A Night, A Consequence, A Vow

Ramon looked away, dragged his hand over his mouth and breathed in hard, his nostrils flaring. ‘Give me a minute,’ he said abruptly, and walked out of the room.

Emily stared after him, her breath locking in her chest as realisation struck and her stomach curled into a hard, familiar knot of resignation. Ramon was walking away, doing exactly what she’d expected him to do, exactly what she had known he would—so why was a silly sob pushing its way up her throat?

She slapped her hand over her mouth but she was too slow and the sob escaped, making a loud, choked, hiccupping sound. A humiliating sound.

Ramon appeared in the doorway, his brows clamped together. ‘Emily?’

She jerked her hand down. ‘Just go.’ Somehow she managed to inject some backbone into her voice. ‘I’m fine. I don’t need you to stay. This is my problem to deal with.’

He stood looking at her for a long moment, then he stalked across the room and her heart surged into her throat. He looked angry but, as he drew closer, the hard lines bracketing his mouth resembled determination more than fury. He stopped in front of her, lifted his hands and framed her face. The warm pressure of his palms against her cheeks made her pulse skitter. ‘I am not leaving,’ he said. ‘I am going downstairs to dismiss my driver and then I’m coming back here so we can talk.’

She stared at him in stunned silence.

‘Do you understand me, Emily?’

Her brain told her a simple ‘yes’ would suffice, but her throat suddenly felt too tight to speak. So she simply nodded. And then she sank onto the sofa, watched him leave and waited for him to return.

* * *

Ramon braced his palms on the wall outside Emily’s flat and sucked in one lungful of air after another.

He didn’t need to go downstairs. A simple text message to his driver had done the job. But he’d needed an excuse to grab a moment alone, to get a handle on himself—on the turbulent emotions storming through him.

Dios.

He wanted to run. To somewhere. To anywhere. As fast and as far away as his legs would carry him.

How the hell had this happened?

Stupid question. He knew how it had happened. He’d been reckless. Unthinking. And now he was the father of an unborn child.

Another unborn child.

Another innocent life to destroy.

His breath shuddered out of him. He wasn’t meant to be a father, or a husband. Husbands and fathers were supposed to protect the people close to them and Ramon had already failed that test on a spectacular scale. He kept people, his family included, at arm’s length for a good reason: to protect them from himself.

He swallowed hard and straightened, a grim sense of determination rising in him, pushing through the turmoil, calming both his thoughts and his breathing. It was the same determination that had seen him do his family and friends a favour by walking away from them twelve years ago, except this time Ramon wouldn’t be walking away. How could he? He’d been presented with an opportunity to protect his unborn child—an opportunity he’d been denied all those years ago. He’d barely processed Emily’s revelation, but he had enough clarity of mind to recognise that he was being given a rare second chance. A chance to do something right...this time.

He pulled out his phone, called Marsha and told her Emily had the flu and wouldn’t be back for at least two days.

When he re-entered the flat she was sitting on one end of the cream sofa where he’d left her. Her hands were clasped on her knees, her grey eyes big and unblinking. They grew even larger when she saw him as though, in spite of his assurances, she hadn’t truly believed until that moment that he’d return. That she’d assumed he would desert her filled him with too many emotions to examine. He removed his suit jacket and draped it over the back of an armchair.

‘It’s yours,’ she said.

He turned to her. ‘Pardon?’

‘The baby.’ Her fingers fiddled with the pearl around her neck. ‘It’s yours.’

He sat beside her, clasped her chin and forced her gaze up when she tried to look away. ‘I know.’

Her tongue came out to moisten her lips in a nervous gesture that he shouldn’t have found arousing in the circumstances—but he had lain in bed and thought about those lips on many nights during the past six weeks of self-imposed celibacy, and they were just as lush and pretty as he remembered.

He dropped his hand. ‘I’m sorry, Emily.’

‘What for?’

‘For the way I behaved in Paris. I wanted another night with you. When you refused, I didn’t like it,’ he confessed. ‘I was out of order.’