Happy Mother's Day! (18 page)

‘You could.’

‘You mean for the rest of my holiday?’ ‘I mean stay here. Live here with me?’ The request startled her, but she still did not understand the
sigificance. ‘You mean permanently? But I have a job, a life … I …’

‘You misunderstand. I am asking you to marry me.’

Thinking of that castle, she had opened his laptop.

A few moments later the Internet had confirmed her suspicions.

Erin had confronted him immediately.

She had expected him to be defensive and perhaps annoyed that she had gone behind his back, but Francesco had been totally relaxed about the entire thing.

‘Quite the little detective,’ he murmured indulgently.

‘But you said that you work with horses.’

‘And so I do. I did not lie to you. I just do other things, too.’

‘Like make lots of money.’

‘So long as I have enough to support a family I don’t see that the state of my bank balance is relevant.’

Not relevant? She stared at him in disbelief. ‘But
you own the bank!
Your name is in the first column of the European Rich List. You can trace your family tree back to royalty.’

‘Well, you can see why I don’t shout it from the rooftops, can’t you? You tell people you are a banker and they begin to yawn straight away.’

‘This is not a joke, Francesco. Things are going too fast.’

‘Then let us be serious for a moment. I do not own a bankmy family, and specifically my father, does. Money is a byproduct of what I do, but it is not intrinsically important to me.’

‘But it’s not just the money. You have a family, Francesco. Do they even know about me?’

‘My family will love you,
cara,’
he purred in his sinfully sexy voice.

She felt her anger slip away as he tangled his fingers into
the mesh of her hair, massaging his fingers into her scalp. He tilted her head back and kissed her.

A long, tremulous sigh left her lips when his head lifted.

‘My parents are staying with my sister in Australia. I have contacted them and told them about our marriage. They are ringing this evening to speak to you. They can’t wait to meet you. They would have flown back but my mother had an accident—nothing serious, but she cannot make the trip.

‘They have had some sad times recently. You will bring some joy into their lives. As you have brought joy into mine,’ he said, holding her face in his hands and staring down at her with an expression that made her traitorous heart skip a beat.

‘But shouldn’t we wait until they get back? I don’t understand the hurry.’

‘I really can’t wait that long,
tesoro mio,
to make you my wife. Afterwards,’ he promised with a shrug, ‘they can arrange anything they wish, but you will be mine.’

Valentina’s hand on her arm cut through Erin’s brooding recollections.

As she walked through the door Valentina stopped and turned to face Erin. ‘Look, Erin, I know what this seems like,’ she began urgently.

Erin shook her head in total bewilderment. ‘What seems like?’

‘I’m really sorry.’ ‘Sorry about what?’

Valentina shook her head, her gaze trained on a point in the room beyond Erin. Erin automatically turned.

She literally felt the blood drain from her face.

Her body responded to the sight of the tall, supremely elegant figure who stepped forward, impeccable in his light
grey suit and open-necked white shirt, exactly the same way it would have to a couple of thousand volts of neat electricity.

For a split second every nerve cell in her body fired off then shut down.

She stared at him, her throat aching with the emotions locked there. An irrational part of her visualised flinging herself into his arms and she really had to fight against her genetic predisposition to do so. It would mean heartbreak all over again.

She would not let history repeat itself. One woman in the family prepared to humiliate herself to keep a man was more than enough.

This can’t be happening now. I’m not ready to do this yet.

The same sexual awareness that she had always experienced in his presence hummed in her bloodstream; it made it impossible to think rationally. It always had—that was the problem.

He was standing only a couple of feet away from her at the most. If she had reached out she could have touched him, laid her hand on his chest and felt the warmth of his skin, the thud of his heartbeat.

A strange little laugh emerged from her lips. Losing composure scarily fast, she turned her head. Her gaze met that of Valentina, who grimaced at the silent reproach in her eyes.

The older woman shook her head and mouthed,
I’m sorry.

‘You planned this.’ The sense of betrayal Erin felt was intense.

She had been genuinely touched that Francesco’s cousin had made an effort to cultivate friendship even after what had happened.

‘Francesco just wanted to talk to you and … we meant it for the best.’

Sam, who had come to stand behind his wife, placed a hand on her shoulder. ‘Come on, sweetheart. Let’s leave them to
it.’ As he took his infant son from her arms he looked directly at Erin. ‘Val didn’t want to do this.’ He glanced towards Francesco, nodded almost imperceptibly, and guided his wife from the room.

F
OR
several seconds after the door closed Erin did not move or react. The silence in the room screamed.

The only way she had survived their separation was by recognising that she no longer loved Francesco. That she never actually had.
Real
love, the sort that endured, was slow burning. It had nothing to do with the dark, sizzling heat and mind-numbing lust their marriage had been based on, but was about shared interests and mutual respect.

Mutual respect,
she muttered through clenched lips. It was a necessary reminder. It would be perilously easy to allow chemistry to confuse her when every cell in her body was reacting to him standing there.

She could be sexually attracted to him—who wouldn’t be? But attraction didn’t equate with deeper feelings.

It equated with disaster!

Concentrate,
she told herself,
and don’t think about his mouth. Concentrate on what a total bastard he is and getting out of this room without making a total fool of yourself … that and breathe.

Yes, breathing would be useful. She tilted her chin and took a deep, steadying breath, schooling her stiff features into what she hoped was an expression of contempt.

‘This is a pretty low trick, Francesco, even by your standards.’

Eyes trained on her face, he gave a very Latin shrug. ‘I had no alternative.’

Before she had walked into the room he had been angry. Now she was here and he was still angry, but interwoven with the anger were tenacious threads of tenderness. Hands clenched, he ruthlessly subdued a sudden strong compulsion to cradle her in his arms. Under the hostility she looked so damned fragile!

The groove above his masterful nose etched deep as his eyes continued to rake her face.

Some might have considered the recent changes in her appearance were subtle, but not Francesco, who had every line and curve of her face committed to memory.

The alterations screamed at him. Her face was thinner, emphasising the delicate bone structure and making her eyes appear even bigger, and there was a haunted quality in their bright jewellike depths. Her skin still had that fabulous translucent quality, but there were fine lines of strain around her wide mouth.

Were these visible signs of strain the results of a difficult pregnancy? He had to clamp his teeth over the angry demands for information that hovered on his tongue.

Her lips twisted and Erin shook her head in weary disbelief. There wasn’t even a hint of apology in his manner.
And you’re surprised?
she taunted herself.

‘No alternative but to lie and cheat—now why aren’t I surprised?’ she drawled.

A flash of anger ignited the gold highlights deep in his dark eyes. ‘You would not take my calls, Erin.’

The way he said her name always had caused her stomach muscles to flutter. It still did, though as there was a lot of quivering
going on it was hard to separate out the disturbing sensation from all the others.

‘You refused my request for a face-to-face meeting.’ The steel in his manner was more pronounced as his dark eyes narrowed in recollection.

‘Call singular,’ Erin countered coldly.

‘You can relax, Francesco I don’t want your money, if that’s what you’re worried about.’

Erin permitted herself a bitter smile as she wondered what her mother would say if she had heard this statement.

Far from responding to her scornful rejection of his fortune with any sign of visible relief, Francesco merely dismissed her.

‘Money? I have no interest in money. I have not been calling you every day to talk about money.’ His hands clenched at his sides as he struggled to contain his sense of outrage.

‘Every day!
Now I know that’s not true,’ she told him, appalled at this outright and not terribly imaginative lie.

For the first week after she had returned to England she had fully expected him to turn up. She had pretty much lived in dread … well, about half the time had been dread. The shameful fact was the other fifty per cent of the time her feelings had more accurately fallen under the heading of eager, impatient even, sweaty-palmed, heart-thudding anticipation of opening the door and finding him standing there.

But as it turned out there had been no occasion for her to use her specially prepared speech, the one that made allowances for his feelings. It had been humiliating, but in the long run she had told herself a very important lesson.

She had made the mistake of assuming that he wanted their marriage to continue. That he wanted her. And he hadn’t even picked up a phone to ask her to come back, to say that he missed her.

The answer was simple, of course, though it had taken her long enough to work it out: he didn’t miss her. He had simply written off their marriage, put it down to experience and picked up the threads of his life.carried on being important and dynamic and stopping conversations when he walked into a room.

‘When I rang, your mobile was switched off.’

‘I lost the old phone, I think. I don’t know where it is.’ The days immediately following her return to England two months earlier were still something of a blur to her.

Before she could put a name to the flare of emotion that spilled from his dark eyes, Francesco’s heavy lids lowered concealing his expression under the thick mesh of his lashes. ‘That was careless of you.’

Erin gave a wistful little smile and placed a hand lightly to her belly. ‘Even when you’re careful, accidents happen.’

‘Did you have any accident in particular in mind?’

The edge in his deep accented voice brought her wary glance upwards. ‘What do you mean?’ she demanded shrilly.

One dark brow lifted to a sardonic angle. ‘Defensive, Erin?’

The suggestion brought a guilty flush to her cheeks. ‘No … I just meant accidents, accidents in general.’ The retort sounded pathetically lame even to her own ears so she was surprised and relieved when Francesco didn’t comment on it.

Instead he explained tautly, ‘I have been ringing your home number several times a day for the past four days—your mother told me you did not wish to speak to me.’

‘My mother!’ she echoed, an audible thread of uncertainty entering her voice. ‘But she.’ She stopped and bit her lip.

It was entirely possible he spoke the truth. Her mother’s antagonism for the man her daughter had married had been instant and the feeling had been mutual. The overnight visit
they had made to break the news to her parents in person the week after the wedding had been a total disaster.

Her mother had gone to pieces when Erin had gently explained that she would be moving to Italy, and Francesco had not helped matters by not being at all sympathetic to her distress.

When she had taken him to task over his attitude in private he had informed her that her mother would soon find someone else to take her place as an emotional prop.

‘She is playing on your guilt, but what do you have to feel guilty about?’ he asked her.

‘I don’t feel guilty,’ Erin protested.

‘You are not responsible for your parents. It’s time you realised that they stay in their marriage, not because they have to, but because it suits them both.’

Recalling the conversation now ignited the resentment Erin had felt at the time.

‘Yes, I spoke to your mother. She has explained in some detail how the mention of my name makes you feel sick and the only thing keeping you going is the thought of taking me for all I’m worth.’

‘And you believed her!’ It made her angry that he could consider her capable of being so mercenary.

‘Was she not following your instructions?’ He shook his head incredulously and loosed a bitter laugh. ‘Believed her? One thing you are
not
guilty of,
cara,
is avarice!’ His eyes dropped and it seemed to a horror-struck Erin that he was staring at her still-flat stomach.

My God, he knows about the baby …!

She froze, her eyes wide and shocked, the colour leaking from her face. Common sense reasserted itself about a heartbeat later. A shaky sigh of relief escaped her lips as she
recognised her guilt-fuelled imagination was making her read things into his expression and body language that weren’t there.

Francesco couldn’t possibly know, unless he was a mindreader. Nobody but her doctor knew and she wasn’t showing yet. In fact after the weeks of vile morning sickness she weighed less than she had ever done.

She allowed the hands she had instinctively brought up in a protective gesture to casually fall from her middle. ‘I won’t ask what I am guilty of.’

‘Your mother didn’t tell you about the calls?’

Her eyes slid from his. ‘I expect Mum was just trying to protect me.’

‘From me?’ A muscle in his lean cheek clenched. Erin’s head lifted. ‘It’s what mothers do.’ ‘Not yours, I think,’ he drawled.

Erin’s eyes flashed. ‘How dare you criticise my mother?’

‘You are angry because you know I am right,’ he observed with unforgivable accuracy. ‘However, I did not come here to discuss your mother.’
I came here to hear you tell me you are carrying my child.
‘There are things we need to discuss.’

As Erin met his dark eyes her secret had never felt more of a burden. She gave an indifferent sniff.

‘You’re miserable?’ He looked as though the idea did not displease him. ‘Well, if you are it’s your own doing. You are the author of your own misery, Erin.’
And mine.

The claim made her stare.
‘Me …!’
She loosed an incredulous laugh.

He bared his teeth in a white humourless smile. ‘Yes, you!’ he flung back, dragging a shapely hand through his dark hair. ‘From the outset you did not trust me. Every absence you expected me to account for, every woman I spoke to you
regarded with suspicion.’ Breathing hard, Francesco fought to contain his escalating resentment and anger.

‘You weren’t talking to that woman, you were kissing her!’ The knife-cut of jealousy and betrayal was just as painful now as it had been on that night.

‘Erin, she had been drinking champagne—she kissed me.’

His dismissive shrug made Erin see red. Breathing hard, she pinned him with an angry glare. She doubted he would dismiss it so readily if the situation had been reversed!

Of course he’d managed to make the entire situation seem perfectly innocent, but how many times had she seen her father offer a totally plausible explanation for his serial philandering? He had been so convincing that half the time her mother had ended up apologising for doubting him! She was never ever going to fall into that trap.

‘So you’re the innocent victim?’ she suggested bitterly.

Francesco dragged an angry hand through his hair. ‘What was I meant to do … scream?’ he suggested derisively. ‘Have her arrested? Tell her my wife will think we’re in love?’

His biting sarcasm brought a fresh flush of anger to her cheeks. ‘What you were not meant to do was kiss her back,’ she retorted.

‘Grow up, Erin!’

The weary recommendation drew a sharp gasp of anger from her throat.

‘And don’t blame me for your self-esteem issues.’

‘Don’t try and make it out to be about
my
problem.’

But didn’t he have a point? Hadn’t part of the problem been that deep down she had never really been able to believe that a man like Francesco could really want somebody like her? She had turned a deaf ear to her doubts because she had wanted him so much, but had she ever really expected it to last?

Francesco’s dark lashes lifted from his chiselled cheekbones that were lent extra prominence at that moment by the two bands of febrile colour along the sharp angles. His eyes were smouldering with an anger he was barely suppressing. ‘You haven’t the faintest idea what is typical of me, Erin, or you would not treat me this way.’

‘Is that a threat?’

He folded his arms across his chest and gave a slow, dangerous smile that made her heart beat a little faster. ‘It is a simple statement of fact—’

The response dragged a dry laugh that bordered on hysteria from her aching throat … nothing about Francesco was
simple.
Her life had become impossibly complicated from the moment they had met!

Every time he looked at her the sheer enormity of her betrayal in concealing her pregnancy hit Francesco afresh.

Part of him wanted to demand the truth from her. He might have done just that had the situation not been further complicated by the fact he couldn’t look at her without experiencing an even
stronger
compulsion to pull her into his arms and fill his nostrils with her warm feminine scent.

His bleak eyes stilled on her angry face. ‘What happened to the woman I married?’

The unexpected question sent a stab of pain through Erin. The expression in his eyes told her that whatever feelings he had had for the woman he spoke of were dead. The realisation hurt a lot more than it ought to have.

‘The woman who was warm and spontaneous …’

Erin tossed her head and shrugged. The weak quiver in her voice spoiled her tough pose as she claimed belligerently, ‘She w-wised up.’

‘Your father cheats therefore all men cheat?’

Erin’s eyes fell from his uncomfortably perceptive gaze. Francesco had touched on a subject that had been in her thoughts frequently during the last few weeks, and common sense told her he had a point.

A person couldn’t watch her mother choose time after time to believe her cheating husband’s lies rather than face the truth and not be affected in some way. Had she been so determined not to allow herself to become a victim whom people pitied that she had made a terrible mistake? For as long as she could remember she’d despised her mother for believing the lies her father told.
Am I so damned sure,
she asked herself,
that I won’t do exactly what Mum did?

She couldn’t let herself find out.

Not that the question was anything but academic now; she had made her decision and there was no going back even if she had wanted to.

‘Sometimes, Erin,’ she heard him say as she passed a not quite steady hand across her eyes, ‘an innocent kiss is just that, innocent. Your reaction was totally irrational; you must realise that.’