‘Your actions say differently. How do I know this isn’t some kind of new play from Cabo’s organisation? His blood runs in your veins.’
She flinched as though he’d struck her with his words. ‘You could trust me.’
He laughed—a harsh, low sound in his throat. ‘Like you have trusted me so far?’
‘Liam has Cabo blood too. Will you hold that over him? Blood is not the making of a person.’ Her eyes met his, fire burning in their grey depths.
‘How do I know you won’t disappear the moment I leave this house? Where did you plan to go?’
‘I grew up in Manaus on a small wildlife sanctuary.’ She shrugged. ‘I didn’t like being so secluded then. But I wanted to make a fresh start for Liam somewhere safe, far away from the reach of my father.’
‘If I hadn’t brought you here...if we hadn’t got close...would you ever have told me?’
She pressed her lips together. ‘I don’t know.’
She met his eyes without hesitation, but he couldn’t hold her gaze. He couldn’t look at her without thinking of what she’d planned to do, without imagining her choosing to keep something so important from him.
The thought that she might even have left Brazil with his son made something roar within him. The anger he felt was too much; he needed to get away from here—from her. He felt as if he was walking a razor-thin edge between control and madness.
A small cry sounded from the monitor at her hip and Duarte felt his chest tighten as Nora met his eyes again. He gestured for her to go, turning away from her to pinch the bridge of his nose.
He hesitated for a moment, then found himself following her, unable to stop his feet from moving in the direction of the infant’s cries.
The windows of the room were closed, the shutters keeping the heat of the day out. Nora stood there in the dim light, holding the child to her chest as his cries softened. Duarte took a step closer, looking at the tiny face and wondering how he had ever missed it. The child had Nora’s wide eyes, but that was where the resemblance ended. Everything else, from the colour of his skin to the dimple in the centre of his chin...
He reached out, touching his pinkie finger to that miniature dimple, and remembered that first moment in the hospital room, when a tiny hand had reached out to grip his finger. He wondered if Liam had sensed that he was safe with his papai? Would he have any memory of his first couple of months of uncertainty?
Duarte knew there and then that he didn’t need a paternity test to tell him what he felt.
This was his son.
He looked up to see Nora watching him, a suspicious sheen in her silver eyes.
Clearing his throat, he stepped back from the intimacy of the moment. ‘The Fort Lauderdale opening is in a few days. I see no reason to delay travelling.’ Duarte kept his voice low. ‘Be ready to fly in the morning.’
‘You want to take us with you?’ Nora’s voice was calm, but he saw the sudden flash of defiance in her eyes, a bristling at the authority in his tone.
‘I don’t want to leave either of you anywhere in Brazil while your father is being taken into custody.’
He fought the urge to reach out and touch the child again, to memorise each tiny detail of his face. Something within his chest tightened again, almost painfully.
‘I said I would protect you and that has not changed.’
‘Okay.’ She breathed. ‘Duarte, I’m so sorry.’
He pressed his lips together, unable to look at her without feeling that roar within him starting up all over again.
‘I have phone calls to make.’
He ignored the pain in her eyes and forced himself to leave the room. To leave behind the sudden need within him for the child who was such an integral part of him. To leave the woman who had made him feel as if he was finally glued back together only to tear him apart all over again.
He kept walking even after he reached the ground floor and went outside, passing the pool and moving down the length of the garden towards the sea. When his feet hit the sand, he left his shoes and shirt by the trees and broke into a run, taking out all his anger and pain on his body and pushing himself to his limits.
Nora had barely slept all night, and spent the eight-hour flight to Fort Lauderdale on tenterhooks because of the complete silence of the man by her side.
He seemed flat, somehow, as if all the colour had faded from him. He was helpful, checking if there was anything he could do to help with Liam, but there was a tightness to his eyes when he held him.
Eventually she stopped trying to talk at all and quietly watched a movie on her screen while he worked on his computer. The result was that she was practically delirious with tiredness by the time the warm Florida sun kissed her face.