“ELLIE.” DIOGO’S FACE became instantly angry as he rose to his feet. He’d been sitting back on the sofa, looking far too comfortable in the brunette’s cozy little house. As if this place were his home!
“I won’t share you!” she ground out. “I won’t!”
His brows lowered furiously. “Maldição, I won’t be spied on like this—not by you or anyone!”
“You expect me to just accept whatever story you give me?” she demanded, perilously close to tears. “You think I should be quiet and grateful and put up with you cheating on me? I won’t!” Her hands clenched into fists. “I’m your wife, I have feelings, and I expect you to—I expect—”
What did she expect?
I expect you to be true to me as I’m true to you.
I expect you to love me, as I love you.
God, she was a fool!
“Damn you,” she whispered, sinking into the couch as she struggled to hide her sobs. “Damn you to hell.”
In an instant, he crossed the room. He held her in his arms with unexpected tenderness. He kissed her temple softly, stroking her hair.
“She’s not my mistress, Ellie,” he said. “She’s not.”
“But—”
His eyes were dark with emotion. “I would not have married you if I intended to betray you.”
She looked at him, afraid to believe the words she desperately wanted to believe. “Then what are you doing here?”
He shook his head, tightening his jaw. “I didn’t want you to know. I was… ashamed.”
“Ashamed?” she gasped. “Of what?”
“Know this.” Raising her chin, he forced her to meet his eyes. “When I forced you to take my name, I gave you my loyalty. I will never break my promise. Never.”
She shook her head tearfully. “But it’s not a real marriage.”
Lowering his lips, he kissed her, a hot embrace that made fire rush through her veins.
“Tell me that’s not real,” he demanded.
Ellie heard a startled squeak from the doorway. Dazed, she looked up to see the brunette standing in the doorway holding a tray. The woman was staring daggers at Ellie. If she wasn’t Diogo’s mistress, she obviously wished to be.
Ellie turned back to Diogo. “So why—Why are you here with Catia,” she asked in a small voice, wanting desperately to believe, “if she’s not your mistress?”
“Ah.” He followed her gaze to rest on the brunette. “Her name is Angelique Price. She’s a nanny.”
“Nanny?” she repeated numbly. As if on cue, she heard a sharp, rhythmic bang against the hardwood floor as a little girl, about five years old and holding a doll, ran into the room. She stopped, looking at Diogo with big, frightened eyes.
“What are you doing here?” the little girl said in tremulous English, clutching her doll. “Go away. I don’t want you here!”
Diogo rose steadily to his feet. “Hello, Catia.” He took a step toward her. “I’ve missed you, minha pequena. Angelique called and said you were asking for me. I came as quickly as I could.”
“No! I don’t want you! Go away!”
Diogo picked the child up in his arms. Her doll dropped with a crash to the floor as he hugged her close, whirling her around the room, but instead of bursting into childish squeals of laughter, she howled, “No! Put me down! I don’t want you here, don’t want you!”
She was not a pretty little girl, except in the sense that all children are beautiful. Her hair was mousy brown. She wore thick glasses, her teeth were crooked, and she was far too thin and serious for a five-year-old child. Ellie’s heart went out to the girl.
Then her plain brown eyes fixed on Ellie.
“Who is that?”
He stroked her hair tenderly. “That is Ellie. My wife.” He turned. “Ellie, I’d like you to meet Catia,” he said quietly. “She’s my daughter.”
An hour later, after the little girl went into the kitchen to have lunch with her nanny, Ellie and Diogo sat on the sofa in the front room. The visit between Catia and her father had not improved, in spite of all Diogo’s trying.
The more he’d attempted to charm and please the little girl, the more she’d howled and pushed him away.
“I hired Angelique through an agency. I never even knew I had a daughter till this past Christmas,” he told Ellie, rubbing his head wearily with his hands. “Maldição, she lived in Rio all these years, but I never knew.”
“Where is her mother?” she asked softly.
His dark eyes looked haunted. “She’s dead.”
“Dead?”
He clenched his jaw. “Yasmin was a dancer—so passionate, so full of life. When I met her, I was building a new mine in Saskatchewan. We only had a few dates a few weeks apart. On our third date, she asked me to marry her. I thought she was a gold digger trying to pin me down. So I didn’t ask questions. I just left her.” He looked away, staring at the gleam of the hardwood floor. “When I told her she meant nothing to me, she said she was done with me. She said she loved someone else too much to waste any more time with me. It never occurred to me that she might be pregnant.”
She stared at him, her mouth agape. “Oh, Diogo,” she whispered.
“After I found out about Catia, I couldn’t stand the thought that I’d unknowingly abandoned my daughter for five years. I had to make sure that no other woman could get pregnant without my knowledge…”
“So you had a vasectomy.”
He nodded wearily.
She swallowed. It all made sense. “What happened to Yasmin?”
He clawed his hair back. “She tried to support her baby alone, but couldn’t do it after she got injured. I found out later she tried to contact me when Catia was six months old. She sent me a letter. But I never got it. Wright saw to that. He threatened her.”
Her jaw dropped. “Timothy?”
His lips flinched into a humorless smile. “Yes.”
“Timothy?” she gasped. “Threatened the mother of your child?”
“When I found out at Christmas, he told me he was protecting me. He wrote Yasmin a letter informing her that if she ever tried to contact me again, he would have her arrested for extortion.” He clenched his jaw grimly. “Instead, he offered to buy the baby from her for ten thousand dollars.”
She gaped at him. “Ten thousand dollars!”
“She was terrified he would steal her child from her, so she never tried to contact me again. But with no family or means of support, she ended up working in Rio as a high-class hooker.” He looked up at her with hollow eyes. “And that’s how she died. One of her clients beat her to death at Christmas.”
Ellie sucked in her breath, hardly able to comprehend the horror of it. “And Catia?”
He shook his head. “Yasmin always sent her to a babysitter when she entertained clients. Catia knows that her mother is dead, but not how she died.”
“Thank God,” Ellie said devoutly. “That poor child…”
It was all such a tragedy. Ellie had worked herself into a jealous frenzy over a beautiful mistress who had just been a figment of her imagination.
All along, her rival had been a motherless child.
“Don’t worry,” Diogo said coldly, misreading her pause. “I understand that Catia is my child, not yours. Whatever you think of my unreasonable expectations of a bride, I do not expect you to help me raise her.”
Ellie straightened on the sofa.
“Nonsense,” she said crisply. “She’s your daughter. She must live with us.”
His eyes widened.
“You would… do that?” he said stiltingly.
“Of course!” She frowned. “What I don’t understand is why she’s still living in this house with a nanny. Why hasn’t she been living with you since you got custody?”
“I work such long hours, and travel so often to New York. I thought it better to let her stay in her home…”
She stopped him with a look. “In the home where her mother was beaten to death?”
“You’re right, you’re right.” He clenched his fists, pressing them against his eyelids. “The truth is, I want her with me. Every day. But she refuses to leave this place. When I try to pack up her things to take her, she screams bloody murder and clings to Angelique.”
“I don’t like that woman, Diogo. I don’t trust her.” She wants you for herself, she added silently.
“Catia has lost her mother. She doesn’t know me. And I just can’t get through to her.” He leaned his head in his hands. “I thought if I gave her a few months to grieve, she would be willing to accept her new life as my daughter. Now I’m at the end of my rope. I don’t know what to do. Aside from inviting Angelique to live with us, as well.”
Angelique—living with them? She stared at him, aghast. “You just need to be firm.”
“Be firm?” He gave her a gaunt smile. “With a five-year-old child? Drag her kicking and screaming from her home? I haven’t the heart, Ellie. I can’t do it.” Sounding weary, he added beneath his breath, “God help me, I don’t know what to do.”
She stared at him for a moment. Gently, she reached over and stroked his dark hair. He looked utterly beaten. Diogo Serrador, the barbarian of Wall Street and scourge of the steel industry, looked defeated and destroyed.
Ellie stroked his head. Closing his eyes, he gave a sigh, turning his cheek toward her caress.
She had to do something. She couldn’t bear to see him suffer like this. Or the poor child, either. She had to fix this. Had to make them whole again.
“I am going to help you,” she said steadily.
Diogo opened his eyes to look at her. His expression looked so vulnerable. Strikingly boyish. And she realized that he blamed himself for everything. For Yasmin’s death. For his daughter’s pain. The child he hadn’t even known existed until a few months ago…
“What will you do?”
She kissed him softly on the forehead. “I’ll go talk to her. It’s going to be all right, Diogo,” she said. “I promise.”
The terrible hope in his eyes as he watched her go almost broke her heart.
She went down the hall to the kitchen, but didn’t find either Catia or her nanny. Frowning, Ellie went upstairs. She stopped when she heard voices behind a bedroom door.
“Your daddy doesn’t love you,” she heard Angelique say. “He’s just like the other bad man I told you about, the one who hurt your mama. I’m the only one who can keep you safe. If you let him take you from the house, he will hit you and yell. Unless I’m with you. So just remember—don’t leave here without me! And then—” her voice changed, becoming calculating “—I’ll marry him and never have to work again…”
The little girl said something so softly that Ellie couldn’t hear. The nanny gave a hard snort.
“Oh—her. She’s not your new mommy. But don’t worry. We’ll soon be rid of her.”
Ellie threw open the door. She saw a smug nanny and tearful child, and fury went through her to her bones.
“What are you telling her?” she demanded.
“What do you mean?” Angelique said with an innocent smile. “Just telling her to be a good girl for her father. Shall we go down now for lunch, madam?”
Ellie grabbed the other woman’s wrist. “You horrible, horrible woman. You—are fired.”
“Fired!” Real fear went through her eyes. “You can’t fire me! Only Mr. Serrador can do that!”
“Get out!” Ellie shouted, and the woman ran. “Get out before I hit you with my shoe!”
Catia gave a terrified little squeak, and Ellie fell on her knees in front of her. “It’s all right, sweetie,” she said gently. “It’s all right. Angelique was just being mean. And wrong. Your father loves you. He would never, ever hurt you!”
She tried to give her a hug, but the girl shrank back with a fearful gasp. Poor Catia really believed every evil lie that Angelique had told her. Desperately, Ellie said, “We want you to come home with us, to stay—”
“No!”
Tears filled her eyes at the motherless child’s confusion and grief. She took a deep breath, praying for a way to reach her. “We want you with us. You’ll have your very own room. Lots of toys, and—”
“No!” she shrieked. “I won’t go!”
“And siblings,” Ellie continued desperately, hardly knowing what she was saying. “A baby brother and sister to play with very soon…”
The shrieks abruptly ended.
Staring at her, Catia sucked in her breath with a hiccup. Ellie was afraid to say a word to break the spell.
“Babies?” the girl finally whispered. “A brother and a sister?”
Ellie nodded. She put her hands on her loose white shirt, showing off her gently swelling belly. “Your father and I are going to have twins, Catia. In early November.”
“But… then… why do you want me?” she asked falteringly.
Blinking back tears, Ellie stroked her dark hair. “The babies need a big sister to show them how to play.”
“Oh,” Catia breathed with longing. “I can do that. I can show them how to play with a ball, and ride a bike, and lots of things…”
“I know you can.” Ellie held out her hand. “We want you in our family, Catia. We love you. We need you.”
“You do?” The girl looked up timidly.
“Yes!” Tears were running down Ellie’s face and she didn’t even try to wipe them away. Within hours, she’d already come to love this motherless girl who desperately wanted to belong, to be safe, to be loved. Just as Ellie once had….
Holding her breath, Ellie waited, hand extended.
Tentatively, Catia placed her small hand in her own.
Joy flooded Ellie’s heart. “You won’t be sorry,” she whispered. “I promise. You’ll always be safe and happy with us.”
Together, they walked down the stairs.
In the salon, she saw Angelique Price making her case to Diogo, who was standing by the fireplace with a hard expression. But having once seen his heart, Ellie now realized that unfeeling arrogance was just the mask he wore over a heart that felt too much.
A heart just like her own.
“Your new wife is jealous of the child, Mr. Serrador,” the beautiful nanny was pleading, putting her graceful hand on his arm. “She’s crazy! Don’t let her take the child from me. I think she intends to do the little girl some harm. She’s trying to get rid of me so she can send Catia off to boarding school—or worse. If you love your daughter, for God’s sake, don’t let her fire me!”
They both looked up as Ellie and Catia came down the stairs. Diogo’s face lit up in astonished wonder at the sight of his daughter holding Ellie’s hand.
“I’m ready, Papa,” the little girl said shyly. “I want to go home to our family.”
“Oh, pequena,” he gasped.
She held out her thin arms. Diogo raced halfway up the stairs and took the little girl in his arms. This time, there could be no doubting the brilliance of her smile.
“After all,” she chirruped happily, “someone has to teach those babies how to play!”
He hugged the child fiercely, looking at Ellie over her shoulder.
“Thank you, Ellie,” he whispered, and there were tears in his eyes. “Thank you.”
“She can’t be trusted,” Angelique howled shrilly. “Who are you going to believe, her or me?”
With his free hand, Diogo took his wife’s hand in his own.
“I believe my wife fired you,” he said coolly. “You have five seconds before I toss you out the door.”
“You wouldn’t.”
He took a step toward her, and Angelique fled.
Diogo turned back to his little family.
“Come,” he said tenderly. “Let’s go home.” He kissed the back of Ellie’s hand. And in his dark eyes, she saw a new warmth—and beneath it, the promise of fire.