The Last Heir of Monterrato

‘It would seem not.’ Rafael shifted his position, alerting Lottie to the fact that she was staring at his groin. ‘Believe me, I have explored every avenue.’

‘Oh, Rafe.’ Suddenly Lottie was rushing over to him, flinging her arms around his neck and hugging his unyielding body. ‘I’m so sorry.’

Picking her arms from around his rigid neck with a look of distaste, Rafael let them drop by her sides and took a step back. ‘It’s not your sympathy I am looking for. It is an arrangement of a much more practical kind.’

Lottie gazed up at him, eyes wide with concern.

‘I’m so sorry,’ she repeated, her mind still struggling to take in this shocking disclosure. ‘This must be very difficult for you to come to terms with.’

She put a hand out to touch him but he moved out of her reach, crossing his arms in front of him to form a barrier.

‘Have you talked this through with anyone? Had any counselling? You mustn’t keep it all bottled up inside.’

‘Pah!’ Rafael gave a derisive snort. ‘I do not need counselling, thank you, what I need is a solution to the problem.’

No change there, then; Lottie didn’t know why she had even asked the question. She stared at the proud, haughty man who stood stubbornly a few feet away from her. Here was someone who would rather die than give in to his emotions, whose approach to any problem was to get it fixed and move on, rather than take time to grieve or heal.

‘Sometimes there is no solution, Rafe. You just have to accept it.’

‘Of course there is a solution,’ he bit back, ‘and it lies with you.’

So this was it, then. The reason she was here. Not to sign divorce papers, to end their marriage, but as part of a last desperate attempt by Rafael to provide a Revaldi heir. Lottie bent her head, covering her eyes with her hand as she tried to order her thoughts, formulate some sort of response, explain to him that, no matter how deeply she felt for his predicament, she simply couldn’t do it.

‘I realise that you hold all the power,’ Rafael cut in quickly, hurrying to fill the empty silence before Lottie could say anything negative, ‘and that puts me at a disadvantage.’

Power? Disadvantage? Why was he talking like this? As if it were some sort of business merger instead of the birth of a baby, the creation of a new life that should be born of love and commitment and caring. That explained the suit, she thought suddenly. Rafael was simply trying to broker a deal.

‘I will agree to your terms, Lottie. Anything. Just say the word and it will be yours.’

‘No, Rafe.’ She had to stop him now, before this got any worse.

‘If it’s a question of money...’

Too late. Lottie felt heat rising up her neck, sweeping across her face, as the hideousness of his suggestion took hold.

‘Stop it!’

She was starting to shake with a mixture of outrage and sadness—sadness that he could get her so wrong, that he had never understood her at all.

‘Do you seriously believe that you can buy me? Buy our baby?’

‘There’s no need to be so melodramatic.’ Pushing back his shoulders, he regarded her coldly over the jut of his chin. ‘I’m merely trying to find a mutually satisfactory arrangement. Don’t tell me you enjoy working in that...’ he paused, distaste written all over his face ‘...so-called art gallery in London.’

‘It’s called earning a living.’ Lottie glared at him. ‘It’s what normal people do. And, anyway, how do you know where I work?’

‘I made it my business to know.’

‘What do you mean by that?’ Even as she asked the question the answer hit her like a snowball in the face. ‘You have been spying on me?’

‘You might call it spying. I call it research. Obviously I had to make sure I had all the available facts at my disposal before I contacted you.’

His calm, rational voice was stoking the fire that was already roaring away inside Lottie.

‘There were certain things I needed to ascertain: your career, for example, the state of your finances, whether there was a man in your life.’ He shot her a cold, penetrating stare.

Lottie gasped. How dared he? And, worse still, how dare he look at her now as if this was perfectly acceptable behaviour? She felt violated, exposed, as if he had stripped away the thin layer of her composure and left her standing naked and shivering in front of him.

‘You are telling me that you have hired some private investigator to follow me, lurk in the shadows, pick through my rubbish bins, train his grubby little binoculars on my windows?’ The words were tangling around themselves in their hurry to get out and strangle him.