Don Joaquin's Pride

Since there was little hope of its recovery, Joaquin suggested that the stolen purse should be reported to the police immediately, any credit cards cancelled, and that later they would go straight to Yolanda’s hotel so that she could pack.

‘You can come in with me, Lucy,’ the brunette told her more cheerfully.

‘I’d like to, but I’m afraid I have an appointment this afternoon,’ Lucy responded uncomfortably, still not having met Joaquin’s eyes once since they had left his townhouse.

‘But I need some company,’ Yolanda protested with reproachful eyes.

‘Come back to the house with us and join us for dinner,’ Joaquin murmured smoothly, adding his voice to his sister’s.

‘I’m sorry, but I really do need to get home. I’d be grateful if you could just drop me off at the nearest bus stop,’ Lucy stated tautly.

After all, Joaquin thought that she was a fake and she was a fake—indeed a much bigger fake than he could ever have guessed. He was a clever guy. How could she have been so foolish as to imagine that he would not sense on some level that she was not quite what she appeared to be? And what other interpretation could he have put on behaviour that just didn’t match what he believed he knew about her background and lifestyle? After all, her twin was very different, in personality and presentation. Cindy was confident, occasionally even aggressive in her outlook on the world, and nobody’s fool. Cindy was not shy or awkward or naive.

It was time that she cut loose of any connection with Joaquin and Yolanda Del Castillo, Lucy conceded heavily. Cindy had put a solicitor in charge of any further communications with Joaquin concerning the repayment of her former father-in-law’s savings. There was no further need for Lucy to play any role, nor any requirement for Joaquin to be told that she was, in fact, Cindy Paez’s sister. In any case, sooner or later his own sister would inform him of that fact and probably laugh her head off at how he had been fooled.

As neither Del Castillo was accustomed to having their wishes ignored and their invitations refused, there was a distinct coolness now in the atmosphere.

‘I’ll call you…’ Yolanda said sullenly, when the limo stopped to let Lucy alight. Ironically the brunette finally both looked and sounded her age.

Joaquin flashed Lucy a darkling glance of censure but Lucy evaded it. He would have invited a chimpanzee home for dinner had he believed it would keep his volatile sister happy, she thought bitterly. She caught the bus and went shopping for food. On her walk back to the apartment she found herself passing within yards of her doctor’s surgery and decided to call in for her test results in person.

The receptionist checked the card, which had a note attached. ‘You need to make another appointment.’

‘Another?’ Lucy queried anxiously. ‘Does that mean something came up in the tests?’

‘I expect it’s just the norm for a first pregnancy,’ the young woman said blithely. ‘I’ll check with the doctor now. I can never read his handwriting.’

CHAPTER NINE

PREGNANT?

No, there was no doubt, no room for error, Lucy’s doctor had assured her in the five minutes which was all the busy older man had been able to spare her before his next patient arrived. Tests were now so advanced that they could pick up a pregnancy at the very earliest stages, even before the menstrual cycle was noticeably disrupted. Lucy had stumbled out of his surgery again like an accident victim.

The possibility that she might be pregnant had not even occurred to Lucy. In retrospect she was shattered by the realisation that she hadn’t once thought of that risk. Not that night she had been with Joaquin and not afterwards either. She had never had any reason to think about contraception, having always naively assumed that she would be in a long-term serious relationship before she became sexually involved. On the face of it, what did that wild passionate and romantic night of lovemaking with Joaquin have to do with the production of a little baby nine months down the line?

Only now the connection between those two events was painfully obvious to Lucy, and she was deeply ashamed that she had behaved in such an immature and irresponsible way. A baby…Joaquin’s baby. Not a piece of news she could picture him greeting with anything other than outrage. But then hadn’t Joaquin, with considerably less excuse, been equally careless of consequences? Lucy’s bowed shoulders straightened a little on that conviction. Was she supposed to believe that a male of his sophistication and experience had been so overwhelmed with desire that he had forgotten to use contraception? Well, she might have conceded that excuse had Joaquin only made love to her once, but when she finally finished counting up how many times Joaquin had made love to her she stopped marvelling at the reality that she had conceived a child after one abandoned night. Had Joaquin been industriously set on creating a baby, he could not have made more effort to that end!

After a sleepless night, Lucy was tidying the kitchen early the next morning, taking refuge in keeping herself busy in an effort to keep herself calm, when she heard the front door open.

‘Lucy…?’

She stiffened in astonishment because it was her future brother-in-law’s voice. ‘I’m in here, Roger!’

Roger Harkness appeared in the doorway. He was a big, thickset young man, with light brown hair and deceptively bland blue eyes set into lean, sun-tanned features. ‘Cindy warned me to shout first in case I gave you a fright.’

‘I thought you were staying in Oxford until tomorrow?’

‘Cindy and my mother thought…and Cindy had to stay because my folks have invited a pile of guests round this evening,’ Roger grimaced. ‘But my firm didn’t send me to Germany for two weeks just to have me roll back last minute, get married and go off on honeymoon without reporting back somewhere in between!’

‘It’s a shame, though—’

‘I have to write up a detailed report and present it first thing tomorrow morning to the senior partners. I’ll get it finished quicker here.’

‘I didn’t move any of your stuff in the spare room,’ Lucy hastened to assure him, reminded that the room she was currently occupying was the same one which Roger, having given up his own flat before he went to Germany, had set up as a home office in which he could work.

‘I wouldn’t have worried about it if you had,’ Roger assured her with a rather strained and unconvincing smile. ‘I’m really tired, so I’m going to hit the sack for a couple of hours and then start work.’

As he trod off down to the bedroom, Lucy bit anxiously at her lower lip. The sooner she found herself a bedsit the better. She didn’t want to be playing gooseberry to a newly married couple. Even using the spare room she would be inconveniencing them. Roger had seemed tense and awkward with her, unlike his usual genial self.

Poor Cindy, Lucy reflected sympathetically, her thoughts turning to her twin, who had been so much looking forward to her reunion with Roger, only now to find it cut short. Roger had only got back from Germany the night before. He must have driven straight to Oxford, spent the night and got up at dawn to get back into London so early. Certainly her twin wouldn’t have had the opportunity to make any serious confessions to Roger. But then when her sister chose to tell Roger about the financial hot water she was in was really none of her business, Lucy reminded herself.

Didn’t she have enough problems of her own to worry about? Exactly what was she planning to do about the fact that she was pregnant? She wasn’t prepared to consider a termination. She would have her baby…Joaquin’s baby. No matter how he felt about it. But how would she live? It was all very well making airy-fairy plans to raise a chil

d on her own, but Lucy was already foreseeing how difficult it would be.

She wasn’t capable of earning a salary big enough to cover the cost of childcare. In some circumstances government help was available to assist single mothers to stay in employment. Only she didn’t have a clue whether she would qualify for help, didn’t have a clue where she would live, how she would live…anything!

And at that point of rising panic, the doorbell went. Rushing to answer it, while being surprised that it hadn’t been the intercom which had sounded a warning of a visitor first, but too preoccupied to put on the security chain, she just opened the door.

‘Allow me to tell you that the security is useless in this building,’ Joaquin informed her with grim disapproval. ‘The main entrance door downstairs was lying wide open. Anybody could just walk in!’

But he had. And in that first time-suspended moment of recognition Lucy was overwhelmed by happiness. Thought had nothing to do with it; instinct reigned supreme. There he stood, looking breathtakingly, stunningly handsome in a black cashmere overcoat worn over a faultlessly cut dark business suit. But then her brain kicked back into functioning again and she went rigid.

‘Joaquin…?’ The birth of sheer panic turned Lucy pale enough to make his keen gaze narrow in his inspection of her now startled face. But she couldn’t help but be aghast at his arrival. Roger was in the apartment! Roger had never even heard of Joaquin Del Castillo but Joaquin had certainly heard of Roger, and if the two men were to meet and Joaquin learnt how he had been deceived what else might be said in Roger’s hearing? If Roger had to find out what his bride-to-be and her sister had been doing while he was safely out of reach in Germany, the very worst way he could find out would be from a male who had as low an opinion of Cindy as Joaquin had!

‘Why are you looking at me like that?’ Joaquin strode smoothly past her into the hall.

‘Sorry…I wasn’t expecting you,’ Lucy muttered in a stifled undertone, her shaken appraisal pinned to his tall powerful frame while she tried feverishly to work out how to get rid of him again.