Raul gazed back at her, strikingly pale now below his olive skin, so still he might have been a stone statue, a stunned light in his piercing dark eyes.
With the greatest difficulty, Polly cleared her throat and breathed unevenly. ‘I asked the clerk to let me have an hour reading over that profile and I photocopied it without telling him. That afternoon, I went in and signed the contract. I thought I was doing a really good thing. I thought I would make that couple so happy... I was inexcusably dumb and shortsighted!’
The heavy silence stretched like a rubber band pulled too taut. And then Raul unfroze. In an almost violent gesture, he shook open the pages he still held. He strode over to the window, his broad back turned to her, his tension so pronounced it hummed like a force field in a room that now felt suffocatingly airless.
Polly sank wearily back against the pillows and fought to get a grip on the tears still clogging her aching throat.
Timeless minutes later, Raul swung back, his darkly handsome features grim and forbidding. ‘This abhorrent deception was not instigated by me,’ he declared, visibly struggling to contain the outrage blazing in his eyes, the revealing rawness to that harshened plea in his own defence. ‘I had no knowledge of your request for further information or of your initial reluctance to sign that contract.’
‘How am I supposed to believe anything you say?’
‘Because the guilty party will be called to account,’ Raul asserted with wrathful bite. ‘At no stage did I give any instruction which might have implied that I would countenance such a deception. There was no need for me to stoop to lies and manipulation. There were other far less scrupulous applicants available—’
‘Were there?’ Polly breathed, not best pleased to realise that she had featured as one of many.
He was shocked and furious, so furious there was a slight tremor in his fingers as he refolded the pages she had given him. His sincerity was fiercely convincing.
‘So now I know why you have no faith in my word. It wasn’t only my decision to conceal my identity as the father of your child in Vermont that made you change your mind about fulfilling the contract.’
It was an unfortunate reminder. He only had to mention that cruel masquerade to fill Polly with savage pain and resentment. She surveyed him with angry, bitter eyes. ‘I would never, ever have agreed to a single male parent for my child, and when I found out who you really were, I was genuinely appalled—’
Raul skimmed a startled glance at her. ‘Dios mio... “appalled”? What an exaggeration—’
‘No exaggeration. I wouldn’t give a man with your reputation a pet rabbit to keep, never mind an innocent, helpless baby!’ Polly fired back at him.
Raul gazed back at her with complete incredulity. ‘What is wrong with my reputation?’
‘Read your own publicity,’ Polly advised with unconcealed distaste, thinking about the endless string of glamorous women who had been associated with him. There was nothing stable or respectable about Raul’s lifestyle.
Outrage sizzled round Raul Zaforteza like an intimidating aura. He snatched in a deep shuddering breath of restraint. ‘What right do you have to stand in judgement over me? So subterfuge was employed to persuade you into conceiving my child—I deeply regret that reality, but nothing will alter the situation we’re in now. That child you carry is still my child!’
Polly turned her head away. ‘And mine.’
‘The Judgement of Solomon. Are you about to suggest that we divide him or her into two equal halves? Let me tell you now that I will fight to the end to prevent that obnoxious little nerd I met last night raising my child!’ Raul delivered with sudden explosive aggression.
Polly blinked. ‘What little nerd?’
‘Henry Grey informed me that you’re engaged to him,’ Raul imparted with a feral flash of white teeth. ‘And you may believe that that is your business, but anything that affects my child’s welfare is also very much my business now!’
Stunned to realise that Henry should have claimed to be engaged to her, Polly surveyed the volatile male striding up and down the room, like a prowling tiger lashing his tail at the confines of a cage. Why did she want to hold Raul in her arms and soothe him? she asked herself with a sinking heart.
‘I think you should leave, Raul.’ As that dry voice of reproof cut through the electric atmosphere, Polly tore her mesmerised attention from Raul. In turn, Raul swung round. They both focused in astonishment on the consultant lodged in the doorway.
‘Leave?’ Raul stressed in unconcealed disbelief.
‘Only quiet visitors are welcome here,’ Rodney Bevan spelt out gravely.
Dressed in an Indian cotton dress the same rich blue as her eyes, Polly turned her face up into the sun and basked, welded to the comfy cushioning on the lounger. The courtyard garden at the centre of the clinic was an enchanting spot on a summer day. Even Henry’s unwelcome visit couldn’t detract from her pleasure at being surrounded by greenery again.
Henry gave her an accusing look. ‘Anybody would think you were enjoying yourself here!’
‘It’s very restful.’
Until Polly had escaped Henry and his mother for three days, she hadn’t appreciated just how wearing their constant badgering had become. She was tired of being pressurised and pushed in a direction she didn’t want to go. Now that Raul had found her, she was no longer in hiding. After she had sorted out things with Raul, she would be able to take control of her own life again.
‘Mother thinks you should come home,’ Henry told her with stiff disapproval.
‘You still haven’t explained why you told Raul we were engaged.’
Henry frowned. ‘I should’ve thought that was obvious. I hoped he’d go away and leave us alone. What’s the point of him showing up now? He’s just complicating things, swanning up in his flash car and acting like he owns you!’
Strange how even a male as insensitive as Henry had recognised that Raul behaved as if he owned her. Only it wasn’t her, it was the baby he believed he owned. Dear heaven, what a mess she was in, Polly conceded worriedly. There was no going back, no way of changing anything. Her baby was also Raul’s baby and always would be.
‘It was kind of you to call in, Henry,’ she murmured quietly. ‘Tell your mother that I really appreciate all her kindness, but that I won’t be coming back to stay with you—’
‘What on earth are you talking about?’ Henry had gone all red in the face.
‘I just don’t want to marry you...I’m sorry.’
‘I’ll visit later in the week, when you’re feeling more yourself.’
As Henry departed, Polly reflected that she was actually feeling more herself than she had in many weeks. Stepping off the treadmill of exhaustion had given her space to think.
As she slowly, awkwardly raised herself, Raul appeared through a door on the far side of the courtyard. He angled a slashing, searching glance over the little clusters of patients taking the fresh air nearby. Screened by the shrubbery, Polly made no attempt to attract his attention.
His suit was palest grey. He exuded designer chic. In the sunlight, his luxuriant hair gleamed blue-black. His lean, strong face possessed such breathtaking sexy symmetry that her breathing quickened and her sluggish pulses raced. Raul radiated raw sexuality in virile waves. The media said that men thought about sex at least once a minute. One look at Raul was enough to convince her.
But a feeling of stark inadequacy and rejection now threatened her in Raul’s radius. How the heck had she ever believed that