Page 17 of Claiming His Baby At The Altar

Nausea swirled in the pit of her stomach to know why he’d stood her up and cut her from his life. To know he still believed that of her.

Forcing herself to maintain eye contact, she whispered, ‘What happened between us... I didn’t sleep with you for Justin’s sake, I swear.’

Ramos’s jaw clenched. There was a long pause before he challenged, ‘Then why did you?’

‘You were there.’ She swallowed. ‘You know why.’

It was because she couldn’t not.

At the time she’d thought it was because he couldn’t not too.

His chest rose sharply. She could feel him trying to probe into her brain. She wished she could delve into his mind too, and scoop out his memories of their night together and see if it had meant anything to him. Anything at all.

Frightened at how badly she wished ithadmeant something to him, Flora cleared her throat and strove for lightness, desperate to break the charged silence. ‘So... Was Aimee your lover...when we...’ she couldn’t bring herself to call it making love even though that was how it had felt at the time ‘...slept together?’

Eyes not leaving her face, he rested his head back. ‘She was my mistress, not my lover,’ he corrected. ‘A mistress is a woman kept by a man. I paid for her apartment and gave her an allowance and in return...’ He raised a shoulder.

‘And in return she kept herself available for you?’ Flora guessed hoarsely. Her stomach rippled violently in the same way it had when she’d seen those paparazzi pictures of him and Justin sailing the Mediterranean on Ramos’s yacht with a dozen topless, beautiful women sunbathing around them.

He gave a slow incline of his head.

‘Were you faithful to her?’

‘There is no exclusivity between a man and his mistress. That is the whole point.’

‘Then why has she been crying?’ And why didshefeel like crying?

‘Because she’s an actress—a professional one—seeking attention. Playing the wronged lover is a role she can get her teeth into.’

‘Or, maybe, she’s genuinely upset.’

‘Very conveniently when the paparazzi are there to witness it,’ he rebutted drily. ‘We have been over for a long time.’

Noting that he’d avoided answering if Aimee had still been his mistress when they’d slept together, and on the verge of asking if he still intended to take lovers now they were married, she was cut off by the sound of his phone ringing before she could voice it.

Grateful for the interruption, Flora turned her face away to gaze out of the window and breathed in deeply.

Of course he would have lovers. Alejandro Ramos was a Lothario with the looks and wealth to live exactly as he pleased with no need for thought or consideration for anyone else. Any woman who kidded herself into believing otherwise was on a hiding to nothing but heartbreak. She’d been stupid enough to fool herself once that she might be different from the others, and he’d mentally cut her from his life before she’d got out of his bed. She would not put herself in the position of making that mistake again.

She was going to have to keep her heart sealed in titanium because this was a marriage she wouldn’t be able to escape for many years. He’d already warned her of the consequences should she divorce him but, now that Benjamin was here, she was prepared to give their marriage a proper chance for their son’s sake, because Ramos was his father and, most importantly,wantedto be a father to him.

She really hoped that Aimee woman’s tears were fake. As repulsive as she found the whole mistress thing, she wouldn’t wish harm or pain on anyone.

They’d reached the Spanish border.

She wished they could be back in the private hospital room, the three of them cocooned without any intrusion from the outside world.

The rest of the two-hour drive to Ramos’s villa in the Pedralbes area of Barcelona was spent in silence broken only by the low murmur of his voice as he made numerous calls. Benjamin slept the entire journey. Still exhausted from the birth, Flora slept much of it too.

She didn’t expect her heart to thud when they drove through the electric gates to his land. She’d only been here twice before. Both times it had been dark, the three-storey villa designed in the style of a French mansion aglow with soft, romantic nightlights. The last time, she’d parked her hire car against the high privacy wall and climbed marble steps, freshly awed at the ornately created wrought iron balconies each front-facing window was adorned with.

This time it was daylight, the sun high above them and casting the white exterior with a warm glow. This time, she was driven into a brightly lit underground garage in which seven other vehicles, including a motorbike, were already parked.

As if he had an internal radar, Benjamin’s eyes opened. And then his mouth opened and the silence officially ended. Flora unclipped him, lifted him into her arms and carried him out of the car.

‘I will show you to your room,’ Ramos said as they stepped into an elevator.

Herroom?

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