The Disobedient Virgin

“I baked this morning,” Sarah said, a hesitant smile curving her lips. “That apple cake you like so much…Unless you’re busy this evening.”

Busy? He was supposed to be at Samantha’s in half an hour but she, the glitter of New York, the life he’d made for himself, seemed light-years away.

“No,” he said, “I’m not busy.” He cleared his throat. “I’m never too busy for your apple cake, Mama.”

He held a smile until Sarah left the room. Then he picked up the letter and sank down on the sofa, smoothing out the heavy paper with his hand.

The second paragraph was almost as shocking as the first.

According to Enrique Ramirez’s last will and testament, his fling with Sarah Reece hadn’t been the only dalliance that had resulted in a pregnancy.

Ramirez had sired two other illegitimate sons.

Two more Ramirez bastards, Jake thought coldly.

And he’d left his fortune to be divided among the three of them.

“As if I’d touch a penny, you son of a bitch,” Jake muttered through his teeth.

Should you wish to learn the identities of these men, the letter said, Senhor Ramirez has stipulated a condition.

A condition? Jake shot to his feet. If the SOB were alive, he’d fly to Brazil and tell him where to shove his condition.

He scanned the letter again. Ramirez had been guardian to some Brazilian kid. If he wished to learn the identities of the two other legatees Jake was to take over that role, be a kind of custodian to the child. Details would be forthcoming if he were interested.

“Interested?” Jake snorted. Right. That was just what he was in the mood for. Playing warden to some kid in another hemisphere.

He tossed the letter aside. To hell with the scum who’d sired him. To hell with conditions that were damned near demands from the grave. To hell with doing the bidding of the pig who’d never given a damn about him or his mother.

And to hell with ever learning the names of his halfbrothers. Because that was what they were. His half-brothers. The only other people on earth, aside from his mother, who shared his blood.

Jake stared at the letter once more. Then he cursed, folded it and put it in his pocket.

One thing he’d learned, building his empire. It was unwise to make important decisions in anger and just plain stupid to make them without gathering all the facts.

“Coffee’s ready, Joaquim.”

He’d make a couple of phone calls to this Javier Estes character. Or maybe he’d fly down to Rio, confront Estes in person. Yes. A face-to-face meeting might be best.

“Joaquim?”

“I’m on my way,” he called.

Damned right, he was.

CHAPTER TWO

ACCORDING to its discreet brochure, the Escola para Senhoritas Novas lay nestled in the mountains a short drive from the city of Rio de Janeiro.

The school is near enough to Rio de Janeiro for our young ladies to benefit from the city’s cultural opportunities, yet far enough from it to protect them from its temptations.

The truth was that the School for Young Ladies, run by the Little Sisters of the Mountains, might as well have been located on Pluto. The nuns took girls with no demerits on their records to the opera at Teatro Municipal twice a year. Except for that, nothing that happened in Rio or in what the girls called “the real world” had any impact on the school.

Days began at six and ended at eight-thirty, when the lights in the stark dormitory rooms went out. Even the older girls, like Catarina, who had their own rooms—if you could call four cots jammed into a ten-by-twelve space one’s own room—were forbidden to keep their lights on past nine.

No good had ever come of keeping late hours, Mother Elisabete told them.

She never said what benefit keeping early ones might bring.