Although Maxim suspected the other man wouldn’t have told him where she’d gone even if he knew, he also suspected he wasn’t lying.
‘I’m not even sure she knew,’ Caron added wearily. ‘It took all of my powers of persuasion to get her to take a few hundred euros so she could buy a train ticket and survive until she finds a new job.’
‘She has no money?’ Maxim asked, his fury building. ‘How can she have no money? Was she not working for de la Mare? Surely she must have saved something?’ From what he could see of La Maison, for all the homely charms she had added to the place, she and de la Mare had been living very frugally.
‘Pierre hadn’t paid her for months,’ Marcel announced, and Maxim’s temper shot into the stratosphere. ‘That’s how he persuaded her to marry him,’ Marcel added. ‘Apparently he told her he would be able to leave her the money he owed her in his will from his pension, if she were his widow. If I had known this before now I would have told her: there was no pension.’
‘That bastard.’ Maxim stalked back towards the farmhouse entrance. The surge of guilt wasn’t helping to contain his rising fury at Cara’s foolish actions.
His father had always been a bastard. So it was no surprise the conniving cheapskate had found a way to cheat his housekeeper out of her wages before he died. And trick her into marriage in a pathetic last-ditch attempt to stop Maxim owning the de la Mare legacy.
But if Cara was destitute, why hadn’t she accepted Maxim’s offer? And why had she capitulated so easily over the will? Surely this was madness.
He understood pride, but you couldn’t eat pride, and it didn’t put a roof over your head. Was the thought of becoming his mistress really so repugnant that she would rather starve?
He shoved past the waiting reporters, ignoring the lights flashing in his face and the probing questions being shouted at him. Not to mention the hit to his ego at Cara’s foolish decision to run, rather than accept his help.
He tugged his cell phone out of his pocket and started dialling. Once he’d climbed into the SUV, he stuck the phone on hands-free and began issuing orders while he reversed out of the yard.
He needed Cara Evans found.
The guilt stabbed into his gut as he drove off the de la Mare property. But more than that was the crippling feeling of loss—that he did not fully understand—and the terrifying sense of déjà vu.
His mother’s voice echoed in his head... A voice which had haunted his dreams for so many years after her death, a voice he hadn’t heard for years.
‘Maxim, ne t’en vas pas. Je ne peux pas vivre sans toi.’
Maxim, do not leave. I cannot live without you.
As he accelerated along the country road, he allowed his fury to overwhelm the memories. He would bring Cara back. And make her see reason.
He took the turning to the local train station.
She only had a few hours’ start on him—she wouldn’t be that hard to find. Especially not with the resources he had at his disposal.
This wasn’t over. It couldn’t be. He wouldn’t let it be. Not like this.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Five months later
‘YOU SHOULD SEE the crowd out there tonight. I swear I’ve spotted more movie stars already than are at my local multiplex.’
‘That’s cool.’ Cara sent a wan smile to her new friend Dora, whose excitement at their latest waitressing gig would have been infectious if only she weren’t so exhausted. She eased the zip up on the short black skirt she wore for her waitressing work but left the button at the top undone. But as she donned her white shirt, she encountered another problem. She hunched her shoulders, attempting to hide the way the shirt’s buttons threatened to pop out of their holes over her ever-increasing bust.
How much longer was she going to be able to hide her condition? And what would she do when that day came? This job was the only thing keeping her afloat. But working any and every shift she could get was starting to take its toll.
She slammed the locker door and slipped on the four-inch heels the luxury hotel on London’s Embankment insisted on, then stretched her back to alleviate the ache which had set in a week ago.
She pressed her palm to the curve of her stomach, and the trickle of panic receded. The wave of love she already felt for the child swept through her and a tired smile edged her lips. This baby was hers, and only hers, something she could love and cherish the way she never had been.
‘How far along are you, honey?’ Dora murmured.
Cara’s head swung round, to find Dora’s gaze on her, full of concern and curiosity.
She dropped her hand from her stomach, the panic returning to tighten around her throat. ‘I... How did you know?’ she managed. Dora was her friend, surely she wouldn’t tell their line manager.
‘Because you’ve got that dreamy look on your face I had with my two,’ Dora said easily. ‘And that bump...’ she glanced pointedly at Cara’s tummy ‘...is becoming harder and harder to miss.’