The Spaniard's Love-Child Read Online Free Page A

dread at bay. It had been later, after the police had arrived and taken control, that he had been unable to repress his fear.
    â€˜You?’ Nell couldn’t keep the incredulity from her voice. A man who checked in on the sleeping youngsters before he retired for the night did not mesh with Katerina’s description of someone who looked on his brother’s children as an imposition.
    â€˜What?’ The irascible voice sounded impatient.
    â€˜Well, yes, but kidnap , isn’t that a little extreme?’ she asked faintly.
    â€˜What world are you living in? We have a great deal of money and it is a fact of life that there are many people out there—unscrupulous people—who would do anything, and I mean anything , to dispossess us of some of it.’
    Nell, aware of Katerina’s scrutiny, tried not to let her horror at this chilling information show. She couldn’t even imagine the sort of life he was describing.
    â€˜What are the police going to do now?’
    â€˜Police?’ Katerina parroted sharply. ‘Has he sent the police after us?’
    Frowning, Nell shook her head for the girl’s benefit and laid a finger to her lips.
    â€˜Don’t worry, Miss Rose, they are not going to prosecute you for wasting police time.’
    Even though Katerina was listening, Nell could not permit this blatant attempt to intimidate her pass. ‘Well, they’d have a hard time doing that, wouldn’t they?’
    â€˜If you’d contacted me as soon as they got there like any normal, responsible adult—if you’d stopped to consider the anguish their family would be feeling instead of waiting for hours—a great deal of grief, not to mention wasting police resources, might have been avoided.’
    Nell bit her lip; it was only Katerina’s presence that stopped her responding to this unfair accusation with a few home truths of her own. Raul Carreras was in no position to play the blame game.
    â€˜Possibly this conversation might be better continued in the morning when everyone has had a little sleep,’ she suggested stiffly.
    â€˜Morning!’ A caustic laugh reverberated down the line. ‘You think I will permit the children to spend the night under your roof? Tell them I will be there in twenty minutes.’
    â€˜My God, you really are as stupid as you look.’
    There was the angry hiss of indrawn breath before a cold voice inserted with icy precision. ‘Twenty minutes.’
    A martial light entered Nell’s blue eyes as she replaced the dead receiver.
    â€˜Is he coming? I won’t go with him.’
    Nell’s cool voice cut through the rising note of hysteria in the teenager’s voice. ‘You look tired, Kate. Why don’t you crawl into bed until your uncle gets here?’
    â€˜You mean he’s going to take us away.’
    Over my dead body. ‘Nobody’s doing anything until the morning,’ Nell told the girl calmly.

CHAPTER THREE
    T HE door opened before Raul had a chance to ring the bell. He sensed she had been waiting for him, watching through the window perhaps, for his car to draw up? He spared a passing thought for his car parked at that moment in a less than salubrious area, and turned his attention to the young woman standing in the doorway.
    A woman who looked like this and was prepared to exploit it, as Nell Rose had already proved herself willing and able to do, did not need to live in such a place. There would be men—men like his brother—more than happy to house her in relative luxury, though she would have to make a little more effort with her appearance, he thought, studying her critically. Because whatever else Nell Rose had been doing while she’d waited for him, it had not involved a comb! Her red-gold hair stood like a fiery nimbus around a porcelain-pale face.
    The women he became involved with did not have tangled hair; they were well groomed, attractive, intelligent and no