He’d noticed her lengthy pause and the skin around his mouth had tightened with barely restrained irritation. She felt a shiver run down her spine. He wanted answers and he had managed to track her down. She suddenly felt as if he was a predator on the hunt and she a small rabbit heading straight for his trap.
She looked up the street and saw her bus, just beginning to turn the corner.
Duarte followed her gaze and narrowed his eyes.
‘I’m sorry. I have to go. I have a flight to catch.’ She forced the words from her lips, trying not to let him see the tears that threatened to spill from her eyes at any moment.
‘Let me drive you to the airport. I just want to talk.’
Nora stared at the face of the man she had once loved. The man she’d thought she loved, she corrected herself.
If he said he had no memory of her, did that mean he had no recollection of what had passed between them all those months ago?
Guilt and anger joined the swirl of emotions warring within her. She had made her own mistakes, but he had ensured she was punished in return. He had shattered her trust and broken her foolish heart.
She had grieved for him and mourned the father her child would never have. But a small, terrible part of her had whispered that at least with his death she would be safe from his wrath. Her child would be safe.
She needed to get away. Fast.
If there was one thing she had inherited from her crime boss father, it was the sheer will to survive. She closed down her emotional reaction to his miraculous return and focused instead on the worst moments they’d spent together. The pain he’d put her through.
She lowered her hand to her stomach, reflexively protecting her unborn child from the threat of danger. That was what Duarte Avelar was to her, she reminded herself. Dangerous. That was what he had always been.
Nora opened her mouth to tell him she had no interest in answering his questions, but instead let out a silent gasp as her entire lower body spasmed with pain. Her handbag fell to the ground and she gripped her stomach, feeling the dull throbbing that had been torturing her back all morning shifting around to her front and burrowing deep inside.
The twisting heat took her breath away. She could do nothing but breathe for a long moment.
‘Are you okay?’
His voice came from close beside her, and his hand was warm on her elbow. She pushed him away, not able to look up into his face. She needed to get on that bus before her father’s men returned. She needed to get out of Rio today. But she couldn’t think straight.
‘Cristo, you’re pregnant...’ Duarte breathed reflexively, slipping into heavily accented English. ‘You’re really, really pregnant.’
‘Excellent observation.’ She spoke through clenched teeth.
‘Do you need to get to a hospital?’
‘No... I was just lifting some heavy boxes. I’m moving out of town today.’
She breathed in through her nose and out through her mouth, praying this was just the shock of him showing up on her doorstep and her body was simply reminding her to take it easy.
In the back of her mind she heard the noise of the bus drawing closer along the street. She needed to move. ‘I’ll be fine. I need to get to the airport or I’ll miss my flight.’
She moved to walk around him, throwing her arm out to hail the ônibus, but then she felt another wave of pain tighten inside her abdomen so swiftly she cried out.
Clutching onto the nearest object for balance—a very firm male bicep—she squeezed hard and prayed that this wasn’t the moment her child would choose to be born.
As that thought entered her mind she felt a strange pop and the trickle of what felt like water between her legs.
This could not be happening.
She kept her eyes closed tight, a low growl escaping her lips through the waves of pain that seemed to crash into her body.
‘I think my waters have just broken.’
CHAPTER TWO
NORA WAS VAGUELY aware of the sound of a loud engine slowing to a stop beside them and the bus driver calling out to see if she needed help.