The Consequence He Must Claim. Dani Collins

the denigration in the village combined didn’t equal the rejection she’d felt when it became obvious her father had left them nothing.

      Not even the ability to hold up their heads.

      Her mother had maintained that he’d loved them, which had kept her going, but Sorcha didn’t even have such a declaration of love from Cesar.

      He could very well have been using her. Ticking a final box.

      Did she really want to put herself through all of that for a check in the mail once a month that would just make her feel like a whore? Her mother had managed without support payments and Sorcha would rather spare herself the humiliation of begging for scraps.

      “You were planning to resign,” Diega said again. “Do. Before his father has to hear about this.” Because I’ll tell him, she seemed to threaten.

      Sorcha’s eyes burned. “I want to see him,” she said in a thin voice.

      “Please, Sorcha. I’ve been far more civil than anyone could expect me to be. Show me you have enough remorse, enough class, not to make this worse.”

      Class. Ouch. Perhaps Diega did know where she came from.

      I hate you, Sorcha asserted silently as she rose and leveled her chin. Beyond the windows, the sunny brilliance of Valencia was a streaked image of blue sky and concrete gray, chrome and luxury-car black, early summer flowers blooming in a kaleidoscope of colors between.

      “He has my number,” she said.

      A tiny snort sounded, letting Sorcha know Cesar wouldn’t be dialing it on Diega’s watch. Then she veiled her triumph with good manners, standing and opening the door.

      Sorcha didn’t offer her hand, didn’t look for Diega’s. She was convinced Cesar would reach out to her, though. He had to. She wouldn’t disgrace herself the way her mother had, pleading for favors from the family of her children’s father only to be cast out anyway. If Cesar didn’t remember how and why they’d wound up making love, he’d think she was exactly as Diega painted her: one more woman who’d fallen under his spell.

      No, if he called her, she wanted it to be because he missed her. It would be better that way, she assured herself. She wouldn’t be accused of trying to trap him with a baby. She’d know it was about her, not duty or obligation.

      In the short term, however, that left her with one option: go home to tell her mother she’d made the same mistake she’d grown up with.

CHAPTER ONE

      Present day...

      SORCHA ENDED THE call and grabbed a tissue to let the tears release. Oh, she was homesick and filled with self-pity, not that she had wanted her mum to hear it.

      Mum was probably doing the same thing. They were both pretending Sorcha’s situation wasn’t a disaster and this emergency caesarian in London was the icing on the cake. Things really couldn’t get any worse.

      She so wished she’d managed to get home before going into labor. She might have found a decent job here after quitting right after that disastrous talk with Diega, but Ireland was where her heart was. If her son wouldn’t be recognized as Spanish, like his father, she had at least wanted him born on Irish soil.

      It hadn’t happened.

      Her nurse, Hannah, came in with a wheelchair and a chipper offer to take her down to meet him. Finally.

      That brought a smile to Sorcha’s face. She might be lonely here, but at least she had her son now. She would only be in hospital a few days, Hannah assured her, while the staff confirmed they were both healthy enough to be released. Then Sorcha could make the trek on the ferry and soon be surrounded by the people who loved her.

      Her family would adore her son. Little things like being illegitimate just made him more like the rest of them.

      Hannah asked how she was feeling and Sorcha started to explain that she had had every intention of delivering naturally, but had gone into labor early and the cord had been in the way, so they’d had to send her for emergency surgery. It had been quite dramatic, arriving on the heels of a tourist bus crash and at the same time as another woman needing an emergency caesarian section in the theater next to hers.

      She broke off as they entered the nursery to find crying babies and the other mum from last night. Not that she’d met the stunning Italian woman. Sorcha had only caught a glimpse of a man she’d thought must have been the woman’s husband. She’d heard him speaking Italian on the phone as she was wheeled past him.

      “Hello. I heard we were competing for the surgeon’s attention last night,” she greeted. “I’m Sorcha Kelly.”

      Wait a minute. That wasn’t the man from last night. He looked sharper, despite his stubble of beard growth. His hair was decidedly shorter.

      He offered a polite nod. “Alessandro Ferrante. My wife, Octavia, and our son, Lorenzo,” he said, then glanced at his wife. “That is the name we agreed upon, is it not?”

      The other woman seemed...shell-shocked. If she felt anything like Sorcha did, Sorcha sympathized. The anesthetic had made her sluggish and every movement caused the incision across her abdomen to whimper.

      Octavia exchanged a look with her husband that Sorcha might have tried to decipher, but the nurse had fetched and loosely wrapped her baby. He was crying furiously, like he’d been at it awhile, making her very sorry he’d had to wait.

      “Do you mind, Mr. Ferrante?” Hannah said, pirouetting a finger in the air.

      He apologized and turned with the sort of male briskness that men showed when confronted with a woman’s demand for modesty.

      Sorcha couched a smile. He reminded her of Cesar. Not so much in looks, although they were both very dark and handsome, but in the way he emanated vitality and owned the room.

      Cesar, she thought, and missed him all over again. She desperately wanted to be with her family when his wedding took place this weekend, not here in the hospital, nursing melancholy along with his baby.

      Murmuring a tender greeting, she closed her arms around the delicious weight of the bundled infant. Hers, she thought. Not a Montero, just as she wasn’t a Shelby. “Enrique,” she added in a whisper. Cesar’s middle name. She would call him Ricky—

      Wait. Something wasn’t right.

      He was crying so earnestly the sound broke her heart. She instinctively wanted to do anything soothe him, but...

      Distantly she heard Octavia say in a choked voice, “That’s—”

      “Octavia,” her husband interrupted with an undertone of warning.

      Sorcha wasn’t really tracking the other people in the room. She cocked her head, perplexed, as she tried to figure out why her feelings for this baby were protective, but not maternal.

      “Just put him to the breast. He’ll latch. They know what to do,” Hannah urged.

      “I don’t think—” Sorcha couldn’t even voice her thoughts, they were so bizarre. She found her gaze lifting and looked across to the baby Octavia was trying to soothe. Octavia rubbed his back and rocked him and for some weird reason, that boy’s cries went through Sorcha’s skin like rippling waves, moving things in her she couldn’t even name.

      As Octavia held Sorcha’s stare in a kind of eerie transfixion, she lowered the baby so Sorcha could see his face.

      Sorcha looked at the squalling infant. His brows were wrinkled in a way that she knew, like an imprint on a part of her that recognized its own kind. That frown of displeasure was all Cesar, and those miniature lips—they were a replica of the mouth she’d seen in the mirror all her life.

      Horror washed over her in a clammy rush.

      “What’s wrong?” Hannah asked as the other