‘I am the sole executor,’ he conceded. Then with an air of considerable pride, he added, ‘Enrique entrusted me with judging if each mission was fulfilled in spirit as well as on paper.’
‘Each mission?’ Tess quizzed, finding the term rather odd.
One eyebrow arched, challenging her ignorance. ‘You are unaware of the conditions attached to your husband’s inheritance from his father?’
There it was—the link to Nick’s marriage proposal!
‘Since I don’t know of any inheritance, I can hardly be aware of conditions,’ she shot back at the lawyer, her chin lifting with considerable pride of her own as she added, ‘I did not marry my husband for money, Mr Estes.’
His mouth twitched in ironic amusement. ‘I did not imagine it would be a factor to you, given the wealth of your own family. But there is most certainly an inheritance at stake here…’
‘Like hell there is!’
The furious words cracked across the room as Nick charged into it, barely clothed in one of the white towelling robes kept in the dressing rooms at the pool. It hung loosely from his shoulders, gaping at the front because he clearly hadn’t stopped long enough to drag its edges together and do up the tie-belt. The brief black swimsuit he wore underneath it was clearly visible.
Zack, probably still as naked as he’d been in the pool, was wrapped in a towel and riding in the crook of Nick’s arm, his little face looking brilliantly alert to the fascination of his father in steaming attack mode, his gaze following Nick’s other arm as it stabbed out at Javier Estes then swept back, pointing to the door.
‘Get out of our home!’
‘Nick!’ The shocked gasp literally exploded from Tess’s lips as she leapt to her feet, the urge to intervene driven by his appalling lack of civility.
His eyes were like green shards of ice, determined on freezing any further action from her. ‘Keep out of this, Tess! This man has no business here with us. He came uninvited. He is not welcome. He goes with the same nothing Enrique Ramirez granted me when I was eighteen.’
‘I came to give,’ Javier Estes argued.
‘I don’t want what you came to give. I didn’t want any part of what my father denied me while he was alive, and I certainly don’t want it after he’s dead. If you assumed I would take it, you could not be more wrong.’
‘You fulfilled the conditions.’
‘Not to benefit from the Ramirez estate,’ was whipped back so fast, there was no leeway granted for argument.
‘I can still award a third of it…’
‘No!’
The old man gestured urgently to Zack. ‘You have a son…Enrique’s grandson…’
‘Leave my boy out of this.’
‘Why would you deny him his heritage?’
‘Because the only heritage that counts is right here with his mother and me.’ Nick strode over to Tess, his free arm gathering her close to him to present a united family to Javier Estes. ‘Tess and I will bring up our son our way. To value what we value. And that’s about loving him, caring about the person he is and always being there for him. Zack doesn’t need anything from Enrique Ramirez.’
Tess stood in the secure circle of his arm, feeling the fiercely proud independence pumping from Nick and encompassing her as an essential part of what he wanted in his life. Partners, she thought in deep relief, finally dismissing the painful conflict stirred by the arrival of Javier Estes.
A partnership was what Nick had proposed in the beginning. It had nothing to do with gaining an inheritance. It was about sharing what they believed was important for children. And happily sharing a bed, as well. It wasn’t all she wanted, but…the sick anxiety she had carried into this room was draining away.
Nick had not lied to her.
The lawyer from Brazil did not appear at all perturbed by Nick’s violent and vehement outburst. He seemed to look approvingly on the family grouping which was being flaunted at him. After a few moments of silently weighing what he’d just been told, he calmly asked, ‘You think Enrique didn’t care about you?’
‘I remember my meeting with him in Rio de Janeiro very well,’ Nick retorted with bitter derision. ‘One could say everything about it was indelibly imprinted on my brain.’
‘As it was on Enrique’s,’ came the soberly paced reply. ‘Why do you imagine he paid to get reports on your life for the past sixteen years?’
Reports? Did Nick know he’d been under surveillance? It made Tess feel creepy even thinking about it, but Nick did not seem surprised by the claim. He glared at Javier Estes in grim-faced silence as the lawyer put forward another argument.
‘Why do you imagine he constructed the letter he did for you before he died—the task he set you in the hope of changing what he knew to be a life of hollow pleasures…’ His gaze moved, pointedly encompassing Zack and Tess before adding, ‘…into what you have now?’
Tess’s mind instantly seized on the letter.
Received on November the fifteenth with the packet from Brazil?
Was getting married and starting a family part of the task—the mission he had to carry out before…but why do it when he didn’t want the inheritance? Why rush into proposing to her if there was no other agenda on the line? It made no sense.
Nick’s arm around her tightened as he growled, ‘What I have now is due to Tess—the person she is and what she has given me.’
She silently savoured those words. They weren’t hollow. They were loaded with meaning, making her feel truly important to Nick.
The old man nodded and smiled. ‘I can see that your commitment to each other is genuine. Enrique would be pleased.’
Nick’s hand knifed the air in disgust. ‘I did not marry Tess to please my father.’
An eyebrow arched in challenge. ‘Can you deny that his letter prompted you into thinking about marriage? There is…considerable serendipity…in the timing.’
There certainly is, Tess thought.
As Nadia Condor had observed to extremely hurtful effect.
‘Serendipity, yes,’ Nick bitingly conceded, ‘but my marriage to Tess still has nothing to do with the conditions Enrique laid down for inheriting whatever he’d decided was my share of his estate.’
‘The inheritance…’ The lawyer flip-flopped his hand, indicating that it was an ambivalent factor. ‘Enrique simply used it as a power tool to drive you into reappraising your life. It worked, did it not?’