Chapter Seven
Beatrix
My stomach is tying itself in knots as we come in to land in Paris, the setting sun giving the City of Lights a beautiful, warm pink and gold glow. The trip from Spain, which included a short stop for refuelling, has been silent.
Santiago is sitting next to me, working on his laptop with furious concentration.
I’ve been trying my best to ignore him, staring out of the window at the country below us instead and pretending he’s someone else. Anyone else. But, of course, it’s impossible to pretend he’s anyone other than who he is, and I hate it.
I hate how he takes up all the room in the helicopter, not to mention all the air, simply by existing. His intense, kinetic presence makes me feel as if I’m sharing space with a live wire that sparks and crackles, electrocuting everything it comes into contact with.
He’s electrocuting me by sitting so close, the seats positioned side by side with no space between them.
The trip has taken a couple of hours, which has made me hyper-aware of him.
Of the way his powerful body fills the seat, his long legs outstretched.
Of his long, blunt fingers and how they move on the laptop keys, fast and light.
Of his scent and how it makes my mouth water, and me wonder how a scent so warm can match a man so apparently cold, hard and arrogant.
Except, while he might be hard and arrogant, he’s certainly not cold and I know that all too well.
He proved exactly how hot he was four months ago in the church, and now that knowledge has imprinted itself on my brain.
He was a volcano, a fever, a desert sun, burning and burning, and setting me alight with him. I hate him for that.
I hate that I couldn’t pretend I didn’t want him.
I hate that I made that promise to him.
When he offered his ‘services’ in my bed, at first I couldn’t believe his audacity. I don’t have any issue with sex workers, but I’m not one and his casual assumption that I was at first shocked me, then enraged me. And then to assume that I’d as easily sleep with him as his father…
Not that I have any right to be enraged about that, when of course I did sleep with him—or, rather, I had sex with him, which is the whole reason I’m in this mess to start with.
The worst part of that scene back at the hacienda, though, was that I still wanted him and couldn’t hide it from him.
When he touched me I should have pulled away, but I didn’t.
It was as if his hand gripping my jaw kept me pinned, even though there was no strength in it.
That and the look in his obsidian eyes…so much heat and hunger.
My skin went tight the moment he touched me, every part of my body aching. It wanted him and couldn’t see anything wrong with his offer, but there was no way I could accept it, no matter what my body thought.
Sleeping with him again would be yet another mistake and I’ve made so many already. I don’t want to get the paternity test he demanded, either, for fear of him taking the child away from me once he knows the results. And I certainly didn’t want to go to Paris with him.
Sadly for me, he’s been inexplicably adamant about the test, and then he countered my demand for his word that he’d let me keep the baby with a demand of his own: if I wanted to stay with my child, I would have to be in his bed.
A shiver works its way through me at the thought, and I have a horrible feeling that it’s not fear but anticipation.
He wants me, he’s made no secret of it, and the needy part of me loves that he does, even if he quite clearly hates that he does.
That part of me wants to be in his bed, wants his touch, wants him inside me, because it’s desperate for the pleasure he can give me.
It’s been starved of it for too long, and that moment in the church alcove wasn’t enough, not nearly enough.
I shouldn’t have agreed to promise him my body, but I couldn’t see a way out of the trap he’d laid.
Sure, tell yourself he forced you into a corner. If you truly hadn’t wanted him, you wouldn’t have said yes.
I stare sightlessly out of the helicopter as we fly over the city, the truth settling down inside me.
I might have lied to him, but I can’t lie to myself.
I do want him. When he made me the same offer eighteen months ago, even though I refused, I couldn’t stop thinking about what it would have been like if I’d said yes.
If I’d been with him instead of his father.
You know what it would have been like.
I do. It would have been incredible and that’s what I was afraid of. Even now, the thought of being in his bed, of getting another chance with him, thrills me down to the bone. And I hate that too.
He shifts in the seat beside me, settling back, his elbow on the armrest close to mine. His attention is on his laptop screen, focused and intent, his black brows drawn together.
I don’t know why he wants this baby so badly. I don’t know much about him at all, in fact, and that was deliberate on my part. After that night at the fundraiser, when I saw him at the bar, I knew he would be my ruin, and ever since then I’ve avoided the temptation of finding out more about him.
Antonio had nothing but venom to spit when he talked about him, calling his son ‘difficult’ and ‘cold’ and a ‘traitor’. He’d tell me that Santiago had his mother’s ‘emotional weaknesses’, though he didn’t go into details and I didn’t ask. I didn’t want to know and I still don’t.
But…maybe I should know. Maybe I should find out more about him, especially since he’s the father of my baby, and will be in my future one way or another.
I do know one thing though: if he’s as full of hate with our child as he is with me, I won’t stand for it.
I just won’t. I want our child to be loved and wanted, because I know what it means to be unloved and unwanted. I know it all too well.
After years of being bounced from one foster family to another, I was placed with that wonderful family, along with another girl.
I was thirteen and she was ten. Our foster parents were amazing, were everything we both wanted, warm and loving and patient.
They made me feel, for the first time in my life, as if I had value, as if I had finally found a home.
At least they did until they adopted the ten-year-old, Lisa, and not me.
I was placed with another family, while Lisa got to stay with them.
There were no explanations given for why they didn’t want me.
I was left to work out what went wrong on my own, but I was never able to figure out a reason.
Was I too angry? Too disobedient? Too stubborn?
Or was it that I was too needy? Too clingy? Too old?
No one ever said, and I never got another chance at adoption again.
After I’d aged out of the system, I was left on my own.
I’ve been on my own ever since, but I’ve come to terms with that.
Being alone is safer anyway, because when it comes down to it, the only person you can ever rely on is yourself.
Other people will let you down if given half a chance, so I make sure to never give them a chance.
You’re giving him a chance by trusting him not to take the baby away.
I don’t trust him. I trust his word, that’s all. And if he betrays that trust? I’ll fight him with everything I have.
The helicopter lands on a helipad in the inner city, and from there Santiago whisks me into a car that takes us through Paris’s ancient, winding streets.
Fifteen minutes later the car turns into the gated courtyard of a magnificent old mansion with a walled garden.
Once we’re parked we get out, and Santiago ushers me into the house.
It’s breathtakingly beautiful inside. The golden-brown parquet floors have been worn by the constant tread of people over hundreds of years, and there’s a beautiful staircase that curves elegantly up to the second floor.
Chandeliers sparkle with light from the setting sun, casting glitters of pink and gold along the white walls, the same colours echoing in the silken rugs that cover the floors.
Santiago leaves me in the care of a housekeeper, whom he introduces as Helene, who then shows me into a pretty sitting room that looks over the garden outside.
It’s so peaceful-looking, you’d never know you were in the middle of a city.
There are pots full of flowers and herbs, and green lawns and hedges, plus an elegant pond with a fountain, as well as a couple of large oaks.
The sitting room itself has white walls, with gilded moulding around the doors and windows.
The furniture, too, is delicate and white, with pops of gilt and gold in the cushions scattered on the sofa and window seat.
It feels almost feminine and a strange decor choice for a man like Santiago, who is so very… masculine in all ways.
After a moment or two of looking around, I sit down on the cushioned and very pleasant window seat and prepare myself. I’m going to need every ounce of will I possess to face what’s to come, both from the results of this test and from my promise to him.
A shiver whispers over my skin, my body already softening at the thought of being in his bed, the ache between my legs deepening.
It’s been four months since those frantic moments with him in the church, and, as much as I’m loath to admit it to myself, I’ve been dreaming about them.
Thinking about them. Going over and over them as I lie in my lonely bed at night, and it is lonely.
Antonio and I slept in separate beds, because he had health issues that required him getting up in the middle of the night, and he didn’t want to disturb me.
I was more than happy with that, since I didn’t want to be disturbed either.
I never felt lonely in my bed before Santiago, but I felt it in those months after Antonio’s funeral, and it galls me that, even now, all I can think about is him.
Perhaps he’s right, though. Perhaps a physical affair with him is what we need to finally get each other out of our systems.
And then where will you be?
I push the thought away. I can’t think about that now.
What I have to get through first is him finding out that he really is the father of my baby, and what demands he’ll make of me.
Because if there’s one thing I do know about Santiago Veracruz, it’s that he will make demands.
In which case I need to have a response ready.
I’ve only been sitting here for five minutes when the door opens and Santiago strides in, followed by another man carrying a small medical bag.
I steel myself, my hands gripped tightly together in my lap.
Santiago’s black gaze finds mine instantly. ‘This is Dr Dubois,’ he says, gesturing at the man. ‘He’s already done a cheek swab for me. Now it’s your turn to provide a blood sample.’
I nod, giving the doctor a polite smile as he comes over to the window seat and takes some equipment from his bag. Within a few minutes he takes a sample of my blood, and once that’s done he says something in French to Santiago, who nods. Then the doctor leaves the room.
‘The results will be available in a couple of hours.’ Santiago’s black stare pins me to the window seat. ‘I have my own lab and assistants, naturally.’
Of course he does. Not that I’d expect anything less.
Once again, though, the room feels too small with him in it and more than anything it’s making me want to escape.
To run out of the door and lose myself in the streets of Paris, far away from his maddening, demanding, inciting presence.
But that would be letting him win, and I can’t give him the satisfaction.
I won’t. Besides, even if I did run, he’d probably track me down and find me, and anyway, I have a baby to think of now.
We’ll be a family, my child and I. The family I used to dream about having during those long, lonely years in foster care, yet never had.
And this time I’ll be the one choosing who gets to be in that family.
I will never have to suffer not being chosen again.
So instead of running, I make a show of sitting here calmly, ready for any eventuality. ‘So, what would you like to do while we wait?’ I ask. ‘Shall I take my clothes off for you now or later?’