Xavier took his cue from her, but there was an obvious throb of displeasure in his voice. “I tried,” he drawled cynically. “You were dead to the world.”
Her skin prickled. He’d tried? He’d been into the room while she was sleeping? He’d looked at her? Had he touched her, while she’d slept, in an attempt to wake her? She swallowed, the idea unfairly erotic. Her blood simmered.
“You gave him three iced lollies?” She muttered instead, trying to flatten the frustration out of her voice.
“He wasn’t hungry for anything else. I offered.”
She stroked Josh’s hair. “What time is it?”
“Four.”
“Four o’clock?” Her gaze pulled to the window and yes, she could see that darkness was approaching, falling early as it did in winter. “I’ve slept the day away.”
“Is that a problem?”
“I’ll be up all night.”
“That did occur to me,” he drawled, the cynical edge to the words sparking in her blood stream. Her eyes jerked to his and then away again as the power of his suggestive thoughts overtook every thread of her sanity.
“Are you hungry, darling?” She turned away from Xavier, keeping Josh on her hip, glad to have his familiar, sweet shape to hold tight. Glad to have him right there. It was weak and silly to depend on a small boy for security, and yet she did.
He was her anchor and her rock.
“Yep.”
“Traitor,” Xavier laughed, surprising Ellie by moving alongside them. And his smile was so genuine and so fulsome that it rocked her to the core. He was beautiful. Beautiful with his scarred face and enigmatic expression. Different to how he’d been when they’d first met, but no less stunning.
He caught her looking and she turned away quickly, focusing on the door. She slid through it, keeping Josh close.
“Is there a kitchen in this place?”
His voice was droll. “Two.”
She rolled her eyes. “Why am I not surprised?”
“One is down here, the other is on the rooftop. For entertaining.”
Such a rarefied existence. He had every drop of glamour and prestige at his fingertips. It was a world she’d never had any desire to enter. While her high school girlfriends had all styled themselves to within an inch of their lives, trying to look like extras from The Kardashian family, Ellie had been content to float along without an Instagram account and a backlog of selfies. She’d never aspired to money, prestige, position, power.
Yet here she was, in the lap of the luxury and promised to marry an insanely wealthy tycoon.
“I just need to fix him some pasta.”
He nodded. “It’s time for you to meet the staff.”
Staff? She stopped walking, her face tight with alarm. “What staff?”
“Relax. It’s just the housekeeper and a few casuals.” He said it so blithely, as though this wasn’t all incredibly unusual and confronting for Ellie.
“Housekeeper?” Ellie repeated, lifting her gaze to his face, trying to keep a neutral tone in her words. “Does she live here, then?”
His smile showed he understood the direction of her thoughts – that he knew she was clutching at any straw that might mean they would be alone together less frequently. “No. Janice works normal office hours – later if I’m entertaining and she’s required to oversee a dinner party or similar.”
Ellie’s stomach swirled. Dinner party? Was she expected to do this hosting now? The thought of standing side by side with Xavier Salbatore as his friends and business acquaintances came to this incredibly grand home filled her with utter dread.
“Do you… entertain often?” She asked, darting the tip of her tongue out and tracing her lower lip. Enormous brown eyes lifted to his face and heat flushed her cheeks when she realized his eyes were trained on her lips.
“Not since the accident,” he said.
Curious. She switched Joshua to her other hip and stroked his hair absent-mindedly. Beautiful soft, springy curls that tickled her nose when he crept into bed in the middle of the night and found his way to the crook of her arm.
“Have many things changed since the accident?”
He was instantly closed-off, his face shuttering as though a cord had been pulled and the blinds dropped down.
At the wide doors that led to the kitchen, he turned to face her. He was choosing his words with care, at least, she thought he was. But then he shook his head and locked himself away from her once more.
“Janice?” He called, no longer speaking to Ellie. “There’s someone here I’d like you to meet.”
Janice, when she appeared, was an elegant woman in perhaps her fifties, with a slick blonde bun at the nape of her neck, wearing demure cosmetics and a black pant suit. She wasn’t like the Mrs Doubtfire character Ellie had been imagining, yet she liked her immediately. Particularly when the housekeeper smiled kindly at Joshua and reached for his cheeks, pinching them so that he smiled coyly.
“You look much better, Master Salbatore,” the woman said, so Ellie’s eyes jerked to Xavier’s with impatience. Her son was no a Salbatore – yet.
But one look at the mask of stone on his face silenced her. For now.
“He is,” Xavier confirmed, his eyes searing Ellie with their intensity. “This is Joshua’s mother,” he said smoothly, and confining her to that relationship was so neat and somehow offensive that she almost rebutted him.
After all, he was the one who’d insisted they would marry. Would it kill him to announce her as his fiancé?
Fiancé? She shivered. On second thoughts, ‘Joshua’s mother’ was just fine.
“Hello, madam,” the housekeeper said, tilting her head forward in a deferential greeting.
“Call me Ellie,” Elizabeth insisted.
And Xavier made an involuntary movement. A jerk of his head and then his hand was lifting to his temple, pressing against it, his eyes closed as though there was a blinding light being shoved in his face.
Janice noticed too, and her face was lined with concern. “Sir?”
He blinked and swallowed, a rough convulsive movement of his throat. “I’m fine.”
He didn’t sound fine.
“Elizabeth was asking about dinner for Joshua. I’ll leave the two of you to discuss domestic matters.”
Ellie’s heart sank at the enormity of the life she was about to assume. And ridiculous though it seemed, given that he was clearly public enemy number one, suddenly she craved his support. “You’re not going to stay?”
His eyes sliced through her, mocking her and distancing from her all once. “No, Elizabeth. I have more important things to do than discuss macaroni pasta.” He winced then, and smiled apologetically at Janice who, judging by her surprised expression, had never heard Xavier say anything quite so rude before.
Well, Janice was in for a shock, Ellie thought. With the addition of Elizabeth to this grand home, Xavier’s manners were apparently about to take a turn for the worse.
Anxious to smooth over Janice’s worries, Ellie put her most charming foot forward. Joshua sat at the kitchen bench and then, when Ellie insisted on preparing his dinner herself, Janice chatted about the running of the house, the work she did, and the other staff who helped.
“Mr Salbatore mentioned that he would like to engage a nanny. Ordinarily I would liaise with an agency and prepare a shortlist of suitable candidates for you to interview, but obviously I wished to check with you before taking this step.”
Ellie’s gratitude expressed itself with a smile. She didn’t realise it, but it changed her whole face and Janice found herself staring, for a moment, at this beautiful, authentic, kind woman who’d floated into the middle of the cold house in Kensington. A house that was grand and expensive and very beautiful, but somewhat lacking in the soul department.
“I don’t think we need to rush on that score,” Ellie murmured, mentally wishing she could strangle Xavier for being so high-handed. “There’ll be quite enough for Joshua to adjust to witho
ut adding yet another new person into the mix.” She grimaced. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to imply that you’re …”
“It’s fine,” Janice smiled warmly. “I have two children. I remember what they can be like at this age.” She reached across once more, tousling Joshua’s hair, then straightened. “But I am here to help. As much or as little as you would like.”
An understanding passed between them. An alliance. It was fresh and new but Ellie felt it, and safety and security came with it.
“For dinner, I prepare a meal and leave it laid out in this fridge,” Janice murmured, moving to a large double door refrigerator to the right side of a window. “Mr Salbatore has a large appetite,” Janice murmured, burying her head in the fridge, leaving Ellie to stand there with a bemused look on her face as she inwardly agreed with that assessment. “So I always prepare generous meals. As for preferences, he’s not fussy. So long as it’s tasty and abundant, he’ll eat it. If you, however, have more detailed requirements, I will be very happy to accommodate them. You need only provide me with a list of your favourites so that I might incorporate them into my planning.”
“Oh.” Ellie frowned, a little line forming between her brows. “I’m sure whatever Xavier likes will be fine for me,” she said with a tilt of her head.
Janice nodded. “He takes dinner in the State room,” she continued, but Ellie interrupted.
“The State Room?”
“A frightfully grand name, isn’t it?” Janice agreed with a laugh. “And I suppose the room is somewhat grand. It’s a hangover from when this house served as a diplomatic quarter. The State Room was used to host the President of the United States in the early nineteen eighties,” she said with pride.
“And Xavier eats there even when he’s on his own?”
“He likes it,” Janice said. “When you get to know him you’ll realise he’s quite stuck in his ways.”
And then, realizing what she’d said – the implication that the woman who’d borne Xavier a child barely knew him, brought a flush to Janice’s cheeks. “I don’t mean that you don’t know him, of course…”
“It’s fine,” Ellie rushed to reassure her, reaching for Josh and placing him on her hip. “Obviously nothing about this is conventional. I should say it will take us all a little time to get used to things. There will be many slips of the tongue in the meantime.”
Janice nodded, but she was more reserved as they moved from the kitchen and along the corridor, past the room Josh and Xavier had been in earlier, to another doorway.
Janice strode in first, and then waited so she could see Ellie’s surprise at the sheer size of the place.
“Wow.” She blinked at Janice then stepped into the room, placing Josh down in the middle of a timber floor that had been polished to a glossy sheen. A table sat at its centre, long enough to accommodate at least thirty guests, and there was an enormous candelabra placed right in the centre. More fine art adorned the walls, a grand piano stood proudly in the corner and the curtains were all draped in burgundy crushed velvet fabric secured with golden-tassled cords.
“Wow,” she said again, shaking her head.
“Shiny,” Josh agreed, so Ellie smiled, and reached for his plump little hand. He put it in hers and her heart squeezed.
“When you and Mr Salbatore feel like dinner – he usually eats at eight o’clock – just bring it in here and enjoy.” She smiled. “There is a sound system programed with various playlists, and I’ll set the fire before I leave.”
“And what time do you leave?” Ellie asked breathlessly.
“In about twenty minutes.” Janice smiled encouragingly. “But I’m always just a phone call away.”
Ellie shook her head, not wishing to intrude on this lovely woman’s down-time just because she, Ellie, was vibrating with nerves and anxieties at the very idea of sitting opposite this man for dinner.
“As for Master Salbatore here,” Janice said with a grin. “I suspect he would prefer to eat in the kitchen.”
“Yes,” Ellie agreed, thinking longingly of that comfortable, warm space with its neat four-person table and smell of just-baked bread. “I think you’re right.”
At eight thirty, Ellie went in search of Xavier. Her nerves were stretched to breaking point and there was nothing for it but to confront the man who’d caused all this upset and angst in her life. Josh had been asleep for hours. His fever hadn’t returned, but he was obviously wiped out from fighting off his bug.
She’d put him to bed after dinner, and then she’d begun to wait.
And she’d waited.
And minute by minute her anxiety had grown and her nerves had quivered and her doubts had exploded so that, by half past eight, she was a quivering mess. If they were going to have dinner together in that ghastly mausoleum of a room, that living museum, then she’d have sooner got it over and done with.
She found him in his study, and though she knocked before entering, and he called for her to enter, the sight of him still had her feet planting themselves to the same spot on the tapestried rug. His head was bent, his eyes focused on a point on his desk and his body was stiff. Stone-like. As if he were a statue.
Her breath whistled from her lungs and that seemed to capture his attention. He lifted his head, his eyes bleak, his skin pale beneath his darkly golden tan. “Yes?” It was a hiss. A sibilant demand for an explanation as to her arrival.
She swallowed and then assumed an air of defiance that was an utter forgery. “Janice said you eat at eight,” she intoned with her own measure of disdain. “It’s now gone half eight and I came to check if I should wait for you.”
“Is it?” He frowned, glancing at his wrist watch, his mistrust of her now par for the course, yet still oddly hurtful.
“Josh went to bed hours ago,” she confirmed. “He was tired because he’s been sick.” She was nervous and it had resulted in her babbling. She made a conscious effort to cease it and focused instead on her purpose for being in his office. “Would you like me to heat you some dinner?”
He cocked a single brow but oh! How expressive it was! How condescending and insulting. “Are you role-playing the part of the housewife now?”
“If I was doing that,” she said snippily, “I’d have cooked the dinner from scratch, wouldn’t I?”
His eyes sparked with hers and then he scraped the chair back and stood, his frame so bulky and large that she took a step back without realizing it. He grimaced in recognition.
“Leave it,” he said. “I’ll eat later. I don’t think I’m ready to play the part of the doting husband just yet.”
And he turned away, as though he couldn’t bear to look at her. He turned away and she felt as though ice had spread through her veins.
She felt pain, and she ached, and she wanted, more than anything, just to go home.
9
SHE PRETENDED TO BE asleep when he came to bed, much, much later. She couldn’t have said what the time was, when the door opened, piercing the blackness of his room with a fine-blade of light, and she couldn’t have looked at her phone to check without giving away the fact she was awake.
Something she most definitely wasn’t willing to do.
But damn it, she’d slept all day, and her mind was rushing over the past and the future and sleep had been disastrously illusive.
She’d been thinking about the day she’d discovered she was pregnant, and the first thrill of excitement that had filled her. Excitement at the thought of having a mini-Xavier, a little boy or girl who would be so like its Spanish father. She’d been so happy, for the briefest second, because she’d been remembering that beautiful weekend.
And then the truth of their situation had intruded and she’d realized that she was pregnant with the baby of a man who didn’t want her. A man who’d used her for sex, for a bit of fun before settling down with the woman he loved.
And the pregnancy had shifted in her mind from something she was desperately excited about to something she knew would be difficult t
o navigate.
But not once did she consider not having the baby. Nor did she wish to accede to her parents’ wishes and give ‘the child’ up for adoption.
Their baby was hers. Xavier mightn’t have wanted any piece of her but Ellie wasn’t about to push that same fate onto the baby they’d made!
Her mind was in knots, her stomach too, so when Xavier strode across the room and pulled up the duvet, letting cold air infiltrate the coziness of the bed, she stiffened, refusing to move, nor to acknowledge that she was awake. And waiting.
Yes, if she was honest, she’d been waiting for this. On tenterhooks, his parting barb from the day before sliding through her mind.
You will join me in my bed each night. And each night you will beg for me again and again. Each night you will apologise to me for what you’ve done.
What the hell was the matter with her that his words filled her with anticipation? The good kind of anticipation?
And yet she wouldn’t admit that. She wouldn’t act on it.
She lay with her back turned to him, facing the wall with the Rembrandt, keeping her breathing level and her eyes closed, and she stayed as close to the edge of the bed as possible.
The bed indented as he moved into it, his weight depressing it in the middle, and then, one strong, thick arm snaked around her waist, pulling her body backwards, so her spine connected with his taut belly. He curled his body – naked body, she realized with an internal moan – around hers. And he held her tight to him.
Warmth surrounded her.
And her heart began to speed up. He held her like that for several minutes and her breathing was shallow as every single nerve ending in her body was aware of his strong, warm nakedness right behind her. His arm around her breasts was a vice but she made no attempt to evade it anyway.
He was pleasingly close to her breasts and without realizing what she was doing, she shifted a little, positioning his hand closer, so that he laughed low and throaty against her ear.
“You are not asleep,” he said, and heat infused her cheeks.
“No,” she whispered.
Claiming his Secret Baby & Blackmailed by the Spaniard (Clare Connelly Pairs Book 4) Page 10