Chapter Nine
Agustin did not believe things could go back to normal, but the next day Mara made an exceptional effort. She was all business, dressed in one of her trim business skirts and sensible low heels. He wasn’t sure he’d ever seen her hair so tightly braided back and away from her face.
He had no right to be irritated. No right to be anything but grateful.
She was doing exactly what needed to be done.
Last night was as much of a one-off as anything could possibly be.
Acknowledging it in any way would do neither of them any good.
It was best packed away, ignored and avoided.
Not his usual way of dealing with things, but some delicate situations required distance and not being looked at directly.
Like his family. He tended to keep them just out of reach. Out of sight.
Because you care about them.
Right, so not like that. More something to be avoided for protection. Like bears and rabid dogs and sex with his assistant.
So he told himself. And all the while he went through the entire day in a state of utter distraction. He thought of nothing but her in his bed. He thought of nothing but her.
When Paulo called for his daily check-in and brought absolutely no new information to the table, Agustin lost his fraying grip on control. “What the hell am I paying you for then?”
The line was very quiet.
When Paulo spoke, it was stiffly. He was a man used to working for people, but he was also an investigator, a former police officer. He didn’t take disrespect well.
Then maybe he should do his job.
“Mr. Delgado. You have given me little to nothing to go on. There is no record of travel to or from the island, and no record of a child being born that fits the parameters. I am searching for a needle in a haystack.”
“So expand the parameters. The needle must be found.” If he was to pass off Julia as his own, the mother must be monitored.
Paulo was mounting some kind of excuse, but Agustin ended the call before he listened to any of it.
Nothing could be official until Julia’s mother signed away her rights to the child. Something she would no doubt do considering she’d abandoned Julia. But he could leave no loose ends here. He had to have every legal proof and every careful surety that Julia would be his.
Always.
“You have truly bedeviled my life in your absence,” he muttered at his dead brother. Which only brought his thoughts back to Mara and the times he’d come across her talking aloud—not to her ghosts, but to herself.
He had no idea why he found that endearing, like her fear of turbulence. Only there was something comforting about the way his perfect, always on-top-of-things assistant might have a few foibles underneath.
As if thinking about her conjured her, she appeared at the doorway to the sitting room.
Her posture rigid, her hands clasped in front of her, she stopped in the doorway.
She did not cross the threshold. He knew this was purposeful and about last night, even if they both ignored the unusual amount of physical distance.
“We are going to try to feed Julia some solids,” she told him. “I did not know if this is the type of milestone you’d be interested in witnessing.” She spoke formally, like she did at the office, which was only unusual because she didn’t usually hide the warmth in her voice when she spoke of Julia.
But it couldn’t matter. “Is this kind of thing truly a milestone?”
“It is. And she seems ready. Senora Silva has pureed some pears. We can handle it, if you’d prefer, but…”
But she is yours.
The truth of it hung heavy in the air. He had no regrets on that score. An innocent baby was not something to be regretted, especially when it meant in some way his reckless, feckless brother lived on.
He sighed and pushed to his feet. “Very well.”
She gave a sharp nod and then turned, retreating to the hall. He should let her hurry off to the kitchen. He’d meet her there. Distance was the name of the game. It was necessary, and Agustin Delgado always did what was necessary.
Until her, and how her perfume seemed to linger in the air even as she left the threshold of the room. “Mara.”
She paused a few steps down the hall. Her posture was straight. Everything about her rigid. Bracing herself for something. And he found he did not want to be the force she braced herself from.
“I have been thinking about the countess.”
She turned, blinking at him in surprise. “What about her?”
“Before I inform her of Julia’s existence, I will need to ensure a few things.
I think instead of her coming here, I should go to her next week.
Discuss some things, including an NDA, before she comes here and learns of Julia.
I believe she will be discreet, but I need to ensure it. Probably on her own turf.”
Mara nodded slowly. “This is…smart. I can make the arrangements with the countess and for your travel, but what of Julia?”
“I would like it if you could stay here and watch her. I would also like to put off my return to the office until all this is settled. I trust that I can rely on you to make that happen.”
She stared at him, with some confusion, but she didn’t voice it. And she didn’t move when he took a few steps closer. Her breath caught, color creeping into her cheeks.
Not so unaffected. Not so capable of putting last night behind them.
When she spoke, her voice was rusty. “I’ll handle everything, of course.”
For two years, she had been under his nose. That fragrance, the stray curl against her forehead, the mouthwatering body he now knew every inch of.
He had pushed it away for two years. If anyone had asked him a few weeks ago if he found her attractive, he would have had to stop and think about it.
And now he couldn’t stop thinking about it.
He reached out—had to. It was a need, not a want. It was imperative. She was imperative. There was no other way around it.
But she’d moved out of the way, like she’d seen it coming, so he touched nothing. Just air as she made her way down the hall toward the kitchens.
Gracias a Dios.
Mara had been forced to leave the kitchen. She could not watch Agustin lift the spoon to Julia’s eager mouth. She could not listen to the rumble of his laughter when the baby made funny faces, then eagerly went back for the next spoonful.
She could not do this.
So she would focus on work. She told herself this again and again as she walked through the castle, wiping at stray tears and trying to find some semblance of control.
She was a mess, and no amount of trying to find her inner sense of practicality and responsibility seemed able to change that.
She made it to the sitting room, determined to focus on work. She needed to contact the countess’s people, make new travel arrangements for Mr. Delgado. She needed to do her job. But if she did everything she was supposed to…
Would she be chased away from a job that she had worked so hard for? Would her emotions ruin everything she’d spent her entire life striving for? Stability. Being needed.
He would marry the countess. Together they would raise Julia. They would be perfect and lovely and rich.
And what would Mara do? Stand to the side and be his perfect, invaluable assistant knowing that she wished to be in the countess’s shoes. Mothering Julia. Married to him.
“You are such an absolute fool,” she muttered aloud.
She hated that this all made her feel like she was a child again, so confused as to why her father wouldn’t come home. Abandoned by him, blamed by her poor, overworked mother.
Maybe she hadn’t done anything wrong then, maybe she could look back and accept that an adult’s choices didn’t always reflect a child’s needs.
But she had done something wrong now. She had fallen in love with a little baby who could never be hers. And she had fallen into something far more complex than simple love with her boss, who could only ever be that.
How could she stand under the weight of all this feeling? She needed this job, loved this job, and yet how could she go on like this?
She didn’t think it was possible.
He wasn’t the only CEO in the world. He wasn’t the only rich man who needed a resourceful woman to schedule and arrange his life.
No, this time she would apply only to women. Or maybe she would be one of those people who bounced from job to job. A new company every year. She could go to London or Paris or the States.
Maybe the real answer was that all the stability she’d carved out for herself, all the ways she’d made herself needed, were actually the opposite of what she should be doing. Maybe she needed to be the kind of flighty, inconsequential nothing that didn’t matter to anyone.
She stared at the desk she’d set up for him. Her own little chair and end table situation. This perfect little life she’d built. Then ruined, all because he’d touched her. All because she’d so desperately wanted to be touched.
She took a seat in the comfortable armchair she’d been working out of and burst into tears.
And once she was done crying, she pulled out her laptop and got to work.