Page 3 of Claiming His Baby At The Altar

If he ignored her or denied paternity then so be it. She was mentally prepared for that. She had the trial to get through and she needed to stay strong for Justin’s sake.

She’d done her duty and ensured her baby’s daddy knew their child existed. The rest was up to him. For Flora, best case scenario would be Ramos acknowledged their child, offered child support—she really didn’t want to have to go the legal route for that—and limited his involvement to the odd visitation. He wouldn’t want to be a full-time father, that was for sure, not with his lifestyle. A baby would definitely cramp his style.

‘Mademoiselle?’

She opened her eyes.

An official beckoned her.

She summoned a smile and heaved herself to her feet. She hadn’t realised how exhausted she was until she put one foot in front of the other. That silent confrontation with Ramos had drained her. She supposed it was because it had been so long in coming and she’d built it up so much in her head. The ache in her back felt more intense.

As she left the viewing gallery, she was about to head to her brother’s designated room when the official touched her arm and pointed in the other direction.

‘Mademoiselle?Come.’

Immediately pulled out of the zen zone she’d calmed herself into, Flora hesitated before following.

Okay, so it looked as if Ramos wasn’t going to ignore her.

The official pushed a door open. It was a waiting room with a coffee machine and plump sofas and, though she’d expected to find him there, her heart still leapt back up her throat.

He was sitting on a single sofa, leaning forwards, hands locked together.

His dark brown eyes penetrated her from the first lock of their gazes.

Flora had imagined this moment so many times. She’d planned how she would act and what she would say. Act nonchalant. Speak only in practical terms about their child. Do not do or say anything that would make him think she felt anything for him but contempt.

The reality was very different. Enough emotions zoomed through her to make her nauseous with their strength. Hate. Fury. Despair. Longing. The last of them was the worst.

How could she long for him after the way he’d treated her?

How could she have fallen under his spell in the first place?

Flora had known Ramos since she was eleven years old and he and Justin eighteen-year-old students. The young Spanish man had been a regular presence in the Hillier home. He’d even joined them for Christmas a couple of times.

Her brother’s closest friend, a veritable hunk in impeccably tailored clothing, a classically chiselled handsome face women swooned over...and, boy, didn’t he know it. Flora had been determined not to become one of those swooners. The way Ramos and her brother treated women had nauseated her. They might as well have set up a deli counter and handed out numbers to the ‘lucky’ recipients who would be discarded in turn before they got stale.

Ramos had discarded Flora even quicker than he’d discarded the others.

His set jaw loosened enough for him to say, ‘You should sit.’

Thirteen years she’d known him. That his lightly accented voice had a real depth and richness to it were qualities she’d only noticed the night they spent together.

Now, it fell like velvet on her ears and it shook her enough for her to force a laugh to cover it. ‘That’s the first thing you have to say to me?You should sit?’

‘You look like you’re about to collapse.’

Aww, he was concerned about her welfare. Such generosity of spirit.

Easing herself carefully onto a leather two-seater, she wished her huge size hadn’t made her movements so ungainly and graceless when every inch of him reeked of sophistication. It was just another of the discrepancies between them, all weighted in his favour.

Until today, she’d rather enjoyed being so obviously pregnant. The number of smiles she would see as people clocked her watermelon belly lightened her heart. There was something magical about the late stage of pregnancy that people responded to and she liked that it made her feel less alone in a world where her mother was dead, her father an unreliable, useless deadbeat and her beloved brother incarcerated.

Now she felt none of the magic, only a weight in her chest that her precious child should be saddled with such an unworthy and undeserving father.

Ramos’s full but firm lips were tightly compressed as his uncompromising gaze scrutinised every inch of her. He really did have beautiful eyes, so dark they could be mistaken for black, and with such depth that a woman could lose herself in them.

Flora had avoided looking into those eyes for years and a pang ripped through her heart to remember the night they had gazed at her with such intensity and then melted with something more than naked desire, something that had filled every cavity in her chest and seen her fall into their hypnotic pull.

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