Page 51 of Claiming His Baby At The Altar

To think she’d worried he would find her body repulsive!

It wasn’t just in the bedroom that he showed he cared. He liked to surprise her with trips away. There had been a long weekend in Ibiza with a meal at a restaurant that was like no restaurant she’d ever been to; a futuristic sensory experience that had blown her mind. A weekend shopping in New York. A trip for her birthday to Niagara Falls. A week sailing the Caribbean. And so much more besides, all with Benjamin and the nanny in tow, a family unit.

But for all that, never did he ask her to accompany him on his business trips.

‘Is that all I am to you?’ he demanded, eyes glittering. ‘Your stud?’

She cupped his cheeks and rubbed her nose to his. ‘Don’t be offended. You are a most excellent stud.’

He snatched her wrist and bared his teeth, but then the playfully sensual mood was broken by her phone ringing.

He kissed her. ‘Ignore it.’

‘I can’t.’ Flora’s phone was on silent so only her emergency contacts could get through, Alejandro, Sinead and her brother. Alejandro was on top of her, Sinead was in her room adjoining the nursery, so the caller could only be Justin, who usually waited for her to call him when she wasn’t with Alejandro.

Wriggling out from under Alejandro, she scrambled to her bedside table to answer it. Her worries that something was wrong were quickly dispelled and she ended the call inordinately proud of her big brother for all the effort he was making with the wreckage of his life, but apprehensive too for what Alejandro’s reaction to her brother’s intrusion would be.

He’d sat himself back propped against the headboard. All his former playfulness had gone. His arms were folded across his chest, the expression on his face the one he always got whenever the ghost of her brother appeared before them.

Her heart sank.

Would he ever forgive him or was this how it was going to be for the rest of her life, the two men she loved the most estranged for ever?

It didn’t have to be like this.

Taking a deep breath for resolve, Flora shuffled over and sat in front of him, crossed her legs and took hold of his hand.

Looking him steadily in the eye, she said, ‘Today it has been exactly fifteen months since Justin last gambled.’ Exactly fifteen months since Alejandro lured him to Monte Cleure on a business pretext and promptly had him arrested.

His already tight features looked as if they could snap.

‘He goes to Gamblers Anonymous meetings three times a week. He has a job as a barista in a coffee shop. He is doing everything he can to be a better man. He will never have the money to pay you back—the money he stole from you was used to pay his gambling debts, as you know—but he is desperate to make amends with you.’

And for all that her brother was turning his life around, the only way he would find peace in himself would be through Alejandro’s forgiveness.

‘Impossible,’ he bit out.

‘Why? He spent ten months in a prison cell. He has lost his home, the job he loved, his friends, his self-respect and, most importantly, he has lost you. Is that not punishment enough for you?’

His lips formed in a snarl.

‘I love my brother.’ She gently massaged his hand, refusing to let his simmering anger divert her. ‘I love him and I want Benjamin to get to know and love him too.’

‘Over my dead body.’

Flora closed her eyes and took a deep breath. ‘I know you miss him.’

He snatched his hand from hers. The words that flew from his mouth were definitely Spanish curses.

‘How can you not?’ she asked. ‘The two of you were as close as brothers.’

‘Which makes what he did even worse,’ he snapped, throwing the sheets off his lap and climbing off the bed.

‘From your perspective, yes.’

‘He should have come to me when he first got into trouble.’

‘Agreed, but you have to remember his state of mind. All those years he’d known you and you were the golden boy. You had the money, the fame, the first pick of the women... He hero-worshipped you and couldn’t bear to tell you how badly he’d screwed up.’

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