There were half a dozen women waiting for his return to Rome. One phone call, he’d have whichever of them he wanted ready to welcome him into her bed.
But he would be less a man if he didn’t end this in a way that made it clear who was the victor, not just by walking out on the deal James Black had engineered but by forcing the old man’s accomplice-in-crime to admit that what she’d felt in his arms had been real.
It was the penalty she’d pay for her duplicity.
Nobody lied to Nicolo Barbieri and got away with it, especially not a woman who had haunted his days and nights for three entire months.
The cab pulled up in front of a tired-looking, five-story tenement. James Black’s granddaughter, Saturday night’s party girl, lived here?
Maybe he had the address wrong.
There was only one way to find out.
Nicolo handed the cabbie a bill and told him to wait. Then he climbed the grimy steps to the front door. An unlocked front door.
Not a good idea in a neighborhood like this, but how Aimee lived was not his problem.
The door opened on a small vestibule, thick with the faint but unmistakable odor of beer and other, less palatable things. The only signs of life were the mailboxes set into a stained gray wall.
Nicolo scanned the nameplates. A. Black lived in apartment 5C.
The door that opened into the house itself had no lock, either. None that was usable, anyway. Ahead, a dimly lit staircase with time-worn treads rose into the gloom.
Nicolo started up.
By the time he reached the fifth floor and apartment 5C, he was almost hoping he’d come to the wrong place. This was the kind of building that epitomized the things people tried to avoid when they lived in Manhattan.
So what? he told himself again. How Black’s granddaughter lived was her affair.
He hesitated. Had coming here actually been a good idea? What would he gain by forcing her to admit she’d enjoyed what they’d done together? Was his ego that fragile, that it needed affirmation from a woman like this?
Before he could change his mind, Nicolo pressed the bell button.
Nobody answered.
He rang again. And then again. Okay. He’d come here, she wasn’t home. That is, she wasn’t home if he even had the correct address, which he doubted…
The door swung open. Not far, just a couple of inches, but enough for him to see the woman who’d opened it.
Aimee.
She stared at him. Her eyes widened. “No,” she whispered, “no…”
What would come next was in those wide eyes. Besides, they had done this dance before.
She started to slam the door but Nicolo was too quick. She cried out and fell back as he put his shoulder to the door and forced it open. A second later, he was inside a tiny foyer.
Aimee was pressed against the wall, looking up at him with fear in her eyes.
He felt a tightening in his gut.
She hadn’t been afraid of him that night…But this wasn’t that night. It was good that she was afraid. Hell, it was what he wanted. When he was done with her…
“No,” she said again, her voice high and thin.
Her eyes rolled up. She collapsed as if she were a marionette and someone had cut her strings.
Nicolo caught her before she crumpled to the floor. It was an automatic move but he knew damned well the faint was simply another outstanding performance….
Merda. His heart skipped a beat. It was not an act. She was limp in his arms.
He looked around frantically, saw a small sofa and carried her to it. “Ms. Black. Aimee. Can you hear me?”
Stupido! Of course she couldn’t hear him. She was unconscious. What did you do for an unconscious woman?
Cold compresses. And spirits of—of what? Ammonia? Who in hell had spirits of ammonia lying around in this day and age?
A doorway opened onto a kitchen. Nicolo hurried inside, grabbed a towel from the sink, stuffed it with ice cubes from the fridge’s freezer tray and ran back into the living room.
Aimee lay as he’d left her, small and unmoving, her pulse beat visible in her slender throat.
“Aimee,” he said softly.
She didn’t respond. Nicolo knelt beside her. Slipped his arm around her shoulders and lifted her to him.
“Aimee,” he said again, and gently placed the ice pack against her forehead.
After a moment, she groaned.
“That’s it, cara. Come on. Look at me. Open your eyes and look at me.”
Her lashes fluttered but her lids stayed down. Nicolo drew her closer. Held her against him, eased her silky curls from the back of her neck and ran the ice pack lightly over the nape.
She moaned softly, her breath warm against his throat.
He closed his eyes.
He had forgotten what it was like to hold her. The delicacy of her bones. The floral scent of her hair. The unblemished softness of her skin.
His arms tightened around her. “Aimee,” he whispered.
Suddenly he held a wildcat in his arms. She pulled back, curled her hands into fists and pounded them against his shoulders.
“Get away from me!”
“Aimee! Stop it!”
“What are you doing here?” Her voice shook. “Get out. Do you hear me? Get out!”
Nicolo grabbed her wrists in one hand. “Damn it, you fainted! Would you rather I’d left you lying on the floor?”
“I’d rather never see your face again!”
His mouth thinned. He let go of her and rose to his feet.
“My sentiments, exactly, Ms. Black. Where is your telephone?”
“What do you want with the telephone?”
“I’m going to phone for an ambulance. Then it will be my pleasure to walk out that door and not look back.”
“No!” Aimee sat up quickly. Too quickly; the room seemed to give a sickening lurch and the all-too-familiar nausea sent a rush of bile up her throat. “I don’t—I don’t need an—”
“Dio, look at you! You’re white as a ghost.”
“I am fine,” she said carefully, as she rose to her feet. The room tilted again. She took a deep breath, then slowly let it out. “Thank you for your help, Prince Barbieri. Now, get the hell out of my apartment.”
“Not until I know you’re all right.”
“Why would you give a damn?”
“Why? Well, let’s see. I rang the bell. You opened the door, saw me and did an excellent imitation of a Victorian swoon.” His smile was lupine and all teeth. “I’m sure you’ll forgive me if I tell you I can envision a scenario in which you end up accusing me of somehow causing that swoon.”
He meant it as an insult, she knew, but Aimee could only think how close to the truth he’d come.
“I just thanked you for your help, didn’t I?”
“You’re a superb liar,” Nicolo said coldly. “Or did you think I’d forget that?”
“We’ve been all through this.”
“Yes. We have. And you lied.” His eyes narrowed as they met hers. “You told your grandfather I seduced you when we both know that what happened in that club, and in my hotel room, was by mutual consent.”
Aimee stared up at him. His face might have been the stone face of a Roman emperor, his eyes unseeing and unfeeling. It was impossible to imagine she’d slept with this man.
He was, indeed, a stranger.
“Is that why you came here? To hear me admit that I—that I let you seduce me?”
“That you let me seduce you?” Nicolo folded his arms and gave a hollow laugh. “Such clever phrasing.”
Aimee’s legs were like rubber. She’d never fainted before but she thought she might damned well do it again if she had to keep up a conversation with this arrogant ass who was in a snit because he believed she’d come on to him deliberately.
She could only imagine how he’d react if he knew she carried a baby.
His baby.
A choked laugh caught in her throat. Prince Nico
lo Barbieri’s child. He wouldn’t believe it. Well, who could blame him? She could hardly believe it, either.
She couldn’t be pregnant. She took the pill. She’d been taking it for a couple of years now, not to prevent getting pregnant. Why would she, considering that the last time she’d been intimate with a man before she’d slept with Nicolo Barbieri was her senior year at college?
She took it to regulate her period, but what had happened to its primary function as a contraceptive?
Accidents happen. She could almost hear the tut-tutting voice of her boarding school’s sex-ed teacher. Remember, ladies, accidents happen.
Her legs buckled.
“Dio!” Nicolo grabbed her shoulders as she collapsed on the sofa. “That’s it. You need a doctor.”
“I need you to go away.” Aimee struggled up against the pillows as he took his cell phone from his pocket. “What are you doing?”
“Calling for an ambulance.”
“No! I don’t want an ambulance. Damn you, will you just—”
“Then tell me your physician’s number.”
Her physician’s number. The man who’d made her pregnant wanted to call the doctor who’d just told her about that pregnancy. Wild laughter rose in her throat.
“You find this amusing?”
“No. Not amusing. Just—just…”
Aimee shook her head. The only thing she wanted was to bury her face in her hands and weep. That meant getting Nicolo Barbieri out of her apartment and out of her life.
Time to ditch her stupid pride.
“You came here to hear me admit that—that what happened between us was as much my idea as yours.” She paused, touched the tip of her tongue to her dry lips. “All right. I admit it. I’m equally responsible for what happened.” She shuddered and drew the lapels of her robe together. “I behaved irresponsibly. But not like—like what you called me. There was no plan. No orchestration. There was just—there was just you, and me, and some kind of insanity….”
Her voice faded away but she had said enough. Nicolo had what he’d come for: her admission that she’d wanted him as much as he’d wanted her.
The rest didn’t matter. He knew that now.
He no longer gave a damn whose idea the meeting had been, hers or the old man. What mattered was that once he’d kissed her, once he’d touched her, she had belonged to him.
“Please. Go away now. I—I’m tired. I want to lie down.”
His brow furrowed. She was more than tired. She looked…What? Ill? Frightened?
Terrified.
Of him? That was what he’d wanted, wasn’t it? That she be afraid of him? And yet—and yet, suddenly, he wanted something more. Something just out of reach….
“Aimee.” Nicolo squatted beside her and took her hands in his. Her fingers were ice-cold. “Cara. You need a doctor.”
“No.” She shook her head; the lustrous honey curls shifted like strands of heavy silk around her pale face. “I don’t. Really. I’m fine.”
Plainly, something was wrong. She needed help. He wanted to grab her and shake some sense into her.
Or take her in his arms and kiss her. Tell her she had nothing to fear, not from him. Not from anything, as long as he was here to protect her….
Dio, was he losing his mind?
Nicolo shot to his feet. “Tea,” he said briskly.
She looked up at him as if he’d lost his sanity. Perhaps he had but she wouldn’t let him call a doctor and he’d be damned if he’d leave her when she looked like a ghost.
“Tea cures everything, or so my great-grandmother used to say.”
Aimee didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. He was human after all. He had to be, if he’d had a great-grandmother.
She stood up. He reached out a steadying hand but she ignored it.
“Thank you for the suggestion,” she said politely. “I’ll make myself a cup of tea as soon as you—What?”
“I will make the tea.”
He would make the tea. Aimee bit back another wave of what she knew was hysterical laughter.
This arrogant prince, this stranger who’d fathered the collection of cells in her womb, would make the tea.
That’s all they were, at this point, weren’t they? Just cells?
“You will drink some tea, and then I will leave.” He smiled. “Agreed?”
His mood had changed. He’d gone from threatening to charming, and she knew the reason. It was because he’d gotten his way. He’d wrung a humiliating admission from her.
Oh, but his smile was devastating.
Maybe the realization showed in her face, because he moved closer and looked at her through eyes gone as dark as the sea.
“Aimee.” His hands framed her face. “I’m sorry if I frightened you.”
“You don’t have to explain.”
He shook his head, lay a finger lightly over her mouth.
“I was angry. At you. At your grandfather.” He took a breath. “At myself, for wanting you so badly that night.”
“Please—”
“I never wanted a woman as I wanted you.” His voice roughened. “I think I might have died if you had turned me away.”
What did a woman say to such an admission? That she’d have died, too, if he hadn’t made love to her? That he’d made her feel things she’d never imagined? That she’d never forget that night in his arms?
All true—and now she carried his baby. For one moment, she’d forgotten that.
Aimee took a quick step back.
“The kettle’s on the stove. The tea’s in the cupboard over the sink. I’ll—I’ll just—I’ll just go and wash my face….”
“Damn it, we have to talk about that night! You can’t keep pretending it didn’t happen.”
Aimee shook her head, turned and fled. Just as she had that night, Nicolo thought, and thought, too, of what had happened when he caught her.
It would be the same now. All he had to was go after her….
“Damn it!”
He swung away, marched into the kitchen and grabbed the kettle. She had fainted. She was ill. What kind of animal was he to think of sex now?
Besides, he wasn’t interested in getting involved with Aimee Black. As beautiful as she was, as much as he might want to make love to her, he’d never fully trust her.
No matter what she claimed, he would always see James Black’s hand in all that had—
The telephone rang.
Nicolo glanced toward the bathroom. The door was still closed; he could hear the sound of water running.
The phone rang again. Should he take the call? No. Surely she had voice mail….
Click.
Hi. You’ve reached 555-6145. Please leave a message after the tone.
A short metallic ring. Then a voice.
Hi, Ms. Black, this is Sarah from Dr. Glassman’s office.
Nicolo put down the kettle. He knew he shouldn’t listen to a private message but what was he supposed to do? Put his hands over his ears? Besides, this was from a physician.
Now, perhaps, he’d know why Aimee had fainted.
…vitamins. And iron. I meant to tell you that when we spoke earlier. Also, the doctor thought you might want a recommendation for an OB-GYN…
An OB-GYN? What in hell was that?
…absolutely fine, but it’s always a good idea to start with an obstetrician early in your pregnancy and, of course, you’re already in your third month….
The floor tilted under Nicolo’s feet. Pregnant? Three months pregnant? What did it mean? What in hell did it mean that a woman he’d had sex with three months ago was—
Aimee flew past him and slapped the machine to silence. Her face had gone from white to red.
“Get out,” she said. Her voice trembled as she pointed her finger at the door. “Damn it, Barbieri, do you hear me? Get out! Get out! Get—”
And with cold, relentless clarity, Nicolo knew. He knew exactly what it meant.
He had put a child in Aimee Black
’s belly.
CHAPTER SEVEN
AIMEE TRIED to tell herself this was all a bad dream.
Any second, she’d wake up, safe and in bed.
No phone messages from a receptionist who didn’t understand the meaning of privacy. No Nicolo Barbieri staring at her like a man who’d just seen his life flash before his eyes.
Most of all, God, most of all, no baby growing inside her belly.
But it wasn’t a dream.
Everything that was happening was hideously real, from the red light blinking with impersonal determination on her answering machine to the man standing in her tiny kitchen, dwarfing it with his size.
With his fury.
As if he had anything to be furious about.
It was she who was pregnant, she who would agonize over the life-changing decisions ahead, she who would pay the price for one night’s madness.
Male and female. Yin and yang. Poets made the balance sound romantic but it wasn’t. Men led. Women followed. That was what the world expected, and what too many women accepted.
She’d always known that. She’d watched her father treat her mother like an amusing, if sometimes trying, possession.
Her grandfather had done his best to deal with her the same way but she hadn’t permitted it. She’d never permitted it….
Until the night she fell into the arms of this stranger who stood watching her through accusing eyes.
At least she had herself under better control now. She took a steadying breath—there was no point in letting him see how upset she was—and looked straight back at him.
“Goodbye, Prince Barbieri.”
It was like speaking to a statue. “Explain yourself,” he growled.
Explain herself? The cold demand chased away whatever remained of her nerves.
She didn’t need to explain herself to anyone.
“It’s a small apartment,” she said evenly. “Do you really need me to explain how to get to the front door?”
Her attempt at sarcasm backfired. The look on his face grew even colder.
“That call.”
“That private call, you mean.”
That, too, got her nowhere. “You are pregnant,” he said flatly.
Aimee said nothing. Nicolo took a step toward her.
“Answer me!”
“You didn’t ask a question.”
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