'I am the manager—perhaps I can help?'
Jake looked at him and caught a look of amusement in the pale eyes. 'No, you damn well can't. I want to see Charlotte.' He was furious and he was taking no insolence from any man. 'Tell her I'm here.'
'That might be difficult, sir, as she has gone sailing for the day. We are expecting her about six.' Jake glanced at his watch. He would have to cool his heels for over an hour. 'If you would care to wait, I'll have the waitress serve you tea.'
There was no point in arguing—it wasn't the manager he was mad at. Taking a seat in the lounge, he suffered the attentions of a stony-faced waitress. He drank tea, which he loathed, and got the distinct impression from the cold looks slanted his way by the members of staff who passed by that they actively disliked the guests. Or perhaps it was just him in particular. Well, he had had enough. Slapping the paper he had been trying to read down on the table, Jake rose tohis feet and strode towards the double doors leading to the garden and beyond.
Three teenagers were running towards him, laughing and shouting, and he quickly stepped up onto the terrace that fronted the hotel. Where the hell was Charlotte? he wondered, gazing out over the glorious gardens to the lake beyond, and then he saw her.
Clad in the briefest of white shorts and a cropped top, she looked incredibly beautiful. Her long blonde hair, glinting with platinum streaks in the evening sun, tumbled around her shoulders and her long legs moved with lithe grace as she ran towards him.
A brilliant smile of pure masculine satisfaction cut across Jake's strong face. She still adored him. He forgot he was furious. Five long weeks he had been without her—he must have been mad to wait so long. But not any more and a charge of testosterone fired up his body with incredible excitement. Then she stopped.
In the next second Jake realised he could swing from euphoria to a fury that threatened to explode as the truth hit him like a blow to the solar plexus. She was not running towards him, she had not even seen him, and she was not alone. From his vantage point, with his grip white-knuckled on the terrace balustrade, he watched Charlotte laugh happily up into the face of the older man who had stopped beside her, and, with an ease born of long practice, slipped an arm around her bare waist.
Jake jerked his proud head back, and drew in a sharp lungful of air. No man touched his woman, not ever. Outraged and furious beyond belief he vaulted over the balustrade and strode towards her.
Charlie, in blissful ignorance of the impending confrontation, was happily regaling Dave with details of her triparound Kew Gardens when Dave interrupted her, his arm falling from her.
'Don't look now, but a very large, very dark and very angry man has just leapt off the terrace and is heading our way.'
Charlie's head spun to the front. Jake! It was Jake in the flesh, and a quivering excitement lanced through her, quickly followed by a shiver of something very like fear. She could feel the anger, the fury sizzling from him at twenty paces.
'Charlotta. At last,' he drawled, his black molten gaze capturing hers as he closed the distance between them, hauled her into his arms, and crushed her against his broad chest. 'I came at your call, cara.' His deep accented voice resounded in her ear, and for a split second she remained frozen. Then she trembled helplessly, the familiar wild excitement rushing through her veins as he angled his head and took her slightly parted lips, probing straight between them with a savage, possessive passion that left her breathless and weak at the knees when he finally ended the kiss.
Heavy-lidded black eyes gleamed steadily down at her flushed face and slightly swollen mouth. 'You missed me...yes?' he prompted.
Charlie nodded her head. Jake was here, and he still wanted her.
'Good. Then perhaps you would care to introduce me to your companion.' He recognised the man from the photograph, but Jake had a point to make.
'My companion?' Charlie was not thinking straight; in fact she was having trouble thinking at all. She lifted puzzled eyes to his face, and was taken aback to discover he was looking coolly over her head. Only then did she remember Dave. She turned brick-red and tried to ease out of Jake's hold, but he was having none of it. Instead he simply spun her around, one strong arm curved across her bare waist trapping her back against his chest.
His free hand he offered towards Dave, his blatantly possessive masculine stance saying clearer than words that she was his woman. 'Jake d'Amato, and you are?'
Cool and calm, Dave took the extended hand. 'Dave Watts, A very old friend of the family and a kind of honorary dad to Charlie since the death of her parents.'
'Really. I trust not of the sugar variety.'
'Definitely not,' Dave said bluntly. 'But I can see why you would be worried. She is very sweet.'
Charlie was shocked at Jake's outrageous comment and she felt the sudden tension in his body. Twisting her head, she glanced up at him. His dark eyes were narrowed with piercing intensity on Dave, and, twisting back, she saw Dave was equally intense. They resembled nothing so much as two great predatory beasts meeting head to head before fighting to the death.
Then it struck her. Jake's passionate kiss had been arrogant macho posturing at the sight of Dave. Jake didn't love her, but his massive ego would not allow him to entertain the thought she might have another man. Simmering with resentment, she watched in silence as the two men eyeballed each other. Then suddenly Dave laughed out loud.
'You'll do.' He slapped Jake on the back as if they had been friends for years. 'But hurt her and you'll have me to reckon with. And now I better go and chase up the boys, before they cause any damage. See you later, Charlie.' And he walked away.
She'd been unwilling to cause a scene in front of Dave, but Charlie had no such qualms when he left. 'Let go of me, you big jerk,' she snapped and twisted violently in Jake's hold.
'Certainly.' Jake spun her around to face him. 'But first, tell me, where is Dave's wife? He seems overly protective of you as a happily married man,' he demanded, all hard male arrogance.
'Lisa died last year,' Charlie said flatly. 'And before you insinuate Dave is my lover, let me tell you not all men have the morals of a sewer rat.'
Implying I have?' Jake drawled. He was an astute judge of character, and he knew his own sex well. The arm Dave had had around Charlotte's waist had not been avuncular, and given half a chance Dave would take it. But not any more. Jake had made that plain. As for Charlotte... his intense dark eyes swept over her beautiful face. She looked the picture of innocence, but then she always had looked innocent. It was the first thing he had noticed about her at the art gallery before he had seen her cynical smile and dismissive shake of her head when viewing the painting and dismissed it as play-acting. But then she had also felt innocent he recalled, as the first time they had made love flashed in his mind. Her startled gasp, her incredible hot, tight body was not a good image to remember when he was already rigid with desire, and, dropping his arm from her waist, he stepped back. He adjusted his suit jacket and stuck his hands into the pocket of his tailored trousers, his fingers curling into fists.
The jury was still out on Charlotte. The fury that had engulfed him when Marta had passed on Charlotte's message this morning and fuelled his immediate flight to England was still simmering.
If the cap fits,' Charlie sneered, lifting stormy blue eyes to his, and was even more incensed. Jake was so suave, so in control. He was immaculately clad in a tailored slate-grey business suit, and he should have looked incongruous in the casual setting, but he didn't. He looked magnificent, swaying back on his heels waiting... and watching.
The silence lengthened, and the tension. Biting her lips, she reined in her temper. 'What are you doing here, Jake?'
She was no fool. His passionate embrace on arriving had been nothing more than his high-handed way of manipulating her feelings in front of Dave. But no matter how hurt and suspicious she was, she still wanted Jake. She had ached and cried over him for five painful weeks, in a roller-coaster r
ide of emotions, ecstatic when he called and plagued with doubt when he didn't. Ashamed of her weakness, she tilted her chin. 'Apart from insulting my friend, that is.'
Jake studied her with fixed attention, his dark eyes gleaming below thick black lashes. He wondered if she had any idea how desirable she looked, her lovely face flushed with anger and her chin tilted at a defiant angle. 'I don't wish to argue with you over your friend.'
'I bet you don't,' Charlie mocked, the picture in the magazine still fresh in her mind. Jake was a two-timing snake. 'Enjoy yourself in New York, did you? I hear you met up with your old friend Melissa,' she snarled and watched as his black brows drew together in a frown.
'You saw the magazine article,' he said, with a smug smile dawning that made her want to knock it off his face.
'Dinner good, was it? Or was the smile on your face for the afters you were anticipating?'
'Very good, and it was for a very good cause,' Jake said silkily. Charlotte was jealous and, much as he was tempted to play her along, there were more important matters at stake here. 'Melissa is an old friend, and, yes, before you ask, we were lovers, but it was over months before I met you. She left me for another wealthy man who, as it happens, was her date at the dinner—not I.'
'She left you!' Charlie exclaimed. Furious with the man, she still found it incredible that any woman would willingly dump Jake d'Amato.
He shrugged. 'It was no big deal. A mutual parting of the ways.' Charlie was inclined to believe him, because she knew from personal experience Jake was a workaholic and she doubted any woman was a big deal to him, including herself. 'But enough about my past love life. It is the present I am here to talk about, and preferably not in public view.'
Only then was Charlie aware there were a few guests strolling around the garden. She went from outraged anger to mortification in one second flat.
'Unless of course you would like everyone in the hotel to know you are pregnant. After all, you had no hesitation in telling my housekeeper before me. That is why you called me, isn't it?' he demanded curtly.
Fiery colour burned her cheeks. Her Italian must have been better than she thought. Jake knew she was pregnant. As if that were not bad enough, so did almost everyone in the hotel, and she had a horrible suspicion that if Jake ever discovered he was the last to find out, he was not going to be delighted.
'I—I—uh, yes. And it seems like a good idea to talk in private,' she said, her huge eyes studiously avoiding his. 'If you'll follow me, my home is around the back. Over there, the west wing, actually.'
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHARLIE heaved a sigh of relief when they finally reached the safety of her sitting room without encountering anyone. 'Would you like a drink? Tea or coffee?' She headed for the kitchen, and turned. 'Or something stronger,' she suggested politely. Jake was standing in the middle of the room, big, dark and threatening.
'No, thank you. I've had a stomach full of your English tea.' By the grim glance he gave her, he'd had enough of her as well.
Charlie ran clammy hands down her shorts, hovering in the kitchen doorway, uncertain what to do next. Her shock and delight at his arrival had quickly changed to fury and finally embarrassment. She should never have made that phone call. "I—I take it you got my message,' she said, swallowing nervously, her heart beating like a drum in her chest.
'Yes.' His dark eyes didn't leave her face as he moved to stop a few inches in front of her. 'Interesting, Charlotte: your knowledge of Italian has improved enough to tell my housekeeper you are pregnant, and I am going to be a papa. Not something I appreciated,' he said through gritted teeth. 'Nor having to disturb my pilot on a Sunday and fly halfway across Europe to discover the truth.'
She had never seen him so angry. It was in every line of his big taut body, intimidating in its intensity. 'You could have just phoned,' Charlie murmured when he continued to stand and stare grimly at her, and she lowered her eyes, unable to meet the hard censure in his.
The call had been foolish, she knew, but then she had been hurting badly. She had told him she loved him, laid her heart on the line in the hope he cared, and yet he had not called her for a month—and to see a picture of him in a magazine with another woman... She had flipped. Her hunger for him was an ever-present ache; the longing to see his rare brilliant smile, to hear his voice, to touch him, haunted her dreams.
'No, I could not,' he said. 'A phone call wouldn't do for me. I want to be looking into your eyes when you tell me I am going to be a father.' His dark eyes narrowed to angry slits, and he caught her chin with a thumb and finger and forced her to look at him. 'Are you pregnant, Charlotte?'
'Yes, I am,' she said bluntly. She was thrilled and excited at the prospect, but also frightened, and she wanted nothing more than for Jake to take her in his arms and tell her it would be all right. But by the look on his face she doubted he would.
'And just when did you fall pregnant?' he demanded roughly.
'Seven weeks ago.' She still had not got over the shock that she had got pregnant the first or second time she had made love. 'How unlucky is that?' Charlie didn't realize she had spoken her thought out loud until his hand fell abruptly from her chin and he stepped back and looked at her as if she were contaminated. She saw the humourless smile that twisted his firm lips and flinched at the venom in it.
'Unlucky?' His dark eyes held tightly leashed rage. 'For me, maybe, but damned convenient for you. Amazingly, it is exactly how long we have known each other.'
Jake was madder than hell. It was so obvious: she had put him squarely in the frame as the father...but was he? No woman had enraged and inflamed him as comprehensively as Charlotte. He had tried to put her out of his mind,but his body would not let him, a galling admission to make, but not one he intended to act on. His dark eyes raked assessingly over her. The tiny white shorts hugged her hips like a second skin, and her stomach still appeared flat, but perhaps her breasts were a little fuller... No! He didn't want to go there. Yes, he did. But he had no intention of being conned by a blue-eyed little gold digger, however desirable, his hard eyes sweeping back up to her lovely face.
Isn’t it rather early to have a pregnancy confirmed?' he queried with biting cynicism. 'Unless the woman in question is eager to get pregnant.'
'Not if you are as sick as a chip every day for three weeks,' she flashed, looking up at him, and stopped. 'You don't believe me,' she said slowly. She could see it in his eyes, in the cynical curl of his lips. She shook her head, and, turning away from him, she crossed to the sofa and collapsed onto it, folding her arms around her waist, suddenly cold. It had never occurred to her Jake wouldn't believe her.
'I never said that,' he pointed out, following her.
'You didn't need to,' she flared back at him. She could see the anger in every tense line of his body, hear it in every word he spoke. The Jake she loved, the Jake she thought she knew, was not this furious stranger towering over her.
'Can you blame me? You would not be the first woman to try and trap a wealthy husband with a mythical pregnancy. I want proof.'
A wealthy ...proof... Charlie heaved in a shuddering breath. She was slow to anger, but this arrogant man standing before her had succeeded in doing just that. Jake had arrived at her home unannounced, insulted her and her friend, and then had the colossal nerve to suggest she was lying and was only after his money.
Fury made her leap up from the sofa and stand glaring athim. 'Call yourself a man?' she derided, her eyes flashing blue flame. 'You sleep with me for a fortnight and then string me along with a couple of calls, ignore me for a month, and then you come charging over here in your private jet, full of self-righteous rage. Terrified I might cost you money,'' she said with enough scorn to make him clench his fists at his sides to control his anger. 'Demanding proof I'm pregnant.' Shaking with rage, she shoved him in the chest with the flat of her hand, and his mouth tightened to a thin line, but he let her. 'What do you suggest?' she demanded hysterically. 'I slash my belly ope
n to show you? Is that it, is that what you really want—a convenient termination? Is that cheap enough for you?'
Jake's cool façade cracked wide open and he paled like a man in shock. 'No. Dio, no.' His strong hands reached out to grasp her shaking shoulders and he pulled her to him, his face only inches from her own. 'Don't say that, Charlotte, don't even think it.' His black eyes, wide with horror, were fixed on hers, his fingers biting into her flesh.
Shocked out of her near hysterics by the force of his reaction, she snapped, 'Don't worry, I have every intention of keeping my child. And let go of me, you're hurting me.'
Jake drew in a deep, audible breath. 'I didn't realize.' His hands gentled on her shoulders, but he did not let her go.
Which was just as well because Charlie suddenly felt weak. 'What a disaster,' she murmured. Her hormones were all over the place, and the emotional turmoil of the past few weeks was finally getting to her. And discovering the father of her child thought she was after his money didn't help. The only positive was Jake had made it very clear he didn't want her to terminate the pregnancy.
It does not have to be a disaster,' Jake said. 'I will marry you.'
Her head jerked up. 'Marry—? If that was a proposal it lacked something in the offering,' she said bluntly. 'I am having this baby, and, I can assure you, living as I do, I am in an ideal position to bring up my own child.' She was being perverse, she knew. Jake was offering her everything she had ever dreamed of, and half an hour ago she would have jumped at the chance, but now she was no longer so sure. She had never heard him so angry or so insulting.
Jake stiffened, his hands dropping from her shoulders, and suddenly he was back to his cool, arrogant best, all trace of emotion gone, more like the Jake she knew so well. 'Don't be ridiculous. There is nothing ideal about bringing up a child without a father. Believe me, I know. So we will get married as soon as it can be arranged.'
He was right, she knew. So why was she so reluctant? Because she wanted it all: she wanted Jake to love her, as she loved him. Was she being unreasonable?
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