Escape for Easter

Finally he broke it. ‘This isn’t a joke—you’re actually pregnant?’

Sam caught herself in the act of nodding again and bit her lip. ‘Yes.’

She waited tensely.

He looked pale, but, considering the bombshell she had just dropped, he appeared to be taking it pretty well, if you discounted that muscle in his lean cheek that was spasmodically throbbing.

‘Did you plan this?’

Sam stiffened. ‘I beg your pardon?’

The ice crystals in her normally expressive voice gave him a pretty clear idea of what she was feeling. The frustration of not being able to see her face was like a dull ache in his chest. There had been many bitter moments since he’d become blind when he had grieved for the loss of his sight, but never had he felt it as acutely as he did at this moment.

‘You think I planned this?’

‘It is a possibility.’ Even as he spoke he recognised his own lack of conviction.

‘Only if you have a warped mind, but don’t worry, I don’t want anything from you. It just seemed…polite to let you know.’

‘Polite?’

‘If I’d known you were some sort of weird conspiracy-theorist nut I wouldn’t have bothered. You obviously think that all women are out to get impregnated by you… Well, let me tell you, from where I’m standing you don’t look like such a bargain,’ she snorted contemptuously. ‘Unless you like cynical, mean-minded and plain nasty. For the record, if I could have chosen a father for my baby it really wouldn’t be you! You wouldn’t even make the shortlist. So go ahead, think this was all part of some cunning plan, and feel happy because if it was it definitely backfired!’

He heard the lock on the door click and realised she was walking out on him again. Rage rose up in him, closely followed by something he refused to recognise as panic.

‘Marry me.’

The flat statement—it could hardly be called a request—delivered in that terse, peremptory tone effectively ruined her sweeping exit and almost made Sam fall off her high heels.

She slowly turned her head. ‘You’ll laugh, but—’ He didn’t laugh, though, or even smile as she stared, unable to tear her eyes from his dark features. Not a muscle in his face moved and his beautiful eyes somehow remained focused on her own face.

Sam turned her head and told herself the feeling of something hard and heavy lodged behind her breastbone was pity. The sort she would feel for anyone who had suffered such a tragedy.

‘For a moment there I thought you said…’

‘Do not play games. You heard me, Samantha.’

Her headmistress had been the only other person to call her Samantha, but it had not made her nerve endings prickle or even lightly tingle.

She swallowed, her voice rising to an incredulous squeak as she asked on a note of hysterical query, ‘You’re proposing we get married?’

‘Is that not what you wanted me to say?’ Cesare, who had been almost as surprised as she appeared to be to hear himself make the proposal, could now see that it was the obvious solution—the only solution. ‘Is that not why you came here?’

Sam’s eyes went saucer-wide—he sounded so incredibly matter of fact about the subject.

‘I never in a million years expected you to suggest this…or wanted you to,’ she added, thinking of and instantly dismissing those few silly fantasies she had been guilty of weaving in the middle of the previous interminably long sleepless night. Fantasies were harmless—things only got dangerous when you started trying to act them out.

‘Look, I don’t know if you’re actually serious—’

‘It is not a subject I am likely to joke about.’

Despite the outraged note of offence in his interjection, Sam was not so sure. This man’s personality and the motives that drove him were still pretty much an enigma to her—ironic considering that he knew her more intimately than any man. At her side her fists clenched as she struggled not to think about how intimately.

‘But don’t you think this is a slight overreaction?’ He couldn’t see her so he wouldn’t know how badly she failed in her attempt at a smile—it was cold comfort when she was shaking hard from the inside out. As if things weren’t already complicated enough, he had to throw a crazy idea like this into the mix…and make her think about how different this would be if what they had shared had not been just sex.

‘To a situation as trivial as having my child, you mean?’

‘Our child.’ His sudden possessive attitude was something that made Sam uneasy and something she definitely didn’t want to encourage.

He dismissed the correction with a fluid shrug. ‘I have some old-fashioned idea about family life.’

‘I’m sure your girlfriend might have some too. Look, I’m not treating this trivially, I’m just trying to make life easier on you. I’m not making any unreasonable demands.’

‘You should be,’ he said. Sam was still struggling to make sense of his condemnation when his distinctive dark brows drew together in an irritated frown of incomprehension. ‘Girlfriend…?’

Will he dismiss me from his thoughts as simply when I walk from the room? Sam wondered bleakly.

‘Candice was leaving as I arrived.’

‘Candice need not concern you.’

‘She might have something to say about you marrying someone else.’ Probably very loudly, too. To people like the actress, publicity was a way of life. To Sam the idea of her personal life becoming the currency of gossip columns filled her with utter horror.

An expression of baffled irritation settled on Cesare’s features. He moved his right hand in a dismissive arc. ‘What has it to do with her?’

‘Or me, I suppose?’ she suggested, utterly appalled by his display of callous unconcern for his ex-lover…maybe not even ex…? The man was clearly as ruthless in his personal life as he was reputed to be in business.

‘Do not be ridiculous!’

The suggestion drew a laugh of sheer incredulity from her throat. ‘Me ridiculous?’ she echoed, laying her palm flat against her heaving chest. ‘I’m not the one saying we should get married. For God’s sake, you didn’t know my name until a few minutes ago!’ She lifted a hand to her brow and shook her head. This entire situation was beyond surreal and the scary thing was that for a split second she had almost started to consider it.

‘But I knew a lot of other things about you, Samantha.’

The sexual inference in his deep drawl sent a flash of heat over her skin. ‘You don’t know me at all,’ she snapped back, her anger divided between him and herself. Why did she let him do this to her?

He ignored her statement and asked, ‘Are you worried a blind man would not make a good father?’

The frustrating thought of the many things he would never be able to do with his child rose in Cesare’s head to torment him. He realised he would never see his child’s face and the acknowledgement was like a knife thrust to his heart.

‘You being blind has got nothing to do with it,’ Sam said. ‘They say that women are instinctively drawn to alpha males to father their children.’ Up until now Sam had been able to say she was the exception to the rule. ‘And as you’re about the most alpha male on the planet…’

‘A man who requires guidance to cross the road cannot protect his child from danger.’ It was a father’s role to guard his offspring from the perils in the world, and the thought of this role reversal filled Cesare with a furious impotence.

Sam studied his self-critical expression and felt her tender heart twist as she recognised the fear and doubts that lay under the confident front he presented to the world.

‘Being blind does not make you a bad father or role model.’ Unlike, to her way of thinking, sleeping with blonde actresses with long legs. ‘It has nothing to do with this situation at all, except,’ she admitted, adhering reluctantly to honesty, ‘that if you had been able to see none of this would have happened.’

‘You mean I would not have been in Scotland that night.’

‘I mean you would have been able to see me,’ she blurted. Irritated by his blank frown, she spelt it out. ‘I’m not your type.’

She saw the flicker at the back of his eyes and wished she had let him continue to carry the clearly unrealistic image he had of her, but as tempting as it was, she couldn’t.

‘I think you should let me be the judge of that. I have seen your face with my fingers.’ Eyes half closed, his fingers inscribed a series of soft motions in the air.

Sam found the contemplative smile that curled one corner of his mouth deeply disturbing. ‘You could do the same with your child.’

His hands fell and something she could not read flickered across his face. His deep voice fell softly and it carried a note she could not interpret. ‘So I could.’

‘I have freckles.’

The abrupt insertion drew a grin from him.

‘Seriously,’ she stressed.

‘That of course alters things,’ he said with a wry smile. Then his expression grew solemn before he released a hissing sound of frustration between his teeth and wondered angrily, ‘Has this fiancé who cheated and rejected you given you such a low opinion of yourself?’

The suggestion startled Sam. ‘No! I was never in love with Will.’ And she was sharing with him the realisation that had taken her months to recognise because…?

‘Well, it is true. You are not my type.’

Sam was glad he could not see her flinch.

‘But not because of any imagined physical template you appear to imagine I expect my sexual partners to conform to. You are not my type because you are incredibly high maintenance.’

The accusation robbed her briefly of the ability to speak. ‘Me? High maintenance?’

‘Yes, you. Also I do not have relationships with women who need me to tell them they are beautiful.’

‘I do not—!’

He cut back in before she could complete her hot rebuttal of this outrageous claim. ‘I do not have relationships with women who never lose an opportunity to point out my myriad flaws.’

‘And yet you still want to marry me—only you don’t really, do you.’ She paused and he didn’t speak. She’d have thought less of him if he had. She thought less of herself because she wanted him to. Struggling to rationalise the irrational desire to hear him lie, she lifted her chin.

‘Look, I’m sure you’d be—will be—a great father, blind or not, but you’d be an awful husband and I don’t want to be married to a man who doesn’t love me.’

His cynical smile deepened as he heard her out. ‘So love conquers all?’

‘Maybe not, but despite my apparent lack of self-esteem I’m not settling for second best.’

Cesare, suffering from the shock of hearing himself called second best, heard the door open.

In his head the memories he had been holding back surfaced with merciless accuracy to taunt him. He remembered running his fingers over the surface of her belly and feeling the fine network of muscle beneath the soft skin quiver. Tracing the curved angle of her hip with his hands, drawing the tight little swollen buds of her delicious breasts into his mouth and hearing her beg him not to stop. Kissing the hollow at the base of her throat where the echo of her heartbeat had passed from her to him through his fingertips and lips.

It was ironic. She was the only woman he had slept with but never seen and he carried a more vivid memory of her body than anyone else’s before.

It took seconds for the images and tactile sensations that went with them to flash through his mind, but it was long enough to make his body burn with the strength of his out-of-control arousal.

Teeth clenched, Cesare leapt up from his chair, a growl that registered too low for human ears vibrating in his chest as he stalked towards the door. He was actually in the act of tearing it open when he stopped himself. What the hell was he doing?

His breathing slowed. The damned little witch was running out on him again and he was following—straight down a stairwell probably in this sort of temper. He decided if she ran and he followed it was not a good message to send out. Not if a man wanted to maintain the illusion at least of being in control.

Face set in a dark scowling mask of discontent, he turned and walked back to his chair.

CHAPTER FOUR

IT BEGAN to rain just as the taxi drew up on the kerb. It only took seconds for Sam to reach the waiting vehicle, but by the time she closed the door on the downpour her hair was drenched, despite the bag she had held over her head to shield her.

She looked out the window and her thoughts were drawn irresistibly back to her weekend break in Scotland—it had been raining like this that last day.

Sam had read no sinister portents into the gathering storm clouds, she had had no inkling that her life was about to change as she drew the Land Rover up on the gravelled forecourt of the Armuirn Castle.

She had simply been doing a favour for her harassed sister-in-law and about the only thing that had been on her mind was a nice hot bath. She had not anticipated that the cleaning of eight cottages would be so physically strenuous. Not that she had had any intention of letting on and confirming her brother’s mocking opinion that city life had made her soft.

She had shaded her eyes and tilted her head as she’d looked at the castellated turret. The grey-stoned landmark could be seen for miles around. It had been her sister-in-law’s childhood home, but these days Ian and Clare lived in one of the farms and rented out the big house along with several crofts to tourists.

Sam had lugged out a basket containing the cleaning materials, thinking how wielding a feather duster and changing bedlinen hadn’t quite been the way she had viewed spending her holiday. But she could hardly have gone off hiking in the hills when a virulent flu bug had had her sister-in-law so short-staffed that she’d been trying to do ten jobs as well as look after two-year-old twins.

Though Sam had pronounced herself willing to do anything, she had actually been relieved when the anything had not involved looking after the twins. She loved her nephews dearly, but the responsibility of keeping that fearless pair amused and safe was not a responsibility she felt equipped to deal with.

Instead a guilty and grateful Clare had asked if she would clean and prepare the cottages on changeover day for the new intake of holidaymakers and, if she had time, take a grocery order up to the castle and change the linen there.

When Sam had asked if she should run a duster around the place Clare had said definitely not. It seemed the man who had rented the castle for the summer did not want housekeeping.

In fact he did not want anything except total privacy.

Sam had been curious. ‘What’s he like?’

‘Don’t ask me. I’ve never even seen him, neither has Ian. The booking was taken via the website.’

‘Someone must have seen him,’ Sam protested. This was after all an incredibly close-knit community where everyone knew everyone’s business.

‘Oh, Hamish got a glimpse. He was taking some climbers that way when a helicopter put down.’

‘And?’ Sam prompted.

‘Our mystery man got out. Hamish said he was tall.’

‘Not helpful.’

Clare nodded in agreement. ‘Nobody has seen him up close since. He stays in the castle, he doesn’t come into the village. He leaves a grocery list for us when we go in with fresh towels and such like, but we haven’t seen him either.’

‘Maybe he’s a fugitive hiding from the authorities or a film star in the middle of a sex scandal escaping the tabloids?’

‘More likely he’s a stressed executive here for the fishing. But whoever he is give him a wide berth, Sam. The man has taken the castle for six months and he’s paid upfront so if he wants to be invisible he can be.’

‘So does the invisible man have a name?’

‘I don’t recall…it was foreign. Spanish or Italian, I think…?’

By the time Sam reached the castle it was turned six and her interest in the tall Mediterranean had waned. She was shattered. She had changed twenty beds and vacuumed acres of carpet not to mention cleaned windows and been stung by a wasp. All she wanted was to get back to the farm and put her feet up.

There was no sign of the antisocial guest and no response when she poked her head around the door and called out before she went into the kitchen.

Inside the kitchen was dark, the blinds drawn. She put the box of groceries on the floor and after a short fumble found the light switch.

‘Oh, my God!’ Sam’s horrified gaze travelled around the room. It was a total disaster zone, with dirty plates and glasses everywhere plus open cartons and cans. There was not a clean surface in the room. A quick examination of the fridge where Clare had asked her to leave the perishable items revealed most of the contents were either out of date or unrecognisable and growing things.

Sam thought of the hot bath and sighed as she rolled up her sleeves. She was no tidiness freak, and minimalism was not her thing—she liked a bit of cosy clutter—but this was something else entirely.

If the man didn’t want housekeeping, well, too bad, she thought. In the interests of hygiene alone she couldn’t leave it as it was.

Half an hour later the place still wouldn’t have made a health inspector smile, but it was a distinct improvement. She folded her arms across her chest and gave a small nod of satisfaction as she placed the last empty bottle in the sack for recycling and said out loud, ‘Well, I just hope he appreciates this.’

‘Who the hell are you and what are you doing here?’

A fractured gasp of shock left her lips as hands closed over her shoulders and spun her around.

Finding herself face to face with the middle button of a blue chambray shirt, she tilted her face to see the person whose fingers were grinding into the sensitive flesh that covered her collarbones and who was obviously not grateful at all. She found herself staring wide-eyed into the face of the most beautiful man she had ever seen or imagined.

The sensory overload of looking at this much sheer perfection made her head spin. She knew she was staring like an idiot, but she couldn’t have stopped if her life had depended on it.

He was tall, several inches above six feet, and muscular but not in a bulky way. Lean and hard. He had Mediterranean colouring, and his hair was black. It curled low on his neck and fell across his high forehead. The bones of his face were strongly carved, with razor-sharp cheekbones, a masterful aquiline nose, and the piratical shadow on his firm jaw failing to disguise the fact it was uncompromisingly male.

In fact the only things that weren’t uncompromisingly male about him were the extravagant length of his lashes and the full curve of his lower lip that was then compensated by the firmness of the upper, the effect so overtly sensual it made her stomach muscles quiver.

In a bid to stop looking, Sam found herself gazing directly into his eyes instead. She fought to draw a shaky breath. They were so dark they were almost black. Looking into them made her feel as though she were falling.

She quickly reminded herself of the mess in the kitchen. ‘You should be grateful,’ she choked, dragging her violet-blue eyes away from his face. Breathing fast and shallow to carry some much needed oxygen to her brain, she allowed her glance to dwell significantly on the hands curved over her upper arms, before tilting her head and risking a second peek at his face.

He didn’t take the hint and it wasn’t gratitude that was etched on the sculpted angles and planes of his sternly beautiful face, but anger. She could almost see the ripples in the air as it oozed from him.

Suspicion and hostility were being aimed at her, and the air between them almost visibly crackled with it.

‘Would you mind letting me go?’ Sam asked as she lifted her chin and thought how she couldn’t let him see that he was scaring her. That was what he’d want.

A frown flickered across his features and a second later the grip on her shoulders loosened, though still didn’t drop away.

A sigh of premature relief snagged in her throat as her glance drifted to his mouth and she felt things shift low in her stomach.

‘Who are you?’ he questioned.

Sam swallowed. She knew who she wasn’t.

She wasn’t a woman who became wide-eyed and inarticulate because she saw a beautiful man.

She was definitely not a woman who was attracted to danger, and if any man had ever spelt danger she was looking at him. Looking at him and feeling a lot of things she’d have been happier not to. Never in her life had any man elicited such a strong reaction from her.

He frightened and repelled her, but at the same time the flip side to this was a shameful excitement that was seductive as it coursed through her veins like wine. Sam felt intoxicated. She had never in her twenty-four years experienced any feeling so primal and raw.

‘Speak up or I will…’

The threat in his deep voice broke her free of the thrall that had held her motionless. The isolation of the castle and the vulnerability of her situation hit her… What would he do…?

‘Let me go!’ Fear made her voice shrill as she began to struggle frantically against his restraining hands.

‘Dio mio!’ he gritted as she hit out wildly, one of her flailing fists making contact with his jaw. ‘Will you be still, woman?’

Sam was still, but only because the energy had drained abruptly from her body, leaving her shaking and weak-kneed.

‘You’re Italian,’ she stated. His lightly accented voice was deep and vibrant.

‘You’re trespassing.’

‘No, I’m only the cleaner, I just came to change the sheets.’

‘The cleaner…?’ He didn’t sound convinced, but she was relieved to see that, though he still regarded her with suspicion, some of the aggressive hostility had seeped from his manner.

He straightened up to his full and intimidating height and Sam exhaled a shaky breath as his hands fell from her shoulders. Her step backwards brought the back of her legs in contact with the big rustic table in the middle of the room. She leaned into it and pushed her hands in a smoothing motion over her hair. They were still shaking, as was her voice as she retorted sarcastically, ‘No, I’m an international jewel thief and my calling card is washing the dirty dishes…’

She was glad several feet now separated them. Up close and distractingly personal he really was too overwhelming. She no longer imagined she was in any physical danger from this man, but her mental safety was another matter. Whatever it was he projected she was susceptible to it. Every time she looked at him her mind went to mush, and the stuff happening to the rest of her body did not bear close examination.

She was deeply ashamed of her initial reaction to this brooding, bad-tempered Italian with his sinfully sexy mouth and chiselled cheekbones. She lowered her eyes from his face, conscious that she was close to drooling. For God’s sake, woman, show a bit of pride, she chided herself angrily.

‘Of course I’m the cleaner.’ She moved her hand in a sweeping motion from her tousled head down to her sensible shoes. ‘What do I look like?’

He could say she resembled a total wreck and he wouldn’t be wrong, she reflected, thinking how silly and shallow it was to care what he thought of her appearance. Especially as she would not have secured a second glance from him under any other circumstances, even if she had been wearing her most alluring outfit.

But he did not take her invitation to look at her. Instead his unblinking heavy-lidded regard stayed trained on her face as he observed, ‘You do not smell like a cleaner.’

‘What do cleaners smell like?’

A dark brow arched sardonically. ‘You, presumably. I have never held one as close as a lover before.’

The comment made the blush under her skin deepen. ‘You’ve never lived,’ she replied, trying not to think about lovers and this man in the same sentence.

‘A tempting thought,’ he said, not looking tempted.

Which was rude.

‘That wasn’t an invitation.’ As if she would hand out invitations to a man who looked like a dark fallen angel.

He angled a brow and looked even more as though he knew far too much about kissing.

‘So that is not part of the service…?’

‘I don’t charge for kisses, just for mopping, and I only kiss people I like.’

His attention drifted to the window as he appeared to lose interest in the conversation. Without looking at her, he dragged a hand through his dark hair. Sam was used to men not noticing her in a sexual way, but most didn’t act as though she were invisible.

The silence lengthened. When he did speak she jumped. ‘You raise a man’s expectations and then you dash them down. So, Mrs Cleaner, you can take your mop and go home. The estate were informed prior to my arrival that I do not require housekeeping services.’

Sam was tempted to pass the buck and say she was just the hired help, but Clare had more than enough to cope with without complaints from rich guests. Instead she said, ‘They told me the same thing, but you were both wrong.’

A look of total astonishment passed across his lean features. ‘I was wrong?’

A smile fluttered on her lips, then faded as her glance strayed and the fluttering moved to low in her belly.

‘You were,’ she croaked, her eyes still glued to his mouth. ‘You definitely need me.’ Even before he arched an expressive brow the mortified colour had rushed to her cheeks.

‘You sound very confident of your ability to satisfy my needs…’

‘There is no call to be crude and sarcastic,’ she choked. ‘And actually I would prefer not to think about your needs!’ But of course she was. ‘What I meant was you definitely need housekeeping services unless you are planning to eat with your fingers or you’re keen to contract food poisoning. I thought you’d have been grateful.’ Her glance travelled around the room. ‘The place looks a lot better than it did.’

‘And I am meant to thank you? I knew where everything was.’

‘Shall I throw a few empty bottles around the place to make you feel at home?’

‘I could put my hand on anything as and when I needed it.’ He swept his hand in an expressive circular motion and sent the row of freshly washed glasses she had lined up on the dresser flying with a crash. The unexpected noise of breaking glass was so loud that Sam cried out.

Then her mouth fell open as she realised the action had been totally deliberate. Sam stared at him in disbelief. ‘I suppose you expect me to clear that up for you?’ If so he could think again.

Teeth clenched, he glared at her, his face a mask of seething dislike. ‘I do not require your assistance. I am more than capable of…’ To emphasise his capability he brought the flat of his hand down on the dresser top.

‘Oh, yeah, it really looks like it…’ Her voice faded as he lifted his hand. Her stomach flipped as she saw the blood dripping from the jagged cut on his palm. ‘Oh, my God!’ she cried in horror. ‘You stupid man, what have you done?’

His jaw clenched. ‘Nothing.’

‘You idiot—what did you think you were doing? You hit it directly on the glass…anyone would think you were blind.’

‘I am.’

‘Very funny,’ she began, tilting her head up towards his and finding him staring at the wall above her head. The exasperation on her face was replaced by the horror of realization. It wasn’t a sick joke; he was telling the truth.

‘You can’t see—you’re blind!’ Shame and shock in equal parts washed over her like icy water. Her lips quivered and inside her chest something tightened as she lifted a hand to her face and found it wet with inexplicable tears.

‘I’m so sorry, I didn’t realise.’ Still not quite able to believe those beautiful eyes could not see her, she passed a hand in front of his face. He didn’t blink, but reached out with dizzying speed and caught her wrist in his uninjured hand.

‘Stop that. I’ve had enough empathy to last me a lifetime!’ he snarled. ‘I do not require your sympathy or your pity!’

Sam looked at the blood dripping onto the floor and clenched her teeth. ‘I get it.’

His lip curled contemptuously. ‘You get what?’

‘I get that you’re mad with me because I saw you being vulnerable. Don’t worry, I don’t feel extra special. You’re obviously mad with the world. The fact is you’re blind—’

She stopped as she saw shock move at the back of his eyes. ‘You think I need some Mrs Mop to remind me of this fact?’

Sam gritted her teeth and carried on as though the bitter interruption had not occurred. ‘So you can carry on ignoring it if you wish, but like the dirty dishes it’s not going to go away. So if I might make a suggestion, why don’t you stop acting like a gutless wonder and get on with it? Sure it isn’t fair, but—shock horror—life isn’t!’

She saw the disbelief chase across his face and felt a surge of recklessness.

‘This is none of my business—’

‘No, it isn’t.’

Again she acted as though he had not spoken. ‘Which is probably a good thing, because I don’t really care what you say to me. Unlike the friends and family out there, the people who love you and who are no doubt right now worried sick about you…’

There would be a wife or a lover among them. A man who looked like him, a man who projected a force field of raw sexuality, would not live the life of a monk.

She dragged her eyes from the widening scarlet stain on his sleeve and struggled to maintain the role of impartial stranger as she tilted her face up to his thinking how beautiful the woman in his life must be.

The stupid man probably thought he was being noble and strong by going it alone up here in the castle. His problem was he was too stubborn and proud to admit he needed help.

‘Meanwhile,’ she continued, waving her finger even though he was oblivious. ‘You lick your wounds here like some…some injured animal.’ He’d be a wolf, she thought, studying his lean, handsome face and feeling the inevitable flip of her sensitive stomach. ‘My God, you’re selfish!’ she finished in disgust.