His sweet Anna—his mouth curled with cynical derision.
Yeah. Right.
He’d been well and truly suckered! Behaving like a callow youth instead of a mature and worldly-wise hard-nosed thirty-four-year-old!
She’d turned out to be as bad as all the others who’d targeted his personal fortune—worse, even. Pretending—oh, she’d been good at pretending—that she had no idea who he was, pretending she believed he was just a regular guy, earning a crust whichever way he could by fishing, acting as a part-time tour guide, taking casual work wherever he found it. That was the impression she’d seemingly arrived at, and although he hadn’t lied he hadn’t disabused her, too delighted to have found himself falling for the beautiful, gentle Anna who, so it had seemed, had been in love with him, the man, not with his financial clout.
Expelling a savage hiss of breath between strong white teeth, he slowed down to a crawl at a fork in the narrow lane and peered out through the murk at the signpost.
Left towards his cousin’s new home. Right towards the village where Anna the sneaky gold-digger lived. Rylands. The name of her home was burned into his brain.
He was powerless to prevent his mind flicking back to the last time he’d made this journey.
‘Make your way there—I’ll tell my folks to expect you and make a bed up. You will stay overnight, won’t you?’ She’d sounded breathless with excitement when he’d phoned from London to say he was on his way to see her. ‘It’s a real pain—but I won’t be back until around ten. I’ll be working this evening. And, no …’ a breathy sigh, a sigh that had seemed to his bamboozled self to hold every last ounce of the world’s regrets ‘… I can’t cancel—wish I could! Oh, Francesco, I can’t wait to see you!’
Replacing the receiver on one of the bank of phones that sat on the gleaming expanse of his desk in the glass and polished teak office of his London headquarters, he’d grinned wryly. He’d already cancelled three scheduled meetings to be with her. But that wouldn’t occur to her. Why should it? She hadn’t a clue that he headed the vast Mastroianni business empire that ran like well-oiled clockwork from offices in Rome, Brussels, New York and Sydney.
Buzzing through to his senior PA, he’d imparted the information that he was leaving—with a proposal bursting to trip off his tongue and a ring fit for a queen in the breast pocket of his pale grey business suit—reflecting that, though the delay of a few hours in seeing her was more than he could bear, it would at least give him the opportunity to get to know her parents.
Her father had been waiting to greet him. A large, florid figure in shabby tweeds, he’d bounded down the short flight of stone steps like a boisterous overgrown puppy, hardly giving him time to take in the proportions of the seventeenth-century building constructed of mellow golden Cotswold stone. Or the general look of dilapidation.
‘So you are my little girl’s fella!’ His hands grasped in a knuckle-crushing grip, he’d watched the older man’s eyes widen in recognition and then narrow as he as good as licked his lips. ‘Welcome to the ancestral home! Anna’s told us all about you!’
Led through a huge stone-flagged hall, empty apart from a solitary sorry-looking chair, he’d found himself ushered into a smallish panelled room cluttered with shabby sofas and a scuffed pine table and treated to the most blatant begging spiel he’d ever had to endure.
‘Thought I’d get this in before my good lady joins us—you know how it is; they don’t understand business matters, bless their pretty little heads! Thing is, old son, I’ve got this fantastic idea. Can’t lose! Great investment opportunity for a man like you. You’d be a fool to turn it down, and from what I’ve read about you, you’re not that!’
Dismissing the crackpot scheme—something to do with wild animals—he’d felt his heart twist with the shock of betrayal, his face stiffen with anger. So Anna had told her father all about her ‘fella’? You bet she had! Got him primed and ready to swoop!
No wonder she’d sounded over the moon when he’d phoned to say he was on his way. Congratulating herself that she’d successfully reeled him in!
Had the working excuse been just that? A lie, giving her father the time and space to wheedle a million pounds from him? Would his sweet Anna have swanned in when the deal was done and dusted, widening those big green eyes and fluttering those thick lashes, exclaiming with a pout of her luscious lips that she didn’t understand boring business stuff, confident that fantastic sex would hold him?
His voice like a razor, he’d cut the older man off mid-flow. ‘I’ve never been begged for money more clumsily.’ Then he’d asked for a sheet of paper. Scrawled a message for his ‘Sweet Anna’, and left. Despising himself. Hating her.
Hating her for turning him into the sort of fool who could be led from the heart instead of the head.
He who prided himself on his cool, calculating brain, his inborn ability to recognise a gold-digger at a hundred yards, had come within a whisker of being taken for the ride of his life.
He was deeply ashamed of himself.
Gunning the engine, he took the left fork and told himself to forget the whole distasteful episode. And hoped with savage impatience that Silvana—an incorrigible matchmaker—hadn’t included a wannabe billionaire’s wife/mistress in her weekend invitation. He had no interest in the opposite sex. Hadn’t had since—oh, forget it!
Her hands pressing against the aching small of her back, Anna Maybury regarded her feet, shod in comfy old black flatties. She was sure her ankles were swelling. One of the penalties of being seven months pregnant.
Her hands slid round to rest lightly on her bump, which was only partially disguised by her voluminous pale green working overall. Despite the discomfort, she loved her coming baby more than she’d ever thought possible.
A termination, as suggested by a couple of her friends, had been completely out of the question, and her parents’ nagging on about her right to contact the father and demand financial support had been met with stubborn refusal.
This was her baby, and she loved him or her with every atom of her generous heart. She would manage without any input from its father. The very idea made her seethe. He was an utter cad! He might be more handsome than was good for any man, and, as it had turned out, filthy rotten rich, but he was still a callous, womanising louse!
Annoyed with herself for giving him space in her head, breaking the staunch vow she’d made never to think of him again, she tucked a straying strand of her mane of long blonde hair back beneath the unflattering snood and gave her attention to the makings of dinner for four. The pre-prepared items were waiting in the cool box, and the leg of lamb spiked with garlic and rosemary, for the main course, was sizzling nicely in the oven of the huge old range.
An Italian menu, as stipulated. Anna didn’t want to think of anything Italian. Maybe that was why she’d dropped her mental guard and allowed herself to give her baby’s father head-room—something she’d successfully avoided ever since she’d discovered she was pregnant.
Apparently her client, Silvana Rosewall, was Italian, married to some well-heeled English banker. So she’d have to get herself comfy with that and not give in to self-pity just because the lady of the house had stipulated an Italian menu.
She was a professional chef, and her home catering business was doing OK. More than OK. Though she could have done with her friend Cissie’s help tonight, to take over the actual serving.
But Cissie had a promising date, and when she’d first offered to join Maybury Catering in a dogsbody and PR capacity she’d stressed that she would only be filling in time until Mr Right and Rich came over her horizon.
She had to hand it to Cissie, though. Her family had all the right social connections, and a word here and there had produced some good bookings—like tonight’s—and they were infinitely preferable to the others that came in—mostly childrens’ parties or buffet lunches for leisured ladies—handed to her like patronising favours because people knew her family and were sorry for them.
>
But she was not, not going to think about the very real prospect that Rylands, the family home for over three hundred years, might be taken from them. It was a scary thought, because she knew that losing her family’s home would break her mother’s already frail heart. And agonising over such scary thoughts would be bad for her unborn baby. So she wouldn’t let herself.
‘My guests have just arrived.’
A smile lighting her heart-shaped face, Anna turned as Mrs Rosewall entered the huge kitchen. Relief that things would now start moving, occupy a mind that annoyingly seemed inclined to brood, flooded through her. The kitchen was way at the back of the rambling manor, so she hadn’t been able to hear car tyres crunching on the gravel of the main driveway.
‘What do we have?’ Silvana Rosewall picked her way over the uneven slate flooring slabs that had been in situ since the house was built. A woman in her early thirties, she was beautiful in a blue silk gown, spiky high heels, with a cluster of jewels somehow fixed in her upswept dark hair.
‘Tiny hot potato cakes with mozzarella to start, followed by swordfish kebabs, then thin slices of Tuscan-style lamb, with roasted Mediterranean vegetables, and to finish we have zabaglione with caramel oranges,’ Anna reeled off confidently. ‘And coffee, of course. And I managed to get hold of some of those special Venetian biscuits.’
‘Excellente.’ Silvana nodded her approval. ‘We eat in half an hour.’ A slight frown marred the perfection of her smooth-as-cream brow as her eyes swept Anna’s dumpily pregnant figure. ‘You are alone? You can manage—in your condition? I would have thought some other person to wait on the table …’
Someone slim and attractive, not likely to put her guests off their food, Anna translated wryly as her client finally closed the kitchen door behind her. Well, she’d do her best to melt into the background. She had the sort of curves that would have looked great on a six-foot Amazon, but in her own eyes they made her five-two frame decidedly dumpy. Normally she was saved from complete rotundity only by her once tiny waist—although recently that had ballooned with her large and growing larger vigorous baby!
Dismissing her apple-like shape, Anna opened the first of the two large cool boxes which held everything that could have possibly been prepared at home and got on with what she did best. Cooking.
Exactly half an hour later the biggest tray she could find was loaded with four plates of sizzling hot potato cakes topped with melting, slightly browned mozzarella and garnished with fresh basil, and she was on her way, her heart light because all was going as it should. The lamb was resting now, before carving, and the swordfish, tomato and lemon wedge kebabs were ready to put under the grill the moment she was back in the kitchen after unobtrusively serving the antipasto. Hopefully the Rosewalls and their two guests would be so knocked out by the delicious food she was serving they wouldn’t notice her, and her appearance wouldn’t be an embarrassment to her fastidious client.
But her blithe confidence took a shattering nosedive when she entered the panelled room and stared straight into the eyes of … him!
The loaded tray almost followed the abrupt direction of her confidence. Clinging to it for dear life, she felt her face flame. His eyes impaled her. The last time she’d looked into them they’d glimmered between the unfairly long and thick sweep of his dark lashes, smoky with desire. Now they were hard, glitteringly dark and dangerously narrowed.
Gunfighter’s eyes, she thought crazily, and swallowed down a cry of outrage. She dropped her transfixed gaze, willed the fiery colour to leave her hot face, and handed the plates around, her hands shaking.
Scuttling out of the room, her dignity long-lost, she made it back to the kitchen. Her heart pounding, Anna leant back against the solid wood of the closed door and tried to pull herself together. Seeing him here—smooth, urbanely handsome, in the sort of beautifully tailored suit that must have cost an arm and a leg, looking at her as if she were something quite unspeakable—had been a cruel shock.
The taunting words he’d scrawled on that note he’d left for her were etched in acid behind her closed eyes.
Nice try. But I’ve changed my mind. You’ve a lot to offer, but nothing I can’t get in spades elsewhere.
Sex. He’d meant sex.
Her stomach lurched and she thrust a fisted hand against her mouth. Dad must have read the note. Nothing else could have explained his hangdog expression when he’d handed it to her, mumbling that her new fella had only stayed for ten minutes, then left. So her father knew she’d been given the runaround, and that had made her feel even worse, if that were possible.
At first she’d thought that he’d believed she was loaded—hadn’t she and Cissie been staying at that ruinously expensive hotel, patronised by the seriously wealthy? He’d thought he was onto a good thing—until he’d faced the reality of Rylands, denuded of anything worth selling, neglect evident everywhere you looked.
That had been before. A few weeks later Cissie had thrust one of the glossy society magazines her mother took under her nose, a scarlet nail jabbing at a photograph.
‘That’s the guy you hooked up with on Ischia. I thought he looked sort of familiar, but I couldn’t place him—it must have been the scruff he was going around in. He must have been incognito—not a minder or a fancy yacht in sight! He’s always in the gossip columns of the glossies. He’s worth trillions—you lucky cow! Do you keep in touch?’
‘No.’
‘Pity. Hook him and you’d be set for life! Mind you, to be honest, these holiday flings aren’t meant to last, and I guess he’d be a handful—terrible reputation with women!’
Shrugging, she’d turned away, barely glancing at the photographed Francesco Mastroianni, his white dinner jacket contrasting with his fatally attractive dark Latin looks, complete with arm candy. Her mind had felt fried. He hadn’t been after her non-existent family money, as she’d first thought.
Just sex.
But in the short time between arriving in London and phoning her he’d met someone who could give him better sex—someone more sophisticated. Creep! Oh, how she hated men who used women as playthings, to be picked up and then chucked away when a more exciting prospect came into view!
So what right had he to look at her now as if she were beneath contempt?
Heaving herself away from the door, she told herself that if anyone deserved contempt it was him, and rushed to turn on the grill.
She was a professional. She would do the job she’d been hired to do, ignore him and, when the evening was over, she’d put him right out of her head again. She would not, not ‘accidentally’ knock his wine glass over into his lap, or drop a loaded plate on his hateful head. She couldn’t afford that sort of satisfaction. To get a reputation for gross clumsiness would mean she’d never work in the area again.
But if he dared give her that contemptuous look one more time she’d be sorely tempted!
She was pregnant!
His?
Francesco had to force himself to eat. Force himself to ignore Anna Maybury as she served them. Force out the occasional monosyllable that was his sole contribution to the otherwise animated conversation, oblivious to the come-ons that were steaming his way from the sultry redhead his cousin had produced for his delectation.
Not interested. Not remotely. Grimly sifting facts.
Anna had been a virgin. He hadn’t used protection that first time, too blown away to even think of it.
Lost. He’d been lost in a wildly churning maelstrom of unfettered emotion—an experience so new and vivid he’d felt as if the whole of his life up until that moment had been a theatre of shadows.
The child she was carrying could be his. Unless—
Aiming for casual, he leaned back, hooked an arm over the back of his chair and, ignoring the redhead’s pouting smile, tossed into the conversation, ‘Your caterer? How pregnant is she, do you know?’
Three pairs of taken-aback eyes stared at him. It was Silvana who wanted to know, ‘Why do you ask?’
/> Because I might be about to be a father and not know it. Aloud, he responded with deceptive idleness. ‘I wondered if we, collectively, might be required to act as midwives.’
An irritating tinkle of laughter from the redhead—he couldn’t remember what she was called—and an apprehensive glance from Guy towards his wife, who answered. ‘Seven months, according to Cissie Lansdale. Cissie’s a sort of partner on Anna’s catering business—a bit feckless, I think the word is. She usually helps out with the waiting—but not tonight, apparently. Guy, darling—our glasses are empty.’
As her husband did the honours with a second bottle of Valpolicella, Silvana confided, ‘Personally, I think a woman in her position should be resting, not—’ she waved a languid hand over the table ‘—doing this sort of thing. Of course she doesn’t have a husband to lay the law down, and her mother’s a feeble thing—not in good health, I hear. Besides, I suppose they need the money. The father’s hopeless. He married into that family. They once had real standing in the area. But he squandered everything or lost it.’
‘Bad investments followed worse ones, I hear,’ Guy put in as he sat down again.
‘You seem to know a lot about them,’ Francesco commented, reflecting uneasily that seven months was spot-on. The child would be his unless immediately on her return home Anna had jumped into bed with someone else. But that didn’t seem likely, given that at that time she’d been banking on reeling him in. She’d been expecting him to follow her to England, so she would not have wanted some other guy hanging around to stir up trouble, he decided forensically.
Making a huge effort to stop a black scowl from forming, and stopping himself from marching straight into the kitchen and demanding to know the truth, he listened to his cousin’s answer.
‘It was necessary when we first came here to introduce ourselves to the better families so they could advise us on local reliable and honest tradespeople. A permanent housekeeper is to arrive next week, but there are others.’ She took a sip of her coffee and arched one finely raised brow at him over the central flower arrangement. ‘Plumbers, electricians, a man to do the garden, caterers—that sort of person. The pregnant girl came highly recommended.
Mistress to the Mediterranean Male (Mills & Boon By Request) Page 15