скачать книгу бесплатно
It was ten minutes after the time Eric Gibbs had said he wanted her to meet him. Eric was well known for two things: his beard, which made him look like an avuncular Father Christmas, and his almost paranoid aversion to being kept waiting by anyone.
He had been known to walk out on Hollywood royalty because they were late and she wasn’t a famous actor or a diva, she was a very junior journalist whose temporary contract was just coming to an end.
It was a nail-biting place to be for anyone who had her share of insecurities—which Sam did.
A few weeks earlier being offered this contract had been the focus of all her ambitions, and the possibility that the man himself might be about to offer it to her would have had her in a state of feverish anticipation.
Now, when financial security mattered more than ever, Sam knocked on the door feeling oddly detached.
The chances were this was nothing to do with her contract at all. Eric Gibbs had more important items on his agenda than the contracts of very junior members of his staff. On the two occasions they had met face to face he had got her name wrong, though she’d been told not to take that personally. Apparently Eric was not good with names and called everyone from royalty to government ministers ‘mate’.
But if it wasn’t the contract what else could explain this abrupt summons on her day off? She might have had more of a clue if her mental discipline hadn’t disintegrated. She couldn’t string two thoughts together without Cesare muscling his way into her head.
‘Get over him, Sam!’ she counselled herself sternly. If he didn’t want anything to do with this baby, that was his loss. She frowned, lifted her chin and said ‘His loss!’ just as the office door opened. ‘S-sorry,’ she muttered, blushing to the roots of her hair.
‘I said come in.’
‘I didn’t hear, I’m…’
‘Never mind. Sit down…I’ll get straight to the point.’
He did and Sam listened, the knot of anxiety in her stomach having grown into a gaping chasm by the time he had finished speaking.
‘So you’re sacking me?’ It was a shock—more than a shock. She was insecure, but she was not delusional—she knew she was good.
The editor’s direct gaze wandered in the direction of the potted plant on the filing cabinet. ‘We have to let you go. Sorry and all that.’
Sam got to her feet struggling for dignity. It was hard when her knees were shaking so hard. ‘Not as sorry as me.’
‘Of course, we’ll give you excellent references.’
‘What have I done wrong?’
‘This isn’t about you, it’s about… Damn them!’ he growled, slamming his fist down on the desk causing a pile of papers to slide to the floor.
Sam watched the inexplicable display of anger, but it didn’t have the power to touch her. She was numb.
‘It’s about organisational changes.’
Sam accepted the vague explanation with a shrug. ‘I’ll take my things with me, shall I?’
‘No hurry…no hurry,’ Eric said, looking awkward as he gave her shoulder a squeeze.
Sam managed to collect her things without bumping into anyone she knew. She was halfway home before the anger kicked in and she was articulate after the fact. A hundred things she knew she should have said—haughty, cutting things—popped into her head. By the time she reached her bedsit the anger had given way to misery, self-pity and tears that blinded her as she pushed the key into the door and let herself in.
She dropped the things she was holding onto the floor and flung herself headlong on the sofa.
They had been sitting in the stationary car for half an hour before Paolo, sitting in the driving seat, spoke up.
‘There is a lady coming, petite, she has red hair and she’s crying.’
The last comment was the clincher.
‘She is going into the building.’ The thickset Italian continued speaking in his native tongue.
‘We will follow her,’ Cesare said, trying not to think about the tears. This was a situation where the ends definitely justified the means.
Paolo responded with an affirmative grunt, but expressed no surprise at the announcement. He had worked for Cesare for ten years and the role required flexibility. He waited until Cesare had slid from the back seat and then placed a light guiding hand unobtrusively on his employer’s elbow as they walked towards the building the woman had gone into.
‘It is the fifth floor, flat 17b.’
Was she weeping in flat 17b?
Cesare’s expression hardened into a mask of resolution as he continued to refuse to acknowledge his guilt, and the part he had played in her tears.
‘The lift is out of order, sir,’ Paolo said in a tone that suggested this did not surprise him.
‘The building does not meet with your approval? It could do with a lick of paint?’ Cesare speculated.
‘Several. Or, better still, knocking down.’
Cesare laughed. ‘You are a snob.’ Then his expression sobered. A building that his fastidious driver found unacceptable was not one that he had any intention of his child being raised in.
The thickset Paolo, who carried a few extra pounds around his middle, was panting by the time they reached the fourth floor. Cesare was not.
‘You need to take more exercise, my friend.’
Paolo acknowledged the comment with a grunt before giving his employer a rapid thumbnail sketch of their surroundings. He knew that his employer’s remarkably retentive memory would not require him to repeat himself.
‘You wish me to wait?’
‘No. I will call when I need you.’
Sam was still lying on the sofa wearing her damp coat when the doorbell began to ring. It was only when the man from the flat upstairs began banging on the floor and it became obvious that her visitor was not going to go away that she made any attempt to respond.
‘All right, all right,’ she muttered, running the back of her hand across her damp cheeks and glancing with disinterest in the mirror as she passed. The glance revealed a blotchy, tear-stained face and swollen eyes surrounded by a halo of wild, slightly damp red curls.
Sniffing and pushing her hair back from her face, she opened the door a crack, but before she could either tell her noisy visitor to go away or even just check them out the door was thrust open and she was lifted backwards into her cramped hallway as Cesare Brunelli’s broad-shouldered, six-foot-five frame entered her flat.
For thirty seconds she was too stunned to say or do anything at all.
As his hands fell from her waist Cesare was unable to dispel the illogical feeling that they had belonged there—they fitted. Shrugging off the whimsical idea, he drew a hand through his hair and it came away wet. It had been raining outside.
‘Say something or I will start to think I have wandered into the wrong flat.’
It was a lie. He could have picked out her subtle womanly fragrance in a room crammed with hundreds of bodies, and he didn’t think this had anything to do with some sensory compensation he had developed. His sixth sense had not come out of hibernation, but there was, it seemed, just something about her that he reacted to on an almost cellular level.
The mass of raw masculinity in such an enclosed space sent Sam’s nervous system and her brain into chaotic confusion. She expelled a long shaky sigh as her wide-eyed glance slid down the long, lean length of him, a weakness invading her limbs as a deeper shuddery sigh left her with parted lips. He looked incredible—the epitome of male beauty standing close enough for her to touch. Only she wasn’t going to—she still had a grain of good sense left and past experience had taught her that when any form of physical contact with the Italian took place things got dangerously unpredictable.
She stared covetously at him and wondered what to do next—the question might be academic if her heart beat any faster. The moleskin jacket he wore hung open to reveal a close-fitting cashmere sweater, black, like the jeans that emphasised his long, muscular thighs and snaky hips.
She tried to drag her eyes away but couldn’t stop staring. There was a sheen of moisture on his golden skin making it gleam, and the same moisture clung in silvery droplets to the long eyelashes that framed his beautiful eyes.
He had not hidden them behind dark glasses, but then Cesare Brunelli was not a hiding sort of man. He was more of a hit-obstacles-head-on sort of person.
She suspected that most things moved—or even ran—when they saw him coming! If she had shown as much sense, she reflected bitterly, she wouldn’t be in this mess. Although she supposed she would still be out of work, only it would be because she hadn’t made the grade, which wasn’t as bad as out of work because she hadn’t made the grade and was pregnant!
She finally managed to speak. ‘You didn’t wander in, you barged in uninvited.’ She tried hard to inject the necessary degree of coldness and disapproval into her voice, but it was an uphill battle because it was hard to be cold when she was staring at his mouth. ‘How did you get here?’ She started at the sound of the door being closed with an audible click. ‘And what are you doing here?’
Hearing the rising note of escalating panic in her voice, she stopped and cleared her throat.
‘Actually this is a bad time for m-me…’
The husky catch in her voice had a similar effect on Cesare as a nerve ending being exposed to cold air. His brows drew together in a stern line as his forehead puckered into a frown. ‘You’re crying!’
Scalding shame washed over him. He firmed his jaw, causing the muscles along the strong angular outline to quiver. This was not the place for sentiment; he was doing the right thing. It was necessary.
Sam sniffed and placed both hands across her mouth to muffle the sob she felt welling up in her throat.
‘Will you just go away?’ she pleaded.
‘No, I couldn’t if I wanted to.’ He passed a hand across his eyes and smiled sardonically. ‘I’m blind, remember.’
‘I remember.’ It was still hard to believe, even more so now that he had conquered the demons of primitive fear he had been wrestling in Scotland. Did he resent the fact she had seen him when he was not totally in control?
‘In case you didn’t recognise it, that was black humour.’
‘No, that was bad taste.’
‘I’m famous for it.’
Sam couldn’t respond to the quip; her facial muscles felt locked in a tragic expression. ‘Look…’ She paused, wondering what to call him. She couldn’t call the father of her child Mister! ‘Look, Cesare—’
Some emotion she could not interpret flickered at the backs of his eyes. ‘Was that so hard?’ he asked.
Her eyes widened. Even though he couldn’t pick up on the cues of body language and facial expressions everyone took for granted, he was scarily perceptive.
‘Was what so hard?’
‘Saying my name.’
She was too emotionally whacked to prevaricate. ‘Yes, it was.’ And why not? Anything connected with him was hard work!
‘Cesare, the fact is I’ve had a bad day. The last person in the world I want to see is you!’ Unable to stop them, she felt the tears start to roll down her cheeks once more and she wiped them away with the back of her hand.
‘Sometimes it helps to talk about it.’
‘For goodness’ sake, don’t turn kind and understanding now—not unless you want me to cry all over you, and that isn’t a pretty sight,’ she warned him darkly.
Cesare, who was well aware that even the most generous of critics could not have termed his recent actions either kind or understanding, reached out and touched the side of her cheek. She twisted her head away, but not before the shiver that ran through her body communicated itself to him through his fingertips.
‘The advantage of being in the company of a blind man, cara, is you can relax about the way you look and not worry about bad-hair days.’
He might not be able to see her face or read her body language, but Sam recognised with a sense of dismay that she felt more exposed on every level when she was near him.
‘I could never relax in your company.’ She bit her quivering lips and added before he could read something revealing into her retort, ‘I tried to talk to you…Cesare, and all it got me was a headache. Look, I’m sorry. I know you were only trying to do the right thing by suggesting we get married…you’re Italian and the family thing is…’
She stopped as her shoulders began to shake with the effort of biting back the sobs that were locked in her throat. Her head sank to her chest as she began to sob in earnest.
Her muffled cries tore at Cesare’s heart the way no woman’s tears ever had.
He took a step forward and walked into an unseen obstacle. Stepping over it with a curse, he extended his hands and felt the silky top of her head. She lifted it and his hands slid to frame it. He moved a thumb across the wetness of her cheeks.
She sniffed and covered his hands with her own, but, instead of pulling them away, they stayed there holding his in place. ‘Sorry, this isn’t about you. I have to focus.’
Cesare told himself the same thing a hundred times a day—he had to focus and stay in control. When he spoke he did so from experience—he knew that ignoring feelings did not make them go away. ‘No, you need to let go.’ She had been there when he had let go and had taken the full brunt of his rage when he had.
The rest of his sentence remained unsaid as she suddenly walked into his arms, burrowed her wet face into his chest and said in a voice muffled by his sweater, ‘I need you to shut up and hold me.’
For a second Cesare didn’t react at all to the imperious command. Inner conflict was tearing him apart, which made no sense—there was only conflict when someone wasn’t sure they had done the right thing, and Cesare, not a man afflicted with self-doubt, was sure.
He had been able to view the situation with total objectivity. The ability to have a clear overview without getting bogged down with emotional irrelevancies combined with luck was a talent that had helped make him a very wealthy man. He was discovering that it wasn’t easy to retain a grip on that objectivity when his arms were filled with a soft, weeping woman. Her scent flooded his senses and his arms closed around her.
Feelings, strong and unfamiliar, stirred as he stroked her hair and felt her quivering body relax. He slid the bulky wet coat she wore off her shoulders and moved his hands in a soothing motion down her spine. Then he propped his chin against the top of her glossy head and tried to keep things in perspective.
There would be other jobs.
But that wasn’t the point and Cesare knew it. He had known it when he had rung the proprietor of the Chronicle and called in a favour, but he had rationalised his actions—that was harder now when he was seeing the consequences up close and personal.
Very close!
Her curves slotted into his angles as if they had been made to complement each other. He tried to think about why he was doing this, but thoughts of having her soft and warm underneath him kept intruding.
He had been angry and in shock; his pride had been hurt when she had called him second best. He was still assailed by a need to hear her retract that statement, an odd desire for a man who had never given a damn for anyone’s opinion of him.
What she thought of him was not relevant, though he would clearly be more comfortable married to someone who didn’t hate his guts.
They must be married.
His immediate move after she had left his offices had been to cancel his trip back to Italy the next morning. His next had been the call to Mark James to call in a favour. The man had not been entirely happy at the request to interfere with what was, he pointed out, a purely editorial decision, but he had obliged anyway.
Samantha would not be offered a contract.
It seemed reasonable to Cesare to assume that being without a job would make the fiercely independent Samantha appreciate the insecurity of her position. She would be in a more favourable frame of mind to consider his proposal, or at least not dismiss it out of hand.
The irony was not lost on Cesare. He had spent his entire adult life escaping the clutches of women with designs on him—or at least his money—and now he was being forced to employ deception and dirty tactics in order to sell himself as a good marriage bargain.
Cesare had pushed aside any disquiet he felt about employing such methods; he would do anything to ensure that, unlike himself, his child would not be brought up without a father. That his child would never feel as though he didn’t belong. Parents wanted for their children the things they had been deprived of and he was no exception.
