The Last Heir of Monterrato

Enough! She needed to stop this before her internal organs stalled in homage to his beauty. Or, worse still, betrayed her in some hideously embarrassing way. She couldn’t even blame it on the alcohol. Sticking firmly to water, she had had no more than a single sip when Rafael had offered her a taste of the local wine he had ordered. You could hardly get drunk on a sip of wine, now, could you? Other forces were obviously at play here—far more dangerous ones.

‘Can I ask you something?’ Putting his knife and fork together, Rafael took the napkin from his lap and touched it to his lips. Suddenly his deep brown eyes were focussed intently on her face.

‘Yes, of course.’ Lottie laughed nervously under his close scrutiny. ‘As long as it’s not whether I think I might be pregnant.’

Her flippant remark was met with a derisively raised dark brow.

‘Because I really have no idea...’ She tailed off, registering that this was not a subject he was prepared to be light-hearted about. ‘No more idea than you.’

‘I realise that.’ He rolled his shoulders back, his gaze never leaving Lottie’s face. ‘I know we have to wait for two weeks before we can do a pregnancy test. That prior to that there are unlikely to be any discernible manifestations. I know the form, Lottie. I haven’t forgotten that we’ve been here before.’

‘No, of course not.’

Discernible manifestations? How did he manage to make what they were doing sound so clinical, so detached? Because for him it was, Lottie reminded herself painfully.

‘But my question is related to that.’

‘Go on.’

‘Why, Lottie—just to clarify things for me—did you agree to bear me a child?’

Lottie gulped. This was typical of Rafael. Just when things were going peaceably he would lob in a grenade of a question to ruin things. She looked down, the escaping twists of her hair falling forward as she did so, brushing against her cheeks. Even the fish head on her plate looked as if it was waiting for an answer.

‘I don’t know, exactly.’ She raised her eyes again, immediately caught by the net of his gaze. ‘I suppose it was a combination of things.’

Rafael ran his hand down his jaw to his chin, leaving it there as he tilted his head to look at her.

‘Basically, I suppose you were right when you said you knew I had always wanted to be a mother. It’s most probably the maternal instinct in me that made me say yes—as simple as that.’

‘These things are never simple, Lottie.’

‘Well, perhaps I need to prove that I can be a good mother. A better mother than I had, at any rate.’ She smiled at him, not wanting this to get too heavy.

‘Well, from what I’ve heard that won’t be difficult. How is the lovely Greta?’ He raised his eyebrows at her.

‘She’s very well.’ Lottie gave a small laugh. ‘As far as I know she and Captain Birdseye are perfectly happy living the high life in Argentina.’

Rafael had never even met her mother. Their early relationship had been such a whirlwind, with Lottie getting pregnant just weeks after she and Rafael had first met, then their hastily arranged wedding and the move to Monterrato—all happening before Greta had managed to find the time to come over. Subsequent invitations had been politely declined because of the ‘considerable distance’ between them. Lottie could only agree with that—and she wasn’t just thinking about the thousands of miles across the Atlantic.

‘I think maybe she has finally found what she was looking for.’

‘Let’s hope so. And have you found what you were looking for?’ His gaze swept over her. ‘The baby, I mean?’

‘We don’t know there is a baby yet.’ Lottie lowered her eyes, carefully folding her napkin as she tried to inject some realism into the conversation. ‘But you falling out of the sky has certainly opened up the possibility, if nothing else. A faint smile touched his mouth.

‘So you should be thanking me, really?’

Lottie felt her shoulders drop a little. Could she detect the teeniest sign of a thaw?

‘If you like.’ She risked another smile, then felt ridiculously hurt when, instead of returning it, he abruptly looked away. ‘I suppose what I am saying is that I said yes to using our last embryo because I want this baby every bit as much as you do. Even if my reasons for wanting it are different.’

‘What do you mean by that?’

‘I mean that my motive is purely emotional—maternal, if you like. Whereas yours is sensible, practical. I know how important it is to you, to Monterrato, that you produce an heir. But that’s not why I said yes. I said yes because I want a baby of my own. Nothing more complicated than that.’