“Sorry.” He looked at her. “I can't do that.”
“Why?”
“Because he's my son.” Reaching out, he stroked her cheek. “And as long as you're pregnant, you're my woman.”
His woman?
“What do you mean?” she whispered. “Do you intend to marry me?”
“Marry you? No.” He bared his teeth in a smile. “I'm not the marrying kind. Even if I were, I certainly wouldn't marry a woman who's in love with another man.”
She stared at him, her jaw agape. “I'm not in love with Timothy!”
“No. You're just desperate to be with him.” He looked scornfully at Timothy's nine-carat, yellow diamond engagement ring on her finger. “So much that you were willing to marry him with my child in your belly. Without telling him. Without telling me. And you don't love him?”
She flushed. “I had no choice—”
“You don't have a choice now.” He leaned forward, his face inches from her own as he gently tucked a tendril of hair behind her ear. “You will forget him…”
At Diogo's touch, a rush of heat went through her, firing up the longing in her blood. She had to resist the urge to press her cheek against his hand. Her lips tingled, aching for his kiss.
No! She wouldn't fall for his seduction again!
She had to get away before he could hurt her again. Before he could hurt their baby. Because a man like Diogo could only be trusted to make you love him—and then leave….
Her pulse hammered as she clenched her fists tightly. “You don't care about me or this baby!”
Drawing away from her, he bared his teeth in a smile. “I do care…about my son. I will keep him safe.”
She blinked at him. “Safe from what?”
He looked down at her grimly. “Safe from you.”
Safe—from her? As if she would hurt her own child?
Bewildered fury went through her. Diogo was the one who'd caused this whole situation—he'd gotten her pregnant then kidnapped her against her will, and yet he dared to say that she was the dangerous one?
Oh, she had to get back home. She needed Lilibeth. She needed her grandmother to take her into her arms and tell her everything was going to be all right.
Outside the car window, the pale pink sun broke at last through the clouds, illuminating the dark warren of houses crammed onto the hillside. Rio's favelas were famous. But from this angle they didn't look so bad. Sprawling out over the hillsides, they looked more like San Francisco's exclusive, luxurious neighborhoods than poverty-stricken slums.
Rio can be dangerous, Diogo had warned.
But he'd just been trying to scare her. And Ellie was no longer scared.
She was fed up.
Diogo had broken her heart. Humiliated her at her own wedding. Hurt people she cared about. Taken her against her will to a country where his power was absolute.
She wasn't going to wait around until he seduced her, turned on the charm and lured her into loving him again. Because she knew the instant she and the baby started to count on him, he would grow tired of playing house. He would abandon them and merrily go back to his life as the playboy of New York, amusing himself with every beautiful woman who caught his eye.
He'd had a vasectomy to make sure that he would never have a child. Why should Ellie risk her child's heart and security with a man like that?
The Bentley pulled into a side street that was nearly deserted in the early-morning downpour. It stopped at a traffic light. As Diogo leaned forward to speak with the chauffeur, Ellie saw the bodyguards' sedan pull far ahead of them.
It was her only chance!
She wasn't going to be any man's prisoner…
Flinging open the car door, Ellie ran into the rain, her wedding dress illuminated white as she fled into the dark sanctuary of the slums.
CHAPTER FOUR
THE DARKNESS WAS SINISTER, lit with only bits of light from glassless windows covered by ragged fabric. Alleys curved like grasping fingers over the hillside, stretching across the slums in broken half streets of cracked concrete slick with rain.
Ellie had barely turned down the first alley before she knew she'd made a horrible mistake. She tripped on the uneven ground, tumbling into a tumult of taffeta skirts. She felt a sudden pain in her left wrist and an involuntary sob escaped her lips.
“Onde você está indo?”
A man came out of the shadows. Behind him, a younger man with blackened teeth jeered, looking her up and down. “Você está perdida, gringa?”
She didn't understand their words, but the insolent way their eyes stripped her naked screamed danger. Using her unhurt hand, she pushed herself up.
“Excuse me,” she whimpered, backing away. “I'll go…”