The Mills & Boon Stars Collection. Cathy Williams

      ‘She won’t be rushing anywhere,’ said Paulo, but he could see from the expression in his son’s eyes that Eddie remained unconvinced. And then he thought, What the hell? What was one day out if it helped a ten-year-old accommodate this brand-new and unusual situation? ‘Maybe,’ he said as he picked up the wizard book which was wedged down the side of the bunk-bed. ‘I said maybe!’ His eyes crinkled. ‘Want me to finish reading this?’

      ‘Yes, please!’

      ‘Where had we got to?’

      ‘The bit where he turns his father into a toad by mistake!’

      ‘Wishful thinking is that, Eddie?’ asked Paulo drily as he found the place in the book and began to read.

      But Eddie was fast asleep by the end of the second page, and Paulo turned off the light and tiptoed out of the room to find Isabella in a similar state, stretched out on the sofa, fast asleep, her hands clasped with Madonna-like serenity over her swollen belly.

      It was the first time he had seen the tension leave her face, and he stood looking down at her for a long moment, realising how much she must have had to endure in that soulless house—pregnant and frightened and very, very alone. Her hair spilled with gleaming abandon over the velvet cushion which was improvising as a pillow and her thick dark lashes fanned her cheeks. She’d loosened the top couple of buttons of her dress, so that her skin above her breasts looked unbelievably fine and translucent—as if it were made of marble instead of flesh and blood. He could see the line of a vein as it formed a faint blue tracery above her heart, could see the rapid beating of the pulse beneath.

      He heard a sound and looked up to find Jessie standing on the other side of the room, her face very thoughtful as she watched him studying the pregnant woman. She looked as though she was dying to fire at least one question at him, but her remark was innocuous enough.

      ‘The spare room is all ready,’ she said, and waited.

      ‘Thanks.’ He turned away from where Isabella slept, and walked into the dining room to pour himself a whisky while he pondered on what he should do.

      Jessie had been working for him ever since Elizabeth had died. Sometimes he’d thought that she must have been sent to him by angels instead of an employment agency. She’d been widowed herself, and knew that practical help was better than all the weeping and wailing in the world. She was young enough to be good fun for Eddie, but not so young that she felt she was missing out on life by looking after a child who was not her own.

      He also knew that she was expecting some kind of explanation now, and knew that he owed her one.

      And yet he did not want to gossip about Isabella while she lay sleeping. He took a sip of his whisky and raised dark, troubled eyes to where Jessie stood.

      ‘I’ll be off now,’ she said. ‘There’s a salad in the fridge, if you’re hungry.’

      ‘We ate on the way home.’ He nodded at the tray of crystal bottles. ‘Stay for a drink?’

      Jessie shook her head. ‘No, thanks—I’ve got a date.’

      ‘A date?’

      Her smile was faintly reproving. ‘Don’t sound so shocked, Paulo—I know I’m on the wrong side of forty, but I’m still capable of having a relationship!’

      It occurred to him that Jessie might fall in love. Might even leave him. And, oddly enough, the idea alarmed him far less than he would have imagined. ‘Is it…serious?’

      ‘Not yet,’ she said quietly. ‘But I think it’s getting there.’

      ‘Whoa! And there was me thinking you were in love with your work!’

      ‘In your dreams!’

      He drew a breath and followed her out to the front door, where he helped her into her coat and handed her her gloves. ‘Listen, Jessie—’

      She turned to look up at him. ‘I’m listening.’

      ‘About Isabella—’

      She shook her head firmly. ‘No, honestly. You don’t have to tell me anything—and I won’t ask you anything.’ She screwed her face up uncomfortably. ‘Well, maybe just one thing—but then you probably know what that is, already.’

      His gaze was nothing more than curious. ‘What?’

      ‘Are you the father?’

      He very nearly spat his whisky out, and it took him several seconds before he was ready to answer. ‘Jessie—that’s so outrageous, it’s almost funny! Almost,’ he added warningly and his dark eyes glittered with indignant question. ‘You don’t honestly think that, do you? That I would suddenly produce a child-to-be? That I would have been having a relationship with Judy, when all the time I had made another woman pregnant?’

      ‘No, of course I don’t.’ Jessie shrugged and sighed. ‘When you put it like that, I suppose the very idea is crazy. But isn’t that what everyone else is going to think?’

      ‘Why would they think that?’ he growled. ‘She’s only twenty!’

      ‘And you’re only just thirty!’ Jessie retorted. ‘It’s not exactly the age-gap from hell!’

      ‘And I’ve known her since she was a child,’ he said stubbornly.

      ‘Well, she’s certainly no child now!’ retorted Jessie.

      After she’d gone, he walked back into the sitting room to stand over the sleeping woman on the sofa once more, mesmerised by the soft movement of her breathing. No, Jessie was right. Isabella was certainly no child.

      She’d relaxed into her sleep even more. Her arms were stretched above her head and a smile played around her lips—the first really decent smile he’d seen all day. Though maybe that wasn’t so surprising, in the circumstances. Maybe sleep offered her the only true refuge at the moment. And he realised with a pang just how much he had missed that easy, soft smile.

      Overwhelmed by a sense of deep compassion, he leaned over her and put his hand on her shoulder and gave it a gentle shake.

      ‘Isabella?’ he said quietly.

      She didn’t respond—not verbally, anyway. She murmured something incomprehensible underneath her breath, and wriggled deeper into the sofa, and the movement made the fabric of her maternity dress cling to her thighs.

      Paulo swallowed.

      Pushing against the sheen of the material, the bump of the baby could be seen in its true magnitude. She should have looked ungainly, but she looked nothing of the sort—she looked quite lovely, and he felt his body battling with his conscience as he gently shook her shoulder again, but she continued to writhe softly.

      He felt desire shoot through him like an arrow—all the more piercing for its unexpectedness and its inappropriateness. And he must have made a small sound, because her eyelids fluttered half-open to stare at him.

      And in the unreal world between waking and sleeping, it seemed perfectly natural for Paulo’s darkly implacable face to be bent so close to her that for a moment it seemed as though he might kiss her. It was a lifetime’s fantasy come true and she stretched her arms above her head in unconscious invitation.

      ‘Paulo?’ she whispered dreamily. ‘What is it?’

      He shook his head, telling himself that she had aroused in him feelings of protectiveness, nothing more. Nature was cunning like that—it made a woman who was ripe with child look oddly beautiful so that men would want to protect her. ‘It’s bedtime,’ he responded sternly, but the trusting tremble of her lashes stabbed him in the heart, and made him ache in the most unexpected of places. ‘You look like you need it. If you want, I can carry you.’

      ‘Heavens, no—I’ll walk,’ she protested, wide awake now. ‘I’m much too heavy to carry.’

      ‘No,