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‘Bad investments followed worse ones, I hear,’ Guy put in as he sat down again.
‘You seem to know a lot about them,’ Francesco commented, reflecting uneasily that seven months was spot-on. The child would be his unless immediately on her return home Anna had jumped into bed with someone else. But that didn’t seem likely, given that at that time she’d been banking on reeling him in. She’d been expecting him to follow her to England, so she would not have wanted some other guy hanging around to stir up trouble, he decided forensically.
Making a huge effort to stop a black scowl from forming, and stopping himself from marching straight into the kitchen and demanding to know the truth, he listened to his cousin’s answer.
‘It was necessary when we first came here to introduce ourselves to the better families so they could advise us on local reliable and honest tradespeople. A permanent housekeeper is to arrive next week, but there are others.’ She took a sip of her coffee and arched one finely raised brow at him over the central flower arrangement. ‘Plumbers, electricians, a man to do the garden, caterers—that sort of person. The pregnant girl came highly recommended.
‘Now, why don’t we retire to the sitting room while the pregnant one clears away? One Grappa, I think, and then Guy and I will go up and leave you two to relax by the fire and get to know each other properly.’ A big smile in Francesco’s direction as she got to her feet. ‘I know Natalie wants to discuss some charity ball I’m sure you’ll be interested in.’
Like hell he would! Deadpan, he met the redhead’s over-sugared smile. Introduced by Silvana as ‘a friend from London’—an organiser of glittering events for some charity or other—she was certainly a looker. And available. And he was going to have to endure a weekend of having his cousin throwing them together. He would have to let this Natalie know that he was as interested in the female of the species as he was in settling down to read through the telephone directory from cover to cover. And try to be kind about it.
And tomorrow, first thing, he would visit Rylands and demand to know if the child the woman who’d made an idiot of him was carrying was his.
The dishwasher had finished its cycle. Wearily, Anna replaced the contents back in place in the huge Victorian floor-to-ceiling cupboard. Her feet were burning and her back was still aching.
Half an hour earlier Mrs Rosewall had found her repacking the cool boxes and handed her a cheque.
‘The meal was perfect. Are you almost finished?’
‘Everything will be back as it was in half an hour or so. I’m just waiting for the dishes to finish. Unless you’d prefer me to leave now?’ Said without any real hope.
She’d been longing to get away—well out of the orbit of Francesco and his current woman. But from experience she knew that her clients wanted their kitchens to look as if they’d never been used. That was what they paid her for. And they wanted full value for money.
And this one was no different. ‘No hurry. I just wanted to tell you that my husband and I are retiring for the night, but my cousin and his young lady will be in the sitting room and I don’t want them to be disturbed. Just let yourself out quietly. And, while I think about it, could you cater for lunch on Sunday? My guests will be driving back to London in the afternoon, so nothing too heavy, I think.’
Anna hadn’t even considered saying yes! The fee would be more than welcome, but no way would she put herself anywhere near that womanising creep again!
‘Sorry,’ she’d declined, resisting the urge to rub her aching back. ‘That won’t be possible.’
Now, after a final look at the spotless kitchen, she got into her old raincoat, shook her hair free and let herself out. Too tired to hurry, she was drenched when she reached her van and loaded the cool boxes in the back.
It had been a nightmare of a night. The shock of seeing him again had got to her, brought it all back when she hadn’t wanted to so much as think about him again. But it was over now, she reminded herself with almost tearful gratitude, and she forced herself to look on the bright side.
Sensibly telling herself that she never need set eyes on him again, she clambered in behind the wheel.
The way that redhead had been positively drooling over him had made her feel nauseous, and the horrible feeling that he must have noticed her pregnant state—how could he miss it?—put two and two together and know that the baby was his had been argued away as she’d grilled the kebabs.
Callously, he wouldn’t want to know. What had happened on Ischia was just one in a long line of forgettable flings. He would dismiss the matter, reasoning that if she had fallen pregnant it was her own fault and she could deal with it.
Which was fine by her!
With his heart successfully painted as black as his midnight hair, Anna pushed him roughly out of her mind and turned the key in the ignition.
The engine gave a tortured whine—and died. After the fourth attempt Anna had to concede that the battery was dead. Sternly resisting the temptation to bawl her eyes out, she rooted in her handbag for her mobile. It was entirely her own fault. Nick had advised her to splash out on a new battery, but she had kept putting it off because every spare penny was needed to pay the service bills at Rylands and put food on the table.
The fruitless search for her mobile continued—until Anna had to concede that she must have left it at home. Banging her small fists against the steering wheel, she yelped ‘Stupid! Stupid!’ then slumped in exhaustion in her seat, facing the unpalatable fact that she would have to go and knock them up.
‘Them’ being Francesco and his current squeeze! The Rosewalls had long since retired for the night. And for all she knew so had Francesco and his lady. The thought galvanised her. It had to be all of eight miles back to Rylands. It was pouring with rain. If she weren’t pregnant she would walk it. But as it was—
Francesco permitted himself a small Grappa as the redhead vacated the room. Huffily.
Too edgy to settle, he paced the room, glass held loosely in one hand. Used to fending women off, he usually managed it with finesse. Not tonight. He hadn’t been brutal. Just cold, clipped, concise.
Tickets for the charity ball she was organising didn’t interest him. Neither did meeting up for lunch when they were back in town. His schedule was too tight to allow room for any socialising in the foreseeable future.
At which point she’d gone to bed. Alone.
So he should be able to relax. But he couldn’t. Seeing Anna Maybury again had rekindled all the shaming memories, had brought everything he was doing his damnedest to forget back into unbelievably sharp focus, and her advanced state of pregnancy had deeply unsettled him, raising questions he knew he had to have answered.
The morning, when he could confront her, seemed an unendurably long way away.
Her heart quailing, Anna pressed the doorbell. The rain had turned her hair into dripping rats’ tails, and the front of her overall was soaking because the bump meant she couldn’t fasten her old waterproof. She felt sick with nerves, and knowing she must look pretty dreadful didn’t help.
But she had to contact Nick—ask him to come and collect her—and that meant facing Francesco, speaking to him, asking for the use of the Rosewalls’ phone.
The alternative was trudging home along narrow, isolated lanes. The chance of flagging down a passing motorist was a remote one at this time of night, and the likelihood of seeing a light at the windows of one of the scattered cottages or farmsteads was almost non-existent.
As the door swung open in answer to her summons at last she stiffened her spine, barely glanced at Francesco’s hard, handsome features and managed to get out, in a disgracefully wobbly voice, ‘My van won’t start. May I use the phone?’
Silence. Then, above the relentless sound of the rain, she heard his harsh indrawn breath, found her eyes tugged up to his. Hardened grey steel.
And not even the beguiling accent could soften the impact of his rawly savage question. ‘Tell the truth, for once in your life. Is the baby mine?’
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…?’
