oh, how could one man have so many different facets to him? Thoughtfulness and empathy versus vengefulness and cruelty. How masochistic was she to wish for him to show more of the vengefulness and cruelty to her because those were the traits that made it easier to dislike him?

But they had never stopped her wanting him, had they? His abhorrent treatment of her after their night together hadn’t stopped her dreaming of him. Hadn’t stopped the constant ache in her chest.

The car came to a stop.

They’d arrived at the opera house.

CHAPTER SEVEN

THERESTAURANTSINand around the opera house were heaving with people dining and drinking before the evening’s performance. Ramos led her past them all and through to a nondescript, narrow side street that looked as if its better days were centuries ago.

Flora wrinkled her nose at the peeling door of the terraced house he knocked on.

He caught her expression and winked.

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