“Javiero.” A warm, lilting Irish accent sounded on his blind side, but Javiero wasn’t stupid enough to take his eye off his enemy. “It’s nice to meet you. I’m Kiara.” He caught a glimpse of an extended light brown hand.
Javiero had an impression of voluptuous curves and a flash of a white smile in a light brown face, but Val swept his arm out and shoved her behind him in a protective move that was insulting as hell. All Javiero glimpsed now was masses of curly black hair and dark brown irises blinking wide-eyed from around the width of Val’s shoulder.
“For heaven’s sake,” she grumbled as Val moved her out of Javiero’s reach. Val’s entire body had hardened with unjustified, pumped-up aggression.
Javiero returned his loathing tenfold.
“No comment?” Javiero taunted into the thick silence, suddenly thrilled to look like a street thug who’d lost a knife fight. “Not going to say you like what I’ve done with my hair or something equally banal?”
“How is Scarlett?” Kiara asked brightly, still behind Val.
“Fine.” Javiero told her they’d had a boy and Scarlett was sleeping, all without wavering from his locked stare with Val.
“I’d love to see him,” Kiara said with a pang of yearning in her voice.
“No,” Javiero said, silently conveying to Val he was the reason for the refusal.
“I’ll stay here,” Val said grittily. His unblemished features twisted into a frustrated sneer. “Let her go up.”
Wow. That sounded almost as though Val possessed a conscience inside that pinup exterior. Javiero wasn’t fooled. He took supreme pleasure in delivering a second, implacable, “No.”
Val gathered himself and Javiero did the same, distantly thinking it was a good thing they were in a hospital.
“It’s fine. It’s late.” Kiara’s arms wrapped around Val’s waist from behind, as if to hold him back. Or to protect him? She was wasting her energy either way.
“Tell Scarlett to call me when she’s up for a chat,” Kiara added with forced cheer.
Javiero walked away. His win against Val felt empty, but it was a win and that was all that mattered.
* * *
A muted hum intruded on the best sleep Scarlett had had in ages. She frowned without opening her eyes, resisting coming back to consciousness.
“A boy. Well done,” a woman’s voice said. “Did you do it deliberately?”
Paloma? Ugh. She’d drifted into a nightmare. She tried to redirect to something pleasant. Clotted cream and strawberry jam on freshly baked scones. Mmm…
“No.” Javiero’s quiet rumble was a staple in her dreams—sensual and invigorating and fantasy inducing. Very mmm…
“At least that would have made sense.” Paloma’s sharp voice faded as though her volume had been turned down. “What were you thinking, taking up with your father’s mistress?”
What? Scarlett scraped her eyes open, barely comprehending that the golden light was a night-light and the metal bar was part of a hospital bed.
“She was not his mistress. Never repeat that.”
“I don’t have to! The rumor mill will do that for us. They’ll rake up every misstep all the way back to my father’s lack of foresight during the oil shock.”
“Gossip is an unpleasant reality of life, like death and taxes.”
“As is the fact you’ll have to marry her? Because you can’t let Val and Evelina waltz away with half the money that should be ours and leave the other half to her. You have to take control of our half.”
That snapped the last of the drowsiness out of Scarlett. She shifted and, as she did, heard a mewing noise. She glanced at the bassinet, which was empty.
“I have to go, Mother. Scarlett’s awake and Locke is hungry.” Javiero was in the recliner, their son in the crook of his arm. He clicked off his phone and set it aside.
“What time is it?” She fumbled for the button that would raise the head of the bed.
“Nearly midnight.” If he felt guilty for what she’d overheard, he didn’t look or sound it. He lowered the footrest and brought the baby over, back to being the effortlessly compelling yet infinitely intimidating man she’d always known.
“Can you look out the window or something?” she asked as she started to fumble with her gown.
He moved away and she latched her son, then draped a receiving blanket over him. With a shaky sigh, she tried to relax, but now that she was awake, she was absorbing the fact her entire life had made one more turn on the kaleidoscope. All the pieces had dropped into a completely new pattern. Niko was dead. Javiero knew about the baby. Her son was here.
And Javiero’s mother wanted Javiero to marry her to take control of Niko’s money.
Scarlett longed to blink herself back to the villa and familiar surroundings so she could catch her breath.
“Did you text Kiara?” She glanced around for her phone, wondering if she could go back to the island with her in the morning.
“She was here a few hours ago.”
“Oh?” A rush of pride zinged through her. “I wanted to see her when she held him for the first time. She kept saying she was excited to have a baby in the house, especially one she didn’t have to deliver herself.”
He didn’t laugh. “I didn’t bring her up. Val was with her.”
“Oh.” It wasn’t her fault that her friend’s baby had been fathered by Javiero’s detested brother, but she still experienced a stab of guilt. “Did you tell her we’d had a boy?”
“She asked his name and I said we hadn’t decided, but Locke suits him.” He turned his head, voice warming exactly two degrees.
“Locke,” she whispered as she peeked under the blanket. He’d fallen asleep so she fumbled him off her nipple and caught the blanket to hide her breast. “Can you hold him? Kiara made this look so easy.”
He took Locke and used the pad of his thumb to dry the boy’s shiny chin.
She tried to gauge
