Page 16 of Claiming His Baby At The Altar

‘Who’s Aimee?’

The silence before he answered went on so long she could have boiled a kettle and made herself a pot of tea.

If he had answered immediately with, ‘My girlfriend, but it’s over, I’m married to you now,’ Flora would have been fine. Or so she liked to think.

The reality was very different.

‘Aimee was my mistress.’

Revulsion was instantaneous. ‘Pardon me? Yourmistress?’

He inclined his head.

‘What do you mean by mistress? Isn’t a mistress a married man’s lover?’

‘Not always.’

Her heart pounding, she waited for him to elaborate.

‘Well?’ she said when the silence grew.

‘Well, what?’

‘Are you going to explain it to me?’

‘For what purpose?’

‘Oh, let me think... Because I’m your wife and I deserve to know?’

‘Or so you can judge me?’ he challenged, finally turning his stare on her.

‘I wouldn’t.’

His top lip curled. ‘You’re judging me now. I can tell. You have always judged me.’

She clamped her lips together, unable to deny this latest evidence of his astuteness.

What she didn’t dare tell him was that she’d never really judged him from a moral perspective, but more from an instinctive revulsion that she had only ever experienced for him and never her brother, who’d got through women with the same reckless speed.

His eyes narrowed and firm lips tightened at her silence. ‘You used to give the impression you didn’t think me worthy to breathe the same air as you. The first time you looked at me as if I wasn’t something your cat had brought in was when you came to me to plead for your brother. That was the first timeyouinstigated a conversation. I made every effort with you but you always made it clear you didn’t care for my efforts. I wasn’t good enough for you to look in the eye or talk to until you wanted something from me.’

Her stomach twisted.

Desperation to free her brother from a foreign prison had driven Flora to Ramos. Desperate times called for desperate measures and if she’d had to get down on her knees and beg him to drop the charges against Justin and come up with a way of punishing him that wouldn’t have him sentenced to twenty years of imprisonment, then she would have done it.

Even so, she’d had to summon all the courage she possessed to announce herself at his gate. Five minutes it had taken for permission to be granted, and she’d felt every second of it. Then she’d had to find the courage to knock on his door. When he’d opened it, she’d pulled out one last scrap of courage to look into the eyes of the man whose gaze she’d spent years avoiding.

He’d stared at her without speaking for the longest time.

She’d been unable to speak too. Her tongue had become tied. Everything she’d planned to say had spirited out of her brain.

And then he’d blinked, run his fingers through his hair, and invited her inside.

He’d been barefoot, she remembered with a pang.

It made her skin burn to remember how she’d walked out of the same door the next morning feeling as if she were floating on a cloud only to end the day in despair.

The promise to meet in the lobby of the hotel she was staying in had never materialised. She’d made two calls that evening, one to his mobile, which hadn’t connected, the other to his house. The person on the other end had curtly informed her Señor Ramos was unavailable and that she mustn’t call again.

---