But he didn’t remember her at all.
A small tear slid from her eyelids and down her cheek as she realised that perhaps that was a blessing to them both.
To all three of them.
‘You’re awake,’ that gravelly voice murmured from across the room. ‘The nurse told me to tell you not to try to sit up by yourself.’
‘My baby...’ Nora croaked, her throat painfully dry. ‘Give him to me.’ She raised her voice, hearing the edge of panic creeping in but feeling too weak to hold it back.
Duarte frowned, but immediately did as she asked. The soft bundle was placed gently on her chest and Nora looked down at her son’s perfect face for the first time.
‘The nurse just fed him and she asked me to hold him for a moment.’
‘Thank you...’ Nora whispered, inwardly mourning the fact that her baby’s first feed had not come from her.
She mentally shook herself, sending up a prayer of thanks that they were both safe. All those plans she had made for a natural birth had been thrown out of the window when the doctors had told her she was in an advanced stage of pre-eclampsia and they would need to sedate her immediately in order to operate.
Her headaches, the swelling... She was lucky they were both alive. She was lucky they had got to the hospital so quickly.
If she’d been alone...
Tears welled in her eyes at the thought.
‘My sweet, sweet Liam,’ she whispered, closing her eyes and brushing her lips against jet-black downy soft hair. He was beautiful, and so impossibly small she felt something shift within her. Something fierce and primal.
‘Liam? An interesting name.’ Duarte’s voice seemed to float towards her from far away.
‘It’s short for the Irish for William,’ she whispered, her eyes still fixed on examining the tiny bundle.
She almost couldn’t believe that in the space of one day her life had changed so dramatically. She moved her fingertips over ten tiny fingers and toes, puffy cheeks and a tiny button nose. He was perfect.
She closed her eyes and placed her cheek against her son’s small head as a wave of emotion tightened her throat once more.
‘It’s easier to pronounce than our version. My father always shortened his name to Gill.’
Nora refused to look up, unsure if he was baiting her somehow. But there was no way he could know she had chosen her son’s name to honour the great Guilhermo Avelar.
She heard him take a step closer.
‘You have Irish ancestry? You speak Portuguese like a native, but the red hair...’
Nora looked up and wondered if she imagined the shrewdness in his gaze, fearing that he was remembering... The reality of her situation came crashing down on her, dampening the euphoric pleasure of holding her child for the first time. She felt her chest tighten, but schooled her features not to show a thing, not wanting to give him any more information than needed.
‘My mother is Irish, but I’ve lived here my whole life.’
‘Here in Rio?’ he asked.
‘No. Not here.’ She let her words sit and watched as he realised she wasn’t going to play along.
He nodded once and took a few steps away, towards the window. Nora was briefly entranced by the sight of his handsome features in the glow of the afternoon sun. The blue sky formed a heavenly backdrop behind him, making him look like a fallen angel.
How could someone so beautiful cause her so much heartbreak? How could he remember nothing of the time they’d spent together? She’d told him of her Irish mother’s lifelong work as an ecologist and about the remote Amazon village where she’d been born. He’d told her stories of his own idyllic childhood, and how happy they had been as a family until their move to England.
They’d bonded over a shared sense of having felt stifled and restless when growing up. She had never felt such a connection to another person, such an urge to speak the first thing that came into her mind. He had seemed like a good man then—before everything had become so twisted between them. But his anger had made him cold.
The last time they had spoken he had vowed to find her, to hunt her down and put her in prison alongside her criminal father. Even now she could clearly remember the simmering rage in his gaze as her father’s men had dragged him away.
He might not remember that night, or all the events that had led to it, but he still felt that hunger for vengeance—she’d bet her life on it. Why else was he back here in Rio, digging around?