Duarte's Child

An impatient knock sounded on the door. ‘Emily…?’

She smiled, suppressing the pained regret roused by her most recent thoughts. She opened the door a chink. ‘Close your eyes…’

‘No. I want to see you,’ Duarte overruled. ‘I’ve waited long enough.’

She opened the door wide and let him look.

His brilliant eyes shimmered over her. ‘You look amazing. I was a selfish bastard two years ago—’

‘I don’t think you meant to be,’ Emily told him forgivingly.

‘That’s right, Emily. Encourage me to be like that again.’

‘What time do we have to be at the church for the blessing?’ she prompted.

‘We’ve got plenty of time—’

‘Why won’t you tell me what time?’

‘I have a couple of people waiting downstairs and we need to deal with them first.’ Duarte banded an arm to her spine as they reached the first landing.

‘What people?’

‘Had I had the option, I would’ve staged this weeks ago but I couldn’t track the guy down. He was hiking round South America.’

‘Who are you talking about?’ Emily frowned.

Dropping his hand to her waist, Duarte ushered her towards the salon. ‘Toby Jarrett.’

‘Toby?’ Emily gasped in pure horror. ‘I don’t want to see him again!’

However, a bigger shock awaited her within the salon. Not Toby, whom she was expecting, but Bliss. Bliss turned from the window with a saccharine smile that froze when she registered in visible bewilderment that Emily was wearing a wedding dress.

‘We won’t keep you long, Bliss,’ Duarte drawled. ‘To save us all a long trawl through murky waters, you could just confess to being a scheming, vindictive woman.’

Bliss blinked and stared at Duarte. ‘I beg your pardon?’

‘You weaseled your way into a fake friendship with my wife so that you could cause trouble. You never ever told me when Emily called the office and tried to speak to me. You also forgot to fill in my diary for the dinner parties—’

‘I don’t believe I’m hearing these terrible accusations,’ Bliss said in a mortified tone of reproach.

Emerging from her own shock that Duarte should even have made such very accurate accusations, Emily’s head turned as the door that connected with the dining room pushed open and framed Toby Jarrett. Emily’s face reddened fiercely. Tall and fair and lanky, Toby moved deeper into the room.

‘What are you doing here?’ Bliss demanded sharply.

‘I’m here to call your bluff,’ Toby sighed, his frank open features grim. ‘You offered me several thousand pounds to try and seduce Duarte’s wife last year. I was broke but even I wasn’t that low. I was quite happy to settle for the portrait commission—’

‘He’s telling outright lies!’ Bliss snapped. ‘Surely you don’t believe this rubbish, Duarte?’

‘Why should Toby lie?’ Emily murmured tightly, focusing on the blonde with shaken eyes of revulsion after what the younger man had revealed. ‘What has he got to gain from lying now?’

Duarte studied his executive assistant with chilling cool. ‘I cannot blame Emily for trusting you when I made the mistake. You’re sacked, Bliss—and, by the way, if you keep on telling people that I slept with you, I will take you to court for slander—’

‘And how are you ever going to prove that you didn’t?’ Bliss slammed back at him and she gave Emily a cold look of triumph. ‘You’re never going to know for sure, are you?’

‘I think the fact that you pulled the same stunt with your last employer would go a long way to vindicating me,’ Duarte remarked very quietly.

Stilling at that response, Bliss turned white and then she stared at her cousin in furious condemnation. ‘Toby?’

‘Sorry—but when you came out to Lisbon to work on the strength of a fake reference issued by one of my father’s friends, you promised that you were making a fresh start.’

‘You did something like this before?’ Emily demanded of Bliss.

‘Her last boss was married, too. She told a couple of people in confidence that they were lovers and got the rumour mill going,’ Toby explained ruefully. ‘Then she tried to blackmail him by threatening to lie to his wife as well. But he went to the police. Bliss got off with a police caution but only because she managed to convince a doctor that she had had a nervous breakdown.’

‘Were you planning to blackmail Duarte too?’ Emily asked the blonde in horror.

Bliss seemed oddly diminished in stature but her eyes were as hard as ever. Without troubling to respond—indeed, accepting that her every malicious act had been exposed—she just walked out of the room.