Chapter Six
Agustin handled Paulo first, gave him the directive to track down everything he knew about any women Felipe might have brought here, who might have then had a baby five months ago. He had some hope Mara might be able to get a name out of Senora Silva, but that was only a start.
The woman had abandoned her child. Perhaps Mara had been right in considering it might be a desperate situation, but Julia had been left with food and toys and books. She had been left in a planned manner.
It did not reek of desperation.
And somehow, this mystery woman had sneaked on and off a private island, undetected as far as he knew. She had to have some kind of resources in order to accomplish that.
Regardless, she needed to be found. If she wanted nothing to do with her daughter, there would need to be a legal proceeding.
And if she was Felipe’s…
Agustin did not really know. She would have to be claimed as a Delgado, of course, but the media frenzy would be worse than even with Felipe’s death. Perhaps getting a grandchild out of it would ease his mother’s fraying nerves, but what child deserved to grow up in a circus?
No, it could not come out that she was Felipe’s.
But first things first. He went in search of the doctor and found him with Mara in the bedroom with the crib. He had already begun his examination, so Agustin stood in the doorway, watching.
The doctor looked to be in better shape than the Silvas, despite their similar ages. He leaned over where Julia lay in the crib and listened to her heart and looked in her ears and mouth. Then he took a swab from her cheek with which to do the DNA test.
“Once I am back on the mainland, I should have results in the next forty-eight hours. If she is your brother’s, there should be a close enough match to you to determine this.
” The doctor put everything away with precise, adept movements.
“She is a healthy baby girl. A little on the small side, but this seems to be genetic rather than any lack of care. Everything you are doing for her is exactly that which should be done.”
Agustin could see the relief cross Mara’s features. He hadn’t realized she’d been so concerned.
“I will show you to your room, Dr. Cressaro,” Mara said, sounding every inch Agustin’s assistant. Even if today seemed to have blurred all sorts of strange lines.
“Stay with the baby,” Agustin told her. He wanted to talk with the doctor alone anyway. “You’ve both had a long day. Get some sleep. We will have much to accomplish tomorrow.”
Mara looked at him strangely but nodded. “Very well.”
Agustin led the doctor out of the bedroom and down the hall to the bedroom made up for the man. Because Agustin had sent Paulo off to find Julia’s mother, the doctor would have to wait for the plane to return to the island and take him back to the mainland in the morning.
But if the results came back in two days, surely that gave Paulo enough time to track down the mother. From there, Agustin could make all the necessary arrangements and still have his proposal in place for next week.
He’d likely need an even bigger distraction now, but he shook that worry away. One step at a time. Always.
“Doctor, would there be a discreet way to match DNA to the mother?” Agustin asked as he opened the bedroom door.
The doctor paused at the threshold of the room, a thoughtful frown on his face.
“It would be a risk. In this case, I do not need to give the identity of either sample to the testers. So they will know nothing about the two of you except how you relate to each other. Putting the baby’s DNA into a wider system would require some identifiable markers. ”
“Then we will wait and see what Paulo can find. Thank you, Doctor. The plane will be ready first thing in the morning to take you back to the mainland.”
The doctor nodded and closed the door, leaving Agustin in the hallway with whirling questions and plans and too much on his overloaded plate of responsibilities.
He took a moment to stand in the dark hallway and breathe. “Your exploits will not get the better of me,” he murmured, partially despairing of himself that he kept talking to his dead brother.
He seemed to talk to Felipe more now, like this, than he had when Felipe had been alive.
Felipe’s cheerful resistance to any of Agustin’s advice or interference had made it impossible to deal with his brother—not because they fought, but because Agustin could not stand to watch his brother make mistake after mistake.
Agustin shook his head and strode back downstairs. He’d do some work and clear his head before he decided how to deal with everything. He would not think about all the ways he’d failed his brother.
He remembered Ms. Valdez had been working in the front sitting room, so he went to that room, then stopped short when he flipped on the lights.
At some point, she had organized everything from his workbag and hers. Her things were set up on a small end table next to a comfortable chair. Closed laptop, charging. The planner notebook she liked to carry in case of tech emergencies, as she often said.
His laptop was set up on his desk, along with his charging center and a few other things from his bag.
He didn’t have a clue when Mara would have had a chance to do it—everything had taken such a back seat to the baby. But she never failed her duties. He, quite simply, did not know what he would have done without her this trip.
You are lucky I am the oldest of six. Had she been forced to take care of her five younger siblings?
She did not have the background or pedigree he normally hired from, but he had been impressed by the pulling-oneself-up-from-their-bootstraps nature of her professional experience. He had been impressed by her.
But he’d never wondered what such drive may have stemmed from. A large family from the poor area she was from. Likely she’d struggled and scrabbled and somehow ended up at the top of her profession.
He’d never wondered about her as a person. Never allowed himself to. But the past twenty-four-hours made it impossible to separate person from position.
It was impressive. She was impressive. After the Julia situation was situated, he would have to afford her a raise. She had no doubt earned it.
Thinking about that kept him from thinking too much about her as a person, with feelings and dreams and a life outside his orbit.
He did some work to try to distract himself—but because his assistant was so good at her job, she had truly cleared his schedule for the next few days with the thought he’d focus on the proposal. On the countess.
Instead, there was a baby to contend with. But there was nothing to be done about that until Paulo and Dr. Cressaro offered him some initial answers. So he might as well go to bed.
By the time he made it back to his bedroom, it was late.
He did not see any lights on under the door to Mara’s bedroom as he approached.
No sounds of a fussy baby made it out into the hallway.
He might have been satisfied with that, but as he entered the room he was to stay in, he was confronted with the reality of his little plan.
His assistant was sleeping in the bedroom attached to his. If he went into that bathroom to shower and prepare for bed, she would be on the other side of the door in there.
Strangely…intimate. But there were plenty of strange intimacies between boss and assistant. This was not new, he tried to remind himself. Just different.
Still, he prepared for bed in an abbreviated and quicker manner than usual. But once he was done, standing in the bathroom, he could hear the faint sound of crying. The walls and door were thick, so it muffled most of it, but he could certainly make out crying.
He stared at the door now, wondering if he should…do something. Perhaps something was wrong. Perhaps Mara needed help.
Perhaps he could not stand the sound of the baby in distress.
He eased the door open. The baby was still whimpering, but the soft sound of singing was predominant now. In a sweet, quiet tone, Mara was singing an old lullaby he could remember a nanny singing to Felipe when he’d been young and suffering his nightmares.
There was something oddly poignant about that, if Julia was indeed Felipe’s. But Agustin found any emotional response he had to it immediately shuttered to a stop as Mara came into view.
She stood in a little shaft of moonlight coming in through the stained-glass window, swaying back and forth with the baby in her arms. Her hair was down, a riot of dark curls. She wore pajamas—brief shorts that allowed a view of long, bare legs.
He’d seen her legs before. She often wore trim, business-appropriate skirts and high heels. It was not new, except he could now see the golden expanse above her knee. All the way up to mid-thigh. And she was barefoot. He had certainly never seen his assistant without shoes and stockings on.
The bolt of lust was absolutely out of place and unwelcome.
He would blame…stress. The fact that his entire original plan had been thwarted: a marriage proposal, the planning of a wedding that would take the press by storm.
Because he needed a story. Not his brother’s scandals but a distraction from them.
And at the moment, he was finding himself distracted. By his assistant’s flimsy pajamas and riot of dark hair.
She turned slightly, like she was moving the baby toward the crib, but she must have seen him lurking in the shadows. She let out a strangled kind of noise, not quite a scream, but loud enough to wake up Julia. The baby jerked in Mara’s arms and then began to wail.
Mara murmured sweet soothing words, bouncing Julia gently trying to calm her, but the shock of being awoken had upset the baby too much.
Agustin could not stand the sound of it—either of them, Mara desperately trying to soothe, Julia being inconsolable. He strode over to Mara and gave a quiet but direct order. “Give her to me.”