Escape for Easter: The Brunelli Baby Bargain / The Italian Boss's Secret Child / The Midwife's Miracle Baby

‘Say yes now.’

CHAPTER SEVEN

SAM jerked back in her seat as though someone had struck her.

‘You still want me to marry you?’ She gasped hoarsely.

Cesare gave a fluid shrug. ‘Why not? You are carrying my child, Samantha. Nothing has changed except your ability to support yourself.’ He angled an enquiring brow and tilted his head to one side in a listening attitude.

Sam would have given anything to tell him it didn’t matter, that losing her job made no difference—but it did.

She glanced down at the hand laid against her still-flat belly. ‘Do you think I don’t know that?’ She chewed absently on her lower lip and sighed. ‘It’s ironic, really—I thought for a second you might have been here to suggest…’

Sam stopped, very conscious that he was alert to every nuance in her voice. He seemed to possess the disturbing ability to hear not only what a person said, but also what they didn’t say.

‘You thought I was going to suggest what?’

The admission came out in a defiant rush. ‘I thought you might not want me to go ahead with the pregnancy.’

He looked blank for a moment. ‘Not…’ Then he froze.

Sam watched the dark colour run up under his skin, deepening his naturally dark complexion and then receding, leaving him deadly pale.

With unwilling fascination she watched his chest lift as he struggled to contain the outrage that was written into every hard line of his expressive face.

When he finally spoke his low voice vibrated with the strength of his feelings. ‘Dio Mio, you thought that I would ask you to terminate the pregnancy?’ He broke off and slid into a flood of extremely angry-sounding Italian.

Sam stubbornly struggled to cling to the shreds of her defiance in face of his display of incandescent rage. ‘I can see how it would seem like a solution to you.’ She winced, thinking that she sounded like a sulky, petulant child. Why, she despaired, did she always end up feeling as though she was at fault where he was concerned?

Cesare’s nostrils flared as he sucked in a deep breath. It was nice to know what a high opinion she had of him. ‘You see nothing, cara!’ he ground from between clenched teeth. ‘Except what you wish to see! I am the bad man in your story, but this is not a story and if it was it would not belong to you alone.’

‘Very cryptic. Are you trying to make a point?’ she challenged.

He inclined his dark head in a jerky motion. ‘This is our story…our child. And a child needs two parents.’

‘They generally have two. It isn’t optional, unlike marriage.’ She jumped to her feet to put some distance between them and began to pace the room angrily.

‘There is no need to bounce around in that emotional way.’

‘I’ll be as emotional as I like,’ she retorted.

‘This marriage will be a paper arrangement…’

She cut across him shrilly. ‘You’re talking as if it is inevitable and, anyway, what are you talking about…paper arrangement?’

‘Marriages do not have to be for ever.’

His own parents’ marriage had not been. His father—a serial adulterer—had walked out on Cesare’s tenth birthday and the contact with his absent parent during the rest of his childhood had been limited to Christmas cards and the odd birthday present—usually a month or so late.

Cesare was determined that his own son would never be the little boy inventing the marvellous trips his father had taken him on to friends who had full-time fathers. His mother had done her best, but once she had remarried her new family—including three younger half-sisters—had obviously been the main focus of her attention.

Cesare had never quite belonged.

Sam stopped within a foot of his chair and said wistfully, ‘I’d rather thought my marriage would last the test of time. Of course a man who is willing to take on another man’s child might not be so easy to find.’

Cesare was silent as the words sank in—another man bringing up his child. Another man sharing a bed with Samantha.

The pressure in his temples increased, the dull throb became a deafening pounding.

But there was no hint of fury in his voice when he responded coldly, ‘I hardly think now is the moment to be emotional.’ The need to get his point across was more important than recognising the hypocrisy of the criticism. ‘I am offering you a practical solution. Life as a single parent is not a bed of roses.’

‘I’m aware of that,’ she snapped, angry because he had neatly tapped directly into the escalating anxieties that were giving her nightmares. She had no job, the rent on her flat was astronomical and the place was not suitable for a baby, let alone a small child. What Cesare was offering, as cold, clinical and unpalatable as it seemed, would solve all her immediate problems.

She was well aware that most women in her situation would not view being offered marriage by an eligible billionaire as a problem. She should be thinking of the baby as he was, not herself. It wasn’t as if he wanted to be saddled with a wife, but he was prepared to make that sacrifice.

‘You cannot support even yourself.’

She pushed aside her tortured reflections and threw him a humourless smile. ‘I see you prescribe to the kick-them-when-they’re-down school of thought.’ On anyone else the dark line scoring the razor-edged angle of his incredible cheekbones might have been suggestive of embarrassment, but he wasn’t anyone else and she seriously doubted if he stocked the sentiment. ‘Thanks for the concern, Cesare,’ she said, laying on the insincerity with a trowel. ‘But I’ll…we’ll manage.’ Even she could hear the note of hysterical uncertainty in her voice.

His lips curled as he directed a black stare of hauteur in her direction. ‘I do not wish my child to manage. I wish my child to have a stable upbringing, a father….’

‘And you think I don’t.’

His dark lashes lowered, brushing his cheeks. ‘A mother should put the needs of her child ahead of her own wishes.’

Sam gasped. ‘That is low, Cesare, even for you.’

He looked irritated and ran a hand through his hair, causing it to stick up at the front. ‘What do you expect? You won’t listen to reason, you’re too stubborn and idealistic and…Dio mio! Do you not realise how your life would change as a single parent? Job satisfaction would be very low on your list of priorities. You would be forced to take work that paid, but did not necessarily offer you the challenges you need.’

‘Challenges,’ she echoed bitterly. ‘I don’t need challenges, I need—’

‘Security,’ he finished for her smoothly.

‘Well, if I’m short of cash I can always do a kiss and tell. I still have contacts. Just imagine,’ she invited, ‘what the tabloids would pay.’

Cesare leaned back in his chair and Sam was irritated to see that he didn’t look too bothered by the idea of his name being splashed all over the tabloids. ‘Is that a threat?’ he asked in a conversational tone.

‘Could be.’

‘The trick with threats is to never make them if you have no intention of following through.’

She eyed him with intense dislike. ‘You would be the expert on threats.’

He smiled. ‘If I make one you can be sure that I will follow through.’

Sam lowered her eyes before the irony hit her. She was dodging the stare of a man who couldn’t even see her! He could intimidate her, though, without even trying. And Sam had no problem believing he would follow through with any threats he made—none at all.

Cesare was a dangerous man—she had known that from the moment she saw him. Her problem was she had a sneaking suspicion that that was part of his attraction for her. He was the forbidden fruit and to her eternal shame she couldn’t look at him without contemplating taking another bite out of him!