When We Were Young

Chapter 32

"Rodriguez!"

He frowned at her tear stained face and then the white paper lying on the floor between them caught his attention. Paula tried to snatch it up but he beat her to it. His eyes scanned the report and his face contorted with shock before a smirk crawled on his face.

He bought back his smirking eyes to her.

"You are pregnant?," he sneered at her.

She snatched back the paper form him fuming in rage. Juan Rodriguez laughed and then crossed his arms over his chest, regarding her with a grimace. He pursed his lips as if in thought.

"I wonder whose brat it is? Leandro or the gardener?," he chuckled.

Her face paled at his words and he threw back his head booming in a loud laughter.

"By the look on your face, l guess it's the gardener who knocked you up. If it was Leandro's baby then you wouldn't be shivering like this because daddy dearest will only arrange a shotgun wedding between the two of you and then boom problem solved. But a gardener's baby...," his voice trailed off as he dissolved into more laughter.

"Damn, Paula. This is messed up. You are in deep shit!"

"This is none of your business! Stay out of it," she snapped at him.

The smug smile on his face vanished to be replaced by a sinister look. He stepped closer to her until their faces were mere inches apart. His breath smelled a little of vodka and it was only nine in the morning. Paula felt disgusted by his closeness.

"Then l am going to make it my business and tell your parents. How do you like that?"

Her face whitened in disbelief.

"You can't mean it!," she gasped in horror staring at the sick smile on his face.

He thrust his hands into his trousers pockets and began circling her like a predator.

"Do you know what your parents will do after they discover that you are carrying their gardener/ side driver's brat? They will send you to one of your vineyards in the country side and you will stay there, as a prisoner , heavily guarded 24/7 for nine good months until you popped out that thing and then they will give it away to some childless couple or even enrol it into one of those orphanages you sponsor. And then you will be forced to come back to Madrid and lie at every social event you attend that you were abroad studying. You will fake a polite smile and conversation all your life, but deep inside you will be haunted by the child you gave birth and don't know about it's whereabouts. Your secret will eat at your heart like a cancer feeding off it's victim.

Or your parents may chose the short and easier way out of this. You will be forced to have an abortion."

She was trembling by the end of his speech. Her hand unconsciously went to her flat stomach and great fear seized her. No!, she wasn't going to lose her baby at any costs. She was not going to allow her parents to separate her from her baby. She was going to fight to the very end.

"What do you want?," she asked him, knowing what a manipulative bastard he was.

The smirk on his face widened.

"Now we are talking, Paula. It's simple. Tell your parents that the baby is mine and then our parents will arrange a short gun wedding for us and then we will get married. You will get to keep the baby to yourself and l will get to have you in my bed every night like l have always dreamed of. I have desired you for years, Paula and you know it. I want you to be mine forever and no one else's."