The Secret He Must Claim Read online

  ‘A more likely explanation is that you are still not fully recovered from Harry’s traumatic birth. I know he is three months old, but you lost God knows how many pints of blood when you haemorrhaged after giving birth,’ her brother said grimly. ‘I told you before you went to London that I didn’t think you were fit enough to return to your frenetic social life.’

  Elin was stung by the faint censure in his words. The only reason she had become a familiar face on the London club scene a year ago had been so that she could try and keep Jarek out of trouble and out of the tabloids’ headlines. At least she no longer had to worry that Ralph would lose patience with her brother. Their adoptive father had died a week ago, a month after being diagnosed with a brain tumour. Jarek was destined to take over as head of Saunderson’s Bank and even though many of the bank’s board members were concerned by his reputation as a risk-taker, no one could prevent Ralph Saunderson’s heir from becoming chairman.

  Elin bowed her head while the minister intoned a prayer, but her mind was on the man she’d seen in the church. She’d only caught a glimpse of him, and of course he couldn’t be Cortez, she reassured herself. Although he had known her name and London address, he had never tried to contact her in the past year and, as she did not know his surname, she’d been unable to find him to tell him about Harry.

  She thought of her baby son, who had been asleep when she’d left him with his nanny in the nursery at Cuckmere Hall. Harry was innocently unaware that he had been conceived as a result of a few moments of lust between two strangers. But when he was older he was bound to be curious about his father, and Elin planned to make up a story that Harry’s father was dead. It would be better to tell her son a white lie than for him to learn that his father had abandoned him before his birth, she reasoned.

  She and her brother had been abandoned by their own parents when she was a baby. Jarek had been six and he had a few vague memories of their mother and father. But Elin’s earliest memories were of looking through the bars of a cot. Jarek had told her that at the orphanage the younger children had been left in their cots, often for days. She hadn’t learned to walk until she was over two years old, and only then because her brother had sneaked into her dormitory and held her hand while she took her first steps.

  Her own son had been conceived as a result of her night of shame with a stranger, but she was determined to love Harry twice as much to make up for the fact that he would never know his father.

  The ceremony finished and she walked with Jarek behind Ralph’s coffin as it was carried out of the chapel. She looked closely at the people in the congregation but did not see anyone who resembled Cortez. Her imagination must have played a trick on her, she told herself, yet her sense of unease remained.

  The procession of mourners filed into the graveyard and gathered around a freshly dug grave next to Lorna Saunderson’s headstone. Tears welled in Elin’s eyes. It was eighteen months since Mama had died and she still felt a deep sense of loss. Willing herself not to cry in public, she stared across the graveyard, and her heart lurched when she glimpsed a tall figure half-hidden behind the thick trunk of an old yew tree. She could not see the man’s features clearly from a distance, but something about his proud bearing and the breadth of his shoulders were familiar.

  She blinked away her tears and refocused but the figure had disappeared. A flock of crows flew out of the tree, cawing loudly as if something had disturbed them. Had she imagined that she’d seen someone? Elin forced herself to concentrate on the minister reciting a final prayer, and when he finished she stepped forwards and dropped a white rose into her father’s grave.

  ‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost,’ her brother told her later when they arrived back at Cuckmere Hall. ‘The old man is more likely to come back to haunt me than you. He did at least feel some affection for you,’ he added drily. ‘Ralph wanted to adopt a pretty little daughter but he was less keen to take on a ten-year-old boy with issues.’ Jarek strode into the house and took a glass of sherry from the butler, who was waiting in the entrance hall to greet them.

  ‘Ralph cared for both of us,’ Elin murmured, telling herself it was true. Admittedly she had not felt the close bond with her adoptive father that she’d had with Lorna Saunderson, but she’d been fond of the man who had been the only father she’d ever known. However, Jarek had struggled to settle into his new life in England and to accept Ralph’s authority.

  ‘We were his social experiment. Take a couple of kids from the lowest tier of society and see if he could mould them to fit in with the gentility.’ Jarek gave a sardonic smile. ‘It’s fair to say that Ralph had more success with you than with me.’

  ‘That’s not true. I’m sure he thought highly of you, and he respected your financial flair, which is why he appointed you in a senior position at Saunderson’s Bank.’

  Elin took off her hat and coat and smoothed a crease from her black pencil dress. She declined the glass of sherry the butler offered her. ‘Baines, I noticed there is a car parked on the driveway. I presume that my father’s solicitor is here?’ She had hoped to run up to the nursery and spend five minutes with Harry, but she would have to wait until after the formal reading of Ralph’s will.

  ‘Mr Carstairs and his associate arrived ten minutes ago and I showed the gentlemen into the library.’

  ‘Business must be doing well for old Carstairs to drive an Aston Martin,’ Jarek commented. ‘I suppose he’s brought a trainee from the law firm with him, but there wasn’t much point. Ralph had no other family apart from us and his will must be straightforward. At least the reading of the will shouldn’t take long,’ he said, glancing at his watch. ‘I’m racing later this afternoon.’

  ‘I wish you wouldn’t race that damned motorbike,’ Elin muttered as she followed her brother across the hallway. ‘It’s such a risky sport.’

  ‘Everything carries an element of risk.’ A nerve jumped in Jarek’s jaw. ‘No one could have predicted that a trip to a jewellers would cost Mama her life.’

  Elin was saved from answering as she entered the library and Peter Carstairs immediately got up from an armchair. ‘Elin, Jarek, I am sure this is a difficult day for you and I will endeavour not to take up too much of your time.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Elin wondered why the normally affable solicitor seemed tense. ‘Would you like a drink?’

  ‘No, thank you. I think we should proceed.’ Mr Carstairs moved to the chair behind the desk and Elin followed her brother over to the sofa. She suddenly remembered that Baines had said he had shown two men into the library, but before she could suggest that they wait until the solicitor’s clerk returned—presumably he was visiting the cloakroom—Mr Carstairs picked up a document and began to read from it.

  He began by announcing several small bequests that Ralph Saunderson had made to members of the household staff. ‘Next we come to the Saunderson’s estate winery.’ The solicitor cleared his throat. ‘I leave a fifty per cent share of the vineyards and winery to my adopted daughter Elin Dvorska Saunderson.’

  Elin felt a jolt of surprise. She had assumed that Ralph would hand the entire ownership of the estate winery to her. She’d worked as production manager for the past eighteen months and was committed to fulfilling Lorna Saunderson’s vision of producing world class English sparkling wine. Jarek had never shown any interest in the vineyards and winery, but perhaps Ralph had hoped his heir would become more involved in developing Saunderson’s Wines, she reasoned.

  She was vaguely aware of the library door opening and heard a faint click as it closed again, but her attention was on Mr Carstairs and she did not look round to see who had entered the room. The solicitor gave another nervous cough. ‘There is a stipulation attached to the bequest, Elin. Mr Saunderson decreed that you must marry within one year and provide your son with a father before you can claim your inheritance. If you choose not to fulfil the obligation, your share o
f Saunderson’s Wines will revert to your adoptive father’s main heir.’

  Shock rendered Elin speechless. She knew her adoptive father had disapproved of her being a single mother but once Harry had been born he’d seemed delighted with the baby. ‘I can’t believe Ralph would really have expected me to meet the terms of his will,’ she said at last in a shaky voice. ‘Or that a judge would uphold such an outrageous stipulation if I contested the will.’

  ‘Mr Saunderson was completely within his rights to distribute his assets in any manner he saw fit,’ the solicitor murmured. ‘I have to advise you that there are no grounds on which you could contest your father’s wishes.’

  Her brother reached over and squeezed Elin’s hand. ‘You know Ralph liked to play his little games,’ he said sardonically. ‘This is just his way of trying to maintain control from beyond the grave. Don’t worry, Ellie. Your share of the wine business will come to me if you haven’t married in a year and I’ll sign the whole of Saunderson’s Wines over to you. I have no desire to toil in the vineyards.’ Jarek glanced at the solicitor. ‘Do you mind getting on with it? I have other things to do today.’

  Mr Carstairs cleared his throat again. ‘There are only two further items.’ He continued to read the will. ‘I leave two properties, Rose Cottage and Ivy Cottage, to my adopted children, Jarek and Elin, to live in or dispose of according to their wishes.’

  Why had Ralph made the odd bequest? Elin’s feeling of unease grew. It did not make sense. Her brother was Ralph’s heir and would inherit the entire Cuckmere estate, which included Cuckmere Hall, two thousand acres of Sussex farmland, woodland and vineyards, plus thirty-five cottages and the pub in Little Bardley. She knotted her fingers together in her lap while Mr Carstairs continued.

  ‘Finally, I give everything I own at my death, excluding the aforementioned bequests, all monies and properties and also the position of chairman of Saunderson’s Bank, of which it is my right to appoint my successor, to my only natural son, Cortez Ramos.’

  Silence. Lasting for what felt like a lifetime. Elin pressed her hand to her chest to try and ease the violent thud of her heart as the solicitor’s words reverberated around her head.

  Cortez.

  It couldn’t be the Cortez she’d had sex with a year ago. It must be a ghastly coincidence, she frantically told herself. But her sense of dread intensified when she remembered the dark figure she’d caught sight of in the graveyard. What did Ralph’s astonishing will mean for her and Jarek? For her son? Her heart felt as if it would jump out of her chest. Fear, she realised. The certainty of the future that she had taken for granted had just been blown apart.

  She was aware that her brother had stiffened but as always he kept tight control over his emotions. ‘Is this some kind of joke, Carstairs?’ Jarek drawled. ‘You know full well that Ralph and Lorna Saunderson were unable to have children and so they adopted my sister and I. Ralph did not have a natural son and this Cortez Ramos, whoever he is, cannot have any legal claim to my adoptive father’s estate.’

  Before Mr Carstairs could reply, a voice spoke from the back of the room. A deep voice with a husky accent that Elin had heard too often in her dreams in the past year. ‘Ralph did not have a legitimate natural son, but he had a bastard.’ The voice became harsh. ‘I am Ralph Saunderson’s biological son and heir.’

  Elin felt her stomach twist. This can’t be happening, she thought, prayed. If I turn my head, he won’t be there and this whole nightmare will have been a dream. She jerked her head round and her heart juddered to a standstill. At her birthday party a year ago she’d thought him the most beautiful man she’d ever seen, but Cortez was even more stunning than her memories of him.

  ‘So it was you I saw in the church,’ she choked. ‘I thought I’d recognised you, but there was no reason why you should be there...or so I believed.’ Her voice dropped to a whisper as the shock of seeing him stole her breath from her lungs.

  Jarek had leapt up from the sofa. He looked at Cortez and back to Elin. ‘Do you know this man?’

  She swallowed, desperately trying to block out the images in her mind of Cortez’s naked, powerfully muscular body poised above her as she lay sprawled on her bed at the house in Kensington. His dark olive skin a stark contrast to her paleness as he pushed her dress up around her waist and nudged her thighs apart. A bold conquistador laying claim to his prize. At least all that sleek, hard beauty was clothed today, but the formality of his charcoal-grey suit that he wore with a black shirt and tie did not lessen the impact of his raw masculinity.

  ‘We...we met once,’ she managed. The gold flecks in Cortez’s dark eyes gleamed with what Elin furiously recognised was amusement. Never had she been more grateful for her reserved English upbringing with its emphasis on controlling her emotions. ‘It was an unmemorable event,’ she said coolly.

  Her brother frowned. ‘Did you know of his alleged relationship to Ralph?’

  ‘Of course not.’ The faint suspicion in Jarek’s eyes felt like a knife in her heart. She owed her life to her brother. If it hadn’t been for him, God knew what would have happened to her when Sarajevo had been attacked and a bomb had landed on the orphanage. ‘If I’d had any inkling I would have told you.’

  Elin bit her lip as her brother strode across the library and flung open the door. ‘Jarek—where are you going?’ She carefully did not look at Cortez as she hurried past him, but she was conscious of his tall, brooding presence and the evocative spicy scent of his aftershave tugged on her senses.

  ‘You know why Ralph has done this, don’t you?’ Jarek said bitterly when Elin caught up with him in the entrance hall. ‘He blamed me for Mama’s death. And he was right. I should have saved her.’

  ‘There was nothing you could have done against an armed raider. It wasn’t your fault. Jarek...’ Elin’s hand fell from her brother’s arm as he spun away from her and grabbed his motorbike helmet from the hall table.

  ‘If I hadn’t tried to be a hero, Lorna would still be here. I took a gamble when I tackled the gunman, but the gamble failed. I understand why Ralph excluded me from his will but he had no reason to cut you out.’ Jarek opened the front door and turned to face her. ‘Do you know what I wish?’ he said rawly. ‘I wish that when we were held hostage in the raid on the jewellers the goddamned gunman had shot me instead of Mama. It’s obvious that’s what Ralph wished.’

  ‘Oh, please be careful.’ Elin wanted to go after her brother when he ran down the front steps and leapt onto his motorbike parked on the drive, but Peter Carstairs came out of the library and spoke to her.

  ‘Mr Ramos was kind enough to give me a lift here and I arranged for a taxi to collect me,’ he said as a car turned onto the driveway. ‘I’m sorry to have been the harbinger of bad news, my dear. This must all be a great shock.’

  The solicitor was the master of the understatement, Elin thought with a flash of macabre humour. ‘My father died from a brain tumour. Is it possible that he was not of sound mind when he made Cortez Ramos his heir? Do we even know for sure that Mr Ramos is Ralph’s son?’

  She tensed when she saw Cortez standing in the doorway of the library and realised he must have overheard her. Too bad, she thought grimly. She was fighting for her and her brother’s inheritance and, more importantly, for her son’s future.

  Harry was Cortez’s son.

  Oh, God, she couldn’t think about the implications now, or how she was going to break the news to the granite-faced stranger she’d had sex with one time that he had fathered a child. She heard Jarek’s motorbike roar off down the drive and a knot of fear for his safety tightened in her stomach.

  The solicitor shook his head. ‘Mr Saunderson was definitely of sound mind when he asked me to draw up a new will for him six months or so after his wife’s death. I believe he had suspected for some time that Mr Ramos could be his son and when a DNA test proved it, he invited his son
here to Cuckmere Hall. He asked me to draw up the new will on the same day that Mr Ramos visited, on the third of March a year ago.’

  ‘The third of March is my birthday,’ Elin said faintly. The realisation that her adoptive father had written his extraordinary will, which effectively left her penniless, on her birthday, felt like a devastating betrayal. There was no possibility of her marrying within a year so that she could claim a fifty per cent share of Saunderson’s Wines.

  She felt bombarded by one shock after another, and on top of the worry about her future she was terrified that her brother would risk his life riding his motorbike dangerously fast. She felt the same sensation of being unable to breathe that she’d experienced two nights ago in a crowded nightclub. Her legs buckled beneath her, and as if from a long way off she heard Cortez swear.

  CHAPTER THREE

  ELIN WEIGHED NEXT to nothing, Cortez discovered as he sprang forwards and caught her before she hit the floor. Her fragility was the first thing that had struck him when he’d seen her standing at the front of the church. Was her slender figure the result of dieting to be fashionably thin, or was there a more sinister reason? he wondered as he strode into the library with her in his arms.

  Two days ago, pictures of her being carried out of a London nightclub had been plastered over the front pages of the tabloids. There had been speculation that she’d taken cocaine or another recreational drug, popular on the club scene. Is this proof that Elin has resumed her party lifestyle? had been one headline.

  Cortez had been annoyed with himself for pandering to his curiosity and buying the newspaper to read the full story. The references to Elin’s party girl reputation of a year ago, before she had mysteriously dropped off the paparazzi’s radar for a few months, had made him shove the paper into the rubbish bin in disgust.