The Consequence He Must Claim (3 page)

“Oh.” She sounded confused. “This is the information she gave on her admittance form. Am I speaking to the correct person? Will you confirm a few details for me?”

“Sí,”
he said and gave her his birth date and residential address as requested. He rubbed where the ache in his brow intensified. “What is this about?”

“You haven’t spoken to Ms. Kelly today?” She sounded surprised. The silence that followed struck him as a retreat. She was cautious now.

Instinct made him say carefully, “I’ve been tied up. She left a message, but I haven’t listened to it yet.”

“But you’re aware she was admitted last night?”

“Yes,” he lied, while his heart jolted painfully. They’d asked if he’d spoken to her, he reminded himself. That meant she was speaking. “I’ve been anxious for news,” he added. He was a scientist at heart, but he’d studied conversational manipulations at his mother’s knee. “What can you report?”

“Well, it’s difficult news, I’m afraid. There is a very small possibility the babies have been switched.” She paused, allowing him to react.

He didn’t have a reaction. A chasm of confusion opened in him, one he didn’t want to betray to the woman on the phone, or the two women behind him. He could hear their silence as they waited for him to wrap up this annoying interruption.

“Obviously we’ll be running a DNA test, but we’re hoping a blood test can offer some clarity. How soon could you get to a clinic? Our hospital will cover the charges, but we’re anxious for the results.”

Cesar choked out a laugh. “Are you...?”

He realized where he was. He jerked around to see both his fiancée and his mother staring at him. His mother waved an impatient hand at the seating plan spread across the dining room table. Diega’s features sharpened with query.

The air grew too thick for his lungs. In a kind of daze, he held up a staying finger and walked through the French doors onto the small balcony, closing them behind him. With great care, he lowered the voice that had begun to elevate, looking below to ensure there were no listening ears in the courtyard. His gaze blindly scanned the familiar landscape of his youth: immaculate gardens left barren for winter, dormant grapevines across acres of vineyard, the distant sound of waves washing the shoreline of the Med.

“Are you telling me you want me to provide a sample for a paternity test?” he asked in disbelief.

“Please don’t mistake me. We have no reason to doubt Sorcha Kelly’s identification of you as the father. The issue is whether she is the mother of the baby she is currently nursing. As you can imagine, we’re anxious to have this cleared up.”

He couldn’t speak. It took him a long moment to realize he wasn’t thinking any thoughts. His mind was completely blank.

Was he still feeling the effects of the concussion? No. This was the sort of thing no one in the world could make sense of.

Finally he drew a long ragged breath. “I can clear up my side of things very quickly,” he said, his voice flat and sharp. “I would remember if—” He cut himself off. Swore aloud as his condition struck him like a sledgehammer.
Again
.

There was no feeling like opening a door where a memory was stored and finding only an empty shelf. It was beyond frustrating. It was like being robbed and if there was one thing he hated above anything, it was a thief.

“Mr. Montero?” she prompted in his ear.

Maybe he didn’t remember sleeping with his secretary, but it didn’t mean he hadn’t.

At least his damaged brain was still agile enough to deal logically with the present situation. The only way to determine if he’d fathered a child in the mysterious missing week was to provide a blood sample.

Of course, that flash of logic did nothing to alleviate the fact that his mind was exploding with questions. Sorcha had promised—sworn with as much solemnity as a bride taking her wedding vows—that she would never sleep with him.

He had believed her. It had taken a long time for him to trust her. He didn’t give his trust easily, not since the industrial espionage that had nearly bankrupted his family. She knew enough about that to know he wouldn’t tolerate lies of any sort.

But he had wanted to sleep with her.

So had she broken her promise and slept with him? Or would this test prove she had identified the wrong man as the father of her child? Perhaps she’d left Spain because she was pregnant and for some reason didn’t want to tell the real father.

That worried him on a different level. She was a truthful person. A lie like that would only be motivated by a need to protect herself or her family. Had she been attacked or something? Was that why she’d fled?

And what was this crazy story about switching infants? This entire situation was something from a telenovela. None of it made sense, but he could begin to restore order very swiftly.

“Of course,” he managed to say. “Where do I have the results sent?”

* * *

The administrator returned to the nursery with Octavia’s husband. Something in the grim expression worn by Alessandro made Sorcha close her hands more possessively over Enrique. He had a conversation with his wife that Sorcha couldn’t quite overhear, though she looked up at the mention of her name. She also caught the name Primo. Octavia had told her Primo was the man Sorcha had seen last night, Alessandro’s cousin.

Then the administrator stole everyone’s attention.

“We have your blood types.” He glanced over a form on a clipboard, then looked up. “I’d like to give you the results, even though they’re not conclusive. Ironically, we should have labeled the boys A and B, since that is the blood type they’ve come back with.”

Sorcha listened as Alessandro and Octavia questioned the administrator, confirming their son was type B and Enrique was type A. “If Mr. Montero comes up as an A, we can rule out his fathering this baby.” The man nodded at Lorenzo.

“Did you call him?” Octavia asked, turning to look at Sorcha.

Before Sorcha could remind them all that Cesar
was
an A, the administrator said, “We’ve been in touch with Mr. Montero. He was heading straight to the clinic and his results should be with us shortly.”

“Wait. What? You called
Cesar
?” Sorcha screeched, heart dropping so hard and fast it wound up under her feet, squashed by her slippers as her rocking chair came forward.

Everyone looked at her. She’d confided in Octavia that she and Cesar weren’t together, but hadn’t admitted he didn’t even know he was a father.
This was horrible
.

They needed to get to the bottom of how the babies could have been switched, Sorcha knew that. But Cesar didn’t have to know about any of this!

The nursery cleared out again. Octavia’s husband left with the administrator to further the investigation. Octavia wore a frown as she rocked her sleeping baby, seeming to be trying to comfort herself.

Sorcha found herself doing the same. Warily she glanced at her mobile. She’d changed her number since leaving his company, but Cesar had messaged.

I just gave a blood sample. Why?

She could hear his coolest, sternest, tell-me-now tone in the short message.

Oh, hell, oh, hell, oh, hell. He was getting married this
weekend
. Should she have told him? How many times had she gone round this mulberry bush of trying to work out the lesser of all the evils? He didn’t remember what they’d done. He hadn’t called.

He didn’t care
.

She looked at Enrique’s sleeping features, so endearing. Surely Cesar would fall in love as easily as she had? At least she had known her father loved her, even if he hadn’t made provisions for them after his death. What would Cesar say, though? His family was the complete opposite of hers: perfectly respectable, yet absent of warmth and the urge for attachment. Was Cesar capable of loving his son? Or would he reject both of them?
That
was what had kept her from calling—not wanting to face his indifference.

Can I call you?
she shakily messaged back.

I’ll be there in a few hours.

“No-o-o-o...” Sorcha moaned, drawing Octavia’s startled glance.

“Is everything all right?” her new friend asked, concerned.

It was too sordid to reveal. “Lost a game,” Sorcha lied and tucked her phone away.

What would it do to her to see him again? These months without Cesar had been like a drought, her chest heavy and her limbs weighted as she yearned for him. He hadn’t contacted her, though. He didn’t feel any of the same pangs.

Hugging their baby, she wished she could spirit her mother across the water to stand by her here in London as effortlessly as Cesar could pilot his own jet from Spain. She desperately needed support to face him.

CHAPTER TWO

T
HE
SKY
WAS
pewter and drizzling when Cesar parked his car outside the hospital. His phone buzzed again, coming up to twenty messages from his parents. Now his brother was on the trail.

Call me. I want to discuss options.

Cesar dismissed it and thumbed through the rest, marking them to trash.

He’d gone to the clinic with only an abrupt apology, but it had given him time to come to some decisions. On his return, he’d taken Diega aside and explained what had happened.

“We can’t marry before the paternity results are in. I’m sorry. Obviously I don’t remember doing it, but it’s within the realm of possibility that I slept with her. I have to go to London. See her and sort this out.”

The concept of having fathered a child was something he was holding at bay, finding it more than he could take in until the tests confirmed it. However, as much as he wanted to be suspicious of Sorcha’s claim, he couldn’t discount it. If it turned out he had a son, and he was already married to Diega...

Well, he didn’t know how he would react to being a father, but he knew in his gut he didn’t want to be married to another woman while he processed something like that.

Disturbingly, Diega hadn’t been terribly shocked. She’d tried to talk him out of going. “
Querido
, this isn’t a deal-breaker for me. I knew that day that you had had an affair with her. We don’t have to put off the wedding because of it.”

That had taken him aback. “You said I came to ask if our marriage was really what you wanted,” he said. “That I gave you the chance to back out and you didn’t have any doubts.”

That was why she was calling herself his fiancée even though the banquet and formal announcement had never happened. He hadn’t questioned her claim that he’d gone to her for a final, private affirmation that she wanted to move forward. Given all the conflict he’d been feeling in recent months, he had easily seen himself driving out to Diega’s home days before they locked themselves into this arrangement, secretly hoping she would call it off.

This sudden new information, that he had confessed to having an affair and had “begged her forgiveness” for it, didn’t ring as true.

“She was planning to stay until we married,” Diega said. “You didn’t want me finding out at some awkward moment in your office, having doubts about your fidelity. I said I would prefer she wasn’t lingering in our lives through our engagement and you left to terminate her so we could start our life together without her presence clouding things.”

None of that sounded like him, especially the groveling. While he hadn’t planned to sleep with anyone else once he and Diega were engaged, he hadn’t expected either of them would apologize for anything they’d done previous to their union. Why then, would he have felt such a burning need to go to her after sleeping with Sorcha? Since when did he run from any woman’s bed? Lingering and keeping things friendly, leaving on good terms, was his signature move.

If he had stayed with Sorcha, he would remember that day.

Sitting in the parked car, he pinched the bridge of his nose, reminding himself to stop trying to go back in time and change what had happened. He needed to deal with the reality he faced.

But what was that reality?

If Diega had been so offended by his affair with Sorcha, why hadn’t that shone through when they’d spoken of it today? She’d been trying to placate him, encouraging him to believe their wedding could go ahead.

“I understand you might have to take certain measures if the baby proves to be yours, but none of that has to affect plans that have been in the works for
years
.”

Her tone had been persuasive, which set off all his inner lie detectors.

He just didn’t see himself sleeping with Sorcha after three years of anticipating it, then firing her within hours. He wouldn’t do that to her. Over the years, when he had contemplated becoming sexually involved with her, he’d expected it would put an end to her employment with him, but via a lengthy affair that involved cruising on his yacht. Perhaps a visit to his place in Majorca.

Despite entertaining that fantasy more or less daily, he hadn’t wanted to lose her at work. She was the best damned PA he’d ever had. So he’d fought his attraction and kept his hands off her for three long, interminable years.

It had been a delicate balance.

And with that much sexual tension built up, it was no surprise he had eagerly pounced if she had proved agreeable, but it didn’t make this situation any easier to understand or navigate.

Especially when his phone was blowing up with messages from his family that he didn’t have to cancel his wedding.

Damn it, it was done. Perhaps too summarily, and with too much relief, but it was done.

Pocketing keys and phone, he left the car and strode single-mindedly into the hospital—and recoiled at the smell.

It was dinner hour. He’d had enough of that generic hospital-food aroma while recovering from his crash, but determination to get to the bottom of things propelled him through his repulsion to ask for Sorcha’s room number.

Seconds later he took the stairs in swift leaps, paced quickly down the hall, had to identify himself to a guard—what the hell was that?—and finally pushed through her door.

To find her sleeping.

The rush of adrenaline that had been coursing through his arteries since he’d taken the call from the hospital pooled into a full body burn. It wasn’t so much the angelic look of her that brought him up short, although that had always fascinated him when she’d fallen asleep on planes and curled up in break rooms. She wasn’t wearing makeup, which was an oddly vulnerable look for her, blond lashes and brows barely visible, lips a pale pink, translucent skin the color of freshly poured cream.

No, the intravenous tube attached to her wrist and the wheelchair next to the bed stunned him. A prickling uneasiness stung his back and gut and limbs.

He had visited a woman in hospital after childbirth exactly once: when his sister had been born. His mother had sat on the bed looking as flawless as she had on every other occasion of his life. His six-year-old brain hadn’t computed that the baby in the tiny bed on wheels beside her would turn into a child like himself. The room had smelled of flowers and he had not been allowed to take one of the colorful balloons suspended above them. They were just for looks. His parents had been as calmly satisfied as they were capable of being, having produced a third child as scheduled and without setbacks.

There was no baby in Sorcha’s clinically barren room, however. No flowers. No balloons.

His heart lurched. He stepped closer to read the labels on the IV bags, one saline, the other an antibiotic. A breast pump had been unpacked from its box and the instructions left on her food tray. She’d been given consommé and gelatin for dinner. Liquids after surgery, he distantly computed, tempted to brush that strand of blond hair from where it slashed in stark contrast across the shadow beneath her eye.

Sorcha had had a baby
.

Despite all that had happened, his brain was still trying to absorb that much and couldn’t make sense of the rest. Paternity test? Him? A father?

Three years ago, she had landed her position as his PA with a claim that should have made his fathering her baby impossible.

He’d wanted her from the moment she’d entered his office wearing a pencil skirt and a fitted jacket, both moving like a caress on her slender curves as she walked toward him. She’d had just enough of her throat exposed to avoid being either prudish or inviting. Her blond hair had been held in a simple clip at her nape, her makeup subtly highlighting her pure features. Her smile had only faltered for one blink before it became pleasant and confident. She’d shaken his hand as though they were equals, smoothly pretending her tiny start of sexual awareness hadn’t happened.

He’d seen it, however. After a lifetime of always seeing it, he was far more surprised if a glimmer of attraction didn’t happen in a woman’s face. He was marginally surprised that Sorcha suppressed and set aside her response so well. In his experience, women were either disconcerted by his male energy and became flustered, or quickly tried to find an answering reaction in him by flirting and growing supple with their body language.

Adept at compartmentalizing his own rise of attraction, particularly in the workplace, he’d taken her hand and invited her to sit, ignoring the sizzle in his blood. But the fact it was there, and so strong, had him deciding against her before she’d bent her narrow waist and pressed her delightfully flared hips into the leather of the interview chair. As much as he preferred his surroundings to be aesthetically pleasing, he’d learned beautiful women could be a detriment in the office, creating politics and causing colleagues to behave badly.

He’d gone through the process of listening to her pitch, however, since he’d promised he would, and she had captured his attention with her wrap-up.

“Finally, I have a solution to a problem that has impacted your productivity for several years.”

“What problem is that?” he’d asked with forced patience, thinking drily,
Dazzle me
. He knew all the challenges he faced as he expanded from running his own chemical engineering firm into heading the Montero conglomerate. He’d already made plans for every single pothole in the road.

“You’ve been running through personal assistants at three and four a year,” she said matter-of-factly. “Stability at your base will be paramount as you pick up and run with all your added responsibilities. I’m prepared to offer you a five-year commitment and a promise that I won’t sleep with you.”

He’d leaned into the backrest of his executive chair to take a fresh assessment of the admittedly competent PA from his father’s London office whose brazenness was astonishing. He incinerated powerful men in seconds with this battle-ready stare, but if she was shaking under its laser heat, she was remarkably good at maintaining her demeanor.

“Please take that as a statement of my suitability, not a challenge,” she added with a tight smile.

“‘Excellent communication skills’ also means knowing what
not
to say, Ms. Kelly.” He flicked his we’re-done glance from her to the door and tapped his keyboard to bring up the next applicant’s file.

“Whether you actually slept with your PAs isn’t the issue. The perception that you do is an image problem and will persist if you hire one of my older, male competitors.” She thumbed toward the roomful of hopefuls beyond his office door. “Hire me, and I’ll actively put rumors to rest. Furthermore, I won’t throw myself at you or pitch a jealous fit at having to pamper the women who
are
in your life. I won’t hit on them, either. Or on any of your associates.”

She
was
well-informed. The previous male assistants he’d tried had done exactly that, offering “consolation” to the women he’d broken off with. The married women hadn’t been able to keep up with the demands of his travel schedule while the one matronly woman he’d tried had brought a lot of judgment with her. The rest had been a mix of what Sorcha had just described: women given to flirting or openly inviting him or his fellow executives into their beds, searching for a more comfortable situation than working for a living. Even if they hadn’t gone that far, they’d too often grown possessive and resentful of his dates.

As for sleeping with any of his PAs, it had happened once in his early years, before he had realized such mistakes could leave him with exactly what Sorcha had just called it: an image problem.

She hadn’t won him over that quickly, however.

“I might be inclined to accept your word, Ms. Kelly, if you hadn’t slept your way into being granted this interview.” Barton Angsley, the middle-aged CEO running the London office, had given her a very glowing reference and pressed hard for her to be considered for this promotion. Despite her solid qualifications, this was an enormous step up in salary and responsibility.

“I don’t sleep with anyone to advance my career, Señor Montero. I don’t have to,” she dismissed without batting an eye.

He had to admit she was solid under pressure.

“Angsley is taking a stress leave because he’s in the middle of an ugly divorce. Infidelity is usually the source of that kind of ugliness, Ms. Kelly. Did you threaten to give his wife the details? Is that why he’s so eager to send you to Spain?”

“I don’t talk about my employer, ever.” Her face became a haughty mask. “As evidenced by the fact you only found out about his divorce when he requested his leave and asked you to interview me. You’ll recall that he said they’d been in trouble for nearly a year. I was in the room when he was speaking to you or I wouldn’t repeat that much.”

Perhaps she’d covered up Angsley’s infidelity. Maybe that’s why he was so eager to recommend her. Maybe she’d covered his
job
. Cesar recalled a brief comment by his father, as they were discussing possible replacements for Angsley, that the man’s work had been exemplary the past few months, despite his personal issues.

Sorcha could be using that as a lever, but she didn’t seem prepared to throw her employer under a bus for any reason, even to advance herself.

He’d closed their interview with an assurance that he would give her application due consideration, which had been a lie. He’d had no intention of hiring her, but as her older, male competitors had failed to impress him, he’d found himself thinking about her. Sorcha was the kind of woman he wined and dined. He didn’t need the distraction of sexual attraction as he began taking on the role he’d been working toward all his life.

When the time came to make his final decision, however, he’d found himself placing a fresh call to Angsley. He’d learned she had not only rescued some important deadlines on Angsley’s last project, avoiding millions in overruns, but she’d also put in her notice once she realized Angsley was using her to cover his cheating.

A few minutes later, he’d found himself dialing her number. “I understand you’ve been asked to stay on to transition Angsley’s replacement, but are working out your notice anyway. Frankly, I would expect more loyalty from an employee seeking to climb our corporate ladder.”