Duarte's Child

‘To…make…me…jealous,’ Emily echoed afresh as if she was having a great deal of trouble coming to terms with that concept. ‘You mean, you lied—’

Duarte winced at the bluntness of that term. ‘At that stage, I didn’t think it would do you any harm to wonder exactly what I might have been doing while you were staying lost in England for months on end—’

Emily folded her arms and stared at him with accusing aquamarine eyes. ‘I don’t believe I’m hearing this—’

‘At that stage I was still suffering from the conviction that I was making a very generous gesture in trying to put our marriage back together again—’

‘So you told me what was most likely to undermine it? You let me think you had got so close to Bliss—?’

‘Meu Deus…I lived to regret my impulse, didn’t I?’ Duarte countered with feeling fervour. ‘All I did after you went missing was work and search for you—but to confess that seemed weak!’

Emily pivoted away from him to hide a sudden helpless smile. He’d wanted to make her jealous. He had not had a clue what a nest of intrigue he was naively stirring with his behaviour. His pride had been hurting. He had been foolish but in a manner that now struck her as quite ridiculously sweet. Where was the man whom she’d once believed was so utterly indifferent to her feelings? It occurred to her that that man had never existed.

Bliss had found a fertile playground in the emotional distance between Duarte and his new wife and Emily’s own shy insecurity had been the other woman’s greatest aid. The blonde’s first tentative efforts to cause trouble would have been swiftly concluded had Emily ever turned round and asked her husband why he never returned her phone calls.

‘I have never found Bliss attractive. I was always aware of her cold nature but I did not require anything warmer from an employee whom, even now, I must concede was an exceptionally efficient assistant,’ Duarte asserted heavily.

‘When I began telling you on the flight to London about the other things she had done, you were furious with her, not with me…’ Emily registered, turning back to look at him again, relishing that reference to Bliss as being cold.

‘Of course I was furious—but more with myself even than Bliss, minha jóia’ Duarte admitted with bleak, dark eyes of regret. ‘I was bitterly angry that you had been manipulated to that extent and that I had exposed you to her malice. If I had treated you as I should have treated you, Bliss would have been powerless.’

‘Yes. Just one more thing,’ Emily framed with curiosity. ‘The first day I came back. At the airport, you stayed with Bliss to talk to her…what about?’

‘I took exception to the way in which she looked at you and spoke to you,’ Duarte admitted without hesitation.

‘You were telling her off.’ Emily tried very hard not to laugh but for a few seconds, it was a fight she thought she would lose. She swallowed hard. She thought back to some of the things he’d said to her that same day and compared it to the speed with which he had turned on Bliss to rebuke her for what he had evidently seen as a lack of respect; she could only be amused.

‘I assure you that I never ever discussed either you or our marriage with Bliss. Our more relaxed working relationship did not embrace any true confessions. I do not discuss private matters with anyone—’

‘I know…’ Emily conceded, fully convinced. ‘Until recently, not even with me.’

‘Right…OK, I walked right into that one,’ Duarte agreed, but dark colour had risen to outline his high cheekbones.

‘I just want you to appreciate that not telling me the truth about Izabel was taking confidentiality a giant step too far,’ Emily murmured gently.

Duarte snatched in a sustaining breath and squared his broad shoulders. ‘I believed you would think a great deal less of me if you knew what a mess my first marriage had been.’

Distressed by that patently honest admission, Emily closed the distance between them and reached for one lean brown hand. ‘It wouldn’t have been like that. I would have understood you much better—’

Duarte gazed down into her hugely sympathetic aquamarine eyes and murmured with brilliant golden eyes that had a rueful tinge, ‘I should admit that I also rather enjoyed being treated like an omnipotent god.’

Emily blinked in disconcertion.

‘It enabled me to feel in control…and I’m not in control at all!’ Duarte groaned out loud with startling abruptness as he glanced at his watch and registered the time. ‘We’re running late for the church!’