Chapter Two
“Why on earth is there a baby left on my porch?” Agustin thundered. He did not have time for whatever…nonsense this was. How had someone breached the gates? Who would leave a baby unattended on a castle’s steps? And for God’s sake, why? He had things to do, not babies to deal with.
“You will call the police at once,” he ordered.
“Yes, of course,” Ms. Valdez agreed and didn’t point out that there were no police on this tiny private island.
They would have to contact the mainland.
“But there’s a note pinned to the carrier’s interior.
” She was still crouched down, reaching for something inside the carrier.
The fabric of her skirt stretched against the awkward position.
A rather unfortunate view, which he did his level best to ignore. He did not ogle his assistants.
After a few moments, she straightened. Her back to him. Her shoulders were very…stiff.
“Well?” he demanded.
Hefting the carrier with one arm, she came toward him, holding out the note to him with the other. He did not like the expression on her face. It was too soft. The kind of soft he’d only seen from her since Felipe had died.
He hated it, because it tended to remind him they were both people. That no matter how he organized and arranged his life to suit him, to keep himself out of reach, there were always people like Felipe and the unknown specter of death just…waiting in the wings.
He did not want to take the note she held out to him, certainly didn’t want to read it, but Ms. Valdez stood there, patiently waiting for him to take it, soft eyes on his.
He sighed and took the piece of paper. It was a few lines written in small, neat penmanship. But those lines certainly changed everything.
Without Felipe, we are nothing. Take good care of our Julia. I cannot.
Felipe. How had Agustin known that whatever problem this was had come from his brother? Even beyond the grave Felipe was a menace.
“I’ll call the police as you suggested,” Ms. Valdez said quietly. “They’ll get it sorted. Perhaps find the mother and—”
“No. No.” He reached out and grabbed her free arm so that she could not reach for her phone.
That would get out. There was no way to control the police—who they’d talk to, what they’d tell people.
“We will need to handle this ourselves. Contact Paulo.” His head of security could handle finding the mother quietly.
He was the only one Agustin could trust.
And even then…
No, he could trust Paulo. He had to. He looked down at the carrier. A kind of canopy shielded his view of the child’s face, but he could see tiny little feet in pink socks. Impossibly tiny. Just…impossible.
Ms. Valdez looked down at his hand on her arm rather pointedly. Right. He needed to let her go if she was going to make a call. He uncurled his hand and stepped back.
“Let’s go inside. We don’t know how long she’s been out here.” Ms. Valdez looked around the grounds. “Is it possible whoever left her is still here?”
“Unless the person is hiding in the castle, and whatever transportation brought them here left them, they are nowhere. We were the only plane on the strip, and the only boat in the port was my own. It is nearly impossible…” Agustin trailed off.
All of this should be impossible, but the baby was here somehow.
“Here. You carry her.” Ms. Valdez handed off the carrier, and he had no choice but to take the handle she shoved at him. It was then he noticed there was a rather large bag that had been on the stairs next to the carrier.
Ms. Valdez hefted it onto her shoulder and then began to march up the stairs, her heels clicking against the ancient stone some ancestor or another had placed what felt like a million years ago. She walked up to the door like she’d been here a million times when she had never been here before.
A noise sounded from below. Agustin looked down. The tiny pink socks were moving. Nothing could have prompted him to follow Ms. Valdez faster.
She was struggling with the heavy wooden door that had been left unlocked at his instruction, so he moved to help. He easily pulled the door open with one arm.
She looked up at him, a strange expression on her face. One he didn’t recognize—except he’d seen it on the plane, too, when he’d brought her water. Perhaps it was a discomfort with him offering to help.
Which was offensive, he decided. He was not above helping a person who needed it, in the right circumstance.
He did not look down at the tiny pink socks at that moment. He nudged Mara inside, then let the door close behind them.
She was already striding forward, opening the zipper of the bag and surveying its contents. “I will go find Senor Silva. I don’t suppose the castle has some kind of nursery?”
“How should I know?”
She sighed. “Very well. I’ll be back.”
Panic spurted through him. He held out the carrier. “You cannot just leave me alone with it.”
She turned, all stern disapproval. “Agustin.” She almost never called him by his first name. It was rarely appropriate. But the scolding in her tone seemed to fit her now. “The baby is not an it. Her name is Julia, according to the note.”
“Fine. Do not leave me alone with Julia,” Agustin gritted out. “I do not know what to do with a baby.”
She fisted her hands on her hips and glared at him. “And do you expect me to just because I am a woman?”
He hadn’t given any thought to her gender. He just knew he didn’t know anything about babies, and he certainly wanted nothing to do with whatever new mess his brother had left him.
Which meant Mara needed to take care of it.
She sighed heavily as the baby began to cry. “You are lucky I am the oldest of six,” she muttered, stalking over to him. She took the carrier out of his grasp, then carefully placed it on the ground before giving him a nudge out of the way.
He stared at her back as she began to unfasten the crying baby from the carrier. Oldest of six. What an odd detail about her life. Odd to even think of her beyond the function she served in his life.
Sure, he had on occasion wondered about what she might do in her rare moments of free time.
Usually fleeting thoughts about what she might entertain herself with.
On occasion, he’d found himself wondering if she took up the men who invariably flirted with her on their invitations, and then usually gave her more tasks to do so she did not have time to be distracted by men.
But he had never considered her as a person with a childhood, with a family. That she might have cared for siblings. That she might have her own version of Felipe running around, making her life more difficult.
She murmured soothing words at the baby, lifting her out of the carrier and then straightening, balancing the baby on her chest. She bounced with seeming ease, patting the baby’s back.
It all looked so natural for her, and it sent a riot of too many sensations through him. There was something primally alluring about a beautiful woman holding a tiny child.
Ridiculous. He refused to engage with that. But if he didn’t, then he’d have to think about the fact that the child in her arms might be some…part of his dead brother.
No. He shook that one away. He couldn’t deal with that until he knew for sure. This could all be some horrible scam. He wouldn’t fall for it.
“We will need a crib, at the very least,” Mara said. “There are some supplies in this bag, but we’ll need more. Go find Senor Silva so we can determine what we need.”
She was…ordering him around. Something he would have refused in any other situation. But the baby with the big brown eyes the same shade of Felipe’s was staring at him.
He’d much rather take an order than deal with that.
It had been a long while since Mara had taken care of a baby, but some things came back like second nature. And when the baby immediately quieted and buried her forehead into Mara’s shoulder, Mara softened in spite of the stress of the situation.
“You poor thing,” Mara murmured, rubbing the baby’s back while Agustin strode away in search of Senor Silva.
To be left alone. Defenseless. If Mara let herself think of it too much, she would cry, and that wouldn’t do.
The baby couldn’t have been on that porch too long.
Her diaper was dry, and she wasn’t crying in any kind of hungered distress.
Mara couldn’t let herself think beyond that—about what might have prompted someone to abandon a baby on an isolated staircase.
If she let out the emotions lurking deep inside of her, she wouldn’t be able to focus on what needed to be done.
Luckily, Mara was an expert at pushing down her own feelings to take care of a child. And there was so much that needed to be done if they were going to care for this baby until Paulo could sort this mess out.
Paulo. She hadn’t even had a chance to call Mr. Delgado’s personal head of security yet. She needed to get her head on straight.
“I need a list, Julia,” she murmured at the baby. She adjusted her hold so she could pull her phone out of her pocket and began to type out a to-do list in her notes.
Once Mr. Delgado returned, she would call Paulo and make travel arrangements, as he would need to come at once.
She could likely get him here by this evening, but they probably wouldn’t have answers that quickly, which meant there would need to be some baby items brought to the castle to make Julia more comfortable.
When Julia began to fuss a little, Mara paced, typing everything she could think of that the baby would need.
She looked around the cavernous entryway. It would be beautiful with some softening touches, but in the moment, it felt a little cold and impersonal and not the best place for a baby. They’d need something before…
The countess. Mara looked down at the baby. What were they going to do about the countess? The proposal?
“You are quite the adorable wrinkle, muneca. But you needn’t worry about that. I will solve everything.” She added the countess to her list, not sure how they’d deal with that just yet. But it had to be dealt with.
When Mr. Delgado finally returned, he was alone. But he paused and looked behind him, and after a moment or so, a man dressed in severe black appeared, using a cane.
Yes, Senor Silva was about as elderly as she’d expected.
“He saw and heard nothing,” Agustin said, crossing the large entry room to her. There was disgust in his voice, but not at the old man, just at the situation. “There should be no way for anyone to get through the gates without the access code.”
“Perhaps Felipe shared the access code,” Mara suggested.
“Felipe never came here.”
Mara lifted an eyebrow at him. Sometimes she couldn’t help using his own tricks against him. “Did you keep tabs on everywhere your brother went?”
She could tell he did not when he got very stiff and did not answer her question. She didn’t gloat, though. There was too much to do.
“She will need to be checked out by a doctor.”
“No.”
“Agustin, she is a baby.” She really needed to stop calling him by his first name, but it slipped out sometimes when she was tired and particularly frustrated with him for making an already stressful situation impossible.
This certainly took the cake on that score.
“We don’t know anything about how long she was kept outside.
” Mara began to rummage in the bag for the formula and bottle she’d seen.
Julia was starting to make little frustrated noises that made Mara think she might be hungry.
She didn’t know how old the baby was, but she didn’t seem quite big enough for solids yet.
“I realize you want to be careful about media attention, but we can hardly let her suffer for it. She is a human being. She is your brother’s—”
“A note does not make paternity so.”
Mara narrowly resisted scowling at him. “Perhaps not, but if we are not involving authorities, she is our responsibility until you decide how you wish to proceed. She is a defenseless baby. If we are to take the day to sort it out while we wait for Paulo—who I still need to contact by the way—she will need somewhere to sleep. A crib or bassinette of some sort. If there are none here, I will need to go back to the mainland and purchase something.”
“Why can she not sleep in that?” Agustin demanded, gesturing at the carrier.
There was no point explaining it to him.
“Because she cannot. Now, here are your choices. One, I go back to the mainland, and you watch after the baby—there is no car seat so I can hardly take her with me to the airstrip. Two, you go to the mainland and buy everything needed for a baby. Good luck keeping everything on the down-low if you’re out shopping for cribs.
Third, you send Senor Silva to get everything.
” She gestured to the old man who was currently leaning on his cane, dozing. “Which do you choose?”
She had never seen Mr. Delgado speechless. He always knew just what to do. Even when the news of Felipe’s accident had reached them, he’d jumped into action. In this moment, he stared at her, mouth slightly agape. Eyes wide. Clearly lost.
She almost felt sorry for him. But he needed to accept the situation he found himself in. This wasn’t just some random baby.
“What if she is Felipe’s? Wouldn’t you take her in? She’d be your niece. Your mother’s granddaughter. She’d be a Delgado. Would you really turn her away?”