In the Italian's Bed: Bedded for Pleasure, Purchased for Pregnancy / The Italian's Ruthless Baby Bargain / The Italian Count's Defiant Bride

Somehow Emma managed to be normal.

Somehow she managed to kiss her parents goodbye and thank them for a wonderful weekend as they headed off for their drive along the coast.

She wasn’t even angry as she clipped on her seatbelt and headed for her own long drive home, still hoping that he’d ring, that her phone would bleep and it would be Zarios, offering some sort of an explanation.

Pulling up at her flat, Emma felt her heart leap as she saw him standing at her door, glad—so glad—that she hadn’t rung and blasted him with accusations.

He gave a very thin half-smile of acknowledgement as she parked her car, then walked towards him, and Emma felt her heart sink at the grim expression on his face.

‘Hi.’ Refusing to be needy or jealous, refusing to let him know she’d even seen the newspaper, Emma let him into the hallway then up the steep steps towards her flat. She certainly wasn’t going to make this easy for him—if he was still with Miranda then he could tell her so without assistance!

‘I’ve been waiting for you…’ He couldn’t meet her eyes; he followed her through to the kitchen. ‘May I?’ He gestured to the sink and Emma frowned as he poured himself a glass of water and downed it in one gulp. For someone who had had so much practice in breaking women’s hearts, he sure looked nervous. ‘As I said, I’ve been waiting for you.’

‘Well, I’m here now!’ Emma kept smiling, deliberately kept smiling, even though her heart was shrivelling. Just yesterday she’d been in his arms. Little more than twenty-four hours ago she’d been foolish enough to glimpse a future with Zarios in it—and now she knew, just knew, he was about to break her heart.

What an idiot she was to believe him.

What a blind, trusting fool.

‘Your brother asked me to come…’

‘My brother?’ Emma frowned. What on earth did Jake have to do with all this? Unless he’d been asking Zarios for money…Emma’s blood chilled at the very thought.

‘He’s at the hospital…’ Zarios ran a tongue over very pale lips. ‘We thought it better that I came and told you rather than the police…’

‘The police…’ Tiny needles prickled at her scalp, along her arms. Her eyes shot to his, seeing the very real anguish there. ‘What’s he done?’ Frantic images dotted her mind. Oh, she’d known Jake was worried—in deep trouble, perhaps—but from the serious note in Zarios’s voice, from the grey tinge to his skin and his reticence, Emma knew that this was serious. ‘What’s happened to Jake?’

‘It’s not Jake.’

Her hand flew to her mouth as she thought of Beth, the twins…‘What the hell has he done?’

‘It isn’t Jake, Emma…’ Zarios swallowed hard. ‘It’s your parents.’

‘My parents?’ She shook her head. Nothing he was saying was making sense. ‘What are you talking about? I just left them.’

‘There was an accident on the beach road…’

She was already turning for the door, desperate to get to them, only Zarios was pulling her back.

And she knew why—knew as he pulled her into his chest what was coming next. Only she didn’t want to hear it. Struggling like a frantic cat in his grasp, she was desperate to get away, to flee, to run, rather than be held and face the truth.

‘Emma, they were killed outright.’

CHAPTER FIVE (#ulink_d92c7412-17a6-5969-beb5-581adf80e8cc)

HIS arms were the only thing that stopped her falling as everything in her world went black.

In the horrible shrinking vortex which she’d entered, for a moment there was nothing. No sound, no thought, no gravity. Just a spinning sensation of doom that coated each cell in its rapid black welcome, then expelled her to another side—a side where, no matter how she pleaded and wept to go back, there was no escape.

On the most horrific day of her life he was there beside her, this strong pillar of support. In fact, Emma was so bewildered that she didn’t even realise till much later how much she must have leant on him that day.

And that evening, too.

She had let him drive her back to her parents’ home and there lead her to her bed, where she had woken just that morning when everything had been so normal. He had sat on the chair beside her whilst she had drifted in the twilight zone between rest and sleep to a place of vague awareness, and somewhere between darkness and dawn she remembered.

‘Miranda…’

‘Shhh…’ The loose lips of a liar might once have soothed her, but she was beyond comfort now, beyond pain—beyond anything, really.

‘Are you two back together?’

‘We’ll talk in the morning.’

‘Are you back together?’

The endless silence before he spoke was louder than his words.

‘Emma, it’s complicated….’

‘Yes or no?’

There was the longest pause. ‘Yes.’

Which still didn’t answer her question. It was unfathomable to her that after the most breathtaking lovemaking, after all that had been said, he could within a matter of hours simply walk away.

‘Is she pregnant?’ It was an arrogant question, but it was all she could think of, all that could rationalise such a rapid demise.

‘No.’ Zarios looked her in the eyes and lied. Lied because they had to be over. Lied because he wouldn’t do it to his child—could never let it be said, even to himself, that it was the only reason he was with its mother.

‘Miranda and I have been together a long time—four months,’ Zarios added. And Emma suddenly felt as if her mother was in the room with her, recalling the sun-drenched evening and how they had laughed. The perfect answer was there for the taking, but she chose not to use it. ‘Emma, what happened that morning…’

He closed his eyes; she could see his face screwed up in concentration as he tried to find the words, but rather than wait for his paltry summing up, she found words for him.

‘Was just a bit of fun.’

He frowned before he opened his eyes again. Clearly her response was the last thing he’d been expecting, but Emma was hurting so badly that there was plenty to go around, so instead of humiliating herself, instead of letting him think she’d once wanted him, she told him otherwise. She was more than willing to grate off a piece of her raw bruised heart and let him sample the pain—let him take a sip of the humiliation he’d force-fed her.

‘Emma, you know that’s not the case.’

The acrid bitter taste of humiliation was choking her. She had lost not just her parents that day, but the man she’d glimpsed loving, too.

‘Oh, come on, Zarios, my mother would never have forgiven me if I hadn’t at least attempted to flirt with you.’ She stared through the darkness towards him. ‘The great Zarios D’Amilo, coming to my house for a party. My business almost in tatters. It would have been almost criminally irresponsible for me not to at least try…’ And there it was, the tiniest swallow in his olive throat that told her that maybe, just maybe, he believed her. It was enough to make her go on. ‘So you went back to Miranda—oh, well, you can’t blame a girl for trying. Anyway, you know how the saying goes—rich men are like buses; if you miss one, there will be two more following shortly behind.’

Silence hissed in the air. Emma knew she had gone too far, but it was too late to attempt retrieval, and right now she simply didn’t care.

‘Just leave, Zarios.’

‘You shouldn’t be on your own.’