Confessions of a Pregnant Cinderella

Skye felt defensive. ‘In a perfectly nice basement apartment in Dublin.’

She felt guilty when she thought of the mould on the damp walls of her bedroom. And the malfunctioning gas cooker. And the fact that her area turned into a kind of war zone at night. But she was fine. They knew her face so they left her alone.

Lazaro made a sound as if he could read her thoughts. ‘If you’re working as a waitress then I know what kind of place and area you can afford, and I don’t want the mother of my child putting herself or my child at risk.’

Skye’s hand automatically went to her belly. ‘I would never do that.’

She had to admit to herself, though, that she had had misgivings about how she would cope on her tiny salary and in a cold and damp apartment.

He took her bag and coat out of her hands before she could stop him. ‘You’ll stay here this evening and tomorrow we’ll go to see my physician and confirm your pregnancy. Then we’ll have another discussion.’

Anger and a feeling of impotency made Skye say, ‘You can’t just upend my life like this. I have a job. A home. A life.’

He arched a brow. ‘I can’t upend your life? Like you just upended mine?’

CHAPTER THREE

SKYE HAD HAD no answer to Lazaro’s killer response. It had shut down her anger and her justification for leaving because she had done that. She had come here and created this situation and now she had to deal with it.

So she’d agreed to stay. For now.

He’d shown her into a huge bedroom and said, ‘Make yourself comfortable.’

For a while she was too afraid to move in case she left a mark on the pristine carpet, which felt like walking on a cloud, or the silk upholstery of the furniture. Everything was in tones of white and light grey. Sleek and modern lines. Elegant and classic.

She looked at the huge bed warily, but eventually the feeling of grime on her skin got to her and she realised she couldn’t risk getting the sheets dirty.

She went into the bathroom and gasped. It was almost as big as the bedroom. With a slate wet room shower and bathtub big enough for a dozen people. Two sinks. Its soft lighting was very kind to her, making her look less washed out than she felt. But she knew it was just an illusion.

She stripped off and stepped under the shower, almost groaning out loud as the powerful jets of warm water pummelled her skin. Her hair usually took an age to dry, but she couldn’t resist the urge to clean that too, massaging her scalp with the most delicious-smelling shampoo.

Afterwards she went back into the bedroom with a towel wrapped around her head and a voluminous terry cloth robe dwarfing her body. She was tired, but too restless to sleep after everything that had happened, so she curled up in a large armchair and looked out over the view of Madrid under a starry sky.

She wondered if Lazaro was devastated by losing his fiancée. He hadn’t seemed too upset about it. But then he’d said their marriage hadn’t been based on love. He appeared to have an aversion even to the notion of love.

And she hated to admit that a small part of her had been relieved to hear that his relationship with his fiancée hadn’t been a love match.

The night she’d spent with Lazaro had been so...cataclysmic. It had touched Skye emotionally far more than she liked to admit. The morning after she’d wanted to stay more than anything. But she’d known it would only be prolonging the inevitable. Even before she’d known the extent of who he was she had known that Lazaro Sanchez wasn’t a man who struck up a relationship with a waitress after a one-night stand. It might have gone into a two-night stand, but that would have been it.

Anxiety knotted her belly and she had to consciously breathe in and out to unravel the tension. Her mother’s voice came into her head. ‘We’re human beings, Skye, not human doings. All you can do is focus on the present moment. Nothing else exists.’

Her mother would always smile radiantly at that, and her New Age pronouncement would usually be followed by one of her customary spur-of-the moment decisions to move city/country/job. Basically, as soon as somewhere had just started to feel like home they’d moved.

But in one way she was right. Skye couldn’t do much right now but submit to Lazaro Sanchez’s decree. He was the father of her baby. Even if he didn’t believe her.

He could have thrown you out on her ear and refused to listen to you, an inner voice p

ointed out.

Okay, so she hadn’t exactly given him much choice, but it had been her only option. And, even though she wished there had been some more discreet way of doing things, she didn’t regret informing him that he was going to become a father.

She’d never had the chance to know her own father. It was the one thing her mother had always been uptight about—Skye’s father’s identity. She’d eventually revealed the truth that she wasn’t sure who her father was. She’d been at a party...there had been two guys...she didn’t even remember their names...

Skye’s mother had actually come from a very wealthy background, but she’d been rebellious and artistic. Her family had cut her off after news of her pregnancy had emerged, and that was when she’d taken up the life of a hippy nomad. Her pride had refused to let her contact her family again. Pride and—as Skye had realised over the years—immense hurt that she’d been rejected by them.

Family. Skye sighed deeply. She had a very jaundiced view of family, considering the way her mother’s had treated her, and yet that had never stopped her dreaming about a family of her own. A family that was rooted in one place. Secure. Stable.

When she’d found out she was pregnant, as much as the timing was seriously off, she’d felt a huge urge to nest. Put down roots. And telling Lazaro Sanchez about his child had been a part of that. She wanted to be settled when she had this baby, and to have some kind of communication with Lazaro so that her child would grow up knowing where it was from and who its parents were.