The Consequence He Must Claim

“I don’t intend to cheat on her,” Cesar had said that day in his office, referring to Diega. Had he viewed Sorcha as his last chance to enjoy his freedom?

“He wanted to come clean because you work for him,” Diega continued. “You’re not one of his passing fancies. He rightly felt he had to tell me and I admit I wasn’t prepared to start our engagement with you still in the picture. I insisted he end your employment as soon as possible, not keep you on until we married. I’ll have to live with the fact that I sent him away rather than letting him stay to talk things out. If he hadn’t been in such a rush to secure our engagement, he wouldn’t have been on the road that evening, trying to avoid that stalled truck...”

Sorcha shook her head. No. That was not what had happened. “He and I talked that day,” she said, not willing to accept this without a fight, but she stopped herself. Cesar’s confidences were exactly that. She never, ever repeated the things he told her.

“About his doubts? He was a bachelor with cold feet who wanted to persuade you to sleep with him! I wouldn’t give much weight to anything he said under those circumstances.”

Cold feet, yes, he’d definitely been suffering that, but there were other things. “The way you talk about your family. Our family is a business. I prefer it, but I sometimes wonder what it would be like to be close like that,” he’d said pensively.

His family’s negotiation to merge with the Fuentes family was very big business. Those sorts of deals weren’t dropped willy-nilly just so a man could sleep with his secretary, she knew that, but...

But he had asked her to stay.

“The kindest thing you could do,” Diega said, like she was offering step-by-step instructions on how a mistress should conduct herself after discovery by a wife, “would be to leave. I’ll speak to Javiero, ensure you’re written the best possible reference. Given Cesar’s condition, none of us wants a scandal. He’s facing a long, difficult recovery as it is. You don’t want to set him back, do you? I believe you do care for him.”

I’m pregnant, Sorcha thought as waves of hot and cold humiliation washed over her.

Was she really just the one that almost got away? She couldn’t believe it. He’d seemed so real that day. Not the playboy Diega was referring to, but the man capable of reflecting on his life and deciding who and what he really was.

“He doesn’t even remember it, Sorcha,” Diega said with soft compassion. “I’m grateful. I plan to forget it as completely as he has. And we will marry,” she added, as if making a resolution that would be engraved into platinum. “We all know what sort of life he leads and what sort of wife he needs.”

Sorcha stopped breathing, recalling that she had confided some of her background to Cesar that day. Had he mentioned any of that to Diega during their little heart-to-heart?

“I won’t claim he doesn’t value your work, but I hope you weren’t thinking he was in love with you?”

Sorcha looked at her nails, manicure neglected in these past stressful weeks, cuticles chewed with anxiety.

I’m pregnant, she thought again, but she could just imagine how that would play out: Cesar denying it was even possible, his parents thinking it was a ploy on her part to take advantage of his riches. Paternity tests. Delving into her background to discredit her.

She couldn’t do that to her mother.

Revealing her pregnancy would create bitterness all around and even if she could prove she was telling the truth, then what? Did she think he would marry her? Claim his child?

At best she might see a settlement, but she and her sisters were evidence that even when rich men made babies and appeared to love them, they didn’t always make provisions for them. That was the real source of her shame over her upbringing—that her father had left them with no indication they were as important to him as he’d led them to believe while he was alive. All the denigration in the village combined didn’t equal the rejection she’d felt when it became obvious her father had left them nothing.

Not even the ability to hold up their heads.

Her mother had maintained that he’d loved them, which had kept her going, but Sorcha didn’t even have such a declaration of love from Cesar.

He could very well have been using her. Ticking a final box.

Did she really want to put herself through all of that for a check in the mail once a month that would just make her feel like a whore? Her mother had managed without support payments and Sorcha would rather spare herself the humiliation of begging for scraps.

“You were planning to resign,” Diega said again. “Do. Before his father has to hear about this.” Because I’ll tell him, she seemed to threaten.