Special Deliveries: Her Nine-Month Secret: The Secret Casella Baby / The Secret Heir of Sunset Ranch / Proof of Their Sin

It would definitely be satisfying to watch her squirm. Any lingering nostalgia he had would be wiped out the second she lowered her eyes, cleared her throat and asked if he could lend her just enough money to… do whatever she needed it to do. He would think with warmth and relief then of Cecelia and the fact that she would never need to ask him for money.

A cynical smile curved his sensuous mouth. He decided that this unexpected visit from Holly was just the thing. In fact, he couldn’t wait…

Dithering outside the most impressive office building she had ever seen, all smoked glass and metal, Holly chewed her lip and clutched her backpack in front of her like a talisman. People swerved around her, coming and going. They all wore dark business suits and carried briefcases or computer bags slung over their shoulders. These were people in a hurry and on a mission. When she had sent that text to Luiz, asking to meet up, she had expected him to suggest somewhere neutral, maybe a restaurant or a coffee bar. The fact that he couldn’t even be bothered to leave his office to see her was a stark reminder of how little she meant to him and how thoroughly she had been forgotten. He was quite literally prepared to ‘grant her an audience’ between emails.

She knew she should be neither hurt nor surprised by that. She had invested far more in their relationship than he had. He wasn’t going to be eager to see her and he wouldn’t be interested in catching up. In fact, she was slightly surprised that he had agreed to see her at all. She glumly thought that, by the time she was finished saying what she had to say, he would be heartily wishing that he had refused.

Taking a deep breath, she forged a way through the busy swarm of people, either leaving for or returning from lunch. In her shapeless, long-sleeved dress and her thin waterproof anorak, she felt as conspicuous as an elephant at a tea party. She knew, as she was propelled through the revolving doors and ejected like a sack of potatoes into the vast, opulent foyer of the building he had directed her to, that people were staring at her. Politely staring; wondering what on earth she was doing there. She knew that if she didn’t act purposefully right now that a security guard would materialise and offer to show her out of the building. There would be an implicit threat that the police would be involved if she didn’t go quietly.

How on earth had it come to this? It was the question she had been asking herself for the past week. She had made the appointment to see her doctor, as she had been feeling under the weather recently. A prescription and maybe a pep talk on the curative aspect of time had been the only things she’d expected…

Someone bumped into her from behind, a young girl in a snappy black suit carrying the obligatory briefcase and Holly mumbled an awkward apology and was rewarded with a gimlet stare and raised eyebrows.

Her frayed nerves were well and truly reduced to rubble at this timely reminder of how out of place she was here and how horrendous and awkward the next half an hour was going to be.

Indeed, her thoughts were in such a state of meltdown that she was barely aware of the next ten minutes or so, during which a friendly girl, one of four positioned behind a circular desk, pointed to where she should sit whilst one of Luiz’s secretaries came for her. Then, ten minutes later, she was herded off to a private lift and whooshed upwards so that her already sick and nervous stomach churned even more sickly and nervously.

She ceased noticing the curious stares as she was ushered into a huge space that smelled of money being made and deals being done. She paid absolutely no attention to the opulence of her surroundings. She no longer felt insignificant next to the thirty-something-year-old clones with their ears pressed to phones and their fingers tapping on computer keyboards, their body language proclaiming that they couldn’t stop because they were in the middle of making huge profits for their company.

She blindly followed the middle-aged woman in front of her while every fear and apprehension she had nurtured on the train down coalesced into a sickening knot in the pit of her stomach.

She desperately wanted to reach out, grab the woman by the hand and tell her that she had made a terrible mistake; could she please just leave now? But, before she could open her mouth to utter a word, they were at the end of the corridor where she was staring into a boardroom, then turning left through a suite, then an office, then facing a heavy door which was very firmly closed.

Holly felt as though she had had no time to register this side of a Luiz she’d never known existed, no chance to appreciate the world he worked in. She felt that she should have paid more attention to her surroundings. It would have given her the opportunity to stoke up the old anger and fan the flames of hurt and disillusionment which she would need to see her through the next half an hour.

She felt vulnerable, under-prepared and scared to death as the heavy door was pushed open. Her first glimpse of Luiz after all these weeks was of his back, turned away from her as he stared through an impressive bank of windows overlooking the city.

Luiz was aware of his secretary showing Holly in but he only turned around when he heard the soft click of the door being shut. Still playing with the bits of jewellery she had returned to him, he now dropped them into the depths of his trouser pocket and looked at his visitor with a cool, unreadable expression, his antennae on full alert as he studied her, taking in every detail of her appearance.

She had put on weight. Or had she? He couldn’t tell because for the past few weeks the women with whom he had come into contact had all been thin and lanky. Next to any of them someone with even the merest hint of a curve would appear overweight. Next to her, Cecelia was a stick insect.

Familiarity kicked in. The memory of her voluptuous, sexy body slammed into him with the unexpected force of a freight train. He was angrily aware of his dormant libido gathering force and breaking through the barrier of indifference he was keen to keep in place, even though she couldn’t have been dressed in a less flattering outfit. Having not seen him for over two months, she couldn’t even be bothered to dress for the occasion! He thought that she could have tried a bit harder to impress, for someone on a begging mission.

‘I can’t spare you a lot of time,’ he said, moving to sit and watching intently as she hesitantly remained where she was, as though ready to take flight at a moment’s notice. He was riveted by the untouched prettiness of her face. He had contrived to forget the appeal her lack of artifice had always held for him, but he was fast realising that the memory of that had been buried in a very shallow grave indeed. The hope that Cecelia might benefit from comparison wasn’t happening. In fact, it was a struggle to revive the image of the Brazilian beauty with her full, pouting mouth and model size-zero figure.

‘That’s okay.’ In her peripheral vision, Holly was conscious of a comfortable leather sofa against a stark white wall on which hung an imposing abstract painting in bold colours. On the opposite side, a slightly smaller desk was backed by bookshelves, all high-gloss white. But really her eyes were glued to Luiz, as imposing, impressive and sinfully good-looking as he had been in her head, where he had continued to plague her waking moments and invade her thoughts when she was asleep at night.

‘So… what can I do for you?’ He tapped his pen restively on the surface of his desk and lounged back in the chair. Keen eyes noted the slow crawl of colour into her cheeks, confirming his suspicion that her visit was financially motivated. Naturally, he wanted to wait until she was forced to confess the reason for her visit. There was already a cynical twist to his mouth in anticipation of the predictable denouement of her presence in his office but, when the silence stretched on and on, he finally clicked his tongue impatiently and leant forward.

‘You were never short of something to say, Holly, so why the dumbstruck silence?’

‘I… I’m not sure where to begin…’ Her voice sounded unnaturally high and tinged with guilt. She hadn’t expected to be thrown in at the deep end, made to feel unwelcome, granted none of the usual pleasantries that might have put her a little more at ease. He acted as though she had been the one to blame for the break-up of their relationship! As though he hadn’t been the guilty party… the man who had lied to her and led her up the garden path!

Hard on the heels of that thought came the realisation that he could behave however he chose because in his head he was probably guilty of nothing. So he had lied to her, but he certainly wouldn’t feel mortified at that because to feel mortified, he would also have had to care about her and he hadn’t. That was the bottom line. Her soft mouth firmed.

‘Shall I give you a helping hand?’ Luiz queried in a silky-smooth voice that somehow managed to get her back up and reduce her already scattered ability to think even more.

‘How could you do that? You don’t know what I’ve come here to say,’ Holly intoned in a nervous whisper.

‘I can take a guess…’

‘How?’ Confusion tore into her as she tried to fathom out how he could possibly suspect the reason for her visit. Was he a mind reader? He had always been spectacularly good at placing her moods and had always seemed to instinctively know what she was about to say. Plus, she had gained weight. All over there was just… more of her. She had gone up a bra size, and that was underestimating things. Self-consciously, she felt her breasts tighten and she shifted a little. For a man who could take in every detail of a woman’s body in seconds, he would have spotted that in a flash. She thought that it might make her job a little easier if she didn’t have to spell it all out in black and white. Caving in to his superior knowledge, and not doubting for a second that he had guessed why she was there, Holly sagged. ‘I suppose it’s pretty obvious.’

‘It is to me. For God’s sake, Holly, why don’t you take that ridiculous jacket off and sit?’

‘You don’t have much time. I wouldn’t want to impose… I just wanted to say what I have to say… leave you to mull it over…’ But she awkwardly removed the anorak and slunk into the chair opposite his desk.

Luiz gave a sharp intake of breath. He would have had to be blind not to see how those luscious curves were even more tempting now. Her generous breasts were more than evident underneath the baggy dress. His jaw hardened as he fought to contain a crazy urge to lock the office door and discover for himself just how voluptuous she was underneath the unappealing clothing.

‘What’s there to mull over?’ he demanded harshly. ‘Just tell me what you need the money for. What’s gone wrong at the sanctuary? High winds wrecked some of the enclosures? Or is it the cottage? That damn building’s so ancient that you might as well resign yourself to the uphill task of finding money to fix things forever more until you decide to sell it.’ He reached into the desk drawer and pulled out a cheque book. ‘For old times’ sake, I’ll give you however much you want, but after this the well is dry…’

Holly looked at him in a daze, not quite following what he was saying to her.

‘You think that I’ve come for money?’ Yet why was she so shocked and hurt? Hadn’t he told her weeks ago, when they had parted company, that in his eyes all women were gold-diggers unless their fortunes could match his? Including her? Was it any wonder that he was looking at her now, ill-dressed and nervous, and jumping to all the wrong conclusions?

‘What else?’

‘You really are the most cynical person I’ve ever met, Luiz. I don’t suppose I would have liked you at all if I had met… the guy sitting in front of me right now, waving a cheque book around and asking me how much money I had come for. When we were together, you never behaved like an arrogant bore who thought that he could throw money around and get whatever he wanted.’

Luiz flushed darkly, caught off-guard by the pained bitterness in her voice. He leaned back and folded his hands behind his head. If she wanted to get to her point via a circuitous route, then he would let her but, the ‘arrogant bore’ label rankled.

‘But the arrogant bore sitting in front of you is the guy I really am,’ he murmured smoothly.

‘You were never arrogant when you were with me,’ Holly said in a strained voice.

‘But then, I was Luiz Gomez when I was with you. Here I am Luiz Casella, and I don’t have time to go round the houses with you, so why don’t you tell me what you’re doing here and have done with it?’ Arrogant bore… More than anything, he loathed the disappointment and pity in her face when she had said that. When he had walked out, he had left her angry and hurt. Now, surrounded by the trappings of his vast empire, she wasn’t impressed, she was disenchanted. Wealth didn’t seem to make him more of a man in her eyes.

Nerves making her fidgety, Holly glanced away and said abruptly, ‘I read somewhere that you’re going out with… someone now.’

Luiz’s immediate thought was to ask whether she was jealous… jealous enough to trek all the way down to London to confirm a rumour… jealous enough to realise that she had lost a good thing, whatever her high-minded reasons might have been at the time.

‘Where did you read that?’ he asked.

‘On the Internet.’ Holly blushed at the admission.

‘Really? I’m surprised that you were interested enough to try and check me out.’ But he had to admit that it gave him a kick to think that she had been.

‘I wanted to find out who the person I’d been seeing for the past year and a half really was,’ she said defensively. ‘You’re famous.’

‘I’ve acquired some standing in the business community.’

‘I felt like I was reading about someone I didn’t know. You own properties all over the world; your have companies and businesses all over the world. What on earth did you ever see in me? Didn’t I bore you to death?’

‘You were…’

‘A novelty,’ Holly bitterly filled in the blanks. ‘A change of scene—and a change is as good as a rest, isn’t it? And your usual scene when it comes to women are glamorous models and celebrities. There were reports and pictures about the new woman in your life… Cecelia Follone. I guess she’s the sort of woman you described as your ideal long-term partner…the right background…the right look.’

‘And that’s why you came here? To find out whether there was any truth behind the rumours?’ He had temporarily forgotten about Cecelia and didn’t care for the reminder that she was supposed to be his ‘ideal long-term partner’.