Mistress, Mother...Wife?

by Maggie Cox

  She couldn’t help it, but Anna wasn’t entirely convinced. It all sounded too good to be true. Perhaps her nature wasn’t as trusting as it could be, but then bruising experience had taught her to be alert to the glossily wrapped Christmas present that contained nothing but an empty shoebox.

  The earnest dark-haired young man before her in the charcoal-grey suit that was showing signs of fraying at the edges of its cuffs abruptly stopped pacing.

  ‘Of course there’s a pay-off for him, Anna. He’s a businessman! But his interest in helping us sounds perfectly genuine. I know you’re only being protective of Mum and Dad but they’re experienced hoteliers, don’t forget. They won’t agree to anything that remotely smacks of a scam or a rip-off. Yes, this guy might become the main shareholder—but he won’t be running the business. we will. Plus, his policy is to take a longer-term view of situations, so he won’t be in a hurry to just look at what he can get out of the business and then head for the hills.’

  ‘You sound as though you believe this is the answer to all your family’s prayers, Jason.’

  It did indeed seem the ideal solution in terms of enabling them all to stay put, but Anna would rather hunt for another job and flat elsewhere if it meant that Grant and Anita wouldn’t be out of pocket and the couple would have the means to start a good life again somewhere else. What if it really was in their best interests for them to sell the Mirabelle to a big commercial hotel giant?

  ‘Nothing’s been decided yet, Anna.’ Compounding her guilt at being sceptical, Jason sounded subdued. ‘But Romano is coming for lunch, and after he’s eaten we’ll have a proper meeting to thrash things out. Hopefully we’ll be able to report back on what’s been decided later on that afternoon. Would you mind going to talk to Luigi, to make sure he’s got everything he needs to impress our visitor with his menu?’

  ‘Of course.’

  Carrying what remained of her half-drunk coffee to the door, Anna flashed him a smile to make up for her less than enthusiastic response earlier, but her stomach still churned at the prospect of the unknown changes that lay ahead for them all. She paused to glance back at the Cathcarts’ preoccupied son, guessing that he probably saw the chance of working with this Romano chap as something that would enhance his reputation and ability—assets that were sometimes overshadowed by his much more confident and experienced father.

  ‘I just want you to know that I’ll do everything I can to help you and your parents, Jason. I love this hotel too, and I know it’s been a very worrying time for all of you.’

  ‘Thanks, Anna…I’ve always known I can count on you.’

  The memories crashed in on Dante the instant he walked through the glass-panelled entrance into the cosily old-fashioned lobby, with its chintz armchairs and worn brown chesterfields.

  After that incredible night with Anna he’d left the hotel in the early hours of the morning to jump in a cab and catch a flight to New York. His mother’s death had plunged him into a tunnel of despair for a frighteningly long time. It had taken a good year or more for him to be able to function anywhere near normal again because, disturbingly, his work and everything he’d achieved had become utterly meaningless. Life had only started to improve when the warm memory of Anna’s tenderness and his mother’s unfailing belief that he was a much better man than the world suspected broke through the walls of his grief and his self-imposed isolation and helped him start to entertain the possibility of a very different, much more fulfilling future.

  That was when Dante had decided to change his driven, selfish approach to something far more wholesome.

  The Cathcarts were a delightful couple, with admirably solid values when it came to business and family. But Dante, although charmed by their unstinting hospitality and the superlative lunch, sensed that some of those solid values were a bit too entrenched in the past and needed to be brought up to date.

  At lunch, his cool gaze assessed as much as it could as they talked, including the worn velvet hangings at the stately Georgian dining room windows, the tarnished silver cutlery and the slightly old-fashioned uniforms of the waiting staff. Afterwards he was invited to the Cathcarts’ office to discuss the nuts and bolts of an investment.

  As the fragrant, elegant Anita Cathcart poured him some coffee—at Dante’s nod adding cream and sugar—he sat back in the comfortable leather chair, loosened his silk tie a little and relaxed. The hotel was in an absolutely prime location and could—as Eddie had foreseen—potentially be a goldmine. Because of lack of funds and the large debt they had accrued with the bank, it was clear the Cathcarts weren’t able to make the best of their incredible asset, and that was where Dante came in.

  ‘We’ll get started soon, Mr Romano. We’re just waiting for our assistant manager to join us. She’s more like family than an employee, and we’d like her to be in on what we decide. She’ll be along any minute now.’

  Jason, the Cathcarts’ slightly built son and manager, smiled diffidently at Dante as he sat down opposite him at the meeting table. He was clutching a pen and a spiral notebook and his hand shook a little. What was the story with him? Dante wondered. Was the manager’s role too big an ask for him, or was it just that he struggled to assert himself under his parents’ guardianship of the hotel?

  ‘Was she informed about the meeting?’

  ‘Yes…of course. It’s just that she—’

  ‘Then she should be here on time, like everyone else.’

  His chastising glance encompassed them all, but Dante nonetheless tempered it with a trace of a smile. He heard the door behind him open and turned expectantly. A woman with hair the same hue as a bright russet apple stepped inside, bringing with her the faint but stirring scent of oranges and patchouli.

  His thoughts careened to an abrupt halt…like a driver applying the emergency brake before hitting a wall. He stared in shock. Anna…dear God, she still worked here?

  ‘I’m so sorry I’m late,’ she breathed, porcelain skin flushing. ‘I was—’

  The startled leap in her sherry-brown eyes told Dante she recognised him. His heart—which had all but stalled—pumped a little harder as he realised he’d been genuinely afraid she might have forgotten him. What a blow that would have been to his pride, when out of all the women he’d seen over the years she was the one that haunted him…

  ‘Mr Romano,’ Grant Cathcart was saying, ‘I’d like to introduce you to our stalwart assistant manager…Anna Bailey.’

  Rising automatically to his feet, Dante extended his hand, praying hard that his voice wouldn’t desert him. Anna’s palm was fragile and slightly chilled as it slid into his. Their gazes locked as though magnetized, and though he sensed her tremble, inside he believed that he trembled more.

  ‘Miss Bailey…I’m very pleased to meet you,’ he heard himself announce.

  ‘The feeling is mutual, Mr—Mr Romano,’ she replied politely.

  Her warm velvet voice bathed his senses in liquid honey. Arresting memories of their unforgettable night together came pouring back in a disturbing heated rush. Realising that his hand still covered hers, Dante reluctantly withdrew it.

  ‘Why don’t you come and sit down, Anna love? ‘ Anita invited. ‘There’s plenty of coffee in the pot if you’d like some.’

  ‘I’m fine, thanks,’ Anna murmured distractedly.

  As Dante watched her, she moved like a sleepwalker to a seat at the opposite side of the table, next to Jason, and he didn’t miss the spark of warmth in the other man’s dark eyes as he silently acknowledged her. Was something going on there? A hot flash of jealousy hit Dante a glancing blow as he resumed his seat.

  ‘Well, if everybody’s ready, we’ll make a start, shall we? ‘ With a respectful glance in their visitor’s direction, Grant Cathcart organised his notes and prepared to address the meeting.

  Dante Romano. No wonder she’d never been able to find him! What had instigated the name-change? she wondered. Underneath, was he still as ruthless and cutthroat as it had said in the newspaper r
eports she’d read when she’d been searching for him? But what did it matter when it had already been decided by the Cathcarts that he was going to be their saviour?

  As well as investing a substantial amount of money in the Mirabelle, Dante Romano was taking the hotel, its owners and its staff firmly under his wing. Being satisfied that Anita and Grant were completely happy with the arrangement was one thing. Only time would tell if Anna would be equally happy. There was a very big—in fact a huge hurdle she had to cross before then.

  Shaking her head, she emitted a small groan as she added chopped up red and green peppers to the stir-fry she was busy cooking for herself and Tia.

  She’d half believed she was hallucinating when she’d walked into the office to find Dan, or Dante as he called himself now, sitting there. And she’d had such a jolt when his incredible winter-coloured eyes had bored into hers. In those electrifying few seconds the world could have ended, and she hadn’t been able to drag her hypnotised gaze away.

  Five years ago she’d never even asked him his full name. When he’d asked her to stay with him for the night but not to expect anything more she’d agreed—and she’d promised herself she wouldn’t speculate on where he would go or what he would do when he left her, even if it ultimately meant he was going from her arms to someone else’s.

  Consoling herself that she’d helped comfort him in his hour of need, and that no matter how emotionally painful it was it would have to be enough, Anna had never intended to try and track him down afterwards. But when she’d found herself pregnant with his child she’d reasoned that she owed it to him to let him know. However, discovering that the suite’s occupant Dan Masterson was a veritable ‘shark’ in the world of international business, who didn’t care who he brought down in his empire-building quest, had definitely given her pause. He might have been tender with Anna that night they’d spent together, and he might have been troubled, but could she knowingly risk inflicting such a driven ruthless man on her child?

  She’d decided no, she couldn’t. Besides, she’d definitely received the impression from her one-night lover that he wasn’t interested in a relationship, so why would he be interested in the fact that he’d left his one-time-only lover pregnant? she’d reasoned.

  Leading up to that night five years ago she’d been working so hard, what with all the different jobs she did at the hotel—sometimes even working double shifts back to back—and because she’d been extremely tired, she’d absent-mindedly forgotten to take one of her daily contraceptive pills. It had only dawned on Anna to check when early-morning nausea had become a worrying recurrence.

  Some months after Tia had been born she’d revised her decision not to get in touch with Dan and decided to try once more to locate him. It had been as though he had vanished. The only information about him she’d been able to glean was stuff from the past. There had been nothing to indicate what he was doing nearly eighteen months after they’d met.

  From the living room came the delighted chuckle of her small daughter as she knocked down the building blocks she’d had as a toddler that she’d been happily shaping into a wobbling tower for the past ten minutes or so. A wave of sadness and terror deluged her mother all at once. What would Dan—or Dante, as she should call him now—think when he found out that their passionate night together all those years ago had made him a father? How poignant that he hadn’t had the privilege of knowing his own delightful daughter. Anna had no doubt that it would have enhanced his life in a myriad different ways. But what could she have done when it had seemed as though he didn’t exist any more?

  With genuine regret she squeezed her eyes shut, then quickly opened them again. Her terror came from the fact that she knew he was a very rich and influential man indeed—rich enough to invest in a major share of the hotel that was the means of her employment and her place to live. How would it reflect on Anna if Dante’s was the controlling share? What if he decided she wasn’t up to her job—or, worse still, that he wanted to try and take Tia away from her? A man as wealthy as him must have access to all kinds of power…particularly legal power.

  Abruptly switching off the burner beneath the wooden-handled wok, Anna wrapped her arms protectively round her middle as she crossed the tiled kitchen floor to examine the collage of baby and toddler photographs of Tia that were framed on the wall there. Behind her, the suddenly ringing telephone made her jump.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Anna? It’s me—Dante. I’m still in the hotel. You rushed off rather quickly after the meeting and I think we need to talk. I believe you have a flat downstairs—can I come down and see you?’

  CHAPTER FOUR

  ANNA was struck dumb by Dante’s request. What should she do? If she agreed for him to come down to the flat, how to prepare him for her news when Tia was there, large as life, playing happily in the living room? There was no time to prepare for anything!

  ‘I’d love to talk to you—I really would—but—’

  ‘But?’

  She could imagine him sardonically curling his lip. He knew she was hedging. God, why couldn’t she be a better actress?

  ‘I’m making dinner at the moment. Why don’t we arrange to meet up tomorrow? You’re coming in to start working with Grant and Anita, aren’t you?’

  ‘I think I’d rather come and talk to you right now, Anna. I’ll be with you in about five minutes.’

  He put down the phone. Anna was left staring at the receiver in her hand as if it was a grenade she’d just pulled the pin from.

  ‘Tia, we’re going to have a visitor in a minute. We’ll have dinner after he’s gone, okay?’

  She sped round the compact living room, sweeping up strewn toys into her arms like a whirlwind, then throwing them onto the end of the faded gold couch as if she was aiming to knock down coconuts at a carnival stall. When Dante arrived she would hide her emotions as best she could, she promised herself, yanking her oversized emerald sweater further down over her hips. Yes, she would hide behind her assistant manager’s mask—be unflustered and professional, as if she could totally handle whatever he cared to throw at her. No matter that she hadn’t been able to so much as look at another man since he’d left, because her heart had been irrevocably stolen by him.

  She didn’t have a hope of concealing her feelings behind a managerial mask under the circumstances. How could she?

  ‘Who’s coming to see us, Mummy?’ Feeling a tug on her trouser-leg, Anna’s gaze fell distractedly into her daughter’s. The child’s big blue-grey eyes—eyes, she realised with another frisson of shock, that were identical to her father’s—were avid with curiosity. ‘Is it Auntie Anita?’

  ‘No, darling. It’s not Auntie Anita.’ Chewing anxiously down on her lip, Anna forced herself to smile. ‘It’s a man called Dante Romano and—and he’s an old friend of mine.’

  ‘If he’s your friend, why haven’t I seen him before?’ Tia’s husky little voice was plaintive.

  ‘Because—’

  The knock on the hallway door just outside completely silenced whatever it was that Anna had been about to say. Rolling up her sweater sleeves, she reached for Tia’s hand and led her as calmly as she was able over to the couch, where she sat her down. Crouching in front of her, she tenderly stroked back some golden corkscrew curls from her forehead.

  ‘Don’t be nervous, will you? He’s—he’s a very nice man, and I’m sure he’ll be very pleased to meet you.’

  As she hurried out into the hallway a surge of irrepressibly strong emotion made tears flood into her eyes. Not now! she moaned silently, wiping them away with the back of her hand. Why don’t you wait to hear what he has to say before you start crying?

  ‘Hi.’ His handsome smile was devastatingly confident, and Anna could scarcely contain the anger that suddenly rose up inside her, let alone analyse it.

  ‘Hello,’ she murmured in reply, praying he wouldn’t see the evidence of her tears. ‘Come in.’

  Had he called at a bad time? Dante speculated. Her b
eautiful brown eyes appeared slightly moist. He guessed she would rather have put off his visit until tomorrow, but the fact of the matter was he couldn’t wait until then to see her and talk to her again. Ever since Anna had walked into that office he’d ached to get her alone, find out what she’d been doing all these years… maybe even ask if she’d ever thought about him since that extraordinary night they’d spent together.

  Folding her arms, she stood squarely in front of him, leaving him with the distinct notion he wasn’t going to be invited in any farther. Fighting down the sense of rejection that bubbled up inside him, he swept his glance hungrily over her pale oval face. The dazzling fire-lit brown eyes were wary, he noticed, and the softly shaped mouth that was barely glazed with some raspberry-coloured lipgloss was serious and unsmiling.

  ‘You said you wanted to talk…what about? ‘

  It wasn’t a very promising start. Apprehension flooded into the pit of Dante’s stomach.

  ‘What a greeting. You make it sound like you’re expecting an interrogation.’ He shrugged, momentarily thrown off balance by her cool reception.

  ‘It’s just that I’m busy.’

  ‘Cooking, you said?’ He quirked a slightly mocking eyebrow and sniffed the air.

  ‘Look… how do you expect me to greet you after all this time? The truth is you’re the last person I ever expected to see again! For you to show up now, because you’re the new investor in the Mirabelle, is obviously a shock…a shock that I was totally unprepared for.’ Pursing her lips, she was clearly distressed. ‘I don’t know how to put this any other way, Mr Romano, and please don’t think me presumptuous, but I think that whatever else happens round here our relationship should remain strictly professional for as long as we have to work together.’

  ‘Why? Afraid you might be tempted to instigate a repeat performance of the last time we got together?’

  Stung by her aloof air, and the distance she seemed so eager to put between them, Dante said the first thing that entered his head. Trouble was, he’d be lying if he said the thought of them being intimate hadn’t crossed his mind. It was practically all he’d been dwelling on since setting eyes on her.