Leandro’s voice hardened.
‘Our divorce was reasonably amicable, and we agreed to share custody of Henry, whom I believed was my son.’
‘How did you discover that Henry wasn’t yours?’
‘A few years after the divorce there were rumours that Nicole was having an affair with an English politician. I didn’t think much of it, because my ex-wife was free to do what she liked. But Henry was growing up and there were comments—particularly from my father—that Henry looked nothing like me. I loved my son, and I couldn’t believe that Nicole would have deliberately deceived me. But finally I couldn’t ignore my doubts, and a DNA test revealed that I wasn’t Henry’s father.’
Marnie heard the raw note of pain in Leandro’s voice and her soft heart ached as she imagined how he must have felt when he had received the devastating news. ‘Did Nicole know that you were not her child’s father?’
‘Oh, yes, she always knew that her politician lover, Dominic Chilton, was Henry’s real father.’ Leandro did not hide his bitterness. ‘But Chilton was married, and he was scared that a scandal about his mistress giving birth to his illegitimate child would ruin his political career. So, with his agreement, Nicole deceived me into thinking that Henry was my son. When I learned the truth I couldn’t simply walk away from the little boy who had grown up believing I was his dad,’ Leandro said gruffly. ‘Once a month I used to visit Henry in Paris, where he was at school. Now Chilton has left politics and he is divorced from his wife. He and Nicole have gone public with their affair and they are taking Henry to Australia with them to start a new life.’
And in a few weeks Leandro would start a new life as father to their baby, Marnie thought. After the terrible deception by his first wife it was understandable why he had wanted proof that the child she was carrying was his. She felt the baby wriggle and watched the outline of a tiny fist or foot move beneath her jumper. From Leandro’s sudden stiffness she knew his eyes were fixed on her stomach too, and instinctively she grabbed his hand and placed it on the hard mound of her belly just in time for him to feel a few hard kicks.
‘Whether the baby is a boy or girl, I think it will be a future footballer,’ she quipped, wanting to lighten the intense atmosphere in the room.
Leandro’s hand felt heavy on her, and it seemed to burn through her clothes and set her skin on fire. It seemed a lifetime ago that she had lain in his arms and felt his hands on her naked body as he had aroused her with tender caresses and prepared her for his possession. She felt a familiar tingle in her breasts and between her legs and despaired at her weakness where this man was concerned. His revelation that his ex-wife had duped him into thinking he had a son was an explanation for his behaviour, but it did not excuse it.
The room was full of shadows. The light faded quickly in the short days of winter, and Marnie suddenly felt chilled and hauled herself to her feet to go and put another log in the stove. Through the window she watched a huge yellow moon slowly rise over the sea.
‘Why didn’t you tell me that your trips to Paris were to visit Henry?’
‘We did not have the kind of relationship where we talked about personal matters.’
Marnie gave a pained laugh. ‘What you mean is that you regarded me as your mistress and all you require from a mistress is sex. The only time you paid me any attention was in bed.’
‘That’s not true. In Florence—’
‘Florence was different,’ she snapped, whirling round to glare at him. ‘Don’t think I haven’t worked it out, Leandro. You took me to Florence so that you could cold-bloodedly seduce me into believing that our marriage would be for real, when in fact you knew it would be a sham that you had to trick me into so that you could have legal rights to your child.’
He stood up and walked over to her, his jaw hardening when she tensed and wrapped her arms over her distended stomach, as though to protect their child from him.
‘I know it looks that way—’
She interrupted him again. ‘It looks that way because it was that way. You seized your chance when you learned of my amnesia and I bet you prayed that I would never regain my memory. But as an insurance policy you acted like a loving fiancé in Florence and hoped I would fall so deeply under your spell that even if I did remember how badly you had treated me I would forgive you.’
A dull flush flared along Leandro’s sharp cheekbones. Marnie’s voice had never been so cold towards him before. He knew she had every right to be angry with him, yet he hadn’t really expected her to be so furious. It was a measure of his arrogance that he had assumed she would forgive him, he thought with grim self-derision.
‘I admit that at the beginning everything you have said was true. I had proof that the child you were carrying was mine and I was determined to marry you. But things changed in Florence.’
‘Please don’t insult my intelligence by saying you fell in love with me in Florence.’ She delivered the words in a hard voice that he was beginning to recognise as belonging to the new Marnie—the Marnie he had made her become, Leandro realised.
‘We became friends in Florence, didn’t we?’ he said softly.
‘Friends don’t lie and scheme to get their own way. You omitted to tell me that I had been offered an internship with NASA because you didn’t want me to take the baby to California and continue my studies—even though you knew it was my dream to have a career as an astronomer.’
Leandro knew he deserved the note of disgust he heard in her voice, but he hadn’t expected it to hurt so much. It would have been better if she’d shouted at him. Anything would be better than her coldness, which was as bitter as the winter wind that whipped the Norfolk coast.
‘I did what I thought was best for the baby. My mother abandoned me for her career and I didn’t want our child to feel the same sense of rejection I’d felt when I was a kid.’
Her eyes flashed. ‘I would never abandon my baby. Not for any reason. I accepted from the minute I found out I was pregnant that I would have to put my career dreams on hold while I focused on being a mother. Everything you have done you did for you, and what you wanted, so don’t try to blame the baby for the fact that you behaved like a jerk. The only reason you are here now is because it’s what you want, and if you really cared about my welfare you would go away and leave me alone.’
Marnie was breathing hard and her heart was beating too fast. Leandro’s shocked expression made her want to cry. She had thought it would feel good to tell him her opinion of him, but the colour had drained from his face and the life had drained from his eyes. He did not look vulnerable, she told herself. He did not look hurt. She didn’t want to picture him as a little boy, growing up without his mother. And there was an odd constriction in her throat as she imagined him having to say goodbye to the boy he had brought up as his son for six years now Henry’s real father was taking him to live in Australia.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said after a long time. His voice was ragged, as if he had swallowed broken glass. ‘I can’t tell you how sorry I am for...’ He closed his eyes briefly, as if they were aching with tears just as Marnie’s eyes ached. ‘For everything. I wish I hadn’t hurt you, and because I know you don’t want me here I wish I could do as you ask and go away. But I can’t leave you alone in this remote place, and I assume you will refuse to allow me to take you back to London.’
When she gave a jerky nod of her head he continued.
‘So I will unload my stuff from the car and then I’ll cook us both dinner—and if you don’t want to speak to me I’ll understand. But believe me, cara, you can’t despise me as much as I despise myself.’
CHAPTER ELEVEN
SURPRISINGLY THAT NIGHT Marnie slept better than she had done for weeks. Probably it was due to the big dinner she had eaten, she told herself, for Leandro had proved to be an unexpectedly good cook. But deep in her heart she acknowledged t
hat she had slept peacefully knowing that he was staying in the bedroom above her.
Her pregnant shape made her too cumbersome to climb the narrow staircase to the upper floor of the cottage, and she was unaware that Leandro now lay in the narrow single bed in the upstairs bedroom nursing a headache from where he had collided with a low ceiling beam.
He felt a far worse ache in his chest as he replayed all that Marnie had said to him over in his mind. He thought how ironic it was that he had never experienced failure in business, but now, when it came to the only thing that mattered—the one thing he had discovered that he cared about—failure to persuade Marnie to give him a second chance was a terrifying possibility.
* * *
‘I didn’t know you could cook,’ she said two days later as they finished the delicious Thai curry Leandro had made for their evening meal.
‘I don’t need to in London, because my housekeeper prepares all my meals, and at the Villa Collina I have an excellent chef. But I learned to cook from the chef my father employed when I was growing up in New York. It’s a useful skill to have—especially when the nearest takeaway is a good ten miles away,’ he said drily, referring to the cottage’s remote location.
Leandro took an appreciative sip of red wine and exhaled a slow, careful breath when Marnie smiled. Since that first explosive confrontation, when she had wiped the floor with him, the tension between them had miraculously lessened, and although she wasn’t exactly chatty, she no longer spoke to him in a voice that dripped ice.
‘I love the fact that the cottage is miles from anywhere. It would be a lovely place for a child to grow up, with the huge beach for a back garden.’
It was the first time she had made any reference to the plans she might be thinking of for the future, and where she might want to live once the baby was born. Leandro had his own hopes for the future, but he knew he must be patient and take things slowly in his plan to win Marnie back.
‘Where did you go when you left London? I despaired that I would never find you.’
‘I went to Bulgaria and stayed with my father and his wife and their two children.’ Marnie sensed his surprise and darted a glance at him across the table. ‘It was good to spend some time with Dad. I had missed him, and he was upset that we had lost contact for so long. He would like to meet Jake too, but I don’t know where he is.’
Marnie’s voice faltered as she remembered that her brother had stolen the jewellery from the safe in Leandro’s house and had since disappeared.
‘Your brother is working as a groundsman in Scotland, as he originally planned to do,’ Leandro surprised her by saying—and then he shocked her even further. ‘As a matter of fact Jake and my father spent Christmas with me in London, which was not something I’d ever envisaged,’ he said wryly.
‘You celebrated Christmas with Jake...and your father?’
‘“Celebrated” is a bit of an overstatement. I wasn’t in the mood for celebrations.’ He took pity on her obvious confusion. ‘Your brother came to my house in Eaton Square again, because he wanted to apologise to you for stealing the jewellery—which I have already told you he had returned. Of course you weren’t there, and I was drunk at two o’clock in the afternoon. I was drunk pretty much twenty-four-seven then,’ Leandro admitted. ‘I couldn’t face that I had screwed up so badly with you, and when I told Jake what I had done I wouldn’t have blamed him if he’d thumped me. Instead he realised how bad a state I was in and he found my father’s phone number and called him, unaware that Silvestro was the last person I would turn to for help.’
He shook his head, as if he couldn’t quite believe the chain of events that had followed.
‘I was stunned when my father arrived from New York, and then between him and your brother they stopped me drowning my misery in malt Scotch and ordered me to stop feeling sorry for myself. I had more conversations with my father in a week that I’d done in thirty-odd years.’
Leandro cast his mind back to the strangest Christmas he had ever spent. He had formed a firm friendship with Jake, and he’d also learned a lot about Silvestro.
‘My father never stopped loving my mother, you know,’ he told Marnie. ‘I’d always believed he hated her, but he admitted that he was devastated when she went on tour with her musical theatre company. He was jealous of her career. He wanted her to stay at home and just be his wife. After she left he wanted to go after her and ask her to give their marriage another try, but he was too proud to fight for her. Instead he shut himself off from emotions, from love. He has always seemed so cold, but I discovered that he has feelings—he’s simply been unable to show his emotions for fear of being hurt again.’
Leandro recalled the conversation he’d had with his father.
‘Pride is a damnable thing,’ Silvestro had said. ‘I knew I had been wrong to insist that your mother choose between her career and me when I should have been more supportive of her dreams. But my pride wouldn’t let me go after her and beg her to give me another chance. Life is a lonely journey without love.’
His father had given Leandro a searching look.
‘You’re proud—like me. But if something is worth fighting for then forget your pride and follow your heart.’
His heart had brought him to a windy corner of Norfolk, Leandro brooded. He was willing to fight for what he wanted, but he was by no means certain of winning the prize he wanted more than anything in life.
* * *
Simply because a truce had been established between her and Leandro it did not mean that she was falling for him again, Marnie assured herself one morning as she lay in bed and sipped the cup of tea he had brought her.
It was eight days since he had insisted on moving into the beach house to take care of her in the final weeks of her pregnancy and he had been true to his word. He had cooked meals and cleaned the cottage, refusing to allow her to lift a finger—much to her frustration, because in the last couple of days she had developed an obsession for dusting and tidying, and was itching to rearrange the furniture in the sitting room.
‘It’s quite common for expectant mothers to develop a nesting instinct as the due date for the birth approaches,’ the midwife had explained at Marnie’s antenatal appointment the previous day. ‘The baby’s head is engaged, which means that theoretically labour can start at any time.’
Marnie had taken this news with a sense of calm, but it had sent Leandro into panic mode.
‘I wish you would come to London with me,’ he said when he strode into her bedroom to ask if she wanted more tea. ‘If my meeting wasn’t so important I would cancel it and stay here with you.’
‘I’ll be fine on my own for twenty-four hours,’ she assured him. ‘You’ve said you will come back tomorrow.’
‘I’ve changed my mind. I’m going to drive back to Norfolk as soon as the meeting finishes later today.’ Leandro let out a frustrated sigh. ‘I’m worried about leaving you. The midwife said you could go into labour at any moment.’
‘She also said that with first pregnancies the baby’s head can engage a month before the birth,’ Marnie reminded him. ‘My due date is still two weeks away. My back is aching a bit, and I’m too big and uncomfortable to want to sit in a car for a couple of hours’ drive to London.’
‘Dio, why didn’t you tell me you have backache?’ Leandro’s handsome face tautened with concern as he stepped closer to the bed. ‘It could mean that something is about to happen.’
‘It means that I’m the size of a whale and I can’t find a comfortable position to sleep in.’
Marnie saw his eyes move to the mountain of her belly beneath the sheet and wished she hadn’t brought Leandro’s attention to her very pregnant and very unsexy shape. A few times in the past week she had caught him looking at her in a way that had made her wonder if he still desired her, but then she had caught sight of her reflection in
the mirror and told herself she must have imagined the glint in his eyes.
She sighed and pulled the sheet up to her chin, to hide her abundant breasts. ‘Go and do whatever it is you have to do for work, and don’t feel you have to rush back tonight for my sake,’ she muttered, bizarrely feeling close to tears at the prospect of spending a whole day without him.
Maybe it was all the hormones zooming around her body that were responsible for her mood swings.
‘I will definitely be back here this evening,’ Leandro assured her.
His deep voice was as soft as velvet and it caressed Marnie’s senses. Her heart turned over as she studied his sculpted features. He was wearing a business suit today, and he looked suavely sophisticated and at the same time drop-dead sexy.
It was not just his voice that was soft. His eyes were no longer steely grey but had softened to the colour of woodsmoke, and something in his intent gaze made her catch her breath as he lowered his head towards her. His lips were so close to hers that she felt his warm breath graze her skin. She longed for him to kiss her, but as she swayed towards him her common sense demanded to know why she was behaving like a pathetic fool.
Was she really going to succumb to Leandro’s seduction routine again? He did not want her—he wanted his baby. Hadn’t she learned anything?
At the last second she jerked her head to one side and heard him sigh softly as he brushed his mouth against her cheek before he straightened up and walked over to the door. ‘Don’t do too much today, cara. I promise I’ll be back as soon as I can.’
Fighting a strong urge to ask him to stay with her, she shrugged. ‘I’ve learned that your promises don’t mean a lot.’
It could not have been hurt she glimpsed in his eyes, Marnie told herself, feeling like a bitch for deliberately trying to goad him. He had been kind and solicitous all week, and had acted as if he was walking on eggshells around her, clearly not wanting to upset the tentative truce between them. But she wanted so much more. Deep down she acknowledged that she had been pushing him, trying to make him angry so that he would stop treating her as if she was made of glass and seize her in his arms and kiss her with fiery passion like he used to do.
Trapped by Vialli's Vows Page 14