Page 35 of Claiming His Baby At The Altar

‘Is that why you always stuck your nose in the air around me?’

She smiled, remembering her skinny little self back then. ‘I was used to it being just him and me...and Mum, of course.’

‘And I was the interloper?’

‘In my mind, yes. I was too young to think of what it must have meant for you to give up your weekends of wild partying on the student campus to stay in our little home.’ Until that moment, it had never occurred to her what a big thing that must have been for an eighteen-year-old boy, and she gazed into his eyes, suddenly wishing she could go back thirteen years and welcome the motherless Spanish young man into her home with the same embracing generosity her mother had. ‘You were generous with your time when Mum was ill too,’ she whispered. All those visits that had brought such a smile to her mother’s face.

His face inched closer to her. ‘You are thinking maybe I am not so bad after all?’

‘I learned that the day our son was born,’ she whispered. ‘I couldn’t have got through it without you.’

Suddenly realising she was in danger of falling into his eyes again, Flora jumped up. ‘Right, that’s enough compliments for one day. Your head’s big enough as it is—I don’t want you getting stuck in the door. Do you want to call Sinead and tell her she has the job or shall I?’

‘I will,’ he said, following her lead and rising to his feet. ‘You go and get yourself and Benjamin ready. I’m taking you shopping.’

‘For what?’

‘Clothes and jewellery for my beautiful wife’s enrolment into my high society life, and if I am lucky she will let me spy on her in the dressing rooms.’ Then he cupped her cheeks, planted a smacker of a kiss to her lips, and sauntered out of the office like a strutting peacock leaving Flora not knowing whether to laugh or cry.

Flora gazed out of her dressing room window the next day watching Ramos and Benjamin in the swimming pool. She couldn’t hear Benjamin’s happy squeals but could see them, and the joy on Ramos’s face.

She’d been preparing to take Benjamin for a swim herself when Ramos had appeared in the nursery wearing only his swimming shorts and announced he’d be joining them.

As the thought of wearing a swimsuit around the man she lusted after with more desperation with each passing day, knowing most of her own body would be on show for him to sweep his expert eye over, made her feel as if she were coming out in hives, she’d quickly handed the change bag to him.

‘Do some daddy-son bonding,’ she’d told him brightly, relieved she hadn’t changed into her own swimsuit at that point. ‘I’ll help Sinead get settled in.’

In typical Ramos fashion, he’d arranged for their new nanny to move in and start her employment immediately.

His returning stare had been scrutinising but he’d shrugged his broad shoulders and lifted Benjamin into his arms.

She was looking at those broad shoulders now. The strength in them. The smoothness of them. Ramos wasn’t particularly vain—she supposed when you were God’s gift to women you took your gorgeous face for granted—but he worked out. The end result was right there in the distance, and she soaked it up in a way she never did when alone in the room with him. The way she neverdaredto do when alone with him.

The muscles on his back bunched as he lifted Benjamin into the air.

Stop looking at him, she beseeched herself.

She might as well tell her heart to stop beating.

How much longer could she bear it?

Seeing him now, striding around in nothing but a pair of short swim-shorts, reminded her all too much of that night of his pool party.

She hadn’t wanted to go. She’d turned down so many invitations from him. They’d all come after her twenty-first birthday, delivered via her brother along the lines of, ‘Me and Ramos are going to Cannes to watch an awards ceremony. He can get you a ticket if you want to join us?’ The birthday pool party had been the only one she’d accepted and that had been because Justin had asked her in front of their mum who, having recently completed her second round of chemotherapy, had been of the opinion that life was for living and insisted that she go. At that time, Flora would have jumped off a cliff if it had made her mum happy.

She’d been taken through the villa to the pool area and had caught her first glimpse of Ramos semi-naked since she’d seen him nude when she was thirteen. Her body had reacted in the exact same way it had then except this time there had been no bed for her to hide in.

She’d shrunk in on herself, feeling desperately out of place amongst all these rich, semi-naked, beautiful men and women who all knew each other well and were all laughing and drinking and throwing each other in the pool. Music had pounded out, competing with the screams of laughter, and she’d been so aware of the bikini-clad women flirting with Ramos. He’d been holding court like a king in his castle. It had made her sick to her stomach and she’d left his present, a handstitched embroidered portrait of his childhood dog she had spent hours making, on the table with all the other presents rather than approach him with it directly. She hadn’t known what else to gift him. After all, what did you get the man who had everything?

He’d spotted her within minutes of her arrival, which was pretty impressive considering the huge size of the garden and the size of the posse surrounding him and considering that she’d been trying to blend in with one of the garden statues. His smile when he’d seen her... It had almost made her heart explode. He’d pointed at the changing rooms, indicating that was where she should get changed, but right then Flora had felt she would rather die than parade her body surrounded by all those perfectly formed glossy women.

She’d spent the next twenty minutes hiding in the changing rooms then feigned illness to Justin. Except it hadn’t been fake. Her whole insides had cramped and for some stupid reason she’d been fighting back tears.

Ramos had followed her.

She hadn’t expected that.

‘You’re not leaving already, are you?’ he’d asked, eyes bright, teeth gleaming, tall, tanned, virile, half naked. ‘You’ve come all this way.’

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