The Mediterranean Billionaire's Secret Baby

‘Bad investments followed worse ones, I hear,’ Guy put in as he sat down again.

‘You seem to know a lot about them,’ Francesco commented, reflecting uneasily that seven months was spot-on. The child would be his unless immediately on her return home Anna had jumped into bed with someone else. But that didn’t seem likely, given that at that time she’d been banking on reeling him in. She’d been expecting him to follow her to England, so she would not have wanted some other guy hanging around to stir up trouble, he decided forensically.

Making a huge effort to stop a black scowl from forming, and stopping himself from marching straight into the kitchen and demanding to know the truth, he listened to his cousin’s answer.

‘It was necessary when we first came here to introduce ourselves to the better families so they could advise us on local reliable and honest tradespeople. A permanent housekeeper is to arrive next week, but there are others.’ She took a sip of her coffee and arched one finely raised brow at him over the central flower arrangement. ‘Plumbers, electricians, a man to do the garden, caterers—that sort of person. The pregnant girl came highly recommended.

‘Now, why don’t we retire to the sitting room while the pregnant one clears away? One Grappa, I think, and then Guy and I will go up and leave you two to relax by the fire and get to know each other properly.’ A big smile in Francesco’s direction as she got to her feet. ‘I know Natalie wants to discuss some charity ball I’m sure you’ll be interested in.’

Like hell he would! Deadpan, he met the redhead’s over-sugared smile. Introduced by Silvana as ‘a friend from London’—an organiser of glittering events for some charity or other—she was certainly a looker. And available. And he was going to have to endure a weekend of having his cousin throwing them together. He would have to let this Natalie know that he was as interested in the female of the species as he was in settling down to read through the telephone directory from cover to cover. And try to be kind about it.

And tomorrow, first thing, he would visit Rylands and demand to know if the child the woman who’d made an idiot of him was carrying was his.

The dishwasher had finished its cycle. Wearily, Anna replaced the contents back in place in the huge Victorian floor-to-ceiling cupboard. Her feet were burning and her back was still aching.

Half an hour earlier Mrs Rosewall had found her repacking the cool boxes and handed her a cheque.

‘The meal was perfect. Are you almost finished?’

‘Everything will be back as it was in half an hour or so. I’m just waiting for the dishes to finish. Unless you’d prefer me to leave now?’ Said without any real hope.

She’d been longing to get away—well out of the orbit of Francesco and his current woman. But from experience she knew that her clients wanted their kitchens to look as if they’d never been used. That was what they paid her for. And they wanted full value for money.

And this one was no different. ‘No hurry. I just wanted to tell you that my husband and I are retiring for the night, but my cousin and his young lady will be in the sitting room and I don’t want them to be disturbed. Just let yourself out quietly. And, while I think about it, could you cater for lunch on Sunday? My guests will be driving back to London in the afternoon, so nothing too heavy, I think.’

Anna hadn’t even considered saying yes! The fee would be more than welcome, but no way would she put herself anywhere near that womanising creep again!

‘Sorry,’ she’d declined, resisting the urge to rub her aching back. ‘That won’t be possible.’

Now, after a final look at the spotless kitchen, she got into her old raincoat, shook her hair free and let herself out. Too tired to hurry, she was drenched when she reached her van and loaded the cool boxes in the back.

It had been a nightmare of a night. The shock of seeing him again had got to her, brought it all back when she hadn’t wanted to so much as think about him again. But it was over now, she reminded herself with almost tearful gratitude, and she forced herself to look on the bright side.

Sensibly telling herself that she never need set eyes on him again, she clambered in behind the wheel.

The way that redhead had been positively drooling over him had made her feel nauseous, and the horrible feeling that he must have noticed her pregnant state—how could he miss it?—put two and two together and know that the baby was his had been argued away as she’d grilled the kebabs.

Callously, he wouldn’t want to know. What had happened on Ischia was just one in a long line of forgettable flings. He would dismiss the matter, reasoning that if she had fallen pregnant it was her own fault and she could deal with it.

Which was fine by her!

With his heart successfully painted as black as his midnight hair, Anna pushed him roughly out of her mind and turned the key in the ignition.

The engine gave a tortured whine—and died. After the fourth attempt Anna had to concede that the battery was dead. Sternly resisting the temptation to bawl her eyes out, she rooted in her handbag for her mobile. It was entirely her own fault. Nick had advised her to splash out on a new battery, but she had kept putting it off because every spare penny was needed to pay the service bills at Rylands and put food on the table.

The fruitless search for her mobile continued—until Anna had to concede that she must have left it at home. Banging her small fists against the steering wheel, she yelped ‘Stupid! Stupid!’ then slumped in exhaustion in her seat, facing the unpalatable fact that she would have to go and knock them up.

‘Them’ being Francesco and his current squeeze! The Rosewalls had long since retired for the night. And for all she knew so had Francesco and his lady. The thought galvanised her. It had to be all of eight miles back to Rylands. It was pouring with rain. If she weren’t pregnant she would walk it. But as it was—

Francesco permitted himself a small Grappa as the redhead vacated the room. Huffily.

Too edgy to settle, he paced the room, glass held loosely in one hand. Used to fending women off, he usually managed it with finesse. Not tonight. He hadn’t been brutal. Just cold, clipped, concise.

Tickets for the charity ball she was organising didn’t interest him. Neither did meeting up for lunch when they were back in town. His schedule was too tight to allow room for any socialising in the foreseeable future.

At which point she’d gone to bed. Alone.

So he should be able to relax. But he couldn’t. Seeing Anna Maybury again had rekindled all the shaming memories, had brought everything he was doing his damnedest to forget back into unbelievably sharp focus, and her advanced state of pregnancy had deeply unsettled him, raising questions he knew he had to have answered.

The morning, when he could confront her, seemed an unendurably long way away.

Her heart quailing, Anna pressed the doorbell. The rain had turned her hair into dripping rats’ tails, and the front of her overall was soaking because the bump meant she couldn’t fasten her old waterproof. She felt sick with nerves, and knowing she must look pretty dreadful didn’t help.

But she had to contact Nick—ask him to come and collect her—and that meant facing Francesco, speaking to him, asking for the use of the Rosewalls’ phone.

The alternative was trudging home along narrow, isolated lanes. The chance of flagging down a passing motorist was a remote one at this time of night, and the likelihood of seeing a light at the windows of one of the scattered cottages or farmsteads was almost non-existent.

As the door swung open in answer to her summons at last she stiffened her spine, barely glanced at Francesco’s hard, handsome features and managed to get out, in a disgracefully wobbly voice, ‘My van won’t start. May I use the phone?’

Silence. Then, above the relentless sound of the rain, she heard his harsh indrawn breath, found her eyes tugged up to his. Hardened grey steel.

And not even the beguiling accent could soften the impact of his rawly savage question. ‘Tell the truth, for once in your life. Is the baby mine?’

CHAPTER TWO

FLOUNDERING, stunned by such an in-your-face enquiry, Anna decided that it would be more dignified to ignore the question rather than give in to the compulsion to fling What do you care? at him.

Woodenly, she elaborated on her request, hammering home the fact that a way out of her present dead van difficulty need be the only point of contact between them.

‘I need to call Nick to ask him to fetch me, and for that I obviously need to use a phone.’

Aware of steel-hard eyes boring into her, one sable brow elevated in what looked like disbelief, she squirmed inside. Was he asking himself how he had ever managed to make love—amendment, have sex—with such a creature? Lumpen, hair like wet string, clumpy shoes, old school mac out of which loomed a stomach as big as the Millennium Dome!

Fighting the appalling fizzy upsurge of hysteria, she forced herself to calm down, to forget she loathed and despised him, and to explain, slowly and clearly, flattening dangerous emotions out of her voice. ‘Please let the Rosewalls know that Nick and I will collect my van first thing in the morning. All it needs is a new battery.’ Fingers crossed! No way could she pay a big repair bill if there was anything more serious amiss.

Shivering now, wet, cold and intensely weary, she felt desperation claw at her as she took a step forward. ‘May I come in?’

Glancing up at him when he made no move to allow her entry, she felt her heart twist in alarm. His eyes were grim and his beautiful, sexy mouth was set in a cruel slash. The handsome features were taut, throwing those classical cheekbones and the arrogant blade of his nose into harsh relief.

Was he going to tell her to get lost? Force her to walk back?

He moved then. Towards her. Taking an elbow in a grip of steel, turning her. ‘I’ll drive you.’

‘That’s not necessary.’ She couldn’t hide the note of urgency in her voice, dreading the thought of being cooped up in a car with him, him repeating That Question, getting personal. ‘Nick will be more than happy to fetch me.’

His grip tightened. The pace he was setting as he steered her unwilling and yet too exhausted to fight self through the darkness to the far side of the manor house quickened. ‘I’m sure he will,’ he remarked sardonically. ‘However, you need to get out of those wet things and into a hot bath as quickly as possible.’ He tugged her to a halt before she could blunder into the parked Ferrari. ‘You do not have just your own well-being to consider now.’

He meant the baby, Anna conceded guiltily as she shoehorned herself into the passenger seat. And he was right. The whole evening had been disastrous, and she needed to get dry, warm and relaxed for her baby’s sake, but the comparative speed of that operation against the delay of waiting for Nick meant Francesco would have ample opportunity to ask That Question again, and she didn’t know how to answer him.