Brazilian Escape: Playing the Dutiful Wife / Dante: Claiming His Secret Love-Child. Carol Marinelli

she couldn’t quite work out if she regretted it.

      Niklas Dos Santos, for the brief time he had appeared in it, had actually changed her life. Meeting him had changed her. Hell did make you stronger. This was her life and she must live it, and Meg had decided that she was finally going to follow her dreams and study to be a chef. Now she just had to tell her parents. So in a way tonight did in fact have something to do with him.

      The strange thing was, she wanted to tell Niklas about her decision too—was fighting with herself not to contact him.

      As painful as it was to remember, as brutal as his departure had been, still a part of her was grateful for the biggest mistake of her life and, fiddling with his ring as she so often did, Meg felt tears sting her eyes.

      That was the only thing that was different today.

      She hadn’t cried for him since that morning. Actually, she had, but it had only been the once—the morning a couple of weeks later when she had got her period. Meg had sunk to her knees and wept on the toilet floor, not with relief, but because there was nothing left of them.

      Nothing to tell him.

      No reason for contact.

      Apart from the paperwork it was as over as it could be.

      So for the best part of a year she had completely avoided it. Had tried not to think of him while finding it impossible not to.

      Every day had her waiting for a thick legal letter with a Brazilian postmark and yet it had never arrived.

      Every night was just a fight not to think.

      Sometimes Meg was tempted to look him up on the internet and find out more about the man who she could not forget—yet she was scared to, scared that even a glimpse of his face on her computer screen would have her picking up the phone to beg.

      That was how much she still missed him.

      Sometimes she grew angry, and wanted to contact him so that they could initiate the divorce, but that would be just an excuse to ring him. Meg knew she didn’t need to speak with him to divorce him, yet she had not even started the simple process, because once she started down that path it would stop being a dream—which sometimes she thought it must have been …

      Then her fingers would move to the cool metal of his ring and she’d find out again it was real.

      She looked up at the clock and saw that it was time for lunch. Grateful for the chance of some fresh air while she worked out exactly how to tell her parents she was leaving the family business, Meg was tempted to ignore the ringing phone.

      She wished she had when she answered it, because some new clients had arrived and were insisting that they be seen immediately.

      ‘Not without an appointment.’ Meg shook her head. She was fed up with pushy clients and the continual access she was expected to provide. ‘I’m going to lunch.’

      ‘I’ve told them that you’re about to go for lunch.’ Helen sounded flustered. ‘But they said that they would wait till you get back. They are adamant that they see you today.’

      Meg was sick of that word—everyone was adamant these days, and because there wasn’t much work around her parents insisted more and more that they must jump to potential clients’ unreasonable demands.

      ‘Just tell them that they need to book,’ Meg said, but as she went to end the call she froze when she heard a certain name.

      A name that had her blood running simultaneously hot and cold.

      Cold because she had dreaded this day—dreaded their worlds colliding, dreaded the one mistake in her crafted life coming back to haunt her—but at the same time hot for the memories the name Dos Santos triggered.

      ‘He’s here?’ Meg croaked. ‘Niklas is here?’

      ‘No,’ Helen answered, and Meg was frustrated at her own disappointment when she heard that it wasn’t him. ‘It’s regarding a Mr Dos Santos, apparently, and these people really are insistent …’

      ‘Tell them to give me a moment.’

      She needed that moment. Meg really did.

      She sank into her chair and poured a drink of water, willed herself to calm down, and then she checked her appearance in the mirror that she kept in her drawer. Her hair was neatly tied back and though her face was a touch pale she looked fairly composed—except Meg could see her own eyes were darting with fear.

      There was nothing to fear, Meg told herself. It wasn’t trouble that had arrived. It had been almost a year after all. No doubt his legal team were here to get her signature on divorce papers. She closed her eyes and tried to calm herself, but it didn’t help because all she could see was herself and Niklas, a tangle of legs and arms on a bed, and the man who had taken her heart with him when he left. Now it really was coming to an end.

      She stood as Helen brought her visitors in and sorted out chairs for them. Then Helen offered water or coffee, which all three politely declined, and finally, when Helen had left and the door was closed, Meg addressed them.

      ‘You wanted to see me?’

      ‘First we should introduce ourselves.’

      A well-spoken gentleman started things off. He introduced himself and his colleague and then Rosa, a woman whom Meg thought might be around forty, took over. It was terribly difficult to tell her age. She was incredibly elegant, her make-up and hair completely immaculate, her voice as richly accented as Niklas’s had been, and it hurt to hear the familiar tone—familiar because it played over and over each night in her dreams. But she tried not to think of that, tried to concentrate on Rosa as she told Meg that they worked at the legal firm Mr Dos Santos used. She went through their qualifications and their business structure, and as she did so Meg felt her own qualifications dissolve beneath her—these were high-end lawyers and clearly here to do business. But Meg still didn’t understand why Niklas had felt it necessary to fly three of his most powerful lawyers all the way to Australia, simply to oversee their divorce.

      A letter would have sufficed.

      ‘First and foremost,’ Rosa started, ‘before we go any further, we ask for discretion.’

      They were possibly the sweetest words that Meg could hope to hear in this situation.

      ‘Of course’ was her response, but that wasn’t enough for Rosa.

      ‘We insist on your absolute discretion,’ Rosa reiterated, and for the first time Meg felt her hackles rise.

      ‘I would need to know what you’re here in regard to before I can make an assurance like that.’

      ‘You are married to Niklas Dos Santos?’

      ‘I think we all know that,’ Meg said carefully.

      ‘And do you know that your husband is facing serious charges of embezzlement and fraud?’

      Ice slid down her spine. Her hackles were definitely up now, and Meg thought for a moment before answering, ‘I had no idea.’

      ‘If he is found guilty he will probably never be released.’

      Meg ran her tongue over her lips and tasted the wax of the lipstick she had applied earlier. She could feel beads of sweat breaking out on her forehead and felt nauseous at the very thought of a man like Niklas confined and constricted. She felt sick, too, at the thought of what he must have done to face serving life behind bars.

      ‘He is innocent.’ The man who had first introduced them spoke then, and Meg couldn’t help raising one of her eyebrows, but she made no comment.

      Of course his own people would say that he was innocent.

      They were his lawyers after all.

      She didn’t look at Rosa when she spoke. Instead she examined her nails, tried incredibly hard to stop her fingers from reaching for her hair. She did not