LITMIR.BIZ

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chin, a tiny tilt of her head that he remembered of old, from the days when as a young girl she would square up and step up to take the blame for something that someone else had instigated. The children of Caverness protected their own. ‘Yes, I am.’

      ‘Is it mine?’

      ‘It’s a funny thing, the concept of ownership,’ she said softly. ‘I mean, we can care for things and tend things—I tend to this garden—but do we ever really own them?’

      ‘Yes.’ Rafael had no problem with the concept of ownership. ‘Answer the question, Simone. Is this baby mine?’

      ‘Given that hard-line ownership seems to be your thing, I’m going to start in the middle and call it ours.’ She looked at him then and he saw it in her eyes already: a mother’s protectiveness, fuelled in full by a mother’s love. He wanted to weep.

      He needed to apologise.

      ‘Simone, those things I said to you at the hotel. I’m sorry. I was wrong and I knew it the moment I said them. I wanted to come after you. I wanted to talk to you about a million things. I wanted—’ You. Just you. But the neediness of that statement made it too hard to voice. ‘I wanted to come after you.’

      ‘But you didn’t.’ She smiled tiredly and it struck him like a knife wound to his soul how fragile and defeated she looked. ‘You never look back, Rafael. And sometimes…sometimes you should.’

      ‘Come with me to Maracey,’ he said desperately.

      ‘Why?’

      ‘So I can take care of you.’

      ‘Look around you, Rafael. Am I short of money? In need of help?’ She shook her head. ‘If I need care, I can get it here. No. If you want me to accompany you to Maracey or Australia or wherever else you might end up, you’ll need to offer me something else.’

      ‘I’m offering to be a father to this child,’ he said raggedly. ‘Do you want marriage? Is that it?’ He ran a hand around the back of his neck. ‘I-I can do that too.’

      ‘You just don’t get it, do you?’ she said quietly. ‘Offer me something else.’

      He would, but he had nothing else of any value to give. ‘Would you like a puppy?’

      She laughed at that, only it sounded more like a sob. ‘Rafael, why are you here?’

      ‘Because I have a responsibility to this baby and to you and I will not sit back and watch history repeat itself. I’m not like him, Simone. I’m not!’

      Tears filled her beautiful brown eyes, but she blinked them back and looked away. ‘I can’t do this,’ she whispered.

      ‘Simone, please.’ The puppy was back at his feet. He scooped it up and tucked it under one arm as he moved towards her, stopping just short of actually touching her, because if he did that he might never let her go. ‘I’m trying to be what people want me to be and it’s driving me mad. Nothing seems real any more. Not the past. Not the life I’m living in Maracey. Not the work that once consumed me.’ He took a very deep breath. ‘Not even this baby.’

      She closed her eyes at that, shutting him out. ‘My baby’s real,’ she whispered.

      ‘Maybe to you. Please, Simone. I stood here before you years ago and offered you everything I had—all that I was—and it wasn’t enough. It’s still not enough—do you think I don’t know that? But what else can I do?’

      ‘Rafael, I—’

      ‘Please.’ There was no other way around this for him. ‘Come with me to Maracey. We’ll work something out. Just…come. Believe in me. Please. I won’t let you down.’

      He couldn’t see it, she thought, and bled for him a little more. He couldn’t see how many people already believed in him and loved him.

      He thought he was alone.

      ‘All right,’ she said and patted the fat puppy in his arms and wondered why he’d called her Ruby, and lost her heart all over again as Rafael gently touched his fingers to her face and tucked a wayward strand of hair behind her ear. She took his hand and, with a tremulous smile, pressed her lips to his palm, before dropping his hand and stepping away, because if she touched him and held him, she might never let him go. ‘Let me clean up here first.’

      ‘And then?’

      He stood there, an angel in her garden, so lost and wounded, so thoroughly prepared for rejection. How on earth could she ever convince such a scarred and weary warrior to lean on her, just a little, and maybe one day let her back in? ‘And then I’ll come with you to Maracey.’

       Chapter Eight

      RAFAEL brought the car to a smooth halt beside the tiny village parkland. Simone stifled a sigh. They’d spent the last two days on the road and the last two nights sleeping in farmhouse pensions, and, if Simone’s Spanish sign reading served her correctly, they had just entered the territory of Maracey. Rather than push on to the vineyard estate, though, Rafael had stopped for a break.

      In a moment the angelic-looking man occupying the driver’s seat would turn towards her and ask her if she needed to stretch her legs or see to her toilette, or if she would like a drink or something to eat. He would look at her as if she were made of glass and she would glance down just to check that she wasn’t, at which point she would look back up at him as if he’d gone mad.

      Because, clearly, he had.

      ‘Why have we stopped?’ she asked sweetly. ‘Again.’

      ‘Puppy pit stop,’ he said.

      The puppy lay fast asleep at Simone’s feet.

      Rafael got out of the car and scanned his surroundings before leaning back down again to study her intently. ‘Care for a walk? Drink? Something to eat?’

      A kind woman would have said no, and that she was just fine thank you because she’d walked, drunk and eaten less than two hours ago. A kind woman would have reassured him that pregnancy was a perfectly natural state for a woman and did not require such solicitousness on his part. Only a terrible woman would send the man off in search of some exotic juice that he’d never be able to find in a small village shop.

      ‘I’m thinking kiwi-fruit juice,’ she said airily.

      ‘Kiwi-fruit juice.’

      ‘Oh, yes. You see, kiwi fruit is green and green is good for the baby. I’ve been reading up on these things.’

      ‘Right,’ he said distractedly. ‘Green.’

      ‘And chicken.’ Was it lunch time? Simone glanced at the dashboard clock. Close enough. ‘I’d like some fried chicken too.’

      ‘Right,’ he said again and off he went. Man on a mission.

      ‘Come on, Ruby,’ Simone told the puppy as she nudged her awake and scooped her up. ‘He wants us to walk.’

      By the time Rafael returned some twenty minutes later, Simone and Ruby had done all the walking they intended to do and Simone had fished the picnic blanket from the car and spread it out beneath the dappled shade of an old oak tree. She’d just settled down on her back to partake of a tiny snooze when Rafael returned with lunch.

      ‘Are you ill?’ he said abruptly. ‘How are you feeling?’

      ‘Fine,’ she said, sitting up and regarding him with no little exasperation, while Ruby greeted him ecstatically. ‘I’m feeling fine. Blooming marvellous.’

      Rafe’s gaze sped to her stomach. Oh, yes. This baby business had messed with his mind, good and proper.

      ‘I couldn’t find any kiwi-fruit juice,’ he said and handed her a white polystyrene

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