The Brunelli Baby Bargain

‘VIRGIN?’ As Cesare spoke the memory of Sam’s hoarse cry of wonder echoed in his head, but as the memory dredged up feelings he did not want to examine he pushed it away.

Now, the suggestion drew a strangled cry of dismay from her throat.

He arched a dark brow. ‘You thought I wouldn’t notice?’

‘Hoped.’ Sam bit her lip as the admission escaped uncensored.

‘So you could pretend it didn’t happen? Do you intend to be a professional virgin?’ he goaded. ‘The next time you decide to offer me psychological advice, remember that you are the well-balanced woman who preferred anonymous sex with a stranger than to sleep with her fiancé.’

‘I don’t prefer anonymous sex!’ She was outraged at the suggestion.

‘Then you did know who I was.’

A hissing sound of exasperation escaped her clamped lips. ‘I keep telling you I had no idea who you were.’

‘The dictionary definition of anonymous sex is carnal relations with someone you don’t know.’

‘You don’t read the same dictionaries I do. Look, I really don’t know why you’re making such a big thing of this… Honestly, to hear you talk anyone would think I drugged you into submission. It just happened, and I’m not going to beat myself up over it.’ That sounded really grown up—in a perfect world she really would be this well balanced and pragmatic. ‘And for the record I’d have been quite happy to have sex, it was Will who…’ She stopped, an expression of mortified horror spreading across her face as she realised what she had said.

‘Your fiancé wouldn’t sleep with you?’ Cesare thought of her soft body beneath him, of her pulling him down towards her.

There was no question in his mind that any man who could have had that and rejected it was a fool—a certifiable loser.

‘He fell in love with someone else and my personal life is none of your business,’ she hissed, wishing she had realised this before she had blabbed all the embarrassing details.

‘Tell me what else am I to think? You turned up out of nowhere, pretending to be a cleaner… You tried to get inside my head…’

‘Believe me, your head is the very last place I’d want to be.’

‘You say you didn’t want to be in my bed but that’s where you ended up. Where you planned to end up?’

The totally unjustified suggestion drew a cry of protest from Sam. ‘I did no such thing! I didn’t plan anything, it…it was an accident. It was sympathy sex,’ she was driven to claim.

The words were barely out of her mouth when she was racked by shame and guilt. It had been a mean and petty thing to say, not to mention a lie, but there were times, she told herself, when only a lie worked, and she felt desperate.

Frustratingly her pitiless assertion did not even dent his self-assurance, let alone do irreparable damage to his self-esteem, which looked to be fully intact. He even laughed before he drawled, ‘Sure it was, cara.’

She watched his expressive mouth curl upwards, then swallowed as she closed her eyes and remembered feeling the hot, carnal caresses of his mouth on her. A shiver passed through her body and she thought how it was better by far not to go there.

‘A second ago I was capable of sleeping with you for a story, but suddenly I slept with you because you’re utterly irresistible. Maybe I was just curious?’ He greeted the suggestion with an arched brow. ‘I’d never slept with a blind man before.’

‘You’d never slept with any man before.’

‘Then I hope it makes you feel special!’ she yelled. ‘You know, I don’t know why you’re so mad with me. Unless it’s because you resent that I saw through the macho tough-guy façade. Don’t worry, I know what happened wasn’t personal.’

‘Not personal?’

‘You needed someone and I was there.’

Cesare frowned and pushed away the intrusive memory of the feelings that had twisted in his chest when he’d held her in his arms in the breathless aftermath of their lovemaking. The knowledge that he had been her first lover had shocked him, but it had also deeply aroused him, more than he had imagined possible.

‘It is true there have always been some things, cara, that I prefer not to do alone—’

The deliberate crudity made her blush.

‘It’s a foible of mine and if we’re talking needs I’d say that you needed me at least as much as I needed you. Will you put that in your story? Is this is a courtesy visit to inform me of the imminent article? I’m interested—what tack did you take…?’

‘Go to hell!’ she choked.

‘Which is where I was when you dragged me back from the edge by sharing your delicious little body with me. An interesting angle for you—how I saved the billionaire on the brink by generously sharing my luscious little body. But I have to tell you it was only sex—you were not my salvation.’ It was something he had told himself on more than one occasion.

‘Believe me, I wouldn’t want to be!’ she was able to rebut with total sincerity.

‘What are you, then?’

The words slipped out before she could stop them. ‘Pregnant. I’m twelve weeks pregnant.’

In the act of straightening his already perfectly symmetrical silk tie, Cesare froze. For several seconds he did nothing at all including, or so it seemed to Sam, breathe.

‘Pregnant?’

‘It was quite a shock.’

Cesare’s heartbeat and the world around seemed to have slowed. ‘You’re sure?’

The question sent a surge of anger through her. ‘You think this is something I would say if I wasn’t absolutely sure? You think I just came here on the off chance?’ She stopped and blinked back the sudden rush of tears that filled her eyes. ‘Of course I’m sure!’ she added thickly.

‘You’re crying!’ Cesare accused.

‘No, I’m not,’ she denied, shaking her head as she scrubbed a hand across her pink nose. Through her damp lashes she watched as he speared his fingers into his hair and rested the heels of his hands against his closed eyes.

‘I don’t know about you, but I don’t see any need for a post-mortem over why and how and—’

His head lifted. ‘I think we both know how.’

His wry interruption brought a dull flush to Sam’s pale cheeks. She bit her lip, lifted her chin and continued doggedly as though he had not spoken.

‘The why still remains something of a mystery to me, but,’ she added adopting a bright tone, ‘these things happen…’ She stopped and bit her lip again. Couldn’t she say anything that wasn’t a cliché or a platitude?

A muscle clenched in his lean cheek. ‘Not to me.’

‘Well, me neither, as it happens.’

‘Do you think I don’t know that?’ He hadn’t just impregnated a woman, he had impregnated a virgin! In some societies that could be a capital offence.

‘Look, don’t worry, I’m not expecting anything from you. I just thought you might like to know…so now you do I’ll be off…’ She shrugged the strap of her bag firmer onto her shoulder and turned.

‘You’ll be off…?’ he choked.