The atmosphere was still a little strained.
‘You went to Clare’s.’ Her eyes flickered to his face. ‘There’s a party.’
‘I noticed.’ He had also noticed that Nell was absent from this family occasion.
Nell tried to imagine what impression Luiz had made walking into the party and her imagination failed her.
‘That’s how you knew I was here—they told you?’ Nell could not hide her skepticism. It hardly seemed likely that her family would give her whereabouts to a total stranger, but then Luiz was a stranger who could be awfully persuasive and people did not as a rule say no to him.
She certainly hadn’t.
Luiz watched her fluctuating colour and struggled to channel his driving need and lust—it was driving him to distraction—into a more practical and less frustrating direction. Should he call a doctor?
Before he could voice the suggestion she suddenly lost all colour. ‘Lie down.’
Ignoring his urgent direction, Nell groaned as an awful possibility occurred to her. ‘Please tell me you didn’t tell them I was pregnant?’ Nell knew she would have to break the news at some point, but she wanted it to be a time of her choosing.
‘It was not the first subject we discussed.’
Nell gave him a level look.
‘No, I did not tell them you are pregnant.’
Nell’s relief was short-lived.
‘But if you are expecting support from them when you do I would not hold your breath. From my observation they are crass, selfish, insensitive and utterly thoughtless.’ Luiz smiled with grim satisfaction as he recalled the looks on their faces when he had told them what he thought of a family who dumped their responsibilities on the shoulders of a young sister and as far as he could see were still doing so.
Their faces had been pictures, not immediately of guilt—that had come after he had dispensed with their faltering and predictable excuses.
Nell could not argue with the essential accuracy of his rather brutal analysis, but she didn’t feel he had a right to express it and she told him so.
‘That’s my family you’re talking about. Do you always bad-mouth people behind their backs?’
‘Oh, I bad-mouthed them to their faces.’ Pleased to see that some more of the colour had returned to her cheeks, he leaned across and, with a finger under her chin, closed her mouth with a click. ‘Where is the kitchen? Can I get you a glass of water?’
Nell looked at him uncertainly. ‘You are joking, right?’
‘I am capable of getting you a glass of water.’
‘You said that to my s-sister and my brother a-and—’
‘You are equally to blame, of course,’ he observed, cutting across her.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Why are you here babysitting while they are enjoying themselves?’
‘I offered,’ she lied.
He looked unconvinced. ‘Do you intend to play Cinderella all your life?’
‘I don’t!’ she exclaimed.
His lips curled into a scornful smile. ‘What are you doing waiting for a fairy godmother to appear? Or is it Prince Charming?’
‘Well, if I was I certainly backed the wrong horse with you!’ she shot back, still not sure whether he was being serious about what he had said to her family. ‘Did you really crash the party?’
‘I knocked and I was invited in by your niece.’
‘You saw Lucy?’ Her niece had come home from university for the weekend; some might think she had been the obvious candidate to babysit her little cousin.
Nobody had asked Lucy because Lucy would have said no. Maybe Luiz had a point? The private concession made Nell feel uncomfortable—had she become the family doormat?
No wonder he was looking at her with such irritation. He was probably comparing her with her confident, self-assured, beautiful niece whom nobody would dream of dumping on.
‘I saw her.’
‘And you liked her?’ Silly question—what was not to like? Lucy was tall, blonde, bright and beautiful. The line of thought came to an abrupt halt as Nell realised with a sick feeling of disgust that she was jealous of her own niece!
The question seemed irrelevant to Luiz.
‘I did not give it much thought.’
He thought about her now, and got the impression of tall and blonde, a younger version of her mother; the brother too was similar. The bland features of neither woman had made a lasting impression on him—he could walk past both in the street and not recognise either.
‘You,’ he said directing his gaze to Nell, ‘do not look like your family.’
It was not the first time the dissimilarity had been noted; normally she accepted philosophically the recognition that she had got the short end of the genetic stick. That wasn’t the situation now.