Housekeeper in the Headlines by Chantelle Shaw

Author:Chantelle Shaw
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2020-07-08T11:57:05+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHT

CARLOS WONDERED IF he had heard correctly. Impossibly, it had sounded as though Betsy was defending him when she’d told his father that she had been to blame for keeping Sebastian’s birth a secret.

Betsy had wanted to protect him!

Carlos did not know what to make of that, nor of the warmth that curled around his frozen heart. She had no idea how little he deserved her to champion him, he thought bleakly. But his father knew. And Roderigo’s tears for his beloved wife had the same impact on Carlos that they always did.

A familiar sense of guilt ripped through him. And now there was new guilt—because he should have stayed and spoken to Betsy after he’d slept with her, instead of rushing back to Spain like a goddamned coward. But he’d been shaken by how she’d made him feel. Scared that she’d made him feel at all when he’d blocked out his emotions for his entire adult life.

How had he thought that this woman was unremarkable? Carlos thought wryly. Betsy never ceased to amaze him. She looked like a ray of sunshine in her yellow dress. The caramel streaks in her hair had lightened to blonde in the sun, and her lush mouth tempted him to claim her lips with his. He had ached to kiss her since he had brought her and his son to Toledo.

But right now Betsy was sitting on the edge of his father’s bed, and had Sebastian balanced on her knees. ‘He’s a good baby, and mostly he sleeps well at night—except when he’s cutting a tooth,’ she told Roderigo. ‘During the day he has so much energy. As soon as he learned to walk, he wanted to run.’

‘Carlos was the same when he was young. His mother used to say she could not keep up with him.’

Roderigo chuckled, and Carlos decided that he must have stepped into a parallel universe. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d heard his father laugh, but he guessed it had been twenty years ago—before his teenage emotions and hot temper had ruined everything.

Nothing good ever came from making an emotional response to a situation, Carlos brooded. But that wasn’t entirely true, he realised as he looked at his beautiful son. Two years ago he had recognised that Betsy was a threat to his peace of mind, but he’d ignored the alarm bells in his head, driven by something more than simply lust when he’d taken her to bed. The result was this unplanned child who had captured his heart.

They stayed for a while longer, until Sebastian started to become fractious and his grandfather looked tired.

‘Will you bring el nene to visit me tomorrow?’ Roderigo asked as Carlos scooped his son off Betsy’s lap.

‘I’m flying to South Africa later today, to play in an exhibition match, and I’ll be away for the rest of the week. When I return, I’ll bring Sebastian to see you.’

His father lay back on the pillows. ‘So you are still putting tennis first, Carlos.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.