‘I won’t have any gossip about my promiscuous daughter and her bastard child,’ he’d warned her brutally. ‘If you want my support, let me adopt her, though, God knows, I don’t need another damned female hanging around me. You can be a sister to her,’ he had decided, ‘but as far as anyone is concerned she is my child, not yours, and don’t you let yourself forget that.’
So she’d placed her own life on hold and had stayed living with her father so she could be close to her daughter. It was she who had brought Suzanna up since she was a baby, she who had seen to her needs throughout her young years, and she who had visited the child every weekend since her father had placed Suzanna in that dreadful boarding school. ‘To toughen her up,’ he’d announced heartlessly. ‘The way you mollycoddle her, she will never learn to take care of herself if I don’t split you up.’
But really he had sent Suzanna away to school because he knew how it would hurt the two of them to be separated like that. And because it placed Mia under yet more obligation to him. ‘You can have her to yourself during the vacations,’ he’d promised. ‘So long as you remain living here with me, that is.’
Then Tony had been killed, and his whole attitude to both Mia and Suzanna had taken on a radical change. In Tony he had seen the continuance of himself. He hadn’t needed to look any further for a male heir to his fortune. That was when Mia had become a tool for him to use for a different purpose—and Suzanna was the bait he had used to make Mia agree to everything he’d demanded.
‘You get me a grandson and I’ll let you have full custody of Suzanna. I’ll choose the man. I’ll discover the weak link that’ll make him marry you. All you have to do is go to bed with him—not a problem for a whore like you.’
Not a problem. In the dimness of that luxury car she grimaced. Well, it hadn’t been a problem in the end, had it? In fact, going to bed with Alex had turned out to be a pleasure! Which probably meant her father knew her better than she knew herself. Did he know she was already pregnant? Had Alex told him? She certainly hadn’t. She’d had no contact whatsoever with her father since she’d got married. But Alex would have been eager to announce their success to Jack Frazier, she was sure.
In four more months or so her father would get the boy to whom he wanted to leave all his money, Alex would get his island and Mia would get custody of Suzanna.
All pacts with the devil, with this small baby growing inside her the unwitting champion for the three of them.
‘Does she know you are her mother?’
The question made her jump, coming out of the blue as it did.
‘No,’ she replied. ‘I am not allowed to tell her until this child is safely delivered.’ Then her breasts heaved as she sucked in a tense breath of air and let it out again before she added huskily, ‘I was not allowed to tell you either. If my father finds out that you know, he will say I have broken the contract I have with him and keep Suzanna, just for the hell of hurting me.’
The hospital came into view, its brightly lit windows announcing that time here had no real meaning. Work here went on twenty-fours a day.
Alex came with her, travelling through the corridors with a tight-lipped silence that kept his presence remote from Mia, who had become barely aware of him as her anxiety grew the closer they got to the ward to which they had been directed.
They came upon a nursing station first, with a pretty young nurse standing behind it who glanced up then smiled the warmest smile Mia had been offered in months. ‘You must be Suzanna’s sister,’ she declared immediately. ‘You look so much like her.’
‘How is she?’ Mia asked worriedly.
‘Fine.’ The nurse came around the station to touch her gently on the hand. ‘The operation went off without a hitch. The appendix hadn’t burst so she should have no complications. She’s already out of Recovery and back on the ward here, though we do have her settled in a room off the main ward so we can keep a special eye on her.’
‘Can I see her?’ Mia’s eyes were already darting off in the direction the nurse’s hand had indicated.
‘Of course. She’s asleep,’ the nurse warned as she moved off, with them following, ‘but you can take a quick peek at her to reassure yourself. She has been asking for you constantly …’
The room was nothing more than a tiny annexe, with brightly painted pictures, done with childish hands, pinned all over the white-painted walls. But it was the little bed in the middle of the room that held Mia’s attention. Her eyes darkened, her face losing what bit of colour it possessed as one trembling hand went up to cover the sudden quiver of her mouth while she stared at her daughter lying so pale and still.
Without taking her eyes off that sleeping face, Mia walked over to the bed, then gently stroked the child’s pale cheek before she bent and replaced the hand with a kiss.
‘She looks so vulnerable,’ she whispered, worry-darkened eyes running over that little face with its shock of bright hair tied back to keep it tidy.
‘She’ll be sore for a few days,’ the nurse said quietly, ‘but she shouldn’t feel too much discomfort. Her worst worry was that you wouldn’t manage to come.’
Mia winced. Somewhere beyond the periphery of her own vision someone else winced also.
‘Apparently, you were not in the country when she became ill.’
‘I got here as soon as I could,’ Mia said huskily. ‘Has my father been in to see her?’
‘No.’ The nurse’s tone cooled perceptibly. ‘Only the lady who came in the ambulance with her. A Mrs Leyton—your father’s housekeeper, I believe? She stayed until Suzanna was safely back up here again before she left.’
‘Thank you,’ Mia murmured. ‘I’ll sit here with her for a little while, if you don’t mind.’
‘Of course not,’ the nurse said. ‘There is a chair just behind you,’ she added, and with a curious glance at the man who was standing in the far corner of the room, but who had contributed nothing to the conversation, she left them alone.
Mia didn’t even notice. Her whole attention was fixed on Suzanna as one of her hands searched blindly behind her to find the chair so she could sit down on it.
Then she reached for and gently closed her fingers around Suzanna’s small fingers, lifting them to her cheek and keeping them there. ‘I’m here now, darling,’ she murmured softly.