‘I must have misheard Elin. I thought she said her son was born in October,’ Cortez murmured. He stared into the pram and was aware of the painful thud of his heart. The baby had ceased crying and stared back at him with unblinking dark eyes flecked with gold.
‘Harry’s birthday is the sixth of December,’ the nanny told him. ‘Elin says he was an early Christmas present.’ She gave Cortez a polite nod before she continued to walk down the drive, pushing the pram in front of her. She did not appear to hear the choked sound he made as his acute sense of shock turned to anger.
Why had Elin lied about her baby’s date of birth? Could black-haired, dark-eyed little Harry be his son? He would get the truth from Elin if he had to drag it out of her, Cortez vowed grimly.
The butler greeted him deferentially when he returned to the house. The staff had been informed that he was Ralph Saunderson’s son and heir and no doubt they hoped to keep their jobs at Cuckmere Hall. He elicited from Baines that Elin’s suite of rooms were in the east wing. He took the stairs two at a time and strode down the corridor, but when he hammered on the door there was no answer. Without hesitating he turned the handle and walked into a large sitting room.
The elegantly furnished room was filled with light that poured in through the tall windows overlooking the gardens at the back of the house. Cortez thought of the rundown farmhouse where he had lived with his mother when he was a boy. The house had only had two rooms and he’d slept on the couch in the living room. Many nights he had lain awake watching his mother sewing traditional flamenco dresses which she sold to tourists at the market as a way of earning a little more money.
Once again bitterness surged through him as he recalled the poverty he and his mother had endured while his father’s adopted daughter had grown up in the luxurious surroundings of an English mansion. According to the nanny, Elin was still in bed at ten o’clock in the morning. No doubt she had enjoyed being the lady of the manor since Lorna Saunderson’s death and had expected that her affluent lifestyle would continue. It must have been a great shock when she’d learned that Ralph had left her virtually nothing, Cortez thought cynically.
He prowled through the private suite of rooms and discovered a small kitchen and a nursery painted a sunny yellow. Something on the wall of the nursery caught Cortez’s eye and he walked over to take a closer look at a framed photo of a newborn baby wearing a hospital tag on his wrist. The baby’s birth weight and date of birth were printed beneath the photo, stating that Harry had entered the world on the sixth of December, weighing seven pounds and two ounces.
Cortez’s jaw was rigid with tension as he knocked on the door next to the nursery. There was no reply and, unable to contain his impatience, he let himself into what was obviously Elin’s bedroom. As he glanced around at the pastel pink décor a door at the far end of the room opened and Elin walked into her bedroom from the en suite bathroom.
She was naked and Cortez’s breath rushed from his lungs as he was transfixed by the sight of her. The pale spring sunshine streaming through the window bathed her body in a pearlescent light so that she looked ethereal and so beautiful that he felt blinded, as if he had looked directly at the sun. Her fair hair cascaded down her back like a river of gold. She reminded him of a painting of the goddess Aphrodite with her alabaster skin and perfect, small round breasts tipped with rose. He moved his gaze over her flat stomach and narrow hips to the neat cluster of pale gold curls between her thighs, and he was so hard that his arousal was almost painful.
Time seemed to be suspended, but in reality only a few seconds could have passed before Elin snatched up her robe from the bed and wrapped it around her. ‘What are you doing in here?’ she demanded. ‘You have no right to barge into my private rooms.’
Her face was flushed and Cortez had noticed before she’d covered her body with her robe that a pink stain had spread down her throat and over her breasts. The ability to blush at will was no doubt a useful tool in her armoury of feminine wiles, he thought cynically.
‘Actually, I have the right to enter any room in my house,’ he corrected her, struggling to bring his raging libido under control. ‘I knocked but you can’t have heard me.’
She crossed her arms over her chest, but not before he’d noticed the prominent outline of her nipples beneath her silk robe. The knowledge that she was as much at the mercy of their mutual desire as he was did not appease his grim mood.
‘You said I could stay at Cuckmere Hall while I arrange to move into other accommodation,’ she said stiffly. ‘What do you want?’
‘Why did you lie about your baby’s date of birth? The nanny told me your son was born in December, not October as you told me.’
She shrugged. ‘Why do you care?’
He crossed the room in a couple of strides to stand in front of her, and felt an unholy satisfaction when she shrank from him. Good, he wanted to rattle her. ‘Tell me the truth, damn you.’
‘How can I tell you the truth when you threatened to sue me for slander?’ she snapped. ‘Harry was born in December, nine months after we slept together. Work the maths out for yourself.’
‘But that does not necessarily mean I am his father.’ He refused to believe her claim without proof. ‘You might have slept with other men at around the same time that you had sex with me. Statistically, the chance of a condom failing to be effective is very small.’
‘You are the only man I’ve ever had sex with,’ she said in a taut voice with an underlying note of hurt that Cortez dismissed with a sardonic laugh.
‘Your pretence of innocence is ridiculous when details of your love-life are frequently reported by the gutter press.’
Elin drew a sharp breath as if he had struck her. But she quickly controlled the tremble of her soft mouth, and her blue eyes were clear and perhaps a little too bright when she lifted her head and met his gaze. ‘Believe what you like. I don’t give a damn what you think of me. But I’d appreciate it if you would get out of my room and at least have the decency to respect my privacy. I assure you I won’t remain at Cuckmere for any longer than it takes me to find somewhere for me and Harry to live.’
‘The only way to resolve the issue of the child’s paternity is to have a DNA test. And if he is my son, you won’t be taking him anywhere.’
‘You can’t stop me,’ she flared. ‘I’ll deny you are his father. You made it clear that you don’t want a child. It will be better for Harry to grow up knowing nothing about you than for him to discover that you didn’t want him.’
‘If you refuse to allow a DNA test I will apply to the court for the right to discover if I have a child.’ He could not hide his frustration as he raked his hair off his brow and despised the hard clench his body gave when he breathed in her scent: sensual jasmine perfume and a fresh lemon fragrance in her hair. ‘I never said I would not want my son,’ he said gruffly. ‘But I am suspicious that you are now backtracking your claim, perhaps because a paternity test will prove you are a liar.’
Cortez’s anger simmered. He told himself it was because he wanted Elin to give him a straight answer, but deep down he acknowledged the far simpler truth was that he wanted her. He couldn’t dismiss the image of her naked body from his mind, and knowing that her dove-grey silk robe was all that hid her slender beauty from his gaze was sending him quietly mad.
‘If Harry is mine, why didn’t you name me as his father when he was born?’ he said abruptly.
She laughed, but it was not a happy laugh, it was cold and bitter, and the sound of it made something twist in his gut. ‘How could I name you? I didn’t know your full name, or anything about you.’ She took him by surprise when she pushed past him. He followed her out of the bedroom and into the sitting room and watched her open a drawer in the bureau.
‘This is Harry’s birth certificate.’ She handed him the document and he noticed that a blank