‘Yeah, were…past tense. We had a good time, but let’s quit while we’re still speaking!’ Sophie retorted with a brittle smile.
Antonio breathed in deep. ‘I’m flying to England with you.’
‘I don’t care what you do as long as you leave Lydia and me alone,’ she muttered tightly.
‘Lydia won’t be accompanying us.’
‘Excuse me?’ Sophie tossed him a disbelieving look.
‘Lydia is staying here at the castillo until we return.’
‘But I wasn’t planning on returning!’ Sophie exclaimed. ‘I want to take her with me—’
‘No. Lydia goes nowhere without my agreement and I will not give it,’ Antonio delivered without hesitation. ‘You’re not in the right frame of mind to make an important decision about her future.’
Her hands clenched into hurting fists. ‘What do you care? Lydia’s nothing to you now—’
Dark golden eyes sought and held her accusing gaze. ‘That’s not true. I’m angry that I didn’t know the truth. But I care as much about Lydia at this moment as I did when I woke up this morning.’
‘Well, whoopee for you…you can visit us every six months.’
‘Lydia is not travelling to England with us tomorrow,’ Antonio spelt out grimly, brilliant eyes welded to the tight set of her delicate profile. ‘Perhaps by then you might be ready to let me talk and say what I really want to say.’
Her soft mouth quivered and she turned her back on him. ‘You’ve said enough for one day.’
‘Sophie…’ He touched her shoulder.
She shrugged him off. The silence pounded and thudded. Then the door closed on his departure and she wanted to scream and scream to exorcise the agony inside her. She hadn’t wanted him to stay. But she could not bear him to leave her. But what was she supposed to say to a guy who had made a huge sacrifice for nothing? He hadn’t wanted to give up his freedom and marry. But he had truly believed that he had a duty of care towards Lydia. Yielding to temptation on their wedding night had led to a relationship he would never have sought on his own behalf. So he had made the best of things in the short term.
That was the sort of guy Antonio was…always set on doing the right thing no matter how painful it might be. She loved him a lot, but she didn’t want his pity. She felt so ashamed of her sister’s behaviour as well. Belinda’s will had got them into a disastrous marriage and unfortunately Lydia would suffer the most from the fallout. Sophie could not accept that Antonio could still genuinely care about Lydia now that he knew she wasn’t his niece.
The following afternoon, the jet landed in London. After a night spent tossing and turning in misery, Sophie had slept for most of the flight. Antonio watched her the entire time she slept. He covered her up with a rug. He pushed a pillow under her flushed cheek. Without even speaking to him she was putting up signs as big as placards to keep him in touch with her mood. She had left off her wedding ring and even the watch he had given her. She was wearing a T-shirt and shabby jeans that he recalled from his first visit to the caravan site. It bothered him that she should have held onto those garments in spite of her wardrobe of new clothes and the wealth that surrounded her. He could see that he was being not so much airbrushed out of her scheme of things as annihilated as though he had never existed.
‘You can stay in the car,’ Sophie told him uncomfortably outside Norah Moore’s little bungalow. ‘If there’s anything to find out, I promise that I’ll share it with you.’
She had phoned Norah to tell her that she was visiting and she had also told the other woman about the results of the DNA test.
‘Did you know Lydia wasn’t Pablo’s?’ Sophie asked baldly as the older woman put on the kettle.
Norah gave her a reluctant nod of assent.
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ Sophie groaned.
‘Belinda begged me not to and after she had passed away I saw no reason to upset you—’
‘I can’t believe that my sister talked to you and not to me!’
The older woman grimaced. ‘She was your big sister and she wanted you to look up to her. She didn’t exactly plan to tell me either.’
‘It’s OK…I’m grateful that she did talk to you because at least now I can find out the truth.’
‘Well, I called in one evening and found Belinda drinking. I gave her a right telling-off about drinking with a baby on the way and she just laughed. You know how silly she could be. She asked me if I’d be shocked if she told me that the baby wasn’t her husband’s kid. She was gasping to spill the beans to somebody.’
‘What did she tell you about Lydia’s father?’
‘That she’d been with a bunch of different men she picked up in bars and didn’t have a blind clue which one was responsible.’ As Sophie studied her in consternation Norah folded her lips. ‘She went off the rails for a while. It happens. Her marriage was breaking up. Pablo was out all the time and having other women on the side and she decided to have some fun of her own.’
Sophie wrinkled her nose. ‘What a mess…what an awful mess. But if she knew right from the start that Lydia wasn’t Pablo’s why did she name Antonio as a guardian in her will?’
‘I bet she only had that will done after Pablo had been killed. I think she was ashamed and wanted to forget what she’d done. She wanted to pretend the baby was her husband’s. She certainly regretted telling me the truth and took against me because of it,’ the older woman reminded Sophie wryly.
‘I also know that you went to see Antonio at his hotel,’ Sophie admitted. ‘He told me about it.’
Norah pulled a face. ‘That backfired on me,’ she confided ruefully. ‘I expected Antonio to let you keep Lydia here and maybe help you out with a bit of money. Instead he went and asked you to marry him.’
‘Now I understand w
hy you were so against our marriage.’
‘But I didn’t want to interfere. How was I to know what was for the best? Antonio meant well by Lydia and I didn’t want to be the one who spoilt that for the kiddie.’ Norah studied Sophie and raised a brow. ‘I was about to ask how marriage is treating you, but I can see Antonio’s right and tight with his cash. You’re still wearing the same jeans you had before you left. Well, at least he’ll not be getting into debt like that brother of his!’
Sophie went very red in the face and hastened to dissuade Norah from the conviction that Antonio was seriously mean with money. Norah informed her with some satisfaction that her son had started dating a neighbour’s daughter and that the relationship was looking serious. Sophie walked slowly back out to the limousine.
‘You don’t have to tell me anything if you don’t want to,’ Antonio drawled in a trying-to-be-ultra-sensitive tone.
‘Belinda went with a load of different blokes and so we’re never going to be able to find out who Lydia’s father is,’ Sophie responded, determined not to reveal just how affronted she was by her late sister’s behaviour.
‘I’m her father now,’ Antonio murmured very quietly.
‘Believe me, if Lydia was grown up enough to know that you’re prone to taking pity on little children and cleaners, she’d pretty soon tell you not to bother yourself!’
‘What if I was to tell you that I didn’t take pity on the cleaner…that I actually wanted the cleaner for myself,’ Antonio murmured softly.
Sophie blinked, reran that statement in her mind, examined it from all angles and shot him a furious glance of condemnation. ‘I’d know you were just feeling guilty about what you said yesterday and I wouldn’t believe you.’
The flight back to Spain seemed endless to her. An evening meal was served on board, but she had little appetite for it. When the limousine was ferrying them through the wooded countryside, she finally succumbed to the lure of watching Antonio. After all, there would be few if any such opportunities in her future, she reminded herself. Their marriage was finished. What reason did they have to be married now? She would pack and return to England with a cheery wave. The cheery wave, the show of happy indifference, was an essential. At least if she walked out with her head high, she would leave with her pride intact. Antonio, on the other hand, was looking very bleak. But then he had amazing tact and a real sense of occasion, she reflected. It would hardly be polite or considerate of him to sit there wreathed in smiles at the prospect of divorcing her and regaining his freedom.