“Thank you so much.” Carin’s words were cold with sarcasm. “It’s nice to know you’re the thoughtful type.”
“Listen to me,” Rafe snapped. “And pay attention, querida, so that there are no discrepancies in our stories.” His eyes darkened and locked on hers. “I told her that we saw each other many times, that we were much drawn to each other but that we had a lovers’ quarrel, before we knew of your pregnancy, and that we parted.”
“I don’t know why you bothered with such an elaborate lie. I’m sure it pleased her to think we were lovers instead of—”
“It pleased everyone, or so it would seem.” A thin smile curved his mouth. “We have had messages offering good wishes from your stepbrothers, and from Nicholas and Amanda. Did you know they left for Paris yesterday?”
“Yes. I know. Amanda stopped by here, and…Good wishes?” Carin shook her head in confusion. “For what? Did my mother pass along that ridiculous fairy tale? I can’t believe anybody in my family would fall for it.”
“Ah, but they did.” Rafe’s smile was slow and intimate; so was the touch of his hands as he cupped her shoulders. “Perhaps you come from a family of romantics and they’d prefer imagining you in a marriage based on love, and not on necessity.” He read the shock in her eyes and his smile tilted. “That’s right, querida. I explained to Marta that we intend to marry.”
His words stunned her. Married? To Raphael Alvares? She knew he didn’t mean it, that he’d invented a story to ease the situation, but even thinking about such a thing, imagining herself as his wife…
“You shouldn’t have done that!” Carin moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue. “It’s only going to make things more difficult.”
“I disagree.”
“She’ll nag me, now. She’ll want to know when we’re getting married.”
“She won’t ask,” he said, very softly.
Slowly, carefully, he undid the top two buttons of her dress, slipped his hands inside, cupped her naked shoulders. She caught her breath, told her heart to stop banging like a drum.
“She will. You don’t know my mother. She’ll ask, and ask, and—”
“There will be no need, querida, because I have already answered the question. You and I are to marry today.”
Carin felt the blood drain from her head. She swayed; Rafe’s hands tightened on her.
“Is this supposed to be funny? Because it isn’t. And I resent your lying to my mother about something like this. When she finds out the truth—”
“She already knows the truth. You are to be my wife.”
“You’re definitely not funny, you’re crazy.” She twisted away from him, took a quick step back and closed the buttons with trembling fingers. “I am not going to be your anything!”
“I’ve made all the arrangements.”
“You’ve made all the…” Carin laughed. “You really are crazy, senhor!” She reached behind her, snatched a sweater from the bed. “You need a stay in this place more than I ever did. I think the psychiatric department is on the top floor. Just check with the nurse, as you go—”
He caught her by the arm as she started past him. “You think this is a joke, Carin?” His mouth thinned; anger flashed in his eyes. “It is not. I have the license.”
“You can’t get a license by yourself,” she said stupidly.
Rafe laughed. “You can, if you have the right contacts.”
He was serious. Crazy, but serious. Calm down, she told herself, just calm down.
“Maybe. But you need more than a license.” She jerked her arm free of his hand. “You need a warm, willing body. You can’t marry a woman who refuses to marry you. Not in the United States. Women aren’t property. My mother could have told you that.”
“Your mother,” he said coldly, “thinks that this is all wonderfully exciting. She knows how happy this news will make you.” His teeth glittered in a quick, tight smile. “You will tell her that it has.”
“Forget it. I’ll tell her the truth. And, once I have—”
“I have more than our marriage license, querida. I also have all the documents I need to take my daughter home, to Brazil.”
Carin had started towards the door. She froze, then turned and looked at him.
“I don’t believe you. Proceedings like that take a long time. Months, even years…”
She fell silent. Rafe was holding a sheaf of papers in his outstretched hand.
“Take a look. Here are the custody papers, and here is her passport. And please, do not waste my time telling me what one can and cannot do, in the United States.” His eyes lanced into hers. “I have friends. Powerful friends. By the time you manage to get the documents you’ll need to stop me, my child and I will be on Brazilian soil.”
“My child,” Carin answered, her voice trembling.
“Our child, if you use your head and do the only intelligent thing.”
She stared at him for a long moment, hating him, hating herself, hating the hour of unbridled passion that had put her at his mercy.
“You have no right to do this to me,” she whispered.
“I have the right to see to it my child grows up properly.”
“You wanted her to have your name. I gave it to her.”
“That does not make her legitimate.”
Carin laughed. “My God, just listen to you! Talking about legitimacy in one breath and blackmail in another.”
Rafe looked at his watch. “Make a decision, please. The official who will marry us is already waiting at my hotel.”
“Rafe.” Carin shuddered. It had been cold in here before. Now, she could almost feel her blood turning to ice. “Rafe, listen to me. You want access to my daughter? You can have it. I’ll give you visitation rights. You can see my child—”
“Our child. Why is that so difficult for you to say?”
“Our child.” She swallowed dryly, fought to keep her head. “Yours, and mine. We’ll work something out. A plan—”
“The hour grows late, Carin.” He spoke brusquely; his face might have been carved from stone. “I told my pilot to have my plane ready by noon.”
“Your plane?”
“It is a long flight to Brazil, but do not worry, querida. I have spoken with your doctor and I’ve carried out all his recommendations for your comfort.”
“For my…” Carin reached behind her, felt for the bed and sank down on the edge. “Rafe. At least give me time to think. Just—just put things off until tomorrow…”
She lifted her face to him and he saw how pale it was, saw how her eyes had turned into bottomless pools of darkness and the memory came to him, unbidden and unwanted, of how she had lifted her face to him that night, of how deep and dark her eyes had seemed as he’d possessed her.
And then he remembered the rest of it, how she had used him, how she had r
ebuffed him, how she had tried to pretend he had no child, and his heart hardened.
His daughter was all that mattered.
He held out his hand, his face expressionless. “We’re wasting time. Are you coming with me, to tell your mother our good news?”
“But—but my home is here. My life is here.”
“Your life is with me now. In my country.” He gave her a thin smile. “You will be Amy’s mother, and my wife. An obedient, dutiful wife, who shares my bed and never looks at another man, nor breaks the vow of fidelity.”
“I’ll never share your bed, you son of a bitch! Do you hear me? Never. Nev—”
Rafe lifted her to her feet, gathered her into his arms and kissed her, moving his mouth against hers until her lips softened, parted, clung, however unwillingly, to his.
“Querida,” he whispered, “querida, do you see how it can be, between us?”
She pulled back, breathing hard, and stared at him through eyes gone dark and blind.
“What I see,” she said, her voice trembling as much with anguish as with the depths of the lie, “is that I can pretend you’re Frank. Is that what you want? For me to go to your bed, shut my eyes and imagine another man, moving inside me?”
He didn’t think, he reacted. He drew his hand back, saw her flinch but hold her ground…
No. Deus, no. He dropped his hand to his side. He had never struck a woman. She wasn’t going to reduce him to the kind of man who did, no matter how she tormented him.
“The child is all that matters. Get that through your head, my soon-to-be wife. I will do anything for Amy and if you are wise, you will not get in my way.” Without warning, he swung her into his arms. “Your mother says it is hospital policy for you to be escorted from the premises when you are discharged, Carin. But I am the only escort you will need or want, from this moment on.”
CHAPTER SIX
SIX weeks later, Rafe stood in the tall grass alongside his private airstrip in southeastern Brazil and watched as his plane lifted into the sky.
The jet was taking Carin’s physician and his nurse back to New York. Rafe had flown them to his ranch for his wife’s post-partum checkup. Carin had refused to see the specialist his own doctor had recommended. She’d said she preferred to fly to the States to be examined by her own gynecologist but Rafe was not a fool. He suspected she’d have found an excuse to stay in New York, once she was there, so he’d arranged for Dr. Ronald to come to her here, at Rio de Ouro, instead.