by Jennie Lucas
How could he have let himself seduce her? He needed her. He could always count on Emma. She always put his needs first. She never even asked for time off. Not until three months ago, when she’d abruptly left for a long weekend.
The Kensington house had felt strangely empty without her. He’d avoided coming home. On the third night, he’d returned from an unsatisfactory date at two in the morning, expecting to find a silent, dark house. Instead, he’d heard a noise from the kitchen and felt a flash of pleasure when he realized Emma must have returned early.
He’d found her sitting alone in the dark kitchen, holding a tequila bottle. Her black dress was wrinkled. Her eyes had dark smudges beneath them, as if she’d been crying, and her long black hair was unkempt, cascading thickly down her shoulders.
“Emma?” he’d said, hardly believing his eyes. “Are you all right?”
“I just came back from Texas,” she whispered, not looking at him. “From a funeral.”
He’d never seen her drink before, he realized—not so much as a glass of champagne. “I’m sorry,” he said uncomfortably, edging closer. He didn’t know anything about her family. “Was it someone you loved?”
She shook her head. “My stepmother.” Her fingers clutched compulsively around the bottle. He saw it was still unopened. “For years, I sent money to pay her bills. But it never changed her opinion. Marion always said I was selfish, a ruiner of lives. That I’d never amount to anything.” She drew in a shaking breath. “And she was right.”
“What are you talking about?” he said, taking an instant dislike to this Marion person, dead though she might be.
Emma flung an unsteady arm around to indicate the immaculate, modern kitchen. “Just look.”
Cesare looked around, then turned back. “It’s perfect,” he said quietly. “Because you’re the best at what you do.”
“Cleaning up other people’s lives,” she’d said bitterly. “Being the perfect servant. Invisible like a ghost.”
He’d never heard her voice like that, angry and full of self-recrimination. “Emma...”
“I thought she’d forgive me in the end.” Her voice was muffled as she sagged in the kitchen stool, covering her face with a trembling hand. “But she left me no message in her will. Not her blessing. Not her forgiveness. Nothing.”
“Forgiveness—for what?”
She looked at him for a long moment, then she turned her face toward the shadows without answering. She took a deep breath. “Now I’m truly alone.”
Something had twisted in Cesare’s chest. An answering pain in his own scarred heart, long buried but never completely healed. Going to her, he’d taken the bottle from her hand. He’d set it on the kitchen counter. Reaching out, he’d cupped her cheek.
“You’re not alone.” His eyes had fallen to her trembling pink lips as he breathed, “Emma...”
And then...
He’d only meant to offer solace, but somehow, he still wasn’t sure how, things had spiraled out of control. He remembered the taste of her lips when he’d first kissed her. The look in her deep, warm green eyes as he covered her naked body with his own. The shock and reverence that had gone through him when he realized he was her very first lover.
She was totally different from any woman he’d taken to his bed before. It wasn’t just the alluring warmth of her makeup-free face, or her total lack of artifice, or the long, dark hair pulled back in an old-fashioned chignon. It wasn’t just her body’s soft plump curves, so different from the starvation regime demanded by starlets and models these days.
It was the fact that he actually respected her.
He actually—liked her.
Everything about Emma, and the way she served him without criticism or demand, was comfort. Magic. Home.
But if he’d known she was a virgin, he never would have—
Yes, you would, he snarled at himself, remembering the tremble of her soft, tender lips beneath his, the salt of tears on her skin that night. The way she’d felt to him that night...the way she’d made him feel...
Cesare shook his head savagely. Whatever the pleasure, the cost was too high. Waking up the next morning, he’d realized the scope of his mistake. Because there was only one way his love affairs ended. With an awkward kiss-off, a bouquet of roses and an expensive gold watch, handed over by his one indispensable person—Emma herself.
He clawed back his short dark hair, still damp from his shower. His jaw was tight as he remembered the stricken expression on her pale, lovely face when she’d seen Olga in lingerie, standing in front of a bed which had been mussed, not with lovemaking, but from his hopeless attempt at sleep after a night on the phone with the Asia office. Of course Emma wouldn’t know that, but why should he be obligated to explain?
What is wrong with you, Cesare?
Nothing was wrong with him, he thought grimly. It was the rest of the world that was screwed up, with stupid promises and rose-colored illusions. With people who pretended words like love and forever were more than sentiments on a Valentine’s Day card.
He’d told himself Emma had no feelings for him, that their night together had been just an escape from grief. It meant nothing. He’d told himself that again and again. Told himself that if Emma tried to call it love, he’d break in a new housekeeper—even if that meant replacing her with someone who’d have the audacity to expect tea breaks and four weeks off every August.
But he’d never expected that Emma herself would just walk away.
Cesare looked out into the deepening autumn night. She’d done him a favor, really. She couldn’t be his friend and his lover and know all his household secrets. It was too much. It left him too—vulnerable.
You are truly too good to me, Mr. Falconeri.
Cesare rubbed the back of his neck. He didn’t deserve that. He had been a good employer to Emma. Hadn’t he done everything a boss could do—paying her well, respecting her opinion, giving her independence to run his home? For the past few years, as they’d grown closer, he’d resisted an inconvenient desire for her. He wasn’t used to ignoring temptation, but he’d done it, at least until three months ago. And as for what had happened that night...virgin or no—the way she’d licked her full pink lips and looked up at him with those heartbreaking eyes, how could he resist that? Christo santo, he was only a man.
But for that momentary weakness, she was now punishing him. Abandoning him without so much as a by-your-leave.
Fine. He growled under his breath. Let her quit. He didn’t give a damn. His hands tightened. He didn’t.
Except...
He did.
Cursing himself, he started for the door.
* * *
Emma wearily climbed out of the Tube station at Kensington High Street. Making her way through crowds of early evening commuters, she wiped rain from her cheek. It had to be rain. She couldn’t be crying over Cesare.
So he’d never given her a chance to tell him he was going to be a father. So she’d found him in a hotel room with his ex-girlfriend, the lingerie model. So Emma was now all alone, with a baby to raise and nothing to help her but the memory of broken dreams.
She was going to be fine.
She exhaled, shifting her aching shoulders. She’d phone Alain Bouchard and accept that job in Paris. He’d give her decent hours, along with a good paycheck. She needed to be more sensible, now that she’d soon be a single mother.
Passing a shop selling Cornish pasties, she breathed in the smell of beef and vegetables in a flaky crust, vividly reminding her of her father’s barbecues in Texas when she was a child. Going to the counter, she impulsively bought one. Taking the beef pasty out of the bag, she ate it as commuters rushed past her. Tears fell down her cheeks as she closed her eyes, savoring every bite. She could almost hear her father’s voice.
Let me tell you what I know, kiddo. You’re going to make it. You’re stronger than you think. You’re going to be fine.
It did make her feel a little better. Tossing the bag into
the trash, she looked out at Kensington High Street. The lights of the shops glimmered as car lights streaked by in the rain.
She barely remembered her mother, who’d died when she was four, but her dad had always been there. Teaching her to fish, telling her stories, helping with homework. When Emma had gotten ill as a teenager, he’d been by her side every day, even as he pulled extra overnight shifts at the factory to fight the drowning tide of medical bills.
Her throat ached. That was the kind of father her unborn baby deserved. Not a man like Cesare, who’d loved once, and lost, in a terrible tragedy, and was now unable to love anyone but himself.
Maybe it was for the best he would never know he was a father. She could just imagine how Cesare’s careless lack of commitment would affect a child.
Why didn’t Daddy come for my birthday, Mommy? Why doesn’t he ever come see me? Doesn’t he love me?
Emma’s eyes narrowed. No more romantic illusions. No more false hopes. She’d never give Cesare the chance to break their child’s heart, as he’d already broken hers.
Pulling her raincoat tighter around her body, she gripped her handbag against her shoulder and went out into the drizzly night, walking down the street and past the town hall. Her footsteps echoed loudly past the expensive townhouses on Hornton Street, in counterpoint to the splatters of rain, until she finally reached Cesare’s grand three-story mansion.
It was a palace of white brick, which had cost, including renovations, twenty million pounds. For years, she’d buried herself in work here, waiting for her real life to begin. Trying to decide if she even deserved a real life.
You selfish girl. Her stepmother’s hoarse voice came back to her. It should have been you who died.
The memory still caused a spike of pain. She pushed the thought away. Marion was the one who’d ruined her father’s life. She’d made a bad choice. It wasn’t Emma’s fault.
Though it sometimes felt that way. She swallowed. If only her father were still alive. He always had known the right thing to do....
She walked past the gate. Her lips pursed as she remembered meeting Alain Bouchard for the first time six months ago, here in the front garden. He’d shown up drunk and wanting to start a fight with Cesare, his former brother-in-law, blaming him for his sister’s death. Fortunately Cesare was away, on a business trip to Berlin; Emma knew he’d never gotten over Angélique’s tragic accidental death ten years before.
Emma could have called the police. That was what the rest of the staff had wanted her to do. But looking at Alain’s grief-stricken face, she’d invited him into the house for tea instead, and let him talk himself out.
The next day, Alain Bouchard had sent her flowers and a handsome note of apology for his drunken ravings. That was the proper way of showing someone appreciation, Emma thought. Not by throwing expensive jewelry at them, bought in bulk, via a paid employee.
She stalked up the shadowy steps to the mansion, punched in the security code and entered. The foyer was dark, the house empty, gloomy as a tomb. None of the other staff lived in. When Cesare was gone, which was often, she was alone. She’d spent too long in this lonely tomb.
Well, no more. Throwing down her handbag, Emma ripped off her coat and ran up the stairs, taking them two at a time. She was going to pack and leave for France immediately. Before she’d even reached her bedroom at the end of the hall, she was pulling off her knit dress, the pretty dress that hit her curves just right, that she’d bought that very day in a foolish attempt to impress Cesare. Yanking it over her head, she tossed it to the hall floor. She’d wear comfortable clothes on the train, black trousers and a plain shirt. She’d be in Paris within three hours—
A small lamp turned on by her bed. Startled, she turned.
Cesare was sitting in her antique chair with blue cushions by the marble fireplace.
She gasped, instinctively covering her lace bra and panties. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“I live here.”
She straightened, and her expression hardened. “Oh, so you just remembered that, did you?”
His eyes were black in the dim light. “You left the hotel before we could discuss something important.”
“How did you—” she breathed, then cut herself off. He couldn’t possibly know about the baby. And she didn’t intend to let him know now.
Cesare rose to his feet, uncoiling his tall, powerful body from the chair. He looked down at her.
“I’ve decided not to accept your resignation,” he said in a low voice. “I want you here. With me.”
For a moment, they stared at each other in the shadows of her bedroom. She heard a low roll of thunder outside, the deepening patter of rain. Water dripped noisily from her hair onto the glossy hardwood floor.
Her arms dropped. She was no longer trying to cover her body. Why should she? He’d already seen everything. And she meant nothing to him. Never had. Never would.
“I don’t belong here,” she said. “I won’t stay.”
“Just because we slept together?” His eyes narrowed dangerously. “Do you really have to be such a cliché?”
“You’re the cliché, not me.”
“One stupid night—”
“No,” she cut him off. She looked at him, and said deliberately, “I’m in love with you, Cesare.”
Oh, that did it. She saw him flinch. He’d taken the words like a hit. Which was fine, because she’d meant it that way.
His black eyes glinted with fury as he grabbed her shoulders. “You don’t love me. It’s just because I was your first experience in bed. You haven’t learned the difference between sex and love.”
“But you have?”
Cesare didn’t answer. He didn’t have to. The whole world knew his tragic story: how he’d married young, and had been desperately in love with his wife, a beautiful French heiress, before she’d died just three years later. His heart had been buried with her.
She’d known this. And she’d still let herself hope...
Pulling away from him angrily, Emma went to her closet and reached up to the top shelf for the beat-up old suitcase that had once belonged to her father. Tossing it open on the floor, she turned back to her wardrobe to reach for her clothes.
He put his hand over hers, stilling her.
“Emma. Please.”
Just that one word. The word he’d never said to her before. Please. She swallowed, then looked at him.
“Let me go. It’s better for you this way. Better for all of us.”
“I can’t,” he said in a low voice. “There are so few people in my life I trust. So few who actually know me. But you do. That’s why I know—I know—you can’t really love me.”
His words were strangely bleak. Her heart twisted. He was right about one thing. She, of all people, did know him. She knew he was not the emotionless man the world believed him to be.
Emma ached to reach up and stroke the roughness of his cheek, to whisper words of comfort. Her hand trembled. Shadows from the closed window blinds left lines across his dark, handsome face. His eyes burned through her.
But even more: her secret burned inside her, with every beat of her heart. She was pregnant with his child. Her silence in this moment was the biggest lie any woman could tell any man.
“Why ever did you think you couldn’t get pregnant, Mrs. Hayes?” her physician had asked, looking shocked. “Childhood cancer, especially ovarian cancer, can occasionally cause difficulties, yes. But in your case it worked out just fine. I see it’s a surprise, but this baby is wanted, yes?”
“Of course this baby is wanted,” she’d answered. Oh, yes. Emma had believed for so long that she’d never be a mother. That it wasn’t even a possibility. Fighting the same deadly, silent disease years before, her mother had never been able to have another child. Caroline Hayes had ultimately died when Emma was only four, at the age of twenty-nine. Barely older than Emma was now.
“Cara.” Cesare’s handsome face was almost pleading as he gave an aw
kward laugh. “How many times did we joke about it? That I wasn’t worthy of any good woman’s love?”
She blinked hard. “Many times.”
“So you must see. What you think you feel—it’s not love. Just sex.”
Hot tears burned at the backs of her eyes and she feared at any moment tears would spill over her lashes. “For you.”
“For both of us. You just aren’t experienced enough to realize it yet,” he said gently. “But someday soon, you will...”
Emma stiffened. Was he already picturing her moving on, finding sex or love with another man? Cesare could imagine this, without it ripping out his heart?
Not Emma. It had nearly killed her to find him with Olga. And even if he hadn’t slept with her—that time—she knew there had been other women. Many, many others. And there would always be.
She ripped her hand away. She didn’t have to live like this. Not anymore. She’d never have to spend another lonely night staring at her ceiling, listening to the noise down the hall while he had yet another vigorous one-night stand with yet another woman he’d soon forget. She was done.
It was like a burst of sunlight and fresh air after years of imprisonment.
“I don’t want to love you anymore,” she whispered.
He tried to smile. “See—”
“Do you realize that I’ve never taken a single vacation in seven years? No personal days, no time off, except for my stepmother’s funeral?”
“I just thought you were devoted to your work, like I am.”
“I wasn’t devoted to my work. I was devoted to you.” She shook her head. “I’ve lived in London for years and still only seen Trafalgar Square from the bus. I’ve never been inside the museums—or even had a picture of myself taken in front of Big Ben.”
He stared at her incredulously. “I’ll call my driver, take you down to Trafalgar Square and take your picture myself, if that’s what it takes. I’ll lower your schedule to thirty hours a week and give you two months off every year.” He tried to give his old charming smile. “Forget our night together, and I’ll forgive your infatuation. So long as it ends now.”
She shook her head. “I’m done working for you.”