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

‘Then go.’

‘How did you get Zarios to agree?’

‘It doesn’t matter.’ Emma gave a thin smile. ‘You’ve got the money.’

‘Thank you.’

Jake wasn’t the only one with an important meeting to attend. Staring out of her window Emma watched as Zarios’s sleek silver car purred up to the kerb. She could almost sense that he knew the money had just been spent.

That she was now his.

That thought was confirmed when, instead of opening his car door, instead of walking down the path to her flat, Zarios gave a short burst on his horn that told her, as if she didn’t already know, he was here.

That he had come to claim what he now owned.

‘Emma!’ Rocco rose from his chair and embraced her. ‘It is good of you to come and see me…’

The house was just as it always was whenever Emma went there. Situated in the exclusive Melbourne suburb of Toorak. The door had been opened by Roula, Rocco’s elderly housekeeper, and she had walked them through the home which was more like a vast mausoleum to his brief marriage—its walls and surfaces lined with images of their brief union.

Emma was shocked at the frailty of Rocco as he held her. In the few weeks since she’d last seen him he’d aged more than a decade, and Emma knew it wasn’t just his illness he was suffering from, but a broken heart—he’d loved her parents, too.

‘You should have told me you were bringing Emma over,’ Rocco scolded his son.

‘What, and spoil the surprise?’ Zarios smiled.

‘I am too old for surprises.’

‘You’re sixty,’ Zarios pointed out, but it was hopeless. Age really was just a number, and despite his wealth, despite the trappings they afforded, the years really had ravaged his father.

‘Emma is staying tonight,’ Zarios informed Rocco. ‘She needs a break, and there is also something—’

‘You should have said—I will tell Roula to make up a room, that we have a guest…’

‘There is no need to make up a room for a guest. Emma is family,’ Zarios corrected him, and Emma noticed the slight swallow before he continued. ‘Or she will be soon.’

A smudge of a frown flickered over Rocco’s brow. ‘You two?’

‘Yes.’

‘Are together?’ Still Rocco frowned. ‘Since when?’

‘Since Eric’s birthday.’

‘But what about Miranda…’

‘That is why I ended it with Miranda, Pa…’

‘Why didn’t you say?’ Rocco’s voice was bemused. ‘Why did you let me think the filth in the papers was true?’

‘We wanted to be sure…’ Zarios took her hand and Emma realised he was as skilled a liar as he was a lover. ‘Pa, we know how big this is, and we had to be sure. With everything that has happened these past few weeks, as terrible as they have been, it has helped us to make up our minds. I have asked Emma to marry me, and happily she has agreed.’

He would lie at his own father’s grave, Emma thought, and then realised with a cold drench of horror that in effect she was doing the same: manipulating this wonderful man who, as Rocco’s eyes sought hers for clarification, perhaps trusted Emma more than he did his own son.

‘Is this true?’ Rocco asked. ‘You two really are engaged?’

She could feel Zarios’s hand tighten around hers, attempting to provoke a response, but all she could manage was the tiniest nod.

‘We are going to get a ring tomorrow…’ Zarios filled in the long silence. ‘We wanted to tell you before the papers got hold of it.’

‘And you are happy?’ Rocco asked, still more stunned than pleased.

Even when Roula, the housekeeper, was duly summoned, when champagne was poured and toasts given, there was a forced joviality about it all—and not just from Emma.

Rocco, she realised, was clearly choosing to reserve judgement—he was wary with his words, thin with his sentiment—and for the first time Emma glimpsed what Zarios had meant when he had said that his relationship with his father wasn’t one she could understand. On the night his only son had announced his engagement, after a cursory glass of champagne and some rather strained small talk and stilted interaction between father and son, Rocco reminded Zarios of the time in Europe, and that he had an important call that needed to be made.

‘I shouldn’t be long.’ Zarios glanced at his watch, and then to Emma, and for the first time she saw just a flicker of nervousness in his eyes. No doubt he was worried at leaving her alone with his father.

‘Avetti is an important client…’ Rocco waved him away. ‘You will take as long as is necessary.’

Pensively, Rocco smiled over at Emma, once they were alone. ‘You must have mixed feelings at a time like this?’

‘I do.’ Emma nodded, able to look him in the eye now, because for that second in time she was telling the truth.

‘Come!’ He stood up and gestured to a large dresser, where Emma joined him. ‘I found this photo of your father and I just the other week, when I was going through some papers. You will not have seen it—I didn’t even know I had it.’

She smiled at the image of two grubby little boys sitting on a wall, their knees grazed and dirty. It hurt almost too much to look at the image of her father, so she focused instead on Rocco. As dark as Zarios, but with a cheeky grin, there was a lightness about him Emma could never imagine in his son.

She was right—there in the another photo was Zarios, at eight or nine years old, refusing to smile for his school photo, looking as serious and as accusing as he did now.

‘He hated boarding school.’ Rocco interrupted her thoughts. ‘I hated sending him. I thought I was doing the right thing by him at the time—it is a choice I regret.’

Hearing the wistful note in Rocco’s voice, seeing his kind, tired eyes, reminded her so much of her dad it made her brave enough for an observation. ‘You don’t seem pleased, Rocco, about the engagement?’

‘I am torn,’ Rocco admitted. ‘I love my son, but…’ He frowned, more to himself than to Emma. ‘Your parents meant the world to me. In some ways with them gone I feel more responsible towards you—almost as if you were a daughter. If I could forget for a moment that Zarios was my son, as much as I love him, I have to be honest—I am not sure he is what I would wish for my daughter…’

Which was hardly a glowing reference from a father, but it was said with more concern than malice. His eyes filled with tears as they came to rest on another photo. Emma followed his gaze, her throat tightening, because there, in contrast to the austere photo of his youth, was a very different Zarios.

A smiling, happy little boy, three, maybe four years old, running along the beach carrying a plastic windmill.

And there he was again, grinning and laughing, wrapped in his mother’s arms, with a smiling Rocco looking proudly on.

A different Zarios and a different Rocco, too.

‘You would never have met Bella.’ Rocco picked up the photo and gazed at it fondly, then handed it to Emma. ‘Our marriage broke up before you were even born.’

‘She’s beautiful.’

‘She was…’ Rocco smiled. ‘She was also way too young to be married. She was just sixteen. Things were different in those days. The marriage was arranged by my grandparents—Bella was from my village back home. She came to Australia speaking no English.’