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Sicilian Husband, Unexpected Baby
Sharon Kendrik
Step into a world of sophistication and glamour, where sinfully seductive heroes await you in luxurious international locations.Her proud, passionate husband… When Emma’s billionaire Sicilian husband found out she was near-enough infertile, their marriage was over. Then, back in England, Emma discovered the impossible had happened – she was pregnant! But life as a single mother was tough, and, unable to pay her bills, she had only one option. Vincenzo. …was blackmailing her back into his bed!Now he knows he is a father, Vincenzo is intent on claiming his son and returning to Sicily with him. If Emma is to stay with her beloved child, she must also return to the marriage bed!
DEAR READER LETTER
By Sharon Kendrick
Dear Reader (#ulink_80d817f8-55c5-5eb0-a822-89f364ff9fd7),
One hundred. Doesn’t matter how many times I say it, I still can’t believe that’s how many books I’ve written. It’s a fabulous feeling but more fabulous still is the news that Mills & Boon are issuing every single one of my backlist as digital titles. Wow. I can’t wait to share all my stories with you - which are as vivid to me now as when I wrote them.
There’s BOUGHT FOR HER HUSBAND, with its outrageously macho Greek hero and A SCANDAL, A SECRET AND A BABY featuring a very sexy Tuscan. THE SHEIKH’S HEIR proved so popular with readers that it spent two weeks on the USA Today charts and…well, I could go on, but I’ll leave you to discover them for yourselves.
I remember the first line of my very first book: “So you’ve come to Australia looking for a husband?” Actually, the heroine had gone to Australia escape men, but guess what? She found a husband all the same! The man who inspired that book rang me up recently and when I told him I was beginning my 100th story and couldn’t decide what to write, he said, “Why don’t you go back to where it all started?”
So I did. And that’s how A ROYAL VOW OF CONVENIENCE was born. It opens in beautiful Queensland and moves to England and New York. It’s about a runaway princess and the enigmatic billionaire who is infuriated by her, yet who winds up rescuing her. But then, she goes and rescues him… Wouldn’t you know it?
I’ll end by saying how very grateful I am to have a career I love, and to thank each and every one of you who has supported me along the way. You really are very dear readers.
Love,
Sharon xxx
‘Our son. I intend taking him to Sicily, Emma—and trying to stop me will seriously backfire against you in the long run.’
He rose to his feet, moving as silently as a jungle cat to stand directly in front of her before continuing. ‘I already have a team of lawyers working on the case, and let me tell you that they were singularly unimpressed by your efforts to conceal my son from me.’
Emma swallowed. ‘You’re threatening me— I—’
But her words were halted by the soft dig of Vincenzo’s fingers into her arms as he hauled her to her feet. ‘I am taking him with me, and if you intend to accompany us then you will play the part of my wife.’
She stared up at him. It was as if she had slipped and was falling deeper and deeper into a dark hole of Vincenzo’s making. ‘Your wife?’
Ebony eyes burned into her. ‘Why not? It makes perfect sense.’ He saw the look of confusion darkening her blue eyes. ‘We might as well enjoy what pleasures we can while we have the opportunity to do so.’
Emma felt weak. He sounded so cold-blooded—as if pleasure were nothing more than the by-product of a bodily function. ‘You can’t mean that.’
‘Oh, but I can,’ he promised, with grim satisfaction. ‘And I think you could usefully lose the outraged attitude, don’t you? In view of your response to me, you’re in danger of looking a little like a hypocrite.’
‘Vincenzo—’
‘No. No more arguments. Not any more. You’ve played according to your rules for long enough, Emma, and now it is time to play to some of mine.’
Mills & Boon are proud to present a thrilling digital collection of all Sharon Kendrick’s novels and novellas for us to celebrate the publication of her amazing and awesome 100th book! Sharon is known worldwide for her likeable, spirited heroines and her gorgeous, utterly masculine heroes.
SHARON KENDRICK once won a national writing competition, describing her ideal date: being flown to an exotic island by a gorgeous and powerful man. Little did she realise that she’d just wandered into her dream job! Today she writes for Mills & Boon, featuring her often stubborn but always to-die-for heroes and the women who bring them to their knees. She believes that the best books are those you never want to end. Just like life…
Sicilian Husband, Unexpected Baby
Sharon Kendrick
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
To Janet, Barbara and Allen, with love.
Contents
Cover (#u43c9f039-cd68-5f30-a2dd-3b15f8298374)
Dear Reader (#ulink_2f140fe4-88e6-5067-8c09-20eaef25f256)
Excerpt (#u72a744f8-637c-57b1-a197-4ec17155dd0a)
About the Author (#uc38f3fd1-c0b2-532a-87ec-0a86e3bad3ad)
Title Page (#u8b17cc87-b6c5-5559-9ab9-2a56974bdc46)
Dedication (#u06b25f09-cd7a-5bad-9f73-e467fc3389c1)
CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_8e5d9d43-cd6c-52bf-bac7-1e30db703392)
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_734d357f-9a08-5b34-8223-5aa71bff573f)
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_ddc28988-3724-5eb3-b6e8-a2cb877a480f)
CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_1e478894-6f8a-5e06-bfd8-4d58fc0f6256)
CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)
EPILOGUE (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_f8d81345-24d4-5b9a-a6c6-ab44939ed92a)
EMMA felt the frisson of very real fear sliding over her skin. She looked at the lanky blond man standing in front of her and composed her face carefully—because the last thing she could afford to do was panic.
‘But I can’t afford any more rent, Andrew,’ she said quietly. ‘You know that.’
The man shrugged apologetically but his expression didn’t change. ‘And I’m not running a charity. I’m sorry, Emma—but I could get four times the amount I’m charging you if I put it back on the market.’
Like a robot, Emma nodded. Of course he could. Pretty little cottages in pretty little English towns were snapped up like hot cakes. Everyone, it seemed, was into rural living these days.
The man hesitated. ‘Isn’t there anyone you could ask? Anyone who could help? What about your husband?’
Quickly, Emma stood up, fixing a crumpled attempt at a smile to her lips and wondering if it fooled anyone. Just the very mention of the man she had married had the power to make her feel weak, but weakness had no place in her life, not any more. She simply couldn’t afford to let it. ‘It’s very kind of you to be concerned, but it’s my problem,’ she said.
‘Emma—’
‘Please, Andrew,’ she said, trying to keep her voice calm—because she never spoke of Vincenzo, not to anyone. ‘Either I come up with the increased rent or I move somewhere cheaper—those are the only two solutions open to me.’
She knew there was also an unacknowledged third—Andrew had made that very clear in that sweet and polite English way of his. But she wasn’t going to start dating him just to keep her rent at a below-market-rate level, and, anyway, she didn’t want a boyfriend. She didn’t want anyone in her life—she had no room, no time or inclination for a man. And desire had died in her the day she had left Vincenzo.
Andrew said goodbye, disappearing into the dank November air just as a whimper came from the small bedroom and Emma crept in to stare at her sleeping son.
Already ten months old—how was that possible? He was growing in leaps and bounds with every day that passed—developing his own sturdy little frame to go along with his very definite personality.
He had kicked his duvet away and was clutching his little woollen rabbit as if his life depended on it and Emma’s heart turned over with love and worry. If there had been just her to think about, then there wouldn’t have been a problem. There were plenty of jobs available which came with a room and she would gladly have taken any one of them.
But it wasn’t just her. There was her son to think about—and she owed him the very best that the world could provide. It wasn’t his fault that his birth had placed her in an impossible situation.
Emma bit her lip. She knew what Andrew had suggested made sense, but it wasn’t as easy as that—and Andrew didn’t know the details. Nobody did. Could she really swallow her pride and her beliefs and go to her estranged husband, asking him for financial assistance?
Was she perhaps due some, by law? Vincenzo was a fabulously wealthy man and—even though he now despised her and had told her he never wanted to see her again—wouldn’t he play fair by providing her with some kind of modest settlement if she asked him for a divorce?
Tiredly, she rubbed at her eyes. What other solution did she have? She wasn’t qualified for anything high-earning and the last time she’d gone out to work had ended up paying most of her meagre wages to the childminder. And little Gino had hated it.
So she’d taken up child-minding herself. It had seemed the perfect compromise—she loved children and it was a way of earning money to pay the bills without having to farm out her beloved son to anyone else while she did so. But lately even that avenue of employment had caved in.
Several of the mothers had complained that her cottage was too cold for their children and demanded that she increase the temperature significantly. Two even removed their children straight away and her suspicions that there was going to be a domino effect and that the rest would follow suit were soon proved true. Now there were no more children to look after and no money coming in.
How on earth was she going to feed herself and Gino? Put a roof over their heads if Andrew increased the rent? Emma wanted to cry but she knew that she could not afford the luxury of tears—and tears would solve precisely nothing. There was nobody to dry them except for her and tears were for babies—except that she was determined her little boy was going to cry as little as possible. She had to be the grown-up now.
Opening the drawer of the small telephone table, she extracted the well-worn business card—her hand beginning to shake as she stared down at the name which leapt out at her like a dark crow from the sky.
Vincenzo Cardini.
Beneath it were the contact details of his offices in Rome, New York and Palermo—which she could never afford to ring in a month of Sundays—but also the number of his London offices, which she assumed he still operated out of regularly.
And yet it hurt to think that he might still own a luxurious tower block in the capital. To realise that he might have spent long and regular amounts of time in the same country as her and not once—not once—bothered to come and look her up, not even for old times’ sake.
Well, of course he wouldn’t, she scolded herself. He doesn’t love you any more, he doesn’t even like you—he made that quite plain. Remember his last words for you—delivered in that deadly cold, Sicilian drawl of his.
‘Get out of here, Emma and do not come back—for you are no wife of mine.’
But hadn’t she tried to ring him before, not once, but twice—and both times hadn’t he humiliatingly refused to speak to her? What was to say that this time would be any different?
Yet she knew she owed it to her son to keep trying. She owed him the right to know something of the basic comfort which should be every child’s entitlement and which his father’s money could guarantee. Wasn’t that more important than anything else? She needed to do this for Gino’s sake.
Emma shivered, pulling her sweater closer to her slim frame. These days her clothes seemed to swallow her up. She generally wore layers and kept on the move in this chilly autumn weather to keep herself warm. But soon her son would be awake and then she would have to put the heating on and more of her precious pennies would be eaten up by the ever-hungry gas fire.
There was, she realised heavily, no choice other than to ring Vincenzo. Running her tongue around her suddenly parched lips, she lifted up the phone and punched out the number with a shaky finger, her accelerated heart rate making her feel dizzy with expectation.
‘Hello?’ The voice of the woman who answered was smooth and with only a trace of an accent, probably bilingual.
But Vincenzo only employed people who could speak Italian, as well as English, Emma remembered. He even preferred it if his employees also spoke the very particular Sicilian dialect—which was a mystery to so many. Because Sicilians looked out for one another, he had once told her. They were members of a unique club of which they were fiercely proud. In fact, the more Emma thought about it, the more surprising she found it that he had ever chosen to marry her at all—she who spoke nothing more than a smattering of anything other than her native tongue.
He married you because he felt obliged to, she reminded herself. And didn’t he tell you that enough times? Just as the marriage broke down because you were unable to keep your part of the bargain.
‘Hello?’ said the woman’s voice again.
‘Would it be…?’ Emma cleared her throat. ‘Er, could you tell me how I could get hold of Signor Cardini, please?’
There was a short silence—as if the telephonist was shocked that a faltering unknown should dare to ask to be put through to the great man himself.
‘May I ask who is calling?’
Emma took a deep breath. Here we go. ‘My name is…Emma Cardini.’
There was another pause. ‘And your call is in connection with…?’
So there was no recognition of her name and no knowledge of her status. No respect, either—and something deep inside Emma bristled with hurt and rejection.
‘I’m his wife,’ she said baldly.
The woman had clearly been wrong-footed and Emma could almost hear her thinking—What the hell do I tell her?
‘Please hold the line,’ she said crisply.
Emma was forced to wait for what seemed like an eternity, while pinpricks of sweat beaded her forehead despite the chilly atmosphere in the cottage. She was just silently practising saying Hello, Vincenzo over and over in her head to make it sound as emotionless as possible, when the telephonist’s voice broke into her thoughts.
‘Signor Cardini says to tell you that he is in a meeting and cannot be disturbed.’
The humiliation hit her like a blow to the solar plexus and Emma found herself gripping on to the receiver as if she wanted to crush it in her clammy palm. She was just about to drop it back down onto the cradle when she realised the woman was still speaking to her.
‘But he says if you would care to leave a number where you can be contacted, he will endeavour to ring you when he has a moment.’
Pride made Emma want to pass on the message that he could go to hell if he couldn’t even be bothered to speak to the woman he had married.
But she could not afford the luxury of pride. ‘Yes, here’s my number,’ she said quietly. ‘Do you have a pen?’
‘Of course,’ said the woman in an amused voice.
After she had put the phone down, Emma went to make a cup of tea, cupping the steaming mug around her cold fingers as she looked out of the kitchen window at the little garden she had grown to love.
