The Mills & Boon Stars Collection. Cathy Williams

      He waited until the automatic response of his body had died away completely, and he felt an ugly kind of taste in his mouth. Quietly, he turned the computer off and went to find himself a drink.

      Barefooted, he went silently along to the kitchen where he poured himself a glass of water and stood drinking it, looking out of the window into the night sky. Outside, silver-white stars pin-pricked the darkened night and he found himself picturing Isabella’s father’s ranch in Vitória da Conquista. Where the stars were as big as lollipops—so bright and so close that you felt you could lean out and pluck them from the sky.

      He pressed the empty water glass to his hot cheek as he anticipated the fireworks to come. What the hell was Isabella’s father going to say when he discovered that his beloved daughter was going to have a baby? By a man she was refusing to name! He was going to be absolutely furious.

      He was just thinking about going back to bed when he turned to see Isabella standing in the doorway, silently watching him.

      She had changed into a big, white nightshirt and a pair of bedsocks and had plaited her hair, so that two thick, dark ropes hung down either side of her face. She looked impossibly sweet and innocent, making the swollen belly seem indecent in comparison.

      ‘Did I wake you?’ he asked. He saw the way she grimaced, then tried to turn it into a smile and he pulled a face himself. ‘Obviously, I did.’

      ‘I heard…er…noises. Then the door slammed.’

      ‘And did it startle you?’

      ‘Only for as long as it took me to realise where I was. But I probably would have woken at some point, in any case. Indigestion,’ she said, in answer to the query in his eyes. ‘It’s the bane of late pregnancy.’

      ‘I suppose it is,’ he said slowly. He stared again at her bulging stomach. ‘Would a glass of milk help?’

      ‘Yes, please.’

      ‘Sit down, then, and I’ll fetch it for you.’

      She pulled a chair out from under the kitchen table and negotiated herself into it, wriggling her toes around inside the roomy bedsocks.

      Paulo reached into the fridge and poured her a big, creamy tumblerful, then leaned against the draining board and watched while she drank it. He found himself fascinated by the white moustache she left behind, and by the tiny pink tongue-tip which snaked out to lick it away. Who would ever have thought that a heavily pregnant woman could look so damned sexy? he wondered.

      His wife had been sick for a lot of her pregnancy. The doctors had told him she was ‘delicate’. Like a piece of Dresden china that he dared not touch for fear of breaking her. And yet Isabella looked real and very, very touchable.

      Isabella could feel him watching her, and she tried to drink her milk unselfconsciously, but it was difficult. And she could feel the baby moving around at the same time as her breasts began to sting uncomfortably in a way she was certain had nothing to do with the pregnancy. What conflicting and confusing messages her body was sending out!

      She put the half-empty glass down on the table with a clunk. ‘Did…did Elizabeth have an easy pregnancy?’

      Paulo frowned. ‘No, not really. It didn’t agree with her. She was very sick for the first five months or more.’

      Her expectant look didn’t waver. Here in the quietness of the night, it was easier to ask questions which had always seemed inappropriate before. ‘You must miss her.’

      He didn’t answer for a moment. ‘I did. Terribly, at first. But it was such a long time ago,’ he said slowly. ‘That sometimes it seems to have happened to another person. We were together for two years, and Lizzie’s been dead for ten.’

      ‘Doesn’t Eduardo ever ask?’

      ‘Sometimes.’

      Isabella studied him. ‘And does he have any contact with his mother’s family?’

      ‘A little,’ he began, then suddenly his temper flared. ‘What is this, Isabella?’ he demanded, suddenly impatient. ‘Truth or dare?’ Women did not ask him about his wife—in fact, they did the very opposite. Ignored the few photographs which existed of Elizabeth with her infant son. Never asked the child any questions about his mother, as though they could not bear to acknowledge that he had loved a woman and had a child by her.

      ‘You want to squeeze every painful fact out of me?’ he grated. ‘Yet obstinately refuse to disclose the identity of your baby’s father?’

      ‘That’s different.’

      ‘Why?’ he snapped.

      ‘Because there’s no point in your knowing,’ she said stiffly. ‘I told you. It’s over.’

      ‘So why this sudden interrogation? Is this one rule for you and another for me? Is that it?’

      She shook her head. ‘If I thought that telling you would do any good, then I would.’

      ‘But you don’t trust me not to use the information?’ he probed softly.

      ‘No, I don’t,’ she admitted.

      For some inexplicable reason, he smiled. ‘Then you are wise, querida,’ he murmured. ‘Very wise indeed.’

      He saw the way that one plait moved like a silken rope over her breast when she lifted her head to meet his gaze head-on like that. ‘Now go to bed, Bella,’ he said roughly. ‘You need your sleep.’ And I need my sanity.

      She paused by the door. He had warned her off prying, but there were some things she really did need to know. And if Paulo was in the habit of having late-night visits…‘Did I hear you talking to someone earlier?’

      ‘I had an…unexpected visitor.’ He gave a grim kind of smile. And anyway, what was the big secret supposed to be? ‘It was Judy.’

      ‘But I thought you said that it was over?’ She’d blurted the indignant words out before she could consider their impact. Or the fact that she had no right to say them.

      He knew it was a loaded question. Knew it and was surprised by it. No, maybe not completely surprised. ‘It is.’ He gave her a brief, hard look. ‘She won’t be coming back again.’

      ‘Oh.’ She kept her voice as expressionless as possible and hoped that her face did the same. ‘Was it serious between the two of you? I suppose it must have been if she had a key.’

      He gave a faint frown, tempted to dodge the question, knowing instinctively that the truth would hurt her. ‘I don’t do “serious” any more, Bella,’ he told her quietly.

      She felt her heart plummet. ‘No. Right. Well, I guess it’s time I went back to bed.’

      Paulo’s eyes narrowed with interest as he watched the interplay of emotions on her face. Maybe Judy had been more astute than he had given her credit for.

      ‘I guess it is,’ he agreed blandly. ‘Goodnight, Isabella.’