Hot-Blooded Italians: Sicilian Husband, Unexpected Baby / A Tainted Beauty / Marriage Scandal, Showbiz Baby!

Black eyes looked up over the silky tangle of Gino’s head and met hers and he found anger vying with desire. But there was a child in his arms, a child who would be confused and frightened by any display of anger, and so Vincenzo forced himself to ask her a cool question. ‘Good shower?’

‘Lovely, thank you.’

He held her gaze as he let desire in. ‘Icanimagine,’ he said softly, eyes now drifting to the soft swell of her breasts visibly curving beneath the thin material of cheap towel.

Now she was shivering with more than cold and Emma turned her back on him, hating the mixed messages he was sending out to her and the way they were making her feel. It was as if he wanted to weaken her in every way he could—first, by being proprietorial with Gino and then by that unspoken, sensual scrutiny. She felt in a complete muddle—as if the Emma of yesterday had disappeared and now a stranger had taken her place.

She dressed quickly, choosing a pair of clean jeans and a different sweater; her normal, daily, practical and presentable uniform, which never in a million years could be described as flattering. But Emma was glad. She was unwilling to ‘dress up’—to look as if she might be trying to make an impression on him. Or have him accuse her of playing the temptress again.

Only when she’d brushed her hair and given it a quick blast of the dryer did she take in a deep breath and go back into the sitting room, where Vincenzo was now standing with his back to her, holding Gino and looking out down the garden at the spreading chestnut tree, as she herself had done a million times before.

Gino heard her first, for he turned in his father’s arms and then gave a little squawk and began to wriggle towards her and Emma held out her arms and took her son, burying her face in his curls to hide the great rush of unknown emotion which was threatening to swamp her.

His arms empty without the baby’s warm weight, Vincenzo walked back towards the window, his heart beating very loud and very strong, more shaken than he had anticipated. And when he turned to look at Emma, to look at her cradling the child in what he considered to be a completely over-the-top way, his mouth hardened.

She glanced up, trying to read his expression but failing as she encountered a stony black gaze which gave absolutely nothing away. But why should that surprise her? Apart from those first few, heady months—when they had been rocked by the power of sexual attraction masquerading as love—she never had been able to tell what was going on in that head of his. He didn’t ever tell her. He didn’t do confidences, he’d once told her. As if talking about feelings made a man look weak.

‘Do you have any coffee?’ he questioned unexpectedly.

She felt wrong-footed. ‘Probably not the kind you’re used to. I keep it in the fridge,’ she said, and then pointed at one of the kitchen cupboards. ‘There’s a cafetiere in there.’

‘So you have not adopted the foul, instant-coffee habit of your countrymen,’ observed Vincenzo caustically as he began to set about making a pot with the air of a man to whom the kitchen was unfamiliar territory.

Emma watched him, wondering how he did it. She knew that he had always had women waiting on him hand and foot all his life. Quite frankly, she was surprised he hadn’t demanded that she make his coffee for him, except that even Vincenzo probably didn’t dare try that. But how quickly he adapted, she thought reluctantly. To see him now, you would imagine that he had been making morning coffee since he was first permitted to put a flame beneath a pot.

So why couldn’t he have adapted to married life so easily instead of embracing such an old-fashioned and autocratic relationship? It was as if by slipping that gold band onto her finger he had stepped back by a few decades.

Emma put Gino down onto the patchwork mat she’d finished off in those last, tiring days of her pregnancy and put down his large cardboard box for him to play with. She had covered it with wrapping paper and filled it with washed and empty plastic containers of different sizes—some of them filled with beans and rice, which made varying sounds.

Vincenzo paused in the act of pouring out two cups of coffee, his lips curving in derision. ‘Why is he playing with rubbish?’ he demanded.

‘It’s a home-made toy,’ defended Emma, standing her ground. ‘He watched me make it—so it was educational. He even turns it into a drum kit by banging a wooden spoon against it! And children often appreciate a simple plaything more than an expensive one.’

‘Which presumably you can’t afford anyway?’ he challenged.

Emma shrugged. ‘Well, no.’

Vincenzo glanced around him, not bothering to hide his distaste as he sank onto one of the hard chairs around the dining table. ‘Can’t afford very much at all by the look of things,’ he observed, and then put his cup down and his eyes lanced through her with a look of pure black ice. ‘Which presumably is what brought you back to me.’

She didn’t feel that now was the right time to correct him. To tell him that nothing had brought her back tohim. That this was about the legal ending of their ill-fated marriage, and nothing to do with feelings. ‘I wanted the best for Gino,’ she said in a low voice.

‘Did you really, Emma?’ he queried silkily. ‘Or did you just think you’d try to screw me for as much money as possible?’ His eyes glittered. ‘As well as screw me in other ways.’

Colour flared in her cheeks. ‘Don’t be so coarse!’ she whispered, as if Gino might be able to understand his crude allusion and judge his mother to be morally corrupt. And aren’t you? prompted the voice of her conscience. Was it really appropriate behaviour to do what you did with your estranged husband in the Vinoly suite yesterday?

Vincenzo shrugged and carried on as if she hadn’t spoken. His tone was soft—presumably not to alarm Gino—but that did nothing to detract from the venom which underpinned it. ‘If you’d really wanted the best for him, then you would have contacted me a long time ago.’

‘But I tried,’ she protested. ‘I tried to ring you and you refused to take my call! Twice!’

‘Then you didn’t try hard enough, did you?’ he snapped. ‘Just enough to go through the motions, but with no real determination. But that probably suited you very well, didn’t it, Emma, since everything seems to have been satisfying your needs, cara—and your desires?’

She stared at him, shocked by the bitterness in his voice.

‘And it’s still about your desires, isn’t it?’ he continued remorselessly. ‘You came to me because you wanted money and wanted sex—and so far you’ve scored on one count.’

‘I did not come to you for sex!’

‘No?’ he queried witheringly. ‘Someone forced you to end up naked on the sofa with me, did they?’ His eyes blazed. ‘But nowhere in your schemes do you seem to have considered what the child’s needs might be—’

‘But I did!’ Emma flared.

‘Liar.’ He leaned forward. ‘You didn’t think that it might have been a good idea to tell me about it when you discovered you were pregnant?’

‘It isn’t—’

‘Or maybe when you went into labour, that I might like to have known?’ His words ruthlessly cut through her stumbled explanation. ‘Or when you’d given birth—that as the father I had an inalienable and unquestionable right to know about it. Didn’t that occur to you, Emma?’

‘We’ve been through all this,’ she said dully. ‘Even if you had shown me the courtesy of taking my calls, you wouldn’t have believed me.’

‘Not at first, perhaps,’ he agreed through gritted teeth. ‘But just as I’m doing now, I would eventually have come around to realising that we had conceived a child—even if it did happen to be in the most unfortunate circumstances possible.’

Emma flinched, feeling for Gino. ‘Please don’t talk about it in that way.’

‘But it is true, cara.’ His eyes mocked her. ‘For surely even you would not deny that the circumstances surrounding his conception were regrettable?’

Regrettable. What a cruel yet emotionless word to use. What if she told him that her heart had been in bits that last day in Rome? That she had been aching and empty and longing for that sweet time to return, when all they had wanted or needed was love. That when he had pulled her into his arms as she’d been about to walk out of his life for good, she had been blown away by a passion which had seemed to mimic that time.

No, if she told him any of that, he would simply accuse her of lying again. Because, from the shuttered look of anger on his autocratic face, Emma could see that he had already made his mind up about her.

She couldn’t help shivering as she put her coffee cup down on the table and stared at him, wondering what he was intending to do with his newly acquired knowledge.

‘So…so what is going to happen now?’ she questioned faintly. ‘I’m assuming that you’re going to want regular…access?’

He gave a short, disbelieving laugh. ‘What do you think?’

She bit her lip. ‘I don’t know,’ she whispered, but, knowing Vincenzo as she did, he was going to want to take it right to the limit. Would he want holidays in Sicily for Gino? she wondered painfully. An entrée into that harsh and beautiful world which would gradually exclude his pale English mother? She was going to have to be mature about this. To deal with it in a calm and reflective way and then maybe Vincenzo would respond in the same way.

‘How best…how best do you think we should we go about it?’ she asked as politely as if she were asking a stranger the time of day.

Vincenzo had spent the last twelve hours thinking of nothing else. There was only one solution and it was one that he had felt with a powerful and bone-deep certainty.

‘You will return with me to Sicily,’ he said flatly, his voice as dark as his face.

‘You must be out of your mind,’ she breathed, ‘if you really think I’d go anywhere near Sicily again.’

Vincenzo’s lips curved into a cruel smile. Oh, but she was playing right into his hands! ‘Then do not come,’ he said softly. ‘But in that case I shall take Gino myself.’

‘T-take Gino?’ Emma’s heart was beating so fast and so loudly that she could barely hear her own reply. ‘You seriously think I’d let you take my son out of the country without me?’