Duarte's Child

‘Right…so now I’m getting the big freeze!’

She thought about that and sighed again. ‘I’m just tired.’

Ten minutes later, he tugged her across the bed into his arms and she groaned out loud while surreptitiously snuggling back into the hard heat of him. He turned her round to face him, brilliant dark golden eyes still ablaze with vibrant energy.

‘Bliss did have a grandfather clock,’ he murmured with the air of a male expecting a burst of applause. ‘And no, I have never been in her apartment but I do recall her telling me a long time ago that the only thing her father left her when he died was an ugly big clock. An appraiser had advised her to keep it as an investment and she had it shipped out here.’

‘Congratulations,’ Emily mumbled, eyes dropping closed again.

‘You can’t go to sleep now, minha jóia,’ Duarte ground out incredulously. ‘Did you hear what I said?’

‘Talk about it in the morning—’

‘It is the morning and we’re flying over to London in precisely six hours’ time,’ Duarte reminded her with considerable impatience and he shook her shoulder slightly, lifted and dropped her limp hand, striving to rouse her again.

But nothing short of a fire alarm would have wakened Emily or persuaded her to take the slightest interest in anything other than sleep.

‘Anyone ever tell you that you sleep like the dead?’

‘You.’ Glancing up from the magazine she was pretending to read, Emily noted anxiously that once again, Duarte was staring at her from his seat opposite. He had been doing that ever since she came down to breakfast two hours earlier and yet he had barely spoken to her. The drive to the airport had been similarly filled with unspoken tension and in half an hour the jet would be landing in London.

‘Tell me, do you remember what I said to you last night just before you feel asleep?’ Duarte enquired with studied casualness.

Emily chewed at her lower lip and silently shook her head. It was a lie. She did have a vague recollection of him accusing her of giving him the big freeze but that was not a subject she was particularly keen to reopen, for she was all too well aware that when she had wakened around seven in his arms she had not given him the big freeze. Reddening at that mortifying awareness of her own drastic lack of control, Emily returned to her fake perusal of the magazine and wondered why she’d dreamt about Bliss’s grandfather clock during the night. Quite where and how the clock had figured in her dream, she could not recall.

‘You’re just so quiet,’ Duarte remarked.

‘Last night drained me,’ she muttered honestly.

‘You made your point. You more than made your point,’ Duarte extended. ‘But I assure you that I have never been intimate with Bliss Jarrett.’

Emily nodded, much as if she was listening to a weather report.

‘At least look at me…’ Duarte intoned in low-pitched frustration, evidently as aware as she was of the presence of the nanny nursing Jamie at the other end of the cabin.

Slowly Emily raised her head, aquamarine eyes full of strain.

She encountered stunning dark golden eyes that made her own instantly sting with tears and hurriedly she dropped her head again.

‘Please don’t cry…’ Duarte leant forward and grasped her knotted fingers between both his hands. ‘I feel enough of a bastard as it is.’

Emily gulped.

‘I’ve really screwed up our marriage,’ Duarte muttered half under his breath, startling her into looking up again—but there was nothing to be gained but a view of Duarte’s gleaming dark springy hair bent over their linked hands. ‘I don’t want you to argue with me about that.’

Emily surveyed his bent head in growing wonderment. She had no intention whatsoever of arguing with him on that score. There was a moment of awkward silence while he gave her a chance to argue in his defence. His wide shoulders emanated ferocious tension when the silence remained unbroken.

‘In the future I will do a lot of things differently,’ Duarte swore, practically crushing the life out of her fingers, every word emerging stilted and raw with emotion. ‘I’m not the most liberated guy around but I can change. Ordering people around just comes very naturally to me…’

‘I know,’ Emily whispered. ‘It’s just I’m not really sure why you’re talking like this—’

Duarte lifted his proud head and his incisive dark golden eyes glittered over the bemused expression on her face. ‘I didn’t sleep last night. I kept on getting flashbacks of you cowering in a chair in front of me after I caught…saw,’ he adjusted hastily, ‘you in Toby Jarrett’s arms that night. I don’t think you got out a single sentence that I didn’t interrupt—’