A Night, A Consequence, A Vow

His grin was wicked and devastatingly sexy. He didn’t spank her—she hadn’t really thought he would—but he did hold her down, run his hand up the inside of her thigh and do things with his fingers, and later his tongue, that made her whimper, plead and promise to do absolutely anything he commanded.

Afterwards, they lay together again, Emily’s cheek pressed to his chest, one arm flung over the hard, beautifully sculpted surface of his abdomen.

‘Which gynaecologist?’

He told her the name and her eyes widened. He had chosen a Harley Street specialist. One she had struck from her list of potential private ob-gyns because the cost was too prohibitive and he was bound to have a waiting list.

Clearly, there were certain benefits to be reaped when the father of one’s baby was a billionaire.

Her gaze drifted to the pearl necklace lying on the nightstand. Feeling hot and sticky earlier, she’d taken it off before her nap and forgotten to put it back on.

The pearl was the only possession she had of her mother’s. Surprisingly, her father had given it to her. He’d left it in a small velvet box on her bedroom dressing table in her grandfather’s mansion a few days before her sixteenth birthday, while she’d still been at boarding school. There’d been a handwritten note with it—nothing elaborate, just three short sentences in her father’s untidy scrawl:

This belonged to your mother.

She would have wanted you to have it.

Happy Birthday.

Maxwell

Not Love, Dad.

Just Maxwell.

Her throat tightened. She’d heard people say you couldn’t miss something you’d never had, but Emily knew that wasn’t true. She’d never known her mother, but she had missed her desperately throughout her life. When Emily was ten, Mrs Thorne, in a rare moment of compassion, had given her two photographs of her mother and she had cherished them, looking at them often and longing to know more about the woman with the wild blonde curls and the pretty smile. But Mrs Thorne, when asked, had said she hadn’t known Kathryn very well and had told Emily to ask her father.

It had taken Emily six months to work up the courage to broach the subject during one of his infrequent visits, and then Maxwell had brushed her curiosity aside.

Closing her eyes, she held her breath and listened to the sound of Ramon’s heart beating. It was strong and powerful, much like the man himself. How had she ever drawn parallels between Ramon and her father? They weren’t cut from the same cloth. She saw that now.

If her mother had had someone like Ramon by her side during her pregnancy, ensuring she received the proper care and attention, would she have lived?

Emily would never know the answer. She would never know her mother and she could do nothing to change that. But she could do everything within her power to ensure her child would grow up knowing its mo

ther.

‘I’ll go to the appointment on Tuesday,’ she said softly, and he kissed the top of her head.

‘Gracias, mi belleza.’

CHAPTER NINE

MR LINDSAY, THE Harley Street specialist, was a mild-mannered, softly spoken man to whom Emily warmed at once despite the nerves jangling in her belly in the hours leading up to the appointment. As an expectant mother she felt as if she should be more excited about her first prenatal visit, but it simply made a situation she still grappled to cope with all the more stark and real.

Mr Lindsay smiled from the other side of his big desk in his big, plush medical suite. ‘Do you have a rough idea of when you conceived?’

Emily felt her face flame. Was it normal to know the exact date you’d conceived? Or did that scream one-night stand?

Just as she opened her mouth to stammer out an answer, Ramon smoothly intervened, supplying the date and then adding, ‘We think it was around then, at any rate.’ From the chair beside hers, he gave her a warm, encouraging smile. ‘It’s hard to say exactly, isn’t it, querida?’

She nodded, returned his smile and tried to transmit a ‘thank you’ with her eyes.

She was glad he was there—a turnaround from this morning, admittedly, when she’d told him she’d prefer to come alone. A waste of breath, of course. He’d been adamant about attending with her, and no argument had come close to changing his mind.

Mr Lindsay did a swift calculation and pronounced a due date, and Emily’s breath locked in her lungs for a moment. In just under thirty-one weeks her baby would be born. Suddenly, it all felt very real.

And very frightening.