The Consequence He Must Claim (The Montero Baby Scandals 1)

“Changing your timetable on her instruction is not a responsibility. It’s playing politics. She was the one being possessive, showing me that she had the power to direct me, which tells me she saw me as a threat. So I chose to remove myself.”

“Odd that she would feel threatened, when you, apparently, let our relationship blur into personal?”

“I didn’t sleep with you to get at her, if that’s what you’re suggesting! It just happened. Is that so hard to believe?”

“No,” he said with clipped firmness and a hint of self-condemnation.

Her question was supposed to be a knock back, but his response, and the way their gazes locked, kept them firmly in the center of the ring. She could feel him trying to dig past her defensiveness to the truth, trying to see exactly how their lovemaking had happened.

Naked and earthy and, in her case, complete abandonment to something that had been building for years.

Her layers of composure began falling away like petals off a rose. A fresh wave of heat rose from her chest, up her throat, into her cheeks. His gaze slid down, scanning like an X-ray, trying to see not through fabric, but through time. He was trying to remember what she looked like, nude and flushed with desire, then pink with recent climax and supreme satisfaction.

The night nurse came in, making them both jerk guiltily.

“Hello,” she said cheerily, unaware of the thick sexual tension. “Are you the father? I hope you have identification. The guard at the nursery door will need it. We have strict orders to be vigilant with your two sons.”

“Two?” Cesar snapped his head around.

Sorcha caught back a laugh.

“Just one,” she assured him. “She means Octavia and I. Our sons. The mix-up.”

His brows crashed together. “Yes. Explain that.”

“Talk while you walk.” The nurse brushed him aside so she could assist Sorcha from the bed. “No limo service this time. Dr. Reynolds wants you moving.”

Cesar stepped to her other side as she struggled off the edge of the bed.

He reached to flick her gown down her bare thighs before she could, telling her his gaze had been on her legs.

This was such a peculiar situation. She’d slept with him in her mind long before she’d done it in real life, yet the experience remained only in her mind. He didn’t share it.

But he brought her shaky grip to his arm to steady her as she stood, acting like intimacy between them was established. She licked her lips, stealing a wary look up at him.

His expression was hard and fierce, impossible to interpret, but when had he ever been easy to read? He was capable of charm, had a dry sense of humor and was incredibly quick to understand almost anything. This situation, however, defied understanding. No wonder he’d retreated to his most arrogantly remote demeanor.

“I was planning to be home when I delivered,” Sorcha explained. “But I went into labor early and the cord was in the wrong place. His blood supply would have been cut off if I delivered naturally.”

She didn’t have a choice about leaning on him. The nurse moved ahead to hold the door into the hall, leaving Sorcha to shuffle from the room by clinging to Cesar’s warmth, surrounded in the nostalgic scent of his aftershave.

“They did an emergency C-section and there was a mix-up. Octavia and I knew right away they’d handed us the wrong newborns, but no one believed us. Although...”

She eyed the guards—plural—at the nursery door. One for each baby.

“I guess they believe now that something happened. They’re running the DNA tests to confirm it.”

“I didn’t believe it when I came on shift,” the nurse said, tagging her card against the reader to let them into the nursery. “We’re all waiting on the results. A mix-up should be impossible.”

Sorcha glanced at Cesar to see his mouth tighten again. As the door opened, she held back to let Cesar go in first, asking, “Do you, um, want to see him?”

“Oh, yes,” he said darkly, flashing his passport at one of the guards. “If I have a son, I definitely want to see him.”

Octavia glanced up from where she was feeding Lorenzo as Cesar swept in. Sorcha only managed a weak, fleeting smile of greeting, too caught up in watching Cesar’s reaction to his first sight of Enrique.

Love him, she silently begged.

* * *