by Trish Morey; Day Leclaire; Natalie Anderson; Brenda Jackson; Ann Voss Peterson
Sleek and no-nonsense, feminine without being flowery. Exactly, in fact, like she was and exactly what he needed in a PA.
Come to think of it, Simone had been right about this place, he revised, peeling off his jacket and hooking it over his shoulder. He could be anonymous here, no longer Dominic Pirelli, billionaire investor and market strategist, but just one more suit escaping his office for an hour.
Except that this suit was waiting to meet the woman who was carrying his child.
Anticipation coiled in his gut. He glanced down at the platinum Tag Heuer at his wrist, saw that she was already late.
‘Do you think she’ll turn up?’ Simone looked over her shoulder, putting voice to his greatest fear, her asymmetrical black bob swinging around her head. ‘What if she changes her mind? She didn’t leave a contact number.’
‘She’ll turn up,’ he said, willing the woman to show. After the way he’d spoken to her yesterday, he’d be the last to be surprised she was having second thoughts, but it didn’t matter if she had changed her mind. He had her name. She had his baby. And there was no way she was escaping him now. ‘She’ll turn up.’
Angie’s eyes felt heavy and scratchy as she hurried along the pedestrian bridge linking the hurly-burly of Sydney CBD streets to the tourist precinct of Darling Harbour, and she didn’t need to see her reflection to know how red they appeared to the outside world. She could tell that from the inside.
Screams had driven her from sleep and dreams filled with snarling dogs snapping and tugging at her clothes and body. One had taken Shayne’s face while it circled, barking out his taunts, telling her she would never be a real woman. Another had soothed her with words of comfort while trying to snatch her baby at the same time. And yet another had taken his place, larger and more powerful than all the rest, growling with teeth bared, moving closer, ready to savage.
And she’d woken in fear to her own screams, panting and desperate, the sheets knotted around her, her body damp with perspiration and her lonely bed more empty than ever. But safe, she’d realised, blessedly safe from the nightmare.
After that it had been impossible to sleep, the images the night had spun leaving her shaken and afraid, the night sounds of Sherwill—the barking dogs, the squeal of tyres as the hoons did burn-outs around the streets, the neighbours yelling—all keeping her company while a hundred scenarios for how today’s meeting would unfold spun their way through her mind. No wonder she hadn’t slept.
And now the light summer breeze whipped at her hair, carrying with it a combination of diesel fumes from the highway below and greasy doughnuts from a nearby stall and Angie’s stomach roiled anew. She protested at the unfairness. There was nothing left in her stomach, and yet still she wanted to heave.
Please God, she thought, swallowing back on the urge. Not now. Not here. Not when she was rushing to get to this meeting. She’d lost breakfast—one piece of dry toast and a cup of tea—ten minutes after she’d pointlessly forced it down, and that had been hours ago. An hour on a jostling, crowded train hadn’t helped, nor had the man who had lurched against her from behind as she’d left the train and almost sent her sprawling to the platform. He’d disappeared into the crowds without a word of apology, while she’d had to sit down for ten minutes to see out the cold sweat and wait for her heartbeat and temperature to get back under control.
Ten minutes she hadn’t had.
So much for being relaxed and composed before she met the father of the child growing inside her.
Damn.
She blinked against the lunch-time sun, pushing her sunglasses higher on her nose as she descended the last few steps to the crowded boardwalk, suddenly wishing she’d worn something lighter. She’d wanted to cover herself up but it was much too hot for jeans and her old cardigan and she felt tatty and dated. Families strolled by as she hesitated on the last step, speaking in languages she didn’t recognise, the children laughing with painted faces and hanging on to fat balloons that bounced against the air as they ran. Couples walked hand in hand, sharing secrets, oblivious to everything and everyone. Lunch-time joggers darted between them all, all lean limbed and firm skinned under Lycra and nylon and wired for sound.
Angie pulled her thin discount department store cardigan tighter around her shoulders as she made her way through the crowds, half wishing she’d never agreed to a meeting here. Darling Harbour had sounded both cosmopolitan and exotic when she’d heard Mr Pirelli’s secretary suggest it as the meeting location and she’d made out she knew exactly where she was supposed to be, too embarrassed to admit she hadn’t been here for years.
Besides, she’d been so relieved that he’d agreed to meet her at all, she wasn’t about to argue about the location.
It was a good sign, wasn’t it, that he wanted to meet her? And if he met with her, surely that meant he would want the child? She held that hope close to her heart, nurtured it. It was all she wanted, for this child to be with its rightful parents, to be cherished by them.
And if they decided they didn’t want it?
She sucked in a mouthful of the salt-tinged air. Well, there were other options, other couples unable to have children who would adore a tiny baby as their own. This baby would make someone happy, she was sure of it.
She pulled a crumpled note from her pocket, checked again for the details of where she was supposed to meet and scanned the surroundings, feeling a sizzle of apprehension when she recognised the green arch of the Harbourside Shopping Centre the PA had told her to wait outside. Her steps slowed as she approached. She was close now but, with the shifting crowd milling around the water’s edge, it was impossible to pick out individuals. What if he hadn’t waited? What if he’d given up and left?
Then, as she drew closer, she saw a couple sitting at a table holding hands, their heads bowed, the mood intense. She hesitated, her heart thudding hard in her chest. Could they be them? Could this be the parents of the child growing inside her?
Even as she watched, she saw the woman swipe tears from the corners of her eyes. Angie felt those tears like a tug against her womb. Surely it must be them? This was the right place and she was late. Was that why she was crying—because she feared Angie wasn’t going to show?
Yet still she wavered, unwilling to intrude on this private moment. She looked around, shifting from one foot to the other, searching for any other more likely looking couple. There was a party of Japanese students lining the edge of the boardwalk, and an Italian family seated at a nearby table enjoying gelati and then there was a man in a white shirt with his jacket slung over his shoulder standing with his back to her.
Her eyes almost skated over him.
Almost.
All too soon they skated back. He stood tall and dark and somehow compelling, even from this angle, and when he turned his head to talk to the slim woman Angie had missed standing beside him, his profile only added to his appeal. A strong nose and jaw, and a dark slash of brows atop eyes that seemed focused on the woman beside him.
Another couple, she surmised, and way too unlikely. The woman looked cool and collected and nowhere near anxious enough to be meeting the woman inadvertently carrying her child, while surely he was too perfect, too virile-looking. For even while she knew fertility had nothing to do with looks, somehow the prospect that this man needed help seemed too far-fetched. Her eyes slipped away. And then she heard a cry of anguish and turned in time to see the woman on the bench jump up, the man reaching for her hand to stop her.
Guilt consumed her. She shouldn’t have been so late. She should never have hesitated and added to her distress. She dragged in air, desperate to find a way through the sudden tangle her nerves had become, forcing herself to take the few tentative steps towards the couple.
‘Over there. Could that be them?’
Dominic’s eyes followed in the direction Simone indicated, settling on a couple sitting at a table not far away. He sucked in air. Could this be the woman who’d called? Was the man sitting alongside her husband? T
hey were clearly not tourists, not the way they were dressed, and the woman’s expression, her tightly drawn features and reddened eyes signalled that something was definitely not right between them.
Could it be because she was carrying someone else’s child? Carrying his?
Breath whooshed from his lungs as every organ inside him contracted. Was the child Carla had so desperately and futilely wanted somehow growing inside this woman instead?
He studied the couple while he willed his breathing back to normal, studying them between the holidaymakers and honeymooners and strollers tied with balloons. The woman was blonde and slim, not unattractive under her sad eyes. The man was older, he noticed, whereas she looked around thirty-five—the age, he guessed, where she might be starting to panic about never having children. Had the child she’d longed for turned out to be someone else’s?
His eyes flicked over their clothes. Both of them had the kind of grooming that took money. Maybe she’d been honest about not wanting his—it looked as if they had plenty of their own to go around. Of course, he rationalised, at the rates the Carmichael Clinic charged, they would have to have money.
It all seemed to fit.
‘What do you think?’ Simone prompted.
‘Must be,’ he mused, his eyes leaving the couple for a moment to scan the crowd. There were families and tourists and a gaunt-looking woman who looked as if she was lost in the crowd. No, there was nobody else it could be. He nodded, feeling a strange tightening in his chest as he contemplated this next step, twenty-four hours’ notice strangely nowhere near enough to prepare himself to meet the woman carrying his child. ‘Let’s go find out.’ He’d barely got the words out when the woman suddenly cried out and jumped to her feet.
The man followed, trying to placate her. Dominic cut a swathe through the pedestrian traffic. Did the woman think he wasn’t going to show? He shouldn’t have hesitated. Who else could it be? She was arguing through her sobs, her head turned back to the man holding her hand when he reached them.
‘Mrs Cameron?’
‘Mr and Mrs Pirelli?’
The couple looked around, both of them stunned for a moment, but Dominic’s attention had already been snagged by the woman who’d arrived from left field, the woman with his name on her lips.
‘Who are you?’ he demanded.
CHAPTER THREE
SHE was shabby and pale, a ghost of a woman dressed in drab clothes and with hair the colour of dishwater pulled into an unkempt ponytail. Even as he took her in she seemed to shrink before him, her focus over his shoulder on the couple behind. ‘I thought… I thought that was Mr and Mrs Pirelli.’
‘I am Dominic Pirelli.’
‘Oh.’
Simone came up alongside him with a click of heels and a whiff of that French perfume. ‘Then you must be Mrs Cameron.’
Dominic wanted to argue the point. What did Simone think she was saying? He’d already decided who Mrs Cameron was and it wasn’t this ragged excuse for a woman. Mrs Cameron was right here next to him—he swivelled around to see the couple rapidly disappearing into the crowd—and turned back, still not wanting to believe it could be true. How could this woman, this dishrag of a woman, be capable of carrying his child?
How could the clinic possibly have put his child into her?
But she was here, where they were supposed to meet, and she had uttered his name…
The shabby woman swallowed, and Dominic followed the movement down a neck so thin it looked too small for her head. ‘That’s right,’ she uttered, almost as if she were afraid of the admission. ‘I’m… I’m Angie Cameron.’
Her voice cemented it as much as her admission. Unsure. Afraid. Sounding more like that teenager again when she must be—he peered at her, trying to put an age to her appearance—and failed. She looked nothing like the women he was used to dealing with in his life. For a woman so undernourished, she looked—weighed down.
‘And you,’ the ragged urchin offered, wiping her palms on her jeans before she held out her hand, ‘must be Mrs Pirelli. I’m really sorry we have to meet in such circumstances.’
Her words were unnecessary. Dominic could not possibly imagine meeting her in any other. ‘Simone is not my wife,’ he said sharply. ‘Simone is my PA.’
Something flickered in the PA’s eyes at her boss’s rapid fire correction, vanishing just as quickly, the brief touch of her fingers just as cool as the smile in her newly resumed demeanour. Angie blinked, way out of her depth, still reeling from making a fool of herself by approaching the wrong couple without being faced with this man—the man she’d decided could not possibly be the one. And now the woman with him was not his wife.
She could barely keep up.
She turned to offer her hand to the man but caught how he was looking at her—as is she were some kind of scum—and thought better of it, pulling her hand back.
Besides, even if she hadn’t felt his revulsion, she wasn’t sure she could cope with having her hand swallowed up in his. He’d looked tall from a distance before, but now, standing before her, he might well have been a mountain. Tall and broad-shouldered and composed entirely of rugged angles and treacherous planes. An insurmountable obstacle that she sensed with just one touch would drain her of what little strength she had.
No way would she risk that. Not when she needed every bit she did have for the tiny scrap of a baby growing inside her.
She closed her eyes. Oh, God. This man’s baby.
A sudden gust of wind caught her and she swayed with it, stumbling a little before a manacle closed around her arm. But when she opened her eyes it was his hand that encircled her arm, his long fingers overlapping with the thumb. ‘Sit down,’ he growled, his deep voice all rough edges that rippled down her spine, ‘before you fall down.’
He steered her backwards to the now empty seat and she collapsed gratefully onto it, still stunned that something made of skin and bone could feel like iron against her flesh. She put one hand to the place, sure she could feel the heat of his grip in the tingling band of skin.
He said something to the woman beside him, who disappeared efficiently in a click of heels and a flick of her hair while he looked around, raking the fingers of one hand through his hair. ‘Where is your husband?’ he asked, searching the crowd. ‘Surely he came with you?’
‘No. He’s not here.’
His head swung back in disbelief. ‘He made you come alone? In this condition?’
She almost managed to find a smile, certain he wasn’t referring to her pregnancy, but then she remembered the look in his eyes—as if she were the lowest of the low—and any thoughts of smiling departed. She knew she looked like rubbish lately. Hadn’t Shayne told her plenty of times? So instead she shrugged. ‘It’s hardly terminal. I get a little morning sickness. It passes by lunch time.’
Or it usually did. Today being the exception, of course. ‘And then it was a mad dash from the station.’
The woman reappeared, holding a bottle of spring water. ‘Here,’ she said, holding it out. ‘You look like you could do with this.’
Angie thanked her and unscrewed the cap, genuinely grateful for the gesture even if she hadn’t needed yet another reminder of how bad she looked. The water was cool against her throat, refreshing both heated body and scrambled mind, opening the door to hope again. Maybe now the worst was over and there would be no more shocks. Maybe now they could just deal with the situation and get on with their lives.
‘Have you eaten anything?’
‘I’m not hungry,’ she insisted, just wanting to get on with it and make the arrangements that needed to be made. But her stomach had other ideas, rumbling so loud there was no way she could hide it, and she cursed a fickle stomach that could be threatening to turn one moment and suddenly so desperately hungry that it felt as if it was about to devour itself in the next.
‘Of course you’re not hungry. Simone, go and find us a table at Marcello’s. As private as possible. We’ll be right along.’
‘Are you sure? I thought you wanted somewhere public.’
‘We can’t talk here. Besides, this woman needs to eat.’
‘Of course,’ she said with a tight smile, though the look she flashed at Angie made it clear that she wasn’t impressed. Then she flicked her head around and marched briskly off, her shiny bob swinging from side to side.
‘I don’t want to cause any fuss,’ she said, her eyes on the departing woman, momentarily mesmerised by the movement in the sleek curtain of hair, knowing that the cut must have cost a fortune. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been to the hairdresser instead of cutting her hair herself in front of the bathroom mirror.
‘Can you walk? Do you need help?’
She looked up at him and caught that look in his eyes again, as if he was weighing her up and assessing her suitability to bear his child and finding her wanting. Tough. He was stuck with her and she was stuck with him and they’d just have to make the best of it. She pushed herself to her feet, determined to show him that she didn’t spend her entire day being blown around by gusts of wind. Or men who looked like mountains, for that matter. ‘Thank you, but that won’t be necessary. Neither will lunch. I’d rather just work out what we’re going to do about this situation we happen to be in.’
‘We can talk about “this situation” when you’ve had some sustenance. It will be easier to talk then,’ he said, taking her forearm to steer her in the direction Simone had disappeared, sending a burst of shooting stars up her arm as she made to follow him. Instinctively she jerked her arm away, but he had already released her and she wondered if it was because he’d felt that same unexpected zing of current. But no. Far more likely that he’d simply achieved what he’d set out to do—he’d bossed her into submission and he could let her go, mission accomplished.
But she was too hungry to argue any more, too prepared to find the logic in his argument as she fell into step beside him. She needed to eat and they needed to talk. She’d probably have enough in her purse for a sandwich or something—anything to distract her from the strange tingling sensations under her skin. Like pins and needles except on the inside.