Giancarlo just glowered at her and said nothing, because how could he tell her that dear Edward had already been on his mobile asking where the hell his Natalia was? He was supposed to be patching up his marriage—the love-struck adulterer! Not worrying about his mistress because she wasn’t exactly where he expected her to be!
So he’d lied to Edward and enjoyed doing it. He told him he’d sent her off on a fact-finding mission to some bloody place he couldn’t even recall now. But it had served a dual purpose of reassuring Edward that not only was his Natalia safe, but she was also safely out of Giancarlo’s influence!
The two-timing swine had actually said as much. And it stuck in his own throat that he couldn’t just say— ‘Go to hell, Edward. She is with me and staying with me! So keep your lecherous emotions in check from now on!’
But he couldn’t say it, because he knew Edward. Let Edward know that he was aware of his little bit on the side and the stupid man would have a fit of panic and feel the need to confess all to Alegra just in case Giancarlo decided to do it before him! Edward knew how close brother and sister were and that any Sicilian male worth his salt would not remain silent in the face of such dishonour to one of his family!
But Giancarlo also knew that Alegra could not cope with the truth about her beloved Edward. She adored him—had adored him from the day he’d walked into her life at the tender age of eighteen, and no other man had ever come close to reaching her since! Unless you included Marco, he added with an ache that set his anger blazing. For it was bad enough that she’d had to lose her son. To place in front of her the truth that she could be in danger of losing her husband would finish her. No doubt about it.
And to really top it all off nicely, he raged on within his own throbbing silence, he now knew, without a single doubt in his head, that if Edward had kept his lecherous hands to himself then he, Giancarlo, could have met Natalia Deyton and been free to explore the possibilities of their attraction with openness and honesty instead of having deceit and lies poisoning everything!
And the bottom line to that? he asked himself as his brain threatened to stall completely in response to his heated fury. He would not have rushed her into bed. And he would not have done it without even the most basic of sexual precautions!
So now he had a woman standing here who belonged to him in more ways than any woman had ever belonged to him, while she—
Hell! He stood up violently. She believed half of her still belonged to Edward! She even lived in Edward’s house, damn it! Wore clothes bought with Edward’s money!
Well, not for much longer, he vowed, his eyes hardening with a determination he could see was alarming her. But he had her. He had Natalia Deyton just where he wanted her. All he needed to do now was convince her of that!
‘You could be carrying my child,’ he reminded her thinly.
‘There is just as much of a chance that I’m not!’ she instantly replied.
‘One chance in a thousand is good enough for me,’ he returned. ‘I am Sicilian,’ he reiterated, knowing he was using his nationality like a damned hammer to beat her into submission. ‘To a Sicilian, family is everything. While the small chance exists that you could be carrying my child, it makes you the mother of my Sicilian child! So stop arguing,’ he said with the flick of a hand gauged to draw her anger. ‘Accept your fate—for the near future anyway.’
‘Why, you arrogant bully!’ She gasped in wide-eyed disbelief that she was actually hearing any of this.
She was right and he was.
‘I don’t need to stand here and take this!’
Try moving, his eyes challenged. ‘Drink your juice,’ he prodded, saw the anger flare, saw the eyes change to warning bright diamonds, and was bracing himself for action even before the glass went sailing past his shoulder…
She couldn’t believe she had just done that! Natalia stood staring in horrified amazement as the glass of juice went flying past his shoulder and smashed against the opposite set of wall units.
Trying to blink away the sense of shock, she ended up focusing on Giancarlo—then immediately wished she hadn’t when she saw the expression his face was now wearing.
Retaliation was coming, she saw with a telling little quiver that had nothing to do with alarm. ‘You asked for that,’ she murmured unsteadily, feeding water onto burning oil when all he did was start striding towards her. ‘Have you any idea how arrogant you sound? How self—’ he reached her; in height and breadth and dangerous attitude he really intimidated enough to make her swallow nervously before she could carry on ‘—s-self-opinionated and just downright pompous?’
‘Pompous,’ he repeated, softly, smoothly, so succinctly she felt her fingernails digging into the underside of the unit top.
She nodded, swallowed again when his hand came up to rest on her shoulder, and stubbornly pretended that it wasn’t there. ‘Nobody th-these days goes around s-spouting such old-fashioned r-rubbish!’
‘Rubbish,’ he repeated that word also. And the hand moved from her shoulder to her nape. Natalia straightened her spine ever so warily. ‘You think it is both rubbish and pompous to show a respect for family values?’
Values like his, she did, when she knew for an absolute fact that if he ever discovered her little secret he would soon forget those same family values. For there was no way that he would want to make her a part of his Sicilian family with or without his child inside her!
A point that didn’t do her any favours at all because just thinking about it brought the sting of tears to the back of her eyes. ‘You might pay my wages, Giancarlo—that does not give you the right to run my life!’
‘No?’ he said, and the hand at her nape tightened perceptibly, sending warning signals tingling down her spine. ‘What about sex, then? Will the great sex be a big enough incentive to make you live with me?’
Live? That’s a joke! she scoffed silently. He just wanted a convenient live-in sexual convenience! ‘What, more studding for the prize bull?’ she taunted. ‘I thought that scenario offended your ego.’
‘Well, let’s just see, shall we?’ he drawled lazily. And using his hand as a brace to lift her mouth up to his, his own swooped down and took…
Took without mercy, took by storm—took her shooting off to a place she didn’t want to go to then never wanted to come back from.
Took her right there in the ultra-modern kitchen, with her clothes gaping and her skirt ruched up around her waist and the rest removed by very quick fingers.
And he took her with his mouth, nothing else. He took her lips and her tongue and made him their master. He took her breasts and teased and sucked until she cried out in exquisite agony, and he took her down a dark, sensuous road she had never ever dared to visit before when he bent to her thighs and took the ultimate intimacy of all.
Which was when he took her will to fight him, right there in the kitchen with her fingers laced into his hair and her mind lost in a swirling sea of sensation.
‘Giancarlo,’ she begged. ‘I’ll do anything you say, but, no more—please. I’ll stay—I’ll stay, but please make love to me properly…’
And that was the point where she took something from him. It was in his eyes when he rose, then picked her up to carry her to the bedroom. She saw pain and remorse for the tactic he’d used to gain her surrender. Then she saw him begin a terrible battle with himself that she feared he was actually going to win.
But he didn’t. And, strangely, their lovemaking then was the sweetest, gentlest, most deeply felt experience they had shared to date.
Later, he dropped her off at her house with the promise to be back in an hour to collect her. ‘You won’t come in and wait?’ she asked.
He looked at the house, then shook his dark head. ‘No, I won’t come in,’ he answered. ‘I—have things to do,’ he excused himself. But the way he said it hurt her somehow, though she didn’t know why it did.
Once inside, the little house felt different. As if the soul had been taken out of it. Eve
n her telephone didn’t seem to be working, she discovered, hearing only a constant high-pitched beep when she picked it up. Neither did the answering machine show any new messages since the last time she’d been here, which led her to suspect that the phone had been out of order for quite a while.
Frowning, she made a mental note to call the phone company to get them to see to it, as soon as she got back to the apartment. Then went off to pack for a long stay with her new lover.
Strange, she thought, even after what they’d shared, those words didn’t seem real…
Giancarlo pulled up outside the small Chelsea townhouse, right on the appointed hour, and was relieved to see the door already standing open and her cases stacked neatly in the opening.
With a bit of luck, he wouldn’t need to go inside. He had no wish to see inside Edward’s love-nest. In fact he harboured a deep abhorrence for going near anything Edward and Natalia had shared.
As he got out of the car she appeared in the doorway. He found a smile from somewhere but it was hard. He was still involved in a struggle with himself where one part of him stubbornly justified his tactics this morning and another derided them as a man’s reaction to another man pacing around his territory.
Walking across the path, he leant over to kiss her before bending to lift the cases. ‘Is this it?’ he asked, and noticed that she already had her coat on.
She nodded, and to his further relief stepped out behind the cases, then turned to shut the door securely before she joined him at the car.
They didn’t speak as they drove away. In fact they didn’t speak all the way back to his place, and the mood was heavy. He didn’t like it. It worried him yet he couldn’t seem to come up with anything to lighten it.
In the end he made a snap decision, and felt better for it because this was more like the man he always liked to believe he was, thinking on his feet and acting on instinct. So, instead of taking the car down to the basement, he stopped outside the front entrance.
‘Stay there,’ he told Natalia, then disappeared into the boot to get her luggage, took it into the foyer and told the concierge to deliver it upstairs. By the time he climbed back in the car he was beginning to feel more like himself—though he couldn’t say the same for Natalia.
‘What’s going on?’ she demanded warily.
‘We’re going out somewhere,’ he said, gunning the engine.
‘Where?’ she asked.
He didn’t answer simply because he had absolutely no idea other than they both needed a complete change of scenery…
They ended up in Brighton. Natalia couldn’t believe it. Yet, he couldn’t have come up with a better idea to help blow away the stresses and strains of the last twenty-four hours.
It was cold and the wind was sharp, and Giancarlo had to buy himself a sheepskin coat from the first shop they saw selling menswear. But they walked the beach for hours, and ate lunch in a sea-front fast-food café then walked the beach again on their way back to the car.
By the time they were driving back towards London, she’d relaxed, he’d relaxed—enough to actually look at each other without guarding their eyes.
Only once did he mention what had happened that morning, during dinner at a small restaurant they found as they hit the outskirts of London. He looked up from his plate and found her watching him. Not knowing what she was thinking tightened the muscle around his heart.
‘I apologise if I—offended you this morning in the kitchen,’ he said sombrely.
‘Edward said you could be ruthless when you wanted to be.’ She smiled a little wryly. ‘I should have remembered that.’
‘Edward would say that,’ he returned very grimly—and changed the subject. Apology over, she noted. Time to move on and leave the rest behind.
Well, she had no argument with that—not any more anyway. It was a decision she had come to when she’d watched him drive off down the street after dropping her at home, and she’d been suddenly drenched in the terrifying idea that she was not going to see him again.
Scares like those focused the mind remarkably, she’d discovered. She had been offered the chance of a few weeks of nothing but Giancarlo. After that—nothing, no matter what else might or might not transpire.
But she was determined now to enjoy those few weeks, and not allow anything whatsoever to spoil them.
So she smiled at him across the table, then very gently asked if they needed to buy a bottle of champagne on their way home…
CHAPTER NINE
THE stock market was having a bad day. Share prices were jumping all over the place, figures flashing blue and red on the screen with no clear reason as to why they were doing it.
Sitting there, staring at the screen in front of him, Giancarlo saw nothing. His eyes were glazed. He just wasn’t interested in what the world was panicking about.
For he had his very own panic button sitting not ten feet away. One quiet swing of his chair and he would be able to see her, happily getting on with her work with no idea what was going on inside his head.
Their time was up. Any day now—any moment, come to that—Natalia was going to turn to him and tell him that she was or was not carrying his baby.
Either result was going to cause problems, he knew that. But at least the former took care of itself to a certain extent. They would just have to get married. He could deal with that. Okay, so he would have to square it with Edward. Tell him the truth, and then seriously warn him off so much as remembering that Giancarlo Cardinale’s new bride had once been his mistress.
But—Dio, he cursed silently, that was not a conversation he was looking forward to! He might end up killing Edward just to remove those memories from his head!
And there was Alegra to consider. What self-respecting Sicilian introduced his sister to her husband’s ex-mistress? If Alegra ever discovered the truth about Natalia, she would never forgive any of them. It was in the genes. Forgiveness was not a word a Sicilian recognised, and, although Alegra might have been living in England for the last twenty-five years of her life, she was still a Sicilian.
He would lose his sister; he didn’t doubt that he would.
But even the prospect of that painful loss did not worry him as much as the prospect of a negative result to his and Natalia’s wild night of unprotected sex. For—where did they go from that point on? The positive result removed the need to make choices, but the negative provided a whole new set of problems he had no answers to.
Because he didn’t want to let Natalia go. Not today or next week or any week come to that—with or without their baby growing inside her. His problem here was trying to convince her of that, making her believe that he wanted to be with her—with or without a pregnancy.
But he had no idea if she was thinking the same thing. She was a closed book as far as her feelings for him were concerned. Oh, she loved the sex, he acknowledged cynically. He would have to be suffering from a real crisis of self-confidence if he couldn’t tell that what she experienced in his bed was pretty damned special.
But was it special enough for her to want to stay with him no matter what? he pondered as he gave in to the urge to swing his chair around so he could look at her sitting there with her hair tied back in that prudish knot and wearing that skimpy red top again that did not know the meaning of the word prudish.
Did she care—really care for him?
Sensing his attention on her, she looked up and smiled. It was a smile that always made him ache. Surely no woman smiled at a man quite that way without being in love with him at least a small amount?
Who knew? He then mocked that. Remember her background. Remember Edward and what brought you here to London in the first place. A woman with a secret lover knows how to lie with smiles, just as she knows how to lie in other ways.
Was the smile a lie?
You should detest her for what she is, a hard voice inside told him as he swung back to his busy screen again.
But he didn’t detest her; he was falling in love with h
er. He had known that bleak fact for many days now and no amount of sensible conversation with himself was going to change that fact.
But he needed to know what it was he was dealing with and the waiting was slowly killing him…
What was he thinking while he sat there pretending to concentrate on market fluctuations when she knew he wasn’t seeing a single figure flickering in front of his eyes? He was too still, too—tense, and that brief smile he’d offered her just now had been forced, Natalia was sure of it.
Was he worrying about the same thing she was worrying about? Was he sitting there wondering what the heck he was going to do if she was pregnant?
She wasn’t a fool; she knew that Giancarlo was not the marrying kind. She knew he adored her body and what she could make him feel, but that didn’t mean he wanted more from her than a few weeks of this sexual bliss they had managed to create for themselves. Take away the fear of an accidental baby and offer him back the life he’d had before he’d decided to play cupid for Edward and Alegra, and she was sure she would not be seeing his heels for dust as he disappeared into the sunset back to reality.
For this wasn’t reality. Not for him, not for her. They’d both been living in a tightly closed cocoon in which sex was all and everything, and feelings were not so much as discussed.
Was he worried that, when it came to it, she was going to cling to him like a vine and refuse to let go? Was he worried that he was going to feel duty-bound to offer more than he wanted to give, if they discovered that she was pregnant?
Oh, please, God, she prayed fervently. Don’t let me be pregnant, because I can’t marry him. I can’t stay with him beyond these next few weeks whether I am pregnant or not!
The stress in not knowing either way was beginning to get to both of them, she was acutely aware of that. So aware in fact that she didn’t dare tell him that they should have known yesterday. Didn’t dare think about it herself…
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