The Mediterranean Billionaire's Secret Baby

Her spine rigid with apprehension, she felt hot tears of sheer exhaustion flood her eyes, and she bit into the soft underside of her lower lip to stop them falling.

Tell him it was none of his business? Would he accept that? Absent himself smartly, relieved that she wouldn’t be making a nuisance of herself, demanding financial support, and—heaven forbid—making herself known to his family and causing him huge embarrassment?

It seemed a definite possibility. As a psychological profile of a guy who would trample a poor girl’s heart with as much compunction as he would trample a fallen leaf, it fitted.

Unless she steeled herself to tell a whopping lie and name some other fictional guy as the father? Claim she was just five months pregnant, putting him right out of the frame? But, given the size of her, would he be gormless enough to believe that?

Bracing herself, Anna waited. But the only question he asked was, ‘Do you still live with your parents at Rylands?’ Receiving a breathless affirmative, he said nothing more until he halted the car at the head of the weedy drive. Then he told her grimly, ‘Don’t think I’ve finished. I’ll be here first thing in the morning. And if I’m told you’re not available I’ll wait until you are.’

Driving back at the sort of speed he had earlier carefully controlled in deference to his passenger, Francesco cursed himself for failing to demand to know the identity of the father of her child.

Once set on a course of action he always pursued it with surgical precision, letting nothing stand in his way. He was single-minded, known to be ruthless when the occasion demanded—he’d had to be. Taking over the almost moribund Mastroianni business empire on the death of his father ten years earlier, he’d dragged it kicking and screaming, into the twenty-first century—not a task for an indecisive weakling.

And as for compassion for fools and knaves—forget it!

So why hadn’t he pressed home his advantage when she’d asked to use the Rosewalls’ phone? Why had he allowed her to avoid answering the burning question? No one else on the planet would have got away with it!

He should have forced the truth from her. He’d had the ideal opportunity.

Except—

She’d looked so vulnerable. Exhausted. Wet and bedraggled, like a half-drowned kitten. His primary emotion had been rage that a woman in her condition was forced to slave for those too privileged to do anything but issue orders and then sit back and wait for them to be carried out. That had been swiftly followed by the need to transport her to where she could find comfort and rest.

He expelled a harsh breath through his teeth. He had to be getting old, losing his touch!

And who the hell was Nick?

Clutching her hot water bottle, Anna crawled into bed. The bathwater had been tepid at best and her bedroom was draughty, with damp patches on the ceiling where the venerable roof leaked.

Her throat tightened. She shivered convulsively. She was being threatened. He really did mean to drag the truth from her, against all her earlier expectations he wasn’t going to shrug those magnificent, expensively clothed shoulders, discount the fact that he might be about to become a father and leave her to get on with it.

She’d read somewhere that the Latin male was deeply family orientated. The reminder made her shudder.

If only she hadn’t accepted the Rosewalls’ catering job! They wouldn’t have set eyes on each other again. And if only she’d been able to fall in love with Nick and accept the offer of marriage that had been made when her pregnancy had begun to show she’d have been a married woman, and Nick would have sworn blind the child was his. He would do anything for her. The thought depressed her.

She and Nick had been best mates since they were toddlers, and he was the kindest, gentlest person she knew. They were deeply fond of each other—always had been—and that had prompted his proposal, and the vow to care for her and the baby, look on him or her as his own.

He cared for her—she knew that—but he was not in love with her and he deserved better. One day he would meet someone who took his breath away. And she wasn’t in love with him either. What she felt for Nick was nothing like what she’d felt when she’d fallen for Francesco—

Oh! Scrub that! Punching the pillow with small, angry fists, she buried her head in it and tried to sleep.

Anna gladly left her rumpled bed at daybreak. Dressing in a fresh maternity smock, she bunched up her hair and pinned it on top of her head. Her eyes looked huge and haunted as they stared back at her from the mirror.

Turning away, disgusted with herself for being scared of the Italian Louse, because he couldn’t make her do anything she didn’t want to do, she stuffed her feet into a pair of beat-up old running shoes. The comfy flats she’d worn last night were still sodden.

She hunted for her mobile.

Nick sounded sleepy when he answered, and Anna apologised. ‘I woke you. Oh, I’m sorry! But listen—’

Briefly she explained what she needed, feeling awful for calling him so early. But Francesco hadn’t specified a time—just ‘first thing’—and if she and Nick were on their way to the manor with a new battery when Francesco turned up, tough. He would have to kick his heels until she decided to return home. And it wouldn’t be running away, she assured herself staunchly. No. It would simply be giving her the upper hand.

‘No probs,’ Nick was saying. ‘Give me half an hour. Didn’t I tell you you’d get trouble? How did you get home? You should have called me.’

‘I was going to. But one of the Rosewalls’ guests insisted on driving me.’ She skated over that bit quickly. ‘And Nick—thanks.’

‘What for?’

‘Thanks for coming to the rescue.’

‘Any time—you know that. Or should do.’

Ending the call, Anna plodded down to the kitchen, collecting her old waxed jacket on the way. A swift glass of juice, and then she’d set out to meet Nick. Thankfully, last night’s rain had stopped, and fitful sunlight illuminated the dire shabbiness of the interior.

No wonder poor old Mum seemed to be permanently depressed as she watched her beloved old family home start on the unstoppable slide into decay. Frustrated too. Beatrice Maybury had always been frail—something to do with having had rheumatic fever as a child—and was unable to do anything practical to change the situation. She’d had to stand by and watch her husband William lose everything through one sure-fire money-making scheme after another, all predictably and disastrously failing.

Sighing, she pushed open the door to the cavernous kitchen—and stopped in her tracks.

‘Mum?’

Beatrice Maybury, her slight body encased in an ancient candlewick dressing gown, greying hair braided into a single plait that almost reached her waist, her feet stuffed into rubber boots, lifted the kettle from the hotplate and advanced towards the teapot. ‘Tea, dear?’

‘You’re up early.’ She watched, green eyes narrowed, as her mother reached another mug from the dresser. Mum rarely surfaced before ten, on her husband’s insistence that she rest. William had always treated his adored wife as if she were made of spun glass. It was a pity, Anna thought in a moment of rare sourness, that he hadn’t treated the fortune she’d inherited the same way. ‘Is anything wrong?’

‘No more than usual.’ Beatrice’s eyes were redrimmed and watery in the pallor of her face, her smile small and tired as she put two mugs of steaming tea on the table. ‘Your father’s worn out. I think that job’s too much for him. I insisted he had a little lie-in.’

She sat, cradling her mug in her thin hands. Swallowing a sigh, Anna followed suit, beyond hope now of setting out to meet Nick on his way here and thereby avoiding The Louse if he had literally meant ‘first thing’. She couldn’t just walk out and leave Mum—not while she was so obviously troubled. As far as Anna could remember her mother had never insisted on anything, meekly allowing others to make all decisions, content to follow, never to lead.

Dad had always been as strong as an ox, but maybe labouring for a firm of local builders was proving to be too much for a man well into his sixties. The wages he earned went to make a token payment to his creditors, while the money she earned paid the household bills—just about. Between them they kept Rylands itself in a type of precarious safety. For the moment.

‘I said I’d feed Hetty and Horace and let them out. No egg this morning. I think Hetty’s off-colour.’

Anna grinned. It was the first time she’d felt remotely like smiling since she’d clapped eyes on The Louse again. ‘She’s probably just miffed because you keep taking her eggs. We should let her sit, increase the flock.’

The cockerel and the fat brown hen were the only survivors of a fox raid—the only survivors of Dad’s self-sufficiency drive. It had been announced with his unending brio, hazel eyes alight with this new enthusiasm, grin as wide as a barn door. ‘Fruit and veg, hens, a pig, a goat. The lot. Keep ourselves like royalty; sell the surplus in the village. Goat cheese, bacon, free-range eggs—you name it! Forget big business—back to nature. That’s the life for us!’

The goat had never materialised. The pig had died. A neighbouring farmer’s sheep had got in and trampled or eaten the fruit and veg, and the fox had taken the hens.

‘And…’ Beatrice raised soft blue eyes to her daughter, ‘We had a little tiff. He was upset, I’m afraid.’

Anna put her mug down on the pitted table-top. She didn’t like the sound of this. Her parents doted on each other. The love they shared was the staunch prop that kept their lives from collapsing around them, becoming a bitter nightmare. Mum had never said a cross word, had never blamed Dad when his bad investments and wacky money-making schemes had gone belly-up. She blamed everyone else instead, always encouraging him in his next, ill-fated ‘Big Idea’.

If they were starting to fight, if love and loyalty were slipping away, then what hope was there for them?

Anna loved them both dearly. She felt protective towards her frail mother, and was exasperated by her father, but she loved him for his boundless energy and enthusiasm, his warmth and gruff kindness.

‘Well, I’m afraid I’m going to have to put my foot down. Rather firmly.’

‘I see,’ Anna said gently, astonished by this departure from the norm. But she didn’t. ‘About…?’