The Consequence He Must Claim

And that thought might have been tolerable if it had been an ordinary week, but no. He had fathered a child during that blackout.

The other mother, Octavia, came to her feet, faltered briefly, then faced them.

“I should tell you... My husband told me that his cousin switched the baby tags during the births. There’s...” She shrugged, distress moving over her pretty face as she looked to Sorcha before she glanced back at Cesar with apology. “Jealousy, I guess. Rivalry. The police are involved. I’m sure you’ll be asked to make statements. I’m so sorry.”

Sorcha, being Sorcha, offered an assurance that it wasn’t Octavia’s fault.

Cesar couldn’t believe what a soft touch she was. Suppose Enrique had gone home with the wrong mother? His child would have been raised by strangers.

It was a chilling thought, one that disconcerted him because deep fury followed it. No one was allowed to steal from him and the idea he might have lost something as precious as his son...

Was Enrique his son?

Was he really wishing it to be true? A tide of...something was rising in him.

Octavia moved to tuck her baby into his bed, saying a sleepy good-night as she shuffled out, hand firm on her nurse’s arm.

Oddly drawn, Cesar went to the other baby and stared at him, not sure what he was looking for. Babies all looked the same, didn’t they?

He wanted another look at the boy Sorcha held. Would he find something of himself in his features? She’d draped a blanket over her shoulder, modestly shielding herself as she nursed.

“When do the DNA results come?” he asked her.

The nurse who had remained in the room looked up from her workstation. “They’ve rushed the tests. Early next week, we hope.”

Cesar clashed his gaze into Sorcha’s unreadable one.

He wouldn’t believe he’d fathered her baby until the test confirmed it, but he’d never known Sorcha to lie. Not about important things. Not when it came to her family.

The only time she had blown off an afternoon of work, her young niece had gone missing for a few hours. The seven-year-old had climbed onto a wrong bus. Sorcha had been a pale, shaking mess until the little girl had called home from a village two hours from her own.

It had been a disturbing few hours, watching his normally reliable PA fall apart. He hadn’t liked it. Not because she’d been inconsolable. She hadn’t. She’d gone into a near catatonic state, deeply withdrawn, white as a ghost, only looking at him to ask, “What if...?” He hadn’t had answers and he’d been powerless to resolve the issue. He typically mollified women with gifts and compliments and sexual pleasure. The best he’d been able to do was attempt to fly her home.

They’d received the call that the girl was safe before they’d reached the airstrip. Sorcha had hugged him, only then crying a few choked tears, then quickly apologizing and mopping up. Within twenty minutes, they’d been back to normal, working productively, pretending the embrace hadn’t happened, but he’d never forgotten the intensity of her emotions.

Or the feel of her pressed to his front, her shoulder so small under his hand, her blue jacket thin enough he’d felt the suppleness of her back. She didn’t wear perfume. Her scent was subtle, like those complex notes he used to try to identify with his father’s vintner. Crushed flower petals? A hint of anise?

His mind had turned to sex in that moment of holding her, not that making love to her was so very far from his private bank of fantasies from the moment he saw her in the morning to when he fell asleep at night. From her interview onward, he had accepted that he wanted her and couldn’t have her, so he’d briefly returned her embrace, then set her away.

That time.

But not the next time he’d held her, apparently.

He sighed impatiently, wanting to believe that if Sorcha had put his name down as the baby’s father for any reason beyond the truth, it was a damned good one. Not just money, either, no matter the fortune he had. Because if it was his fortune she was after, she wouldn’t have kept the baby a secret right up until the moment he was about to marry someone else.

Why then...?

“Why,” he said aloud, moving over to her and switching to Valencian so they could speak with some privacy. “If I’m his father, why did I find out like this? Why didn’t you say something sooner? Why not stay and force me to face it? Why not ask me for support?”

She’d always been good under pressure, rarely revealing her thoughts or feelings, but a vulnerable anger flashed across her expression.

“I tried to see you. I asked your father a dozen times, went to the hospital, but I wasn’t allowed up.” Her face hardened. “It was a difficult time for your family and you were in very bad shape. I wanted to be compassionate about that. When I heard you’d lost your memory...” She searched his gaze as though still having trouble believing it.