He hadn’t wanted to wait for more tests, or hire lawyers, or even pick up the phone and ask. He had needed to see for himself.
Who? a voice asked in the back of his head.
Both, he acknowledged darkly. He had needed to set eyes on the baby, whom he recognized on a deeply biological level, and on the woman who haunted his memories.
Poppy had seemed so guileless. So refreshingly honest and real.
He thought back to that day, searching for the moment where he’d been tricked into making a baby with a woman who had then kept her pregnancy a secret.
He remembered thinking his mother wouldn’t appreciate him popping a bottle of the wedding champagne—even though she’d procured a hundred cases that had been superfluous because the wedding had been called off.
Rico had helped himself to his father’s scotch in the billiards room instead. He had taken it through to the solarium, planning to bum a cigarette from the gardener. It was a weakness he had kicked years ago, but the craving still hit sometimes, when his life went sideways.
It was the end of the day, though. The sun-warmed room was packed to the gills with lilies brought in to replace the ones damaged by a late frost. The solarium was deserted and the worktable in the back held a dirty ashtray and a cigarette pack that was empty.
“Oh! I’m so sorry.”
The woman spoke in English, sounding American, maybe. He turned to see the redheaded maid who’d been on the stairs an hour earlier, when Faustina had been throwing a tantrum that had included one of his mother’s Wedgwoods, punctuating the end of their engagement. He would come to understand much later what sort of pressure Faustina had been under, but at the time, she’d been an unreasonable, clichéd diva of a bride by whom he’d been relieved to have been jilted.
And the interruption by the fresh-faced maid had been a welcome distraction.
Her name was Poppy. He knew that without looking at the embroidered tag on her uniform. She stared with wide doe eyes, the proverbial deer in headlights, startled to come upon him pilfering smokes as though he was thirteen again.
“I mean...um...perdón.” She pivoted to go back the way she’d come.
“Wait. Do you have a cigarette?” he asked in English.
“Me? No.” She swung back around. “Do I look like a smoker?”
Her horror at resembling such a thing amused him.
“Do I?” he drawled. “What do we look like? The patriarchy?”
“I don’t know.” She chuckled and blushed slightly, her clear skin glowing pink beneath the gold of filtered sunlight, like late afternoon on untouched ski slopes. “I, um, didn’t know you smoked.” She swallowed and linked her hands shyly before her.
Ah. She’d been watching him, too, had she?
His mother’s staff had been off-limits since his brother’s first kiss with a maid before Rico had even had a shot at one. He didn’t usually notice one from another, but Poppy had snagged his attention with her vibrant red hair. Curls were springing free of the bundle she’d scraped it into, teasing him with fantasies of releasing the rest and digging his hands into the kinky mass.
The rest of her was cute as hell, too, if a bit skinny and young. Maybe it was her lack of makeup. That mouth, unpainted, but with a plump bottom lip and a playful top was all woman. Her brows were so light, they were almost blond, her chin pert, her eyes a gentle yet very direct dark ale-brown.
No, he reminded himself. He was engaged.
Actually, he absorbed with a profound sense of liberation, he wasn’t. Faustina had firmly and unequivocally ended their engagement, despite his mother’s best efforts to talk her back on board.
His mother had retired with a wet compress and a migraine tablet. He had come in here because he couldn’t go home. His house was being renovated for the bride who was now refusing to share her life with him. Driving all the way to his brother’s house to get blind drunk had felt like an unnecessary delay.
“I don’t smoke.” He dropped the empty pack and picked up his drink. “I rebelled for a year or so when I was a teen, but it seemed like a good excuse to talk with Ernesto about football and other inconsequential topics.” He was sick to death of jabbering about weddings and duty and the expected impact on the family fortune.
Her shoulders softened and her red-gold brows angled with sympathy. “I’m really sorry.” She sounded adorably sincere. “I’ll, um, give you privacy to...”
“Wallow in heartbreak? Unnecessary.” Faustina’s outburst had been the sum total of passion their marriage was likely to have borne. “I don’t want to chase you away if you’re on your break.”
“No, I’m done. I know we’re not supposed to cut through here to get to the change rooms over the garage, but I was hoping to catch Ernesto myself. He gives me a lift sometimes.”
“Are you American?” he asked.
Her strawberry blond lashes flickered in surprise, her expression growing shy. Aware.
An answering awareness teased through him, waking the wolf inside him. That starved beast had been locked inside a cave the last six months, but unexpectedly found himself free of the heavy chain he’d placed around his own neck. The sun was in his eyes, the wind was ruffling his fur and he was picking up the scent of a willing female. He was itching to romp and tumble and mate.
“Canada.” She cleared her throat. “Saskatchewan. A little town with nothing but canola fields and clouds.” She shook her head. “You wouldn’t have heard of it.”
“How did you wind up here?”
“I’d tell you, but I’d bore you to death.” Despite her words, a pretty smile played around her mouth and a soft blush of pleasure glowed under her skin.
“I came out here to smoke. Clearly I have a death wish.”
After a small chuckle, she cautioned, “Okay, but stop me if you feel light-headed.”
Definitely not bored, he thought with a private smile. She wasn’t merely a first cigarette years after quitting, either. To be sure he was drawing in this lighthearted flirting with avid greed, but he found himself enjoying her wit. He was genuinely intrigued by her.
“I saved up to trek around Europe with a friend, but she broke her ankle on the second day and flew home.” She folded her arms, protective or defensive, maybe. “I tagged along with some students from a hostel coming here, but a few days after we arrived, one of them stole everything I had.” She slapped a what-can-you-do? smile on it, but the tension around her eyes and mouth told him she was still upset.
He frowned. “Did you go to the police?”
“It was my fault.” She flinched with self-recrimination. “I gave him my card to get some cash for me one morning. He must have made a copy or something. Three days later he’d syphoned all of my savings and was gone. I had my passport, a bag of raisins and my hairbrush. Losing my camera gutted me the most. It was a gift and my memory card was still in it, not that I’d had the chance to fill it. It was a huge bummer.” She summed up with philosophical lightness.
“You’re a photographer?”
“Not anymore,” she asserted with disgust, then shrugged it off. “At least I had prepaid for a week at the hostel. I asked around and got on with a temp agency. I was brought in to help clean the pool house and guest cottage. Darna liked my work and asked me to stay on full-time in the big house. I’ve been saving for a ticket home ever since.”
“How much do you need?”