To his surprise, Ellie just laughed aloud. “Timothy? Of course he wants me. At nine months pregnant, I'm so very beautiful, so irresistible to men,” she teased.
“You are,” he insisted. He leaned over her on the bed, kissing her lips softly. “He's sent me anonymous notes.”
“If they're anonymous, how do you—”
“I know,” he said grimly. “And I should have killed him when I had the chance. Until he's caught, you must never leave the penthouse without Pedro. Do you understand me?”
She shook her head, then reached out to playfully muss his hair. “Why don't you just admit it?”
“Admit what?”
She looked him straight in the eye. “You love me.”
He stared at her. Sweat rose to his forehead. “What?”
She sat up straight on the bed. “You love me, Diogo. Just as I love you. I've been in love with you for ages. I think since the first time you called me into your office, demanding for me to take a memo on the Trock deal.”
His jaw clenched and he stood back from her. The intimate mood was suddenly gone.
Love her?
Love was for women who didn't know better.
Love was for men who were too weak to control themselves.
Love made a man stupid. Made him vulnerable. Left him helpless.
And he couldn't be helpless. Not with so much at stake.
“You love me,” Ellie whispered. Her clear blue eyes met his. “Please. I need to hear it. All these months, I've been waiting and praying to hear it. I thought that if I showed my love for you in a thousand small ways, giving you a loving home, you would know—”
“Ellie, I can't deal with this now.” His whole body felt tense as he turned away. “I need to take a shower.”
“Diogo?”
He turned on her fiercely. “I don't love you, all right?”
She went pale. She licked her lips, tried to speak, couldn't.
“I don't,” he insisted. “And if you love me, I'm very sorry. I never wanted your love. We have a partnership, querida. A friendship. An intense connection in bed. A wonderful family. That's all. But for God's sake, that should be enough!”
“I don't believe that,” she responded passionately. “The way you kiss me. The way you want to protect me…”
He abruptly left the bedroom, heading toward the bathroom. “I need to get ready.”
He took a thirty-second shower and quickly got dressed. When he came back, he saw her sitting on the sofa in the front room, wrapped in his robe. Dawn was flooding the room with soft pink light. She was hugging herself, staring down at the floor.
Something lurched deep inside his heart.
“Ellie…” He took a deep breath. “We can talk more later.”
“Right,” she said dully. “Later.”
Ellie didn't look up as he left. He would deal with her later. Right now, he had more pressing concerns. He went to his modern office building on the Avenida Rio Branco. He met with Andrew MacCandless, his company's chief of international security, then got reports on Wright's most recent sighting yesterday—traveling to São Paulo from New York on a borrowed plane. He'd apparently promised a wealthy childless couple on Park Avenue that they would soon receive newborn twins for the price of four million dollars.
Newborn twins.
I will find him, Diogo told himself with a haggard breath. He told his chief of security to bring in a private army if that was what it took. The man was threatening his family. He had to be brought down.
Just as the man grimly left to execute his orders, his secretary spoke in Portuguese over the intercom.
“Your wife is here, sir.”
“Here?”
“I just got the call from downstairs reception. Shall I have them send her up?”
He paused. He didn't want to see Ellie now. There was no point in talking. She loved him, and he didn't love her.
Seeing her pain killed him. Distracted him.
Still…
Ellie had never come to his work before. He couldn't turn her away. “Send her up.”
As he paced his office waiting for her to arrive, he couldn't stop thinking about her. His beautiful, warm wife, the mother of his children. He couldn't stand the thought of anyone threatening to take her from him.
Diogo had known what Wright was capable of. Why had he let the man go?
If anything happened to Ellie, it would be Diogo's fault.
He clenched his hands. He couldn't let anything happen. He wouldn't. He would die first.
He loved her.
The stealthy thought brought him up short.
He loved her?
It was true she had changed his life completely. His existence had once been cold. Going from one woman to the next, filling his life with business deals and empty pleasures, he hadn't realized at the time how miserable he'd been—or how alone.