‘Is this a private conversation,’ asked the woman in blue, ‘or can anyone join in?’
Paulo gave an apologetic smile and immediately switched to English. ‘Judy! Forgive me! This is Isabella Fernandes. She’s visiting England from Brazil. Isabella, this is Judy Jacob. She’s—’
‘I’m his girlfriend,’ put in Judy helpfully.
Isabella prayed that her smile wouldn’t crumple. ‘Hello. It’s nice to meet you.’
Paulo shot Judy a look which demanded co-operation. ‘Isabella is a very old friend of the family—’
‘Not that old,’ corrected Judy softly, as she chose to ignore his silent request. ‘In fact, she looks incredibly young to me.’
‘Our fathers were at school together,’ explained Paulo smoothly. ‘And I’ve known Isabella all my life.’
‘How very sweet.’ Judy flashed a brief smile at Isabella and then leaned forward to plant a light kiss on Paulo’s lips. ‘Well, I hate to break the party up, sweetheart, but the show starts at—’
‘And I really must go,’ said Isabella hastily, because the sight of that proprietorial kiss was making her feel ill. ‘Goodbye, Paulo. Goodbye, Judy—nice to have met you.’ Her voice barely faltered over the insincere words. ‘Goodbye, Eduardo.’ She ruffled the boy’s dark head and smiled down at him.
‘But when will we see you?’ Eduardo demanded.
‘Oh, I’ll be in touch,’ she lied, but as she looked into the black glitter of Paulo’s eyes she suspected that he knew as well as she did that she would not come back again. Because there was no place for her in his life here. No convenient slot she could fill—pregnant or otherwise. And if there had been the tiniest, most pathetic hope that she meant something more to him than just friendship…Well, that hope had been extinguished by a girlfriend who was the image of his late wife. A girlfriend who called him ‘sweetheart’ and who owned a key to his flat.
But then, what had she honestly expected? That she could turn up unannounced and tell him she’d run away from home—pregnant and alone—and that he would give that slow, lazy smile and solve all her problems for her?
She didn’t stop for the traditional kissing of the cheeks—she didn’t want to annoy Judy more than she already seemed to have done. Instead, she wrapped her coat tightly around her as she stepped out into the early evening and wondered just where she went from here.
‘ISABELLA!’ screamed a female voice from the bottom of the stairs. ‘Can you get down here straight away?’
In her room at the top of the ugly, mock-Georgian house which stood in an ‘upmarket estate’, Isabella sighed. She was supposed to be off duty. Getting the rest which her body craved, and the doctor had demanded on her last visit to him. But that was easier said than done.
What did they want from her now, this noisy and dysfunctional family? she wondered tiredly. A pound of her flesh—would that be enough to keep them off her back for more than five minutes?
Wasn’t it enough that she worked from dawn to dusk, looking after the lively twins who belonged to the Stafford family? Au pairs were supposed to help look after the children and engage in a little light housework, weren’t they? And to have enough time for their own studies and recreation. They weren’t supposed to cook and clean and iron and sew and babysit night after night for no extra money.
Sometimes Isabella found herself wondering just why she put up with treatment which clearly broke every employment law in the book. Was she weak? Or simply a fool?
But it didn’t take long for her to realise exactly why she was willing to put up with such shoddy behaviour—one look in the mirror reassured her that she was not in any position to be choosy. The curve of her belly was as ripe as a watermelon about to burst, and Mrs Stafford—for all her faults—was the only prospective employer who’d agreed to take her baby on, as well.
Of course, there’d always been the option of going home to Brazil, or returning to the ranch. But how could she face her father like this?
When her furtively conducted pregnancy test had turned out to be positive, she’d been so stunned by disbelief that she hadn’t felt strong enough to present her father with the unwelcome news.
And the longer she put off telling him—the more difficult the task had seemed. So that in the end it had seemed easier to run to England. To Paulo. Never dreaming that her life-long infatuation with the man would render her too proud to tell him, either.
Coming to the Staffords had seemed the only decision which made any sense at the time, but she’d lived to regret it since.
Or maybe the regret had something to do with letting down the two men who she knew adored her.
‘Isa-bella!’
Resisting the urge to yell back at her boss to go away, Isabella levered herself off the bed and slipped her stockinged feet into a pair of comfortable slippers. If there was one thing she enjoyed about being pregnant—and so far it was the only thing she had enjoyed—it was allowing herself the freedom to dress purely for comfort. Elasticated waists and thick socks may have made her resemble an enormous sack of rice, but she felt too cumbersome to care.
‘Coming!’ she called, as she carefully made her way downstairs.
The twins came running out of the sitting room, their faces working with excitement. Charlie and Richie were seven year-old twins whose mission in life seemed to be to make their au pair’s life as difficult as possible. But she’d grown fond of these two boys, with their big eyes and mischievous grins and excessively high energy levels.
Rosemary Stafford’s methods of childcare had not been the ones Isabella would have chosen, but at least she was able to have a little influence on their lives.
She had tried to steer them away from the video games and television shows which had been their daily entertainment diet. At first, they’d protested loudly when she had insisted on sitting down and reading with them each evening, but they had grown to accept the ritual—even, she suspected, to secretly enjoy it.
‘You’ve gotta vis’tor, Bella!’ said Richie.
‘Oh? Who is it?’ asked Isabella.
‘It’s a man!’
Isabella blinked. Like who? ‘But I don’t know any men!’ she protested.
Richie’s mother appeared at the sitting room door. ‘Well, that’s a bit of an exaggeration, surely!’ she said in a low voice, looking pointedly at Isabella’s swollen belly. ‘You must have known at least one.’
Isabella refused to rise to the remark—but then she’d had a lot of practice at ignoring her boss’s barbed comments.
Ever since she’d first moved in, Rosemary Stafford had made constant references to Isabella’s pregnant and unmarried state, slipping easily into the role of some kind of moral guardian.
Isabella thought this was rather surprising, considering that Mrs Stafford had become pregnant with the twins while her husband was still living with his first wife!
She gave a thin smile. ‘Who is it?’
Mrs. Stafford was trying hard not to look impressed. ‘He says he’s a friend of the family.’
She could see Charlie and Richie staring up at her, but Isabella’s smile didn’t slip. Even though a thousand warning notes were playing a symphony in her subconscious. ‘Did he give his name?’
‘He did.’
‘And?’
‘It’s