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Vin didn’t care to explain the sordid story of the one-night stand who last February had tried to claim her baby was his, even though he’d used a condom and she’d claimed to be on the pill. It had turned out the DNA test was unnecessary as she wasn’t pregnant at all. She’d just hoped he would marry her and she’d get quickly pregnant—and he’d be too stupid to do the math. That experience had left him cold.
It was ironic that after confronting that one-night stand over her lies, he’d stopped for a drink in a new bar—and, meeting Scarlett, they’d ended up conceiving a child.
Looking at Scarlett now, he felt his body tighten. She had no right to look so lovely, her riotous red curls tumbling over her shoulders, her eyes so wistful and luminous, her lips so naturally full and pink. Her breasts strained the modest neckline of the simple black dress, and her large baby bump made her even more voluptuous, more sexy.
Pregnant. With his baby.
If it was true, he would devote his life to giving this baby a very different childhood than he’d had. His child would always be safe, and loved. Unlike Vin, his child would always know who his father was.
If her child was even his, he reminded himself. She could be lying. He needed proof. He held out his hand. “Let’s go.”
With visible reluctance, she put her hand in his. “If I go with you to the doctor, and you get proof you’re the father, then what?”
“I’ll have my lawyers draw up a prenuptial agreement.”
“A pre-nup?” Her voice sounded surprised. “Why?”
He gave a grim smile. “I can hardly marry you without control.”
“Control of what?”
“Everything,” he said honestly.
He led her through the now empty cathedral, with only rapidly wilting wedding flowers and a few despondent janitors sweeping up. Her voice trembled as she asked, “What specifically would be in the pre-nup?”
“Standard things.” He shrugged. “Giving me final say on schooling and religion and where we will live. Things like that. I am based in New York but have homes all over. I am often required to travel while running SkyWorld Airways, sometimes for months at a time. I would not want to be away from my children.”
“Children? I’m not carrying twins.”
“Obviously, our child will need siblings.” She made a sound like a squeak, but he ignored her, continuing, “I expect you to travel with me whenever and wherever I wish.”
Her forehead furrowed. “But how would I hold down a job?”
“Money will no longer be an issue. As my wife, your only requirement will be to support me. You will be in society. You will learn to properly entertain powerful people to promote my company’s best interests. You may need comportment lessons.”
“What?”
“And, of course,” he added casually, “in the event we ever divorce, the pre-nup will simplify that process. It will clearly spell out what happens if you cheat on me, or either of us decides to separate. You’ll know what amount of money you’ll be entitled to based on years—”
“Of service?”
He smiled blandly. “Of marriage, I was going to say. Naturally, I would automatically gain full custody of our children.”
“What?!”
“Don’t worry. You would still be allowed to visit them.”
“Big of you,” she murmured. As they walked down the cathedral steps to his waiting car, his bodyguards waiting beside the large SUV behind it, Scarlett abruptly stopped.
“Before we go to your doctor and have the paternity test, could you do me a favor?” She smiled prettily, showing a dimple in her left cheek, then waved helplessly at her bare feet on the sidewalk. “Could we stop at a shoe store?”
Like Cinderella, Vin thought. He was surprised how well she was taking everything. The way she was looking at him so helplessly, so prettily. She would be easy to mold and shape into the perfect wife.
“Of course,” he said almost tenderly. “I’m sorry. I should have thought of that before.” Picking her up in his arms, he carried her. In spite of being heavily pregnant, she seemed to weigh nothing at all. He gently set her into the waiting car, still bedecked with flowers.
The driver’s eyes were popping out of his head to see Vin had left the church carrying a redhead, when he’d gone in to marry a blonde. But he wisely said nothing and just started the car.
Vin climbed into the backseat beside her. “Any preference about the shoe store?”
He expected her to name a designer store, the sorts of luxury brands that Anne had constantly yammered about, but here again Scarlett surprised him.
“Any shoes good to run in,” she said demurely, her black eyelashes fluttering against her pale cheeks.
“You heard her,” he told his driver.
Ten minutes later, Scarlett was trying on running shoes at an enormous athletic store on Fifty-Seventh Street. She chose her favorite pair of running shoes, along with a pair of socks, exclaiming at Vin’s generosity all the while.
“Thank you,” she whispered, suddenly giving him a hug. For a moment, he closed his eyes. He could smell the peppermint of her breath and breathed in the cherry blossom scent of her hair. Then she abruptly pulled back. Staring up at him wide-eyed, she bit her lip. Vin could imagine the sensual caress of those full, plump lips.
Then she smiled, and her eyes crinkled. “I’ll wear the shoes starting now. Excuse me.”
Vin watched her walk toward the ladies’ restroom, past the displays of expensive athletic shoes and equipment. His eyes lingered appreciatively over the curve of her backside, the sway of her hips. Scarlett made even a plain black funeral dress look good.
What a wife she would make. And as for the honeymoon...he shuddered.
Determined to hurry them into the car, he turned toward the cashier. Normally his assistant would have dealt with such mundane details, but he’d left Ernest at the cathedral to handle the logistical problems of the ruined wedding—returning mailed gifts, organizing early rides to the airport for disgruntled guests, donating the expensively catered reception dinner to a local homeless shelter. So Vin himself went to pay for the shoes.
There would soon be lots of other purchases, he thought. Baby booties. A crib. A nursery. He’d have his houses baby-proofed. He’d hire a larger staff. He would buy a few more family-sized SUVs to add to his personal fleet of expensive cars. Small tasks that would distract him from building his empire, but it would be worth it to finally have a family of his own.
He’d be the parent he himself had never had. His child would never know what it felt like to be abandoned. To be used. To be neglected and alone.
Reaching into his tuxedo jacket, Vin felt for his wallet. Frowning, he looked in his pockets. Empty. Had he left it in the car, or back at the cathedral? Scowling, he motioned for one of his bodyguards to pay and told the other one to track down the wallet. Sitting down at a nearby bench, Vin called his doctor to arrange for an immediate appointment. Then he tapped his feet.
Scarlett was taking a long time.
“Go check on her,” he ordered his bodyguard impatiently.
Vin paced. Checked his phone again. Stopped.
Suspicion dawned.
She couldn’t. She wouldn’t.
She had.
“Miss Ravenwood is nowhere to be found, boss,” Larson said when he returned. “I had the bathroom checked. Empty.” He hesitated. “There is a door beside it that leads to a storeroom, then out to the alley.”
With a low curse, Vin strode through the sporting goods store, his two bodyguards behind him. In the back, near the ladies’ restroom, he found the storeroom. Store employees shrank back at his glare as he threw open the back door with an angry bang.
Outside was an alley with graffiti-littered brick walls. Vin walked slowly past the Dumpsters to the end: busy Madison Avenue, crowded with people and cars packed bumper to bumper. He stared around him in shock.
Scarlett Ravenwood had not only walked out on him, she’d most likely stolen his wallet. Not only that, she’d warned him first! “Shoes good to run in” indeed!
Clawing his hand back through his dark hair, he gave a single, incredulous laugh. He’d been ditched twice in one day. Lied to by two different women.
Anne’s loss he could accept. That had involved only money.
Scarlett was different. He’d never stopped desiring her. And now she was carrying his baby.
Or was she? Perhaps she’d lied. He rubbed his forehead. Why would any woman run away when he’d asked her to marry him and live in luxury for the rest of her life? Unless she was afraid of the paternity test. That was the only rational explanation: the baby wasn’t his. The thought caused a sick twist in his gut.
Then he remembered the angry gleam in Scarlett’s green eyes.
I don’t appreciate you digging into my life, then assuming that I’m either a con artist or a gold digger. I’m neither. I just want to raise my baby in peace.
Standing motionless as pedestrians rushed by him on Madison Avenue, Vin narrowed his eyes.
Either way, he had to know.
Either way, he’d find her.
And this time, she wouldn’t trick him so easily. Nothing would stop him from getting what he wanted. He wouldn’t listen to her excuses. Next time, he’d bend her to his will.
Barefoot, if necessary.
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_0306ba8d-5dde-521b-ace1-631c7311b282)
THERE WAS ONLY one thing that mattered in life, Scarlett’s father had always told her as a child. Freedom.
Freedom. It was Harry Ravenwood’s rallying cry every time their family had to flee in the night, tossing their belongings into black trash bags and heading blindly to a new city. At seven years old, when Scarlett accidentally left her teddy bear—her only friend—behind, she’d cried until her father comforted her with stories of Mr. Teddy backpacking around the world, climbing the Pyramids and the Pyrenees. His funny stories of her bear’s adventures finally made her smile through her tears. On cold winter nights in Upstate New York, as their family shivered in unheated rooms and icy wind rattled the windows, Harry sang jaunty songs about freedom.
Freedom. Even on the bleak night when Scarlett was twelve, when her mother died in the emergency room of a hospital in a faded factory town in Pennsylvania, her father kissed Scarlett as tears streamed down his weathered face. “At least now your beautiful mother is free of pain.”
Scarlett had her freedom now. From Blaise Falkner. From Vin Borgia. She and her unborn baby were free.
But it had come at a cost.
To start with, her flight two weeks ago, from Boston to London, had had a little trouble over the Atlantic.
A small fire in the cargo hold caused the plane to divert to a small airport on the west coast of Ireland. As the plane descended, she saw dark clusters of birds through her porthole window, flying rapidly past the plane. “Bird strike!” a passenger cried out, and as one flight attendant rushed toward the cockpit, another tried to murmur reassuring, unconvincing words to the passengers. Wide-eyed, Scarlett gripped her armrests as she felt the plane ominously vibrate and groan in midair.
All she’d been able to think was, she shouldn’t be on this plane. Pregnant women weren’t supposed to fly after their seventh month. She was nearly at eight. She’d fled from New York, with a quick stop in Boston, because she thought it was her only way to escape Vin. But now that danger seemed small when she and her child were both going to die. Just like her own father had died in that wintry plane crash a year and a half ago. She never should have gotten on a plane.
“Prepare for crash landing,” came the pilot’s terse voice over the intercom. “Brace for impact.” The flight attendants repeated the words as the nose of the plane started to plummet and they rushed to buckle themselves in. “Heads down! Brace for impact! Stay down!”
Scarlett had braced herself, hugging her belly, thinking, please don’t let my baby die.
Like a miracle, the plane had finally steadied on one engine and limped hard, landing with a heavy bang on the edge of the runway. No one was hurt, and passengers and crew alike cheered and cried and hugged each other.
Sliding off the plane on the inflatable yellow slide, Scarlett had fallen to her knees on the tarmac and burst into noisy, ugly sobs.
She never should have gotten on a plane. Any plane. After her father’s death, she should have known better.
But just like when she’d accepted that limo ride from Blaise Falkner, she’d ignored her intuition and convinced herself that her fears were silly. And both she and her baby had nearly died as a result.
She’d never ignore her intuition again. From now on, she’d listen seriously to her fears, even when they didn’t make rational sense.
And above all: she would never, ever get on any plane again.
But why would Scarlett need to? She had no family in New York. No reason to ever go back. Vin Borgia had done her a huge favor, warning her in advance that he intended to rule her life and their child’s with an iron fist and separate her from her baby if she ever objected or tried to leave him. She didn’t feel guilty about leaving him, not at all.
She did feel guilty about stealing his wallet. Stealing was never all right, and her mother must be turning over in her grave. Scarlett told herself she’d had no choice. She’d had to cover her tracks. Vin was not only a ruthless billionaire, he owned an airline and had ridiculous connections. If she’d stepped one toe on a flight under her own name, he would have known about it.
So she’d contacted one of her father’s old acquaintances in Boston to buy a fake passport. That cost money.
So she’d taken—borrowed—the money from Vin. She hadn’t touched anything else in his wallet. Not his driver’s license, or his credit cards, most of them in special strange colors that no doubt had eye-popping credit limits. And after she’d arrived safely in Switzerland via ferry and train from Ireland, and gotten her first paycheck at her new job, she’d mailed back Vin’s wallet, returning everything as he’d left it. She’d even tossed in some extra euros as interest on the money she’d borrowed.
She’d gotten the euros from northern Italy, where she’d gone to mail back the package. She could hardly have sent Vin money in Swiss francs, letting him know where she was!
But that was all behind her now. She’d paid everything back. She and her baby were free.
Scarlett took a deep breath of the clear Alpine air. She’d been in Gstaad for over two weeks now, and finally, finally she was starting to relax. She just had to hope when Vin couldn’t easily find her, he would forget about her and the baby, and she’d never have to worry about him again.
Scarlett passed out of the gates of the chalet, if the place could be called a chalet when it was the size of a palace, and turned her face up toward the sun.
It was mid-October, and the morning air was already frosty in the mountains around the elegant Swiss ski resort of Gstaad. The first snowfall was expected daily.
She had her own event to expect soon, too. Her hand moved over her belly, grown so large she could no longer button up her oversize jacket. Only two and a half weeks from her due date. Her body felt heavier, slower. But luckily her new job allowed plenty of opportunity for gentle morning walks.
She’d been lucky to get this job. When she’d fled the shoe store in New York, racing down the alley to hail a cab on Madison Avenue, she’d already decided exactly where to go. Her mother’s best friend, Wilhelmina Stone, worked as housekeeper to a wealthy European tycoon in Switzerland. Though Scarlett hadn’t seen her since her mother’s funeral, she’d never forgotten the woman’s hug and fierce words, “Your mother was my best friend. If you ever need anything, you come straight to me, you hear?”
Since then, she’d gotten only an occasional Christmas card. But when Scarlett had shown up uninvited and shivering at the gate of the enormous villa outside Gstaad, the plump, kindly woman had proved good as her word.
“My boss just asked me to hire a good cook for ski season. The best Southern cook in the US, he said. Can you make grits and fried chicken? Jambalaya? Dirty rice?”
Eyes wide, Scarlett shook her head. Wilhelmina sighed.
“All right, he usually starts coming here in early December, after the season starts. So you’ve got six weeks, maybe more, to learn how to make amazing fried chicken and all the rest. I’ll put you on staff payroll now. Just make sure you learn to cook for groups of ten or more, because Mr. Black always brings friends!”
For the last two weeks, Scarlett had been trying to teach herself to cook, using cookbooks and internet videos. She was still pretty bad. The security guard routinely teased her that even his dog wouldn’t eat what she cooked. It was sadly true.
But she would learn. Being a specialty chef for a hard-traveling, hard-partying tycoon who was rarely around was the perfect job for any single mother with a newborn. She would be able to take a week or two off to heal after the birth, then work with her baby nearby, almost as if this were her own home.
Plus, Switzerland was the perfect place to raise a baby. Scarlett tucked her hands in her jacket pockets as she walked along the slender road. Gravel crunched beneath her soft boots as she took a deep breath of crisp mountain air smelling of sunlight and pine trees. For a brief moment, she closed her eyes, turning her face to the sun. Her heart was full of gratitude.
Then she heard a snap in the forest ahead of her.
She opened her eyes, and the smile dropped from her face.
