The Mediterranean Billionaire's Secret Baby

CHAPTER TWO

FLOUNDERING, stunned by such an in-your-face enquiry, Anna decided that it would be more dignified to ignore the question rather than give in to the compulsion to fling What do you care? at him.

Woodenly, she elaborated on her request, hammering home the fact that a way out of her present dead van difficulty need be the only point of contact between them.

‘I need to call Nick to ask him to fetch me, and for that I obviously need to use a phone.’

Aware of steel-hard eyes boring into her, one sable brow elevated in what looked like disbelief, she squirmed inside. Was he asking himself how he had ever managed to make love—amendment, have sex—with such a creature? Lumpen, hair like wet string, clumpy shoes, old school mac out of which loomed a stomach as big as the Millennium Dome!

Fighting the appalling fizzy upsurge of hysteria, she forced herself to calm down, to forget she loathed and despised him, and to explain, slowly and clearly, flattening dangerous emotions out of her voice. ‘Please let the Rosewalls know that Nick and I will collect my van first thing in the morning. All it needs is a new battery.’ Fingers crossed! No way could she pay a big repair bill if there was anything more serious amiss.

Shivering now, wet, cold and intensely weary, she felt desperation claw at her as she took a step forward. ‘May I come in?’

Glancing up at him when he made no move to allow her entry, she felt her heart twist in alarm. His eyes were grim and his beautiful, sexy mouth was set in a cruel slash. The handsome features were taut, throwing those classical cheekbones and the arrogant blade of his nose into harsh relief.

Was he going to tell her to get lost? Force her to walk back?

He moved then. Towards her. Taking an elbow in a grip of steel, turning her. ‘I’ll drive you.’

‘That’s not necessary.’ She couldn’t hide the note of urgency in her voice, dreading the thought of being cooped up in a car with him, him repeating That Question, getting personal. ‘Nick will be more than happy to fetch me.’

His grip tightened. The pace he was setting as he steered her unwilling and yet too exhausted to fight self through the darkness to the far side of the manor house quickened. ‘I’m sure he will,’ he remarked sardonically. ‘However, you need to get out of those wet things and into a hot bath as quickly as possible.’ He tugged her to a halt before she could blunder into the parked Ferrari. ‘You do not have just your own well-being to consider now.’

He meant the baby, Anna conceded guiltily as she shoehorned herself into the passenger seat. And he was right. The whole evening had been disastrous, and she needed to get dry, warm and relaxed for her baby’s sake, but the comparative speed of that operation against the delay of waiting for Nick meant Francesco would have ample opportunity to ask That Question again, and she didn’t know how to answer him.

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…?’

She wasn’t going to get an answer, because the clangs of the great doorbell reverberated through the house. She rose. ‘That will be Nick. Look, I’m sorry, but I have to go. We’ll talk later.’ Grabbing her old waxed jacket, wriggling into it, she added automatically, ‘Make sure you have breakfast. There’s enough bread for toast. I’ll pick up another loaf on my way back.’

A detour to the village to pick up a few essential provisions once the new battery was fitted would do nicely. She meant to avoid Francesco Mastroianni for as long as she possibly could, placing herself in a controlling position, hoping she’d be better able to handle the interrogation he obviously intended. Provided, of course, that he didn’t emerge from the manor and catch them mid-operation. The thought made her feel vaguely sick as she opened the main door to admit a blast of chilly morning air.

And him.

Francesco swept inside, past her stunned personage. Her tummy flipped. Why did he have to be up and about so early? Couldn’t his latest luscious bedmate have kept him glued to her for longer? And this morning he was looking quite unreasonably spectacular.

Six foot two of dominating Italian masculinity—midnight hair superbly styled, midnight lashes narrowed over glinting steel-grey eyes, handsome mouth a sardonic twist as he remarked, ‘Going somewhere?’

To her great annoyance Anna felt her face grow hot and pink. To think she had once believed herself fathoms-deep in love with this domineering, sarcastic brute! He’d expertly hidden that side of him from her when he’d set out to seduce her. And dump her.

The immaculately crafted pale grey designer suit emphasised his fantastic physique, his classical features. The crisp white shirt darkened the tones of his olive skin and the shadowed jawline that remained just that, no matter how often he shaved.

He was an intimidating stranger.

On the island he’d always worn old cut-off denims, canvas deck shoes that had seen better days, and round his neck a fake gold chain that had left green marks on the sleek bronzed skin of his magnificent torso. Those tell-tale stains had made her heart clench with aching tenderness, had made her love him all the more.

Now she didn’t love him at all.

She loathed him, and all he stood for.

And she most certainly wasn’t about to give him an answer, open the way for any conversation. Leaving the main door open, she sent up a swift and fervent prayer for Nick’s speedy arrival and her consequent escape.

‘Is there somewhere more comfortable where we can talk?’ His tone told her he was running out of patience, and the unnerving steely scrutiny he was subjecting her to told her he didn’t like what he saw.

A shabby nobody who might or might not be carrying his child.

‘No.’ She didn’t want to discuss her baby’s paternity with him. With anyone. And because she already loved her coming child with all her generous heart she was deeply afraid.

If Francesco knew he was the father he might be more than happy to wash his hands of the whole thing—dismiss it with a shrug. Or—and this was what made her nerves jump—he might come over all macho, wealthy Italian male and demand custody.

And then what would she do? Could she fight him through the courts and win?

‘Anna—who is it?’ Beatrice appeared from the kitchen region. She stopped dead, clutching the neckline of her shabby robe to her throat. ‘I heard voices. It didn’t sound like Nick.’

Well, it wouldn’t, would it? No one could mistake Francesco’s deep, cultured and slightly accented voice for Nick’s comforting country burr, Anna thought wearily, wishing her mother had stayed firmly where she was. How was she supposed to introduce him? By the way—this is the man who seduced me, lied to me and dumped me!

It was Francesco who took over, his compressed lips softening into a staggeringly devastating smile as he advanced towards the older woman, his bronzed and far too handsome features relaxing.

‘Mrs Maybury. I’m so happy to meet Anna’s mother.’ He held out a well-shaped hand. After a moment’s hesitation, and a swift look at her daughter, Beatrice took it, and went bright pink when it was lifted to the stranger’s lips.

‘Anna?’

‘Francesco Mastroianni,’ Anna introduced stiffly. She wanted to shake her mother for simpering and fluttering like a silly schoolgirl, but resignedly forgave her—because no woman alive would be able to stay sensible when bombarded by the charm he could turn on at will when it suited him.

‘I met Anna again last night when she catered for my cousin’s dinner party,’ he was saying. ‘I am now here to enquire as to her health.’

Like hell you are! she fumed inwardly, hating him for his ability to lie and deceive, for looking so sensational, so poised and self-assured, and loathing him for her own helplessness to do anything about it.

Mum had obviously picked up on that word again, judging from the way she arched a brow and gave a little moue of a smile. Then, ‘How kind of you, signor. Won’t you come through to the kitchen? It’s the only warm room in the house, I’m afraid. And, darling, do close the door. Such a draught!’

Lumbering over the vast expanse of empty hall, Anna was fuming. Mum wouldn’t let him over the threshold if she knew the truth. Underneath that fantastic exterior lurked a black devil—a heartless deceiver who would seduce a virgin, tell her he loved her more than his life, ensuring a more than willing bedmate for a couple of weeks to satisfy his massive male libido, his huge conceit, then callously dump her when a new and better prospect shashayed over the horizon.

Preoccupied, it took her several seconds to register that Nick was walking in through the wide open doorway. With his cheerful open face, his mop of untidy nut-brown hair and mild blue eyes, his sturdy body clad in oil-stained jeans and an ancient fleece, he looked so safe and ordinary she could have wept.

‘Ready?’ His smile encompassed Beatrice. ‘Hi, Mrs Maybury!’ If he had registered the presence of the superbly groomed stranger he didn’t show it. ‘Got the van keys?’ Assimilating Anna’s edgy nod, he supplied, ‘Then we’ll make tracks. Dad said no need to rush to pay for the battery. It’ll wait until it’s convenient.’

Anna ground her teeth and felt heated colour flood her face. Nick’s father owned the village garage and he, like everyone else around here, knew of their dire financial situation. His offer of deferred payment was a kind one, but she wished it hadn’t been voiced in front of Francesco. She did have some pride!

‘That won’t be necessary,’ she put in stiffly, heading for the door, the back of her neck prickling in her need to put as much distance as possible between herself and Francesco whose very presence affected her like an arrow to her heart.

An imperiously drawled, ‘Wait!’ stopped her.

Exuding sophisticated cool, Francesco stepped forward. ‘Nick? I take it you are he?’ Receiving a startled glance that he took as an affirmative, he ordered with the sublime confidence of a man who expected to be unquestioningly obeyed, ‘There’s no need for you to wait. Fix the battery. I’ll take Anna to collect her van later.’

‘Now, hang on a minute!’ Incensed by his assumption that he could call the shots, Anna swung round to face him—and then wished she hadn’t. Because just looking at him, at the upward drift of one strongly marked sable brow, the slight querying smile on that wide sensual mouth as he waited for her to expand on her explosive objection, made her heart leap, her mouth feel as parched as desert sand, her pulses race as she remembered—

Smothering a groan, feeling the fight ebbing out of her like water down a drain, she capitulated.

Pointless to avoid the interrogation any longer. The longer she spent dodging That Question, the more uptight and jittery she would become. It couldn’t be good for her baby.

Flinging Nick an apologetic smile, she said dully, ‘Thanks, pal. I’ll see you later. There’s stuff I’ve got to talk over with—him.’ And if that sounded rude or ungracious, tough.

She didn’t feel even remotely gracious as Francesco ushered her in her mother’s wake as the older woman headed back to the kitchen. Just sick to her stomach.