“What are you doing here?” the little girl said in tremulous English, clutching her doll. “Go away. I don't want you here!”
Diogo rose steadily to his feet. “Hello, Catia.” He took a step toward her. “I've missed you, minha pequena. Angelique called and said you were asking for me. I came as quickly as I could.”
“No! I don't want you! Go away!”
Diogo picked the child up in his arms. Her doll dropped with a crash to the floor as he hugged her close, whirling her around the room, but instead of bursting into childish squeals of laughter, she howled, “No! Put me down! I don't want you here, don't want you!”
She was not a pretty little girl, except in the sense that all children are beautiful. Her hair was mousy brown. She wore thick glasses, her teeth were crooked, and she was far too thin and serious for a five-year-old child. Ellie's heart went out to the girl.
Then her plain brown eyes fixed on Ellie.
“Who is that?”
He stroked her hair tenderly. “That is Ellie. My wife.” He turned. “Ellie, I'd like you to meet Catia,” he said quietly. “She's my daughter.”
An hour later, after the little girl went into the kitchen to have lunch with her nanny, Ellie and Diogo sat on the sofa in the front room. The visit between Catia and her father had not improved, in spite of all Diogo's trying.The more he'd attempted to charm and please the little girl, the more she'd howled and pushed him away.
“I hired Angelique through an agency. I never even knew I had a daughter till this past Christmas,” he told Ellie, rubbing his head wearily with his hands. “Maldição, she lived in Rio all these years, but I never knew.”
“Where is her mother?” she asked softly.
His dark eyes looked haunted. “She's dead.”
“Dead?”
He clenched his jaw. “Yasmin was a dancer—so passionate, so full of life. When I met her, I was building a new mine in Saskatchewan. We only had a few dates a few weeks apart. On our third date, she asked me to marry her. I thought she was a gold digger trying to pin me down. So I didn't ask questions. I just left her.” He looked away, staring at the gleam of the hardwood floor. “When I told her she meant nothing to me, she said she was done with me. She said she loved someone else too much to waste any more time with me. It never occurred to me that she might be pregnant.”
She stared at him, her mouth agape. “Oh, Diogo,” she whispered.
“After I found out about Catia, I couldn't stand the thought that I'd unknowingly abandoned my daughter for five years. I had to make sure that no other woman could get pregnant without my knowledge…”
“So you had a vasectomy.”
He nodded wearily.
She swallowed. It all made sense. “What happened to Yasmin?”
He clawed his hair back. “She tried to support her baby alone, but couldn't do it after she got injured. I found out later she tried to contact me when Catia was six months old. She sent me a letter. But I never got it. Wright saw to that. He threatened her.”
Her jaw dropped. “Timothy?”
His lips flinched into a humorless smile. “Yes.”
“Timothy?” she gasped. “Threatened the mother of your child?”
“When I found out at Christmas, he told me he was protecting me. He wrote Yasmin a letter informing her that if she ever tried to contact me again, he would have her arrested for extortion.” He clenched his jaw grimly. “Instead, he offered to buy the baby from her for ten thousand dollars.”
She gaped at him. “Ten thousand dollars!”
“She was terrified he would steal her child from her, so she never tried to contact me again. But with no family or means of support, she ended up working in Rio as a high-class hooker.” He looked up at her with hollow eyes. “And that's how she died. One of her clients beat her to death at Christmas.”
Ellie sucked in her breath, hardly able to comprehend the horror of it. “And Catia?”
He shook his head. “Yasmin always sent her to a babysitter when she entertained clients. Catia knows that her mother is dead, but not how she died.”
“Thank God,” Ellie said devoutly. “That poor child…”
It was all such a tragedy. Ellie had worked herself into a jealous frenzy over a beautiful mistress who had just been a figment of her imagination.
All along, her rival had been a motherless child.
“Don't worry,” Diogo said coldly, misreading her pause. “I understand that Catia is my child, not yours. Whatever you think of my unreasonable expectations of a bride, I do not expect you to help me raise her.”
Ellie straightened on the sofa.