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clothes and enough food on the table, and that had been to make the money herself. Whether her parents had made much out of their life of crime was hard to say. The only times she’d ever seen them they were so drunk or so high it would have the easiest thing in the world to steal from them, and they had died penniless and in debt, which she was also struggling to pay.
    After she’d restocked the room, she headed up the stairwell, through the fire door onto the small balcony at the top of the fire escape. The air was so cold here it was like breathing in ice shards, but she needed to refresh herself and wake up in readiness for the next shift. She was exhausted with the pregnancy and exhausted from working double shifts, but she had to go on. She had to support herself and a child.
    As a lone bird flew across her field of vision to its roost, she wished briefly that she could fly away. Lucas had used her for sex and moved on. She had used him for sex and moved on, so they were quits. If only she could forget about him once she had told him about their baby, but their child bound them together for life.
    Hugging her stomach protectively, she started to agonise over how and when to tell him. The future of an unborn child was at stake, and she couldn’t afford to get the timing wrong, and didn’t want to think how Luc would take the news.
    * * *
    She worked harder than she ever had during the night shift in a failed attempt to put Lucas Marcelos out of her mind. Only one thing mattered, she kept telling herself fiercely, and that was her baby, and by the end of this shift she could add to her nest egg.
    Though she scrubbed and cleaned and polished throughout the long night, Luc never left her mind. His baby was with her too. That was the one thought that kept her going, kept her happy, kept her calm. In spite of all the obstacles, she was so happy to be pregnant. From the first moment she’d suspected, the world had seemed a brighter place and she had vowed there and then that, whatever problems lay ahead of her, she would make a very different life for her child from the life she had known growing up.
    Luc might have no part in raising their child. She had already accepted that and intended to ask nothing of him. She didn’t need his help. She could do everything by herself, she always had. Telling him was the only difficult part, and that had seemed so easy in theory, but when she’d seen him face-to-face she’d known that nothing about it would be easy, and had panicked at the thought of him taking her baby away from her. Luc had the power to do that. He had the money and the influence she lacked. How would she even find her child if he decided to steal it away from her, when he had homes all over the world?
    She had to lift her head from her scrubbing to take some deep, calming breaths. Becoming a shivering wreck wouldn’t help her child.
    Would a man like Luc turn his back when she told him? Would he allow her to carry on and remain in Scotland? No. He would interfere. But she still had to tell him. It was the right thing to do. But Luc would want his child to have a very different life from anything she could provide. His child would have a privileged life, with nannies and carers and expensive schools...
    But no mother on hand.
    No encumbrance of any kind would be allowed to interfere in the self-indulgent lifestyle of the infamous Lucas Marcelos. His child would reflect his wealth and status, while its mother could only be an embarrassment to him.
    And now her throat felt as dry as tinder, and she remained cold and shivery for the rest of her shift. It was still dark when she finished work. The winter nights were long and cold this far north, and she had never felt so alone and uncertain as she put her cleaning equipment away and prepared to face the new day.
    There were hormones racing through her system, she reminded herself, and these, coupled with simple exhaustion, meant she must pull herself together, and