DEEP SHOCK AND confusion held her frozen in the chair for countless seconds. Then Suki surged to her feet. She tossed the papers back onto the desk, unable to get her fingers off them quickly enough.
‘Are you out of your mind?’ She should’ve posed the question rhetorically because she was one hundred per cent sure that he had gone insane. From grief or from something else, but definitely unsound.
Except he didn’t look crazy. Only brutally determined, eerily controlled. ‘Far from it,’ he confirmed. ‘In fact, this is probably one of the sanest decisions I’ve ever made.’
Her already racing heart tripped over itself to speed up even more. ‘Then I’m terrified to imagine what you class as sane!’
A cold smile curved his mouth. ‘Let’s concentrate on one item at a time.’
‘We will not concentrate on any items because what you’re...suggesting isn’t going to happen,’ she returned. She didn’t realise she was backing away from the chair, from him, until he rose to his imposing height and prowled after her.
‘Where do you think you’re going?’
‘Where do you think? I’m leaving!’
‘No. You are not.’ His voice was deadly soft.
Goose bumps rose on her skin but she kept moving away. ‘Watch me.’
‘I am watching you. And I don’t think you realise how very little options you have here.’
‘I have the option of not staying here to continue this insane conversation with you.’
His hands slid lazily into his pockets, but there was nothing indolent in the eyes that tracked her backward trajectory with narrow-eyed intensity. ‘You can leave this room, but how do you propose to make your escape from this house?’
Her back touched the study door and she froze. ‘You... I seriously hope you’re not suggesting that you intend to keep me here against my will!’
‘That entirely depends on you. You can walk out of here and attempt to make the three-hour journey back to Havana on your own or we can finish this conversation.’
She shook her head, knowing deep inside that things weren’t that simple. The alarming suspicion that he’d planned all this with meticulous precision grew with each second he stared at her.
‘I’ll make the journey on my own, thank you.’
She needed to get out of here. The trip back would be costly, but she’d stick it on her credit card and think about the consequences later.
Reaching behind her, she grasped the handle, turned it. Relief flooded her when it yielded. It occurred to her that once she turned and walked away, this would probably be the very last time she set eyes on Ramon. A tiny second was all she needed to take in the sculpted beauty of his face, the square designer-stubble jaw, the impossibly wide shoulders that Luis had once told her had been honed from his days playing quarterback at college in the States, the lean, hard-packed body that stretched over pure, streamlined muscle.
She took all of it in, stored it in a file somewhere deep in her subconscious, unwilling to admit that some time in the future she would revisit it. Just as she’d revisited their night together more times than she felt comfortable admitting even to herself.
Pulling the door wider, she stepped through it. ‘Goodbye, Ramon.’
‘Is your hurry to get back to do with your appointment with the sperm donor agency or your mother?’ he enquired in an almost indifferent voice.
Suki turned back so swiftly she almost tripped over her feet. The way he leaned so casually against the doorjamb, legs crossed at the ankles, made her believe she’d misheard him. Because surely he wouldn’t look that bored while informing her he’d callously invaded her privacy. ‘What did you say?’
He remained silent, those all-knowing green eyes pinned on her.
‘Did you not hear me? I said—’
‘I heard you, and you know exactly what I said. I just prefer not to conduct this conversation in the hallway in the hearing of my staff, especially if you insist on using that shrill voice.’
Suki swallowed down the scream that rose; squashed the urge to march up to him, take him by his expensive designer lapels and shake the living daylights out of him. It would be useless because she suspected he would remain just as unmoved as he seemed now.
She shook her head in abject confusion. ‘What gives you the right to invade my privacy?’
‘You don’t seem to have grasped the reality before you, Suki.’ He stepped back from the door, his hands leaving his pockets to hang almost menacingly against his masculine thighs. ‘So come back in and let’s discuss this rationally. Now,’ he added after a handful of seconds when she remained frozen.
‘All this...the ticket, the hotel, coming here to meet with your lawyers...it was all one giant plan, wasn’t it?’
‘Sí, it was,’ he confirmed, not a trace of apology in his face or voice. ‘Oh, and I forgot to mention. Your things were moved here from the hotel while we were at the memorial. So bear that in mind if you decide to make another grand exit.’
Her mind sped with the thinly veiled threat in his voice.
Her things...including her passport and airline ticket. ‘Oh, God. You...’
‘Need your undivided attention without the histrionics.’
The reality of what was happening rammed home in that instant. She could try to leave but she wouldn’t get very far. So really, she was going nowhere until he deemed it so.
On leaden legs, she returned to the study. The sound of the door shutting felt like the slam of prison gates.
She tightened her fingers around her clutch to stop their trembling. ‘I can report you to the authorities. You know that, right?’
He raised a mocking eyebrow. ‘For having a simple conversation with a guest after my brother’s memorial?’
‘There’s nothing simple or remotely funny about this, and you know it,’ she replied heatedly.
All traces of mockery evaporated from his face, leaving a harsh, bleak mask. ‘On that we’re agreed,’ he bit out. One hand rose to spear agitated fingers through his hair. ‘Did you stop to think that, had I been in the picture, things could’ve turned out differently?’
Suki didn’t want to admit that the thought had crossed her mind when the doctors had first given her the diagnosis. But in those initial harrowing weeks, she’d clung vainly to hope. Then the tabloids’ timely confirmation of Ramon and Svetlana’s still very much on engagement had usefully reiterated why any reliance on the man who’d slept with her while still committed to another woman, who’d proven most categorically that he was untrustworthy, was out of the question. Father of her child or not, the knowledge that she couldn’t trust Ramon with so momentous a decision had kept her silent. ‘How?’ she asked, despite knowing they wouldn’t have been.
‘For a start, had you come to me, you would be in a financially better place now than you currently are.’
She frowned. ‘Financially better place? What are you talking about?’
‘Luis helped you with your medical bills, did he not? Did you stop to think that going ahead with the pregnancy, that presenting me with my child, would have made you rich beyond your wildest dreams?’
She staggered, actually staggered back at the accusation. ‘Are you telling me you think I deliberately got rid of the baby because it wasn’t financially viable?’
‘I had my investigators look into your financial history, Suki. I know you’re broke.’
She struggled to take a breath. ‘I understand that we were little more than strangers. And we didn’t even like each other very much,’ she ventured. ‘But I would never...never dream of—’
‘Drop the excuses, Suki. Nothing you say will excuse your actions. Having my child was an inconvenience you took care of without bothering to tell me,’ he cut across her, jaw clenched into stone. Turning, he headed back to his desk and picked up two files and the bundle of papers she’d discarded minutes ago and strode towards her, savage purpose in every step.
He casually opened the file he held. Suki recognised the charity’s logo on the letterhead immediately. ‘Which begs the question, why would you get rid of my child, then make yourself a charity case for a sperm donation four months later?’ There was something dangerously deadly in his voice. A scalpel-sharp control that said he was stroking the very edge of his endurance.
She swallowed, knowing instinctively that the none of your business line was the last thing she wanted to throw at him right now. A tremble shivered down her spine. Retreating until she had the grouping of studded leather sofas and a coffee table between them, she attempted to reason with him. ‘Ramon, the past is the past. This thing...what you’re suggesting...it doesn’t make sense.’
His harsh exhalation stopped her stuttering. He glanced up, eyes like the frozen wastelands of Siberia blasting her. ‘Why, Suki? Why, for some unconscionable reason, have you decided you want a child now?’
She raised her chin. ‘I don’t have to explain myself to you.’
A thousand expressions flitted through his eyes, not a single one of them decipherable. Slowly, he shut the file and, without taking his eyes off her, tossed it on the coffee table.
‘Okay. Let’s talk about something else. Your mother is currently in a private hospital with health complications triggered by stage two cervical cancer, yes?’ he pressed.
Her heart lurched painfully. ‘Yes,’ she murmured.
‘With her insurance about to run out this month and her doctors all set to throw in the towel, nothing short of a miracle will bring any hope.’ There was no malice in his voice, but neither was there any warmth or sympathy. For reasons she knew were coming, he was laying out the facts of her life in bare chunks.
A spike of anger tunnelled through her bewildered emotions. ‘And let me guess, you suddenly have the power to grant miracles?’
‘I have more than that. I have the financial power that fuels particular miracles. I’m also trying to discover what your goals are. Is this baby you’re hoping to have a means of alleviating future loss? Having decided that you didn’t want a child before, you’re now desperate for one so should your mother not make it you won’t be left alone?’ he demanded chillingly.
‘I don’t know what kind of monster you think I am, but what you’re suggesting is detestable.’
‘Is it?’ he enquired, his tone a touch softer, a touch more...vulnerable.
Her eyes widened as what he’d said before made clearer meaning. ‘That’s why you want a child? So you’re not alone?’
Pain flickered over his face. ‘I want a family, yes,’ he confirmed.
‘And digging up my mother’s records, what does that achieve except to make me think you’re leveraging my mother’s health against me?’
‘It’s not leverage. It’s an offer of help so, when we reach agreement, you have one less thing to worry about. Those miracles you scoffed about can happen.’
She laughed. She couldn’t help herself. ‘You actually expect me to believe that you’d do that out of the goodness of your heart, after going to this trouble to bring me here?’
He didn’t answer for a long minute. When he did, his voice was bleak. ‘For some reason Luis held both you and your mother in high regard, and yet you were prepared to walk away from the inheritance he left you just to make a point when that money could’ve helped your mother. Luis isn’t around any more to make you see sense. But I am.’
She shook her head. ‘That money was meant for the child I never had.’
‘It was meant for you. But like everything else, you threw it away without a second thought. You think Luis just overlooked the fact that you were no longer pregnant when he chose not to amend his will? He knew your mother was ill. Did you not think this might be his way of helping you?’
‘I don’t know. I had no idea what he was thinking—’
‘Perhaps this! What is happening here right now. Maybe he rightly believed that you owe me answers. That you owe me, full stop.’ His fist was bunched, his nostrils pinched in a tight leash on his control.
She refused to back down. ‘Regardless of that, I don’t deserve that money.’
‘Does your mother deserve your abandonment?’
‘I haven’t abandoned her! I’ve done everything I can for her—’
‘Have you? Or did you make the barest minimum effort then stop, just like you did with our child?’
Fresh whips lashed her heart. ‘You have no right to say that to me—’
‘I have every right. And more. For what you did there is no coming back. Only reparations.’
‘I’m sorry I didn’t tell you the moment I found out! Is that what you want to hear? Do you want me to get down on my knees and beg your forgiveness?’
‘You know what I want.’
She flung her clutch on the sofa, every cell in her body too agitated to contain her. ‘How can you even propose something like this...how can you contemplate doing something so life-changing when you stare at me with such hate? And have you even paused for a second to think about my feelings?’
He swivelled towards the window, his features carefully schooled as he raked a hand through his hair. For a long time, she thought he wouldn’t answer her questions. When he turned back, his features were set even harder, his eyes completely inscrutable.
‘I don’t need to like you to take you to bed,’ he replied. While she was grappling with that, he added, ‘And vice versa. I believe right before our last connection we were less than impressed with each other. Yet, we still proved that we were compatible where it counted.’
Her senses reeled with the enormity of his reasoning. ‘You think that tipsy interlude compares in any way to this...clinical exercise you’re proposing?’
‘Yes, I do. And this time we’re going into this with clear minds and a finite purpose. And you mistake me by thinking this is something you can argue away.’
‘And you do likewise by thinking this is something you can force on me. My answer is no.’
‘There won’t be any force involved. You’ll stay here, take the night to sleep on it. Come morning, you will give me an answer. And I prefer that answer to be yes.’
‘Or what?’
‘Or nothing. And by nothing I mean we will both walk away empty-handed. You will not be returning to England to get yourself impregnated by some faceless sperm donor. I suggested that your place be given away to another needful applicant as of this morning.’
She gasped. ‘What?’
‘You’re not deaf. On top of that, I have personally put in place a facility for an additional fifty women to receive similar funding. The charity is beyond thrilled. They won’t take your name off the list without your express confirmation, but I dare say you’re no longer at the top of their list. Not once I informed them that you’d be giving the traditional way another try with me.’
The ground shook beneath her feet. ‘You...you can’t do that!’
He nodded to the discarded file. ‘You underestimate how much I want this, Suki. You’re still on the waiting list with the charity, but if you truly wish to get pregnant any time soon, I’m your only option.’
‘That’s...that’s blackmail.’
‘You’ll be good enough not to fling disparaging labels around, cara. What you did was far worse.’
The urge to scream again rose. She barely managed to keep it together to raise her hands in a placatory gesture when she wanted to find the nearest letter opener and stick it in his black heart. ‘Ramon. Please hear me out. What I did...my decision... I didn’t think I had a choice...’ Her voice broke. Swallowing, she shook her head. ‘I didn’t have a choice...’ she repeated.
Ramon’s face paled, his features slackening for a brutal, painful moment, before it clenched back into a tight, furious mask. The eyes that stared back at her were almost black with volcanic rage. ‘You had a choice. Me. But you were too selfish to bring me into the equation. You made the decision on your own.’
‘My God, you accuse me of so many things, but what about you?’
His brows clamped tight. ‘What about me?’
‘You told me you were no longer engaged, and yet weeks later I found out it was a lie!’
His jaw flexed for a second. ‘And that is the reason you called my brother when you should’ve called me? That is why you handed him the responsibility when it should’ve been mine to bear?’
Her breath shuddered out. ‘I didn’t hand anyone the responsibility. I didn’t call Luis. My mother did.’
He stilled, straight eyebrows clenched tighter in a dark frown. ‘Your mother?’
She nodded, her head barely able to perform the movement. ‘She was home from hospital but weak from her chemo. She knew what was going on and she felt bad that she couldn’t help me. I told her I didn’t need help but she...she wouldn’t listen. She thought she was letting me down. She knew Luis and I were close friends but she assumed our relationship had grown into something more. Anyway, she assumed he was the father and called him. Apparently, she had a long go at him for shirking his responsibilities. Luis didn’t say a word to refute the claim. He just...turned up at my house the next day and refused to leave.’
‘And let me guess. That was when you swore him to secrecy to keep me from my own child?’ His voice bled fire and ice.
‘I was going to tell you. I didn’t think you would appreciate hearing it from him. And I thought I had time. But then things just...unravelled.’
He breathed in a harsh breath. ‘You say that and yet you found time to call on Luis a second time to hold your hand through the procedure.’
It staggered her how much detail he knew. And how things looked from his side of the fence. ‘I didn’t ask him to come, Ramon. But he wasn’t prepared to take no for an answer.’
He gave an arid laugh. ‘You found it so easy to give in to him, the same way you found it easy to make up excuses not to contact me.’
‘How dare you—?’
His hand slammed on the desk, making her jump. ‘I dare because I am without my child, and you’re to blame!’
Pain shook her from scalp to toes. ‘You preach at me from your lofty pedestal about doing the right thing. Did you stop to think that after lying to me about Svetlana that I’d want nothing to do with you? Or are you going to tell me that those pictures in the papers of the two of you taken in the weeks after we were together were your doppelgängers?’
His jaw worked for a long moment before he exhaled. ‘What happened between you and I was a one-night thing. If memory serves it was what you wanted, what we both wanted.’
The fact that he was justifying his actions shouldn’t have come as a surprise. Wasn’t that how she had come into this world? Hadn’t she heard a version of the same story from her mother about her father’s justification for his infidelity? The only difference here was that Ramon had apparently wanted the seed he’d unwittingly planted in her womb. Suki’s father hadn’t even stuck around for the pregnancy test announcing she was on the way.
The end result of that had been a mother steeped in so much bitterness she’d never trusted another man long enough to move on from the past. From a very early age, Suki had vowed to learn from that lesson, until she’d met Luis and had eventually chosen to hope that all men weren’t the same.
Luis had been one in a million, and she’d trusted him with her life. Unfortunately, she’d been foolish enough to transfer some of that faith to his older brother.
She didn’t plan on making the same mistake again.
Refocusing on Ramon, she shook her head. ‘There’s no way this can ever work. Too much has happened. Besides, what about Svetlana? Won’t she have a huge say in what you’re proposing?’
‘She and I have been over for several months.’ The words were clipped. Final.
Suki told herself the fluttering in her stomach was a side effect of the strain of the conversation. ‘The same kind of over you meant the last time?’
His eyes gleamed, his focus unwavering. ‘The kind of over that means she has no bearing on this conversation.’
She wanted to press for more. Why, she had no idea. Whether Ramon and Svetlana were over or not had no impact on her life. There were more important things to focus on, like the reason he had a file on her mother.
‘Did you know about Luis’s financial bequest before today?’
‘No, but he was fond of you. It doesn’t surprise me he would take such an action.’
Her head still reeled from that. ‘I don’t know what to say...’
Another bleak expression darted across his face. ‘If he were here right now, what do you think he’d say with regard to your mother’s condition?’
Suki’s heart twisted, her best friend’s vibrant face rearing up vividly in her mind’s eye. ‘He would help me beg, borrow or steal to help her.’
‘Sí, he would. And what do you think he would say to you helping me to continue his family line?’ he countered smoothly.
She gasped at the skilful way he’d cornered her. ‘That’s not fair.’
‘Is it not, or are you being a hypocrite? He’s left you a means to help your mother. Should her treatment exceed what he left for you, I’ll pick up the slack.’ He paused, his eyes still fixed on her. ‘Are you going to let pride and stubbornness stand in the way of your mother’s health?’
‘No, of course not! But I can’t help but think this is...a cold transaction.’
‘It’s a transaction where we both win.’
Her heart shuddered. ‘But her doctors say there’s nothing else they can do.’
‘They were wrong.’ Returning to the sofa, he picked up the last file and handed it to her.
Hands shaking, she opened it, started to read. The names that jumped out at her were from some of the best teaching hospitals and medical research facilities in the world. She recognised them because she’d come across several of them in her own research. Letters from acclaimed doctors with countless abbreviations after their names had personally answered all of the pertinent questions Ramon had posed them. Without offering guarantees, at least half a dozen different doctors had given her mother far better odds than her current doctors had.
‘Everything in there has been double and triple checked. All that’s required for your mother to get the help she vitally needs is to say yes.’
Suki closed her eyes, three unshakeable truths becoming crystal clear. Her mother’s case wasn’t hopeless. Luis, in his own inimitable way, was caring for her even from the grave. But by doing so, he’d also put her directly in his brother’s debt.
And there was only one means by which Ramon Acosta wanted payment.