A Mistress, A Scandal, A Ring. Angela Bissell

statement landed between them like a burning stick of dynamite tossed into the room. Jordan braced herself for its impact, her whole body tensing, but if Xavier de la Vega was even mildly shocked he hid it well.

      ‘You have proof of this?’

      She blinked at him. It was such a cool, controlled response—far less emotional than anything she’d expected—but she counselled herself not to read too much into it. At twenty-six years of age, and after five years of working as a trauma nurse, she’d seen people react in all kinds of ways in all sorts of life-altering situations. Often what showed on the surface belied the tumult within.

      She slid the other photo from her journal across the desk to him. This one was older, its colours faded, the edges a little bit worn.

      He leaned forward, gave the photo a cursory glance, then drew back. ‘This tells me nothing,’ he said dismissively.

      Jordan withdrew her hand, leaving the photo on his desk. ‘It’s you,’ she said, and it gave her heart a funny little jolt to think that the tiny, innocent baby in the photo had grown into the powerful, intimidating man before her.

      His frown sharpened and he flicked his hand towards the photo, the gesture faintly disdainful. ‘This child could be anyone.’

      She reached forward and flipped the photo over. The blue ink on the back had faded with time, but Camila’s handwriting was still legible. ‘It says “Xavier”,’ she pointed out, and waited, sensing his reluctance to look again. When he did, she saw his eyes widen a fraction. ‘And the date of birth underneath... I believe it’s—’

      ‘Mine,’ he bit out, cutting her off before she could finish. He sat back, nostrils flaring, a white line of tension forming around his mouth. ‘It is no secret that I am adopted. An old photo with my forename and my birth date written on it proves nothing.’

      ‘Perhaps not,’ she conceded, determined to hold her nerve in the face of his denial and the hostility she sensed was gathering in him. ‘But my stepmother told me things. Details that only your adoptive parents or your birth mother could know.’

      His eyes darkened, the grey irises no more than a glint of cold steel between the thick fringes of his ebony lashes. ‘Such as?’

      Her lips felt bone-dry all of a sudden, and she moistened them with her tongue. ‘Thirty-five years ago Regina Martinez worked as a housekeeper for your parents,’ she began, carefully reciting the details Camila had shared with her for the first time just a month before she had died. ‘She had an eighteen-year-old unmarried niece who fell pregnant. At the time, your parents were considering adopting a child after your mother had had several miscarriages. A private adoption was arranged, and soon after you were born—at a private hospital here in Barcelona which your parents paid for—they took you home.’

      And the young Camila had been devastated, even though she had done the only thing she could. The alternative—living as an unwed mother under her strict father’s roof in their small, conservative village—would have heaped as much misery and shame on her child’s life as on her own.

      Knowing first-hand how it felt to be genuinely unwanted by one’s biological mother, Jordan hoped Xavier would see Camila’s decision not as an act of rejection or abandonment, but one of love.

      She waited for him to say something. It was perfectly understandable that he might need a minute or two to process what she had told him. Something like this was—

      ‘What do you want, Ms Walsh?’

      Her thoughts slammed to a halt, the question—not to mention the distinct chill in his voice—taking her by surprise. ‘Excuse me?’

      ‘Money?’

      She stared at him. ‘Money?’ she echoed blankly.

      His gaze was piercing, the colour of his eyes the dark pewter of storm clouds under his lowered brows. ‘It is common knowledge that my family is one of the wealthiest in Spain. You would not be the first to claim a tenuous connection in hopes of a hand-out.’

      A hand-out? Her head snapped back as if he’d flung acid at her face. She gripped the edges of her journal, shock receding beneath a rush of indignation. ‘That is offensive,’ she choked out.

      ‘Quite,’ he agreed. ‘Which is why I will ask you again—what do you want, Ms Walsh?’

      Jordan felt her heart begin to pound. How on earth could this arrogant, imperious man be her stepmother’s son?

      Camila had been a kind, gentle soul, who’d always looked for the best in people despite the heartbreak she’d suffered early in her life.

      Jordan looked at the envelope she’d placed with such reverent care between the pages of her journal. She’d carried the envelope halfway around the world and not once had she been tempted to snoop inside it. The letter it contained was private, sacred—the precious words of a dying woman to her son.

      Lifting her chin, she looked him in the eye, letting him know he didn’t intimidate her—that she had nothing to feel ashamed about. She held up the envelope. ‘I came here to give you this.’

      ‘And what is “this”?’

      ‘A letter from your birth mother.’

      ‘Camila Walsh?’

      ‘Yes—your birth mother,’ she reiterated.

      A muscle worked in his jaw. His gaze flicked to the photo that lay face-down on his desk, then back to her. ‘A claim which is, at present, unsubstantiated.’

      Jordan let her hand fall back to her lap, her frustration so great she wanted to slap her palm against the top of his desk and demand to know why he was being so bloody-minded. Instead, she clamped her back teeth together and waited for the impulse to pass.

      She was not someone who flew off the handle at the slightest provocation. She might have been saddled with her mother’s unruly flame-coloured hair but she hadn’t, thank goodness, inherited her fiery personality.

      Suddenly she felt as cross with herself as she did with him. Why hadn’t she been better prepared for this kind of reaction? Had she imagined that because she and Camila had been close she would automatically feel some sort of instant kinship with this man?

      Sadly, she had. She’d tucked her grief away in a safely locked compartment of her heart, donned those silly rose-coloured glasses she should have learnt to distrust years ago, and set off on her mission to deliver Camila’s letter and scatter her ashes in the homeland she’d left thirty-three years before.

      It was the final thing Jordan would be able to do for her stepmom—for the woman whose love and kindness had helped to heal the wound Jordan’s mother had inflicted years earlier with her abrupt, unapologetic departure from her daughter’s life.

      And, embarrassing though it was to admit it, Jordan had built up a little fantasy in her head—imagining herself striking up a friendship with Camila’s son, having a kind of stepsibling relationship with him—which, now that she was here, seemed totally laughable.

      This was not a man she could imagine having such a relationship with. Girls did not look at their brothers and feel their skin prickle and heat or their mouths go dry.

      He wasn’t even the sort of man she liked. In fact he was everything she disliked. Arrogant. Superior. Unfeeling. A self-appointed demigod in a power suit, ruling his kingdom from the top of his gilded tower.

      And Jordan knew all about men with god complexes, didn’t she? She’d dated a surgeon whose ego was the size of the Sydney Opera House and then—even worse, because she should have known better—she’d moved in with him and decided she was in love.

      Jamming the brakes on her runaway thoughts, she focused on the cold, handsome face of the man in front of her and made a snap decision. ‘I don’t think you’re ready for this letter, Mr de la Vega.’

      And in that moment she knew she