‘I did.’
‘I’m sorry.’
He flashed her an incredulous look. ‘You are sorry?’
Luiz stared at her. He was the one that ought to be apologising; to his way of thinking ignorance was no excuse. The thought of her coping with everything alone was like an icy hand in his chest.
He should have been there. He nearly had been there. If he hadn’t been too damned proud to chase after her. For the first time in his life a woman had walked away from him and Luiz had not allowed himself to follow her. Instead he had nursed his resentment and tried to act—not well, as it happened—as though nothing had happened.
She shrugged and reached across to flick off the TV. ‘Well, it couldn’t have been the best coming-home present.’
His shuttered expression told her nothing, but it did not escape her notice that he didn’t claim to be delighted. Instead he said quietly, ‘It was always a possibility.’
‘A pretty remote one. There was really no need for you to hotfoot it here—your reputation is safe.’ The photo of him in New York had clearly been considered something of a scoop by the magazine that had identified Luiz as ‘the thirty-two-year-old Spanish billionaire bachelor who guards his privacy zealously.’
She supposed it was natural for someone in his position to want to avoid too much publicity.
‘I’m no more anxious to advertise this than you, so relax—I’m not about to blab about it to anyone, and anyway,’ she added, placing a hand on her still-flat stomach, ‘I’m not showing yet. Nobody suspects a thing, though Kate thinks I’ve taken the dieting too far.’
Luiz felt the anger lick through him. ‘You think that is why I am here? You think I am here to stop you selling a kiss-and tell tabloid story?’
His anger bewildered her. ‘Well, why else would you jump on the first plane?’
‘I have a private jet.’
‘Of course you do,’ she drawled, struggling to cloak her feelings behind a mask of cynical amusement.
‘I clearly have a better opinion of you than you do of me.’ Luiz stopped and rotated his head as if to relieve the tension in his shoulders, his ribcage lifting visibly as he inhaled deeply. Nell found she could not take her eyes off the thin white line of fury that outlined his finely sculpted sensual lips.
She could see he was furious though the why was still something of a mystery to her.
‘It did not even cross my mind,’ he continued in a voice that held an audible rasping tremor of emotion, ‘that you would demean yourself by making money out of a revenge story.’
‘Oh! Well, good, because I wouldn’t. So why did you come, then?’
‘Why?’ His brow furrowed and he repeated in the same oddly flat tone, ‘Why? You are carrying my child, you are alone, I had no idea how you were coping or if you were well, which,’ he added, his narrowed gaze sweeping her face, ‘you clearly are not. I may be the sort of irresponsible fool who has unprotected sex, but I am not the sort of irresponsible fool who ignores his responsibilities.’
The admonishment brought a rush of colour to Nell’s skin. She narrowed her eyes and thought, Suddenly he’s the victim—great! ‘Lucky me, I’m a liability. I feel better already.’
He looked at her in exasperation. ‘You know that is not what I mean.’
‘I know exactly what you mean and for the record I’m not your responsibility.’ I want to be your love, you stupid man. Appalled at how close she had come to voicing her thought, Nell lowered her eyes and bit her lip. She was going to have to take more care in future; thinking before she opened her mouth would be a good start.
He arched a brow and visibly struggled to contain his annoyance. ‘And I suppose the baby is not my responsibility either.’
Nell pursed her lips mutinously and said, ‘No.’ She ignored his hissing intake of exasperation and asked. ‘How did you know I was here anyway?’
‘I had the address of your sister’s house.’
‘I was in between addresses at the time I wrote the letter.’ It sounded less emotive than temporarily homeless. ‘And I have my own place now.’ Nell smiled the sort of casual, confident smile that a woman with her own place would have, and luckily he had not seen her own place.
Staying with her sister had been a real incentive to Nell to find another place—any place. The atmosphere had not been pleasant. Clare had been furious that Nell had vanished just when, as she put it, ‘all the work needed doing.’ She had been even less pleased when Nell had refused to explain where she had been.
Nell, exhausted by the constant probing had eventually lost it and in the ensuing shouting match had called her sister a control freak. This had not gone down well, especially as Clare’s husband Clive had inserted a dry, ‘You’re only just realising that, Nell?’ into the heated discussion.