The Italian's Unwilling Wife

The line went dead again. Abbie didn’t know how long she just sat there after that. Her father stopped phoning, but the silence of the house seemed to swirl around her with his words.

Then she heard the distant sound of a car engine.

He’s on his way out there now to look over his property…

Certainly, whoever was in that car was heading for this house—there was nowhere else out here.

CHAPTER TWO

THE shrill ring of the doorbell cut through her. And for a few moments she was immobilised.

Was Damon really outside her door? There had been moments when she had dreamed of this, dreamed that he’d come to her when he found out about his child, and that he would forgive her.

But they were just dreams. She was sensible enough to realise that the reality was encapsulated in her father’s phone messages.

Damon wasn’t going to forgive her—she’d known that at their last meeting, when he had angrily confronted her about what she had done, and she had tried desperately to explain her actions. He hadn’t wanted to listen; all he’d been able to think about was the fact that she had assisted in his father’s downfall. Even when she had falteringly tried to tell him that she was as much a victim as his father he had cut across her contemptuously.

‘You must consider me really naïve if you think I’m going to fall for any more of your lies. I know what you are. I have evidence to support exactly what a lying, conniving, deceitful—’

‘Damon, please!’ She had broken across him tremulously. ‘Please believe me, I never wanted any of this to happen. The time I spent with you was special to me, and I—’

‘Give the acting a rest, Abbie.’ The scorn in his voice had cut through her like a sword. ‘At least the one good thing about this whole sorry mess is the fact that, as far as I was concerned, our time together was all about sex—I felt nothing for you, other than the pleasure of taking your body. Nothing at all.’

There had been a harsh coldness in his words and in his eyes that she had never seen before. It was as if a mask had been ripped away at that moment and she had seen the true Damon for the first time. It had shocked her to the core, and it had hurt. God help her, it still hurt!

But it also made her very sure that if it was Damon outside he wasn’t here for any sentimental reasons, and he certainly wouldn’t be interested in the fact that she’d had his child.

The shrill ring of the doorbell sliced through the night again, and Abbie tried to focus on what she should do. There were a few heartbeats of silence whilst whoever it was gave her a moment to come to the door. When she didn’t, he put his finger on the bell again and held it there.

It had to be Damon! If there was one thing she should have remembered about him, it was his determination to get what he wanted.

He was going to wake Mario up! Her son was a deep sleeper, but he had his limits.

Suddenly anger surged to Abbie’s rescue. She wasn’t going to hide up here, feeling guilty about the past, because the truth was that it hadn’t been her fault. She had been forced to do what she did. And nobody had a right to roll up here and make such a racket at this time of night.

Drawing her dressing gown closely around her slender figure, she marched downstairs, and, taking a deep breath, she threw open the door.

Damon Cyrenci was standing on her porch, leaning against the door jamb with his finger on the bell. Even though she had been expecting to see him it was still a shock.

He stepped back as the door opened, and silence reigned.

For a second his eyes swept over her with audacious scrutiny, taking in everything about her from her bare feet to the wild tumble of blonde curls around her shoulders.

And the strange thing was that for a moment Abbie was transported back to their first meeting, when he had looked at her in exactly the same way. She felt a tug of sexual attraction rising from somewhere very deep inside her. His appearance had hardly altered. The business suit he wore emphasised his fabulously well-honed physique, and the dark thickness of his hair was unchanged. Maybe there were a few silver strands at the temples, but they just made him appear all the more distinguished.

As her eyes held with the dark, searing intensity of his, her heart lurched crazily. He was the same drop-dead-gorgeous man who had stolen her heart away—except that man had only ever been an illusion, she reminded herself fiercely. Despite the heat of the passion they had once shared, she had never meant anything to him. Behind the façade the real Damon had just been a seducer—a predator who’d enjoyed the thrill of the chase and nothing more.

Falling in love with him had been a mistake, and she had learnt her lesson.

The memory helped her to pull herself together and focus her senses.

‘Hello, Abigail. It’s been a long time.’

His voice was coolly sardonic, and yet the attractive accent still managed to lash against the fragility of her defences.

‘What are you doing here, Damon?’ Somehow she managed to sound calm and controlled.

‘Is that all you can say after all this time?’ Again there was the same mocking tone to his question. ‘How about “nice to see you, Damon—why don’t you come in?”’

The strange thing was that one part of her—the wild, illogical part—wanted to say those words, but his manner forbade it. Something in the cool tone and the glint of his eye told her very clearly that although he was here on her doorstep nothing had changed from their last meeting, and his opinion of her was as low as you could get.

‘I haven’t got time for games, Damon,’ she grated unevenly.

‘Really? Strange how you had plenty of time for games in the past.’

Her father’s words reverberated through her consciousness. This is about revenge, Abigail—and you are next on Cyrenci’s list. She swallowed hard and slanted her chin up. ‘Obviously this isn’t an impromptu social call, so just say whatever it is you’ve come to say, Damon, and then go. You’ll forgive me if I don’t invite you in.’

‘No—I don’t think I will forgive you, Abbie.’

Although he said the words matter-of-factly, there was an undercurrent that struck her and hurt—and that in turn made her angry. Why should he still have the power to hurt her like that? She tightened her hold on the door. ‘Well, you are not coming in.’

He shook his head. ‘I really don’t think you are being very friendly, and I’m sure given the circumstances you can do better than that—in fact, your father assured me that you could.’

What had her father been saying to him? ‘I don’t know what’s been going on between you and my father. I believe you now control the Newland empire—well…’ she shrugged ‘…I don’t care. It has nothing to do with me.’

‘That’s where you are wrong, Abbie. This has everything to do with you.’

The chill certainty in his voice flayed her.

‘I just want you to go now.’ To Abbie’s distress, her voice faltered slightly.

‘I’m not going anywhere.’

‘Well, you are certainly not coming inside my house.’ She started to try and close the door but she didn’t move quickly enough, and he put his foot in the way, effectively stopping her.

‘Let me spell things out for you a little more clearly.’ His voice was suddenly very serious. ‘We have unfinished business, and I’m coming in whether you like it or not.’

‘Damon, it’s late and you’re scaring me.’

‘Good.’ He sounded cold and unyielding.

‘I’ll have to ring the police if you don’t go now,’ she threatened shakily.

‘By all means, you do that.’ For a second his eyes narrowed. ‘At least that way we can speed things up.’

‘Speed what things up?’

‘The legal side of things.’ He watched impassively as the colour drained from her face. ‘As you have so rightly pointed out, I’m in control of the Newland assets now. And according to company records no rent has been paid on this place for—oh, quite some time.’

‘That’s because the place belongs to me!’ she hissed furiously.

Damon shook his head. ‘No, it belongs to me,’ he corrected her quietly. ‘And I’m here to take stock of my belongings.’

‘Well, then, you’d better contact me through my solicitor.’

Damon smiled at that. ‘Oh, don’t worry, I will be doing that. Because I also want access to my son.’

The words dropped into the silence like a bombshell, and Abbie’s limbs suddenly felt as if they didn’t belong to her.

‘So are we going to do things the easy way or the hard way?’ he enquired silkily. ‘It’s up to you.’

She couldn’t answer him. Her hands dropped from the door, and as she momentarily lost her hold on the situation he took his opportunity and walked past her into the house.

His eyes swept over the lounge area, taking in the brown leather sofas, the polished wood floors and the huge stone fireplace. The place was very stylish, but it wasn’t what he had been expecting. The furniture, when you looked closely, was old, and everything had a slight air of faded opulence. But Damon wasn’t interested in décor; he was searching for telltale signs of something that interested him far more. He found what he was looking for as his eyes lighted on a box of toys by the far end of the sofa, and a discarded teddy bear on a chair. At the sight of those toys his insides knotted with a fierce anger.

‘So, where is he?’

As he rounded towards her again, Abbie sensed a seething fury that made her truly afraid. She could hardly think straight for a moment, never mind answer him.

‘Where is my son, Abbie? You may as well tell me now, because I will find him even if I have to go through every room in this house—or every house on this island.’

The determination in those words stunned her, but they also brought an inner answering strength welling up inside her. ‘You keep away from him, Damon. He is not a belonging listed under the company assets. He is a little person in his own right, and I won’t have you marching in here upsetting him.’

‘And what about his right to have a father—or doesn’t that count in your twisted logic?’

The question smote Abbie’s heart. It was something she had asked herself time and time again—something that had kept her awake long into the lonely nights when she had discovered she was pregnant. Yes, she wanted Mario to have a father—a loving father who would put his needs first. But Damon had left before she’d realised she was pregnant, and she hadn’t known where he had gone. She’d tried to track him down, but to no avail. She had consoled herself with the fact that he wouldn’t have been interested in his child anyway. Damon didn’t go in for commitment, he led a playboy lifestyle. He’d told her that when they’d first met.

But the strange thing was that when he’d held her in his arms she had imagined that his feelings for her were different, that what they had shared had meant something. But of course she had been fooling herself. That had been quite clear when he’d walked away from her.

The memory hurt so much that she wanted to tell Damon that the little boy upstairs was not his, and that he had a father in his life—a wonderful, loving father, a man who also loved her. She opened her mouth but the words refused to come.

When it came right down to it, she couldn’t lie about something as important as that.

‘Of course having a father counts,’ she said shakily instead.

‘Right—which, of course, is why you came to me and told me you were pregnant?’ Damon’s tone was scathing.

‘And if I had would you have wanted to stay around and play happy families? I don’t think so. We had had a few weeks together of wild sex—it meant nothing.’ Even as she said the words, the memories that flared inside her made her hot, made her voice tremble with suppressed feeling. ‘You said as much yourself—you said…’ She shook her head and pulled herself together before the tears could gather in her voice. ‘Anyway, all that is in the past and irrelevant. The truth is that I didn’t find out I was pregnant until after you’d gone. I didn’t know how to get in touch with you. You hadn’t left your address or contact numbers. I didn’t know where you were.’

‘You are good at making excuses.’ Damon shook his head. ‘No, Abbie, you didn’t tell me because your father held the purse strings and you thought I had nothing. That was a more important consideration for you at the time.’

‘That’s not true!’

‘Like hell it’s not. You forget, Abbie, that I know you exactly for what you are.’ Damon’s eyes raked contemptuously over her, but as they did so he couldn’t help noticing the sensational curves of her figure beneath the silk of the dressing gown. How come her beauty could still blow his mind? he wondered hazily. How come when he looked at her now after all this time he could still remember exactly how she had felt when he touched her—how she had tasted, how she had moved beneath him?

Back then she had been firm and pert and he had wanted her like crazy—but he could excuse that because he hadn’t known the truth about her then.

How come he could feel the same stirrings now?

‘We’re wasting time,’ he grated, furious with himself for being sidetracked even momentarily like this. ‘And I’ve already wasted enough of that.’

To Abbie’s horror Damon started to head towards the stairs with a look of determination.

‘You can’t go up there.’ She hurried to stand in his path, tried to grab hold of his arm, but he brushed her away as if she were an annoying fly and swept past her.

‘Damon, you have no right!’ Her voice caught on a sob as she raced after him, but he didn’t break his stride.

‘Actually, as the child’s father, I think you will find I have lots of rights.’

The words brought a strange kind of helplessness washing over Abbie. It was the same feeling she used to get when dealing with her father. It was the knowledge that someone more powerful than you could dictate your life, and there wasn’t anything you could do about it, because if you didn’t comply the consequences would be more than you could bear.

She watched as he pushed doors open along the landing into deserted bedrooms.

‘Stop it!’ The anguished whisper made him halt in his tracks to look back at her.

‘Don’t bother to try and turn on the false tears, Abbie, because it’s not going to work,’ he told her acerbically. ‘I don’t care how you feel—in fact I couldn’t give that—’ he clicked his fingers softly ‘—for your emotions.’

‘I know,’ she said softly. ‘I’ve always known that.’

Something about the way she said those words caught at him, and for a brief second he felt a tug of some long-forgotten emotion as he looked into the blue depths of her eyes. He remembered the first night that they had made love. He remembered the vulnerable way she had looked up at him as she’d allowed him to unfasten the buttons of her dress, almost as if she’d been afraid to trust her emotions to him.

The memory infuriated him. Abbie Newland was an actress—there had been nothing remotely vulnerable about her. She had been playing the part her father had set for her, and she had done it very well, and had enjoyed a little fun along the way.

His dark eyes hardened at the memory. ‘Well, at least we understand each other.’

‘Yes, at least there’s that,’ she whispered numbly. ‘But you should also understand that my child is more important to me than anything and if you upset him in any way I will make you pay for it.’

She tried to draw herself up as she said the words. It was probably a bit like facing down a lion without any real weapons, but she wanted him to know that she would fight to the death if necessary for her child.

‘Just because I don’t care about your feelings doesn’t mean I don’t care about him.’

The answer should have reassured her slightly, but it just stung at raw nerves. Still she held his gaze with determination. ‘He’s in the room at the far end of the corridor,’ she said quietly. ‘Let me go into the room first, just in case he’s awake. You are a stranger to him. I don’t want you scaring him.’

Damon considered her words for a second, and then stepped back to allow her to lead the way.

Her whole body felt as if it were shivering with reaction as she walked past him. She guessed she was in shock.

Why did Damon want to see his son? She couldn’t believe it was out of any paternal interest. Those sentiments didn’t fit with the man she knew him to be. Maybe this was just curiosity. Maybe he would take one look at his child, make a token pretence of being interested, before getting back into his car to get on with the real things in life that mattered to him, such as revenge and money and power… And, of course, womanizing.

Yes, that was probably what would happen, she told herself as she opened the door to Mario’s room.

She was relieved to see that the child was still sleeping. He was lying on his back, his face turned sideways against the pillow. He looked the perfect picture of peaceful innocence, his cherub mouth slightly parted, his long dark lashes resting against the satin-smooth skin.

She glanced back at Damon. ‘You can come in, but only for five minutes.’

‘I think your days of being in charge of this situation are over, Abbie,’ he said quietly as he stepped past her.

The words hit Abbie like a punch to the solar plexus. But the feeling was nothing compared to the reaction she felt, witnessing the powerful intensity on Damon’s features as he looked down at his sleeping child.

She felt her heart racing against her chest as the realization hit her that this was about far more than just idle curiosity, and to try and dismiss what was happening in such a way would be to vastly underestimate the situation.

For a long moment Damon just looked at his son. Then abruptly he turned and left the room.

For a second Abbie couldn’t move. Her mind was reeling with confusion—she couldn’t get a handle on this situation at all. What were Damon’s intentions? Why was he really here? Hastily Abbie followed him back out onto the landing.

He was already at the other end of the corridor. ‘So, now you’ve seen him,’ she said breathlessly. ‘Where do we go from here?’

He made no reply; he didn’t even look around at her, just headed down the stairs. The front door was still lying wide open, and he marched through it without closing it behind him.

‘Damon, where do we go from here?’ she asked again, a note of desperation in her voice. She needed to make some sense of tonight, needed to understand what Damon was thinking—and she couldn’t let him walk away without giving her some clue as to what was to happen next.

‘Damon?’ She followed him downstairs and out onto the porch. ‘Damon, please!’

His footsteps slowed and then he looked around. ‘That’s better.’ There was a gleam in his eyes as he looked over at her. ‘If you keep that tone in your voice, we just might get somewhere.’

The cold churning in the pit of her stomach intensified.

‘I agree that we need to talk rationally about this situation.’

He made no reply, and she thought he was going to climb into his car and drive away, but then to her surprise he went to the back of the vehicle and took out a small bag.

With the flick of a switch the car was locked again, and then he was heading back towards her with resolute strides.

Although there was a part of her that was glad he wasn’t just going to drive away, leaving her wondering what was going to happen next, she didn’t like the look of this latest development at all. Her heart thumped nervously against her ribs. ‘Where do you think you are going with that bag?’

‘I’m bringing it inside my house,’ he said curtly. ‘And then I’m going to have a drink and get into bed, because it has been a very long day and I’m tired.’

‘You can’t stay here!’

‘Why not?’

‘Because…I don’t want you here.’

He stepped past her and into the house. ‘Tough.’

The door slammed closed behind him.

CHAPTER THREE

FOR one horrible moment she thought he was going to turn the key in the lock, leaving her stranded outside in the dark in her dressing gown. But to her relief the door opened easily as she turned the handle.

With a mixture of trepidation and fury, she glanced around. His bag was at the base of the stairs and she could hear him opening and closing cupboard doors in the kitchen.

She followed the sounds and watched from the doorway as he found a bottle of vodka and poured himself a drink. ‘What are you playing at?’

‘I think I just told you.’ He lifted the glass in a mocking salute.

With difficulty she reined in her temper. This situation was not going to be resolved by losing her cool.

‘Damon, you can’t stay here. It’s not appropriate.’

He laughed at that. ‘As if you’d know anything about appropriate behaviour! I have to say, all those years mixing with the aristocracy at those English boarding schools weren’t wasted, were they? You’ve certainly learnt the art of pretending to be genteel.’

With difficulty she ignored the insult. ‘This isn’t solving anything. Why don’t you go and check into a hotel for tonight and then come back tomorrow? We can talk properly when we have both calmed down and are thinking rationally.’

‘I am calm.’ He took a sip of his drink and regarded her levelly over the rim of the crystal glass. ‘And I’m thinking very rationally. It’s one in the morning, there’s a storm coming in, and I have no intention of going to a hotel now—especially as I own a perfectly good house here.’

‘Damon this is ridiculous!’ Her voice rose in panic. ‘You are not being at all reasonable.’

One dark eyebrow rose. ‘Really? I think given the circumstances I’m being extremely reasonable. Let’s look at the facts, shall we? You don’t actually own this property. In fact, you are heavily in debt and behind with rent—’

‘I am no such thing!’

‘Plus you’ve hidden my child away from me, depriving me of precious time with him,’ Damon continued as if she hadn’t spoken. ‘I don’t think any court is going to look too kindly on you at all. In fact, I think you will be the one who is judged unreasonable.’

‘You’re twisting the facts!’ She pushed a distraught hand through her blonde hair. ‘I didn’t know I was pregnant until after you’d gone. I didn’t hide anything. And will you stop pretending that you give a damn about having a child? We both know that you would still have walked away from him even if I’d told you I was pregnant.’

‘Do we?’ Damon’s voice grated with sarcasm. ‘You don’t know the first thing about what I would have done, because you don’t really know the first thing about me.’

‘I know that you are a playboy who likes to roam the pleasure fields.’

‘Certainly.’ He inclined his head. ‘And I never planned on having children of my own. But you’ve changed that.’

Damon looked at her pointedly. ‘Enlighten me, Abbie. What were you planning on telling my son when he gets older? That his father is dead? Or that his father didn’t want to know him?’

Abbie hesitated. ‘I wouldn’t have lied to him. I’d have handled it.’

‘Believe me, no matter how you handled it, it still wouldn’t have been right.’ Damon’s voice was heavy. He remembered all too well what it was like growing up without a parent. His mother had walked out of the family home when he was eight. It was so easy to screw up a child’s life. Maybe that was why he had avoided settling down and having children. The responsibility was awesome, and he believed implacably that a child deserved two parents and a stable home.

‘You had no right to keep Mario a secret from me.’ Damon’s eyes burnt into hers. ‘Any court will tell you that.’

‘He wasn’t a secret. And will you stop talking about courts and judgements!’

He shrugged and took another sip of his drink. ‘Courts and judgements are very much the reality; you better get used to it.’