Secret Heirs And A Forever Family

They handed in their jackets and hats, and when they were back in the Jeep Rose said, ‘Thank you for bringing me. I enjoyed seeing it.’

Zac looked at her and arched a suspicious brow. Rose chose to ignore his obvious scepticism at her professed enjoyment and asked, ‘Is this where you’ve been going since we arrived?’

He looked back to the road, his jaw clenching minutely, before he said, ‘Here, and also in Siena. I’m opening a new hotel there in a few months.’

‘Wow,’ Rose said. ‘You’re really marking your territory.’

Zac made a noncommittal noise, and then his phone rang through the car’s hands-free system. He said to Rose, ‘Do you mind if I take this? It’s important.’

She waved a hand. ‘Not at all.’

He took the call and spoke entirely in rapid-fire Italian, of which Rose couldn’t understand a word. She found it curiously soothing, though, listening to Zac’s deep voice, ridiculously melodic in the foreign language. And as a wave of weariness washed over her she curled onto her side and let her eyes close… Just for a few minutes, she promised herself.

Rose woke to a gentle knocking sound. She sat up groggily and realised she was on top of her bed. Feeling disorientated, she said, ‘Come in?’ not entirely sure she wasn’t dreaming.

But Maria’s friendly face appeared around the door and she said in her careful English, ‘Signor Zac is on the terrace—dinner in ten minutes.’

Rose gabbled a thank you and Maria left. A wave of hot self-consciousness washed through her. She remembered closing her eyes in the Jeep, promising herself just a few minutes’ rest while Zac was on the phone, but she must have fallen into a deep sleep… How had she got to her bedroom and onto the bed?

The realisation that Zac must have carried her…he had to have… Oh, God! He probably thought she’d been pretending to be asleep to lure him into her bedroom.

She got up and hastily stripped off her clothes and put on fresh ones, choosing a soft knee-length sleeveless jersey dress in a dark blue colour, pairing it with a pair of low-heeled slingbacks. She washed her face to wake herself up, and put on a minimum amount of make-up, brushing her hair and giving a deep sigh of frustration when it insisted on following its own unruly lines.

Then she castigated herself. What was she doing, primping and preening for a man who barely tolerated her presence in his life anyway?

As she walked to the terrace it dawned on her to wonder why Zac was eating with her, and she also realised that the dress was clinging far too lovingly to her blooming curves, especially her breasts, which were tender and feeling about a size bigger already.

But she’d rounded the corner now, and Zac had seen her and was standing politely. She couldn’t fault his chivalry.

She forced a smile. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to fall asleep like that. It must have been like carting a sack of stones into the villa.’

Zac just looked at her, with something flickering in his eyes that sent an illicit zing of sensation deep into Rose’s solar plexus.

‘It was no trouble at all.’ Then he frowned. ‘But are you sure you’re feeling all right? Is it normal to sleep like that? I was almost tempted to call the doctor.’

Rose’s step faltered just as she reached her chair. He’d been worried? She shook her head. ‘No, it’s perfectly normal, according to my doctor. Fatigue in pregnancy can be quite debilitating, but I feel fine now.’

In fact her blood was fizzing, and she felt more alive than she’d felt in months. The doctor had also told her with a wink—knowing nothing of her personal life—that she might feel increased sexual urges once she’d got over the first trimester. Needless to say that had been the last thing on Rose’s mind at the time, but now she could appreciate the advice. For all the good it would do her…

Zac poured her a glass of sparkling water. He sat back and took a sip of his wine, watching her. Thankfully Maria came out with their first course, dissipating some of the tension.

While they ate the delicious starter—simple but delicious soup and bread—Rose told herself that she was being ridiculous to think she’d seen anything in Zac’s eyes when she’d arrived. It was just her rogue pregnancy hormones and stupid wishful thinking. Dangerous thinking.

In due course Maria came back and efficiently removed their starter plates and replaced them with a main meal of deliciously tender cutlets in a light sauce.

As the food restored a sense of equilibrium in Rose, she recalled Zac finding her by the pool earlier that day, and the way he’d been looking at her so intently. Again she’d had that sense that he was waiting for her to do something.

She felt embarrassed now to recall the daydream she’d been indulging in, of a family living in this beautiful house, its walls and paths alive with the sounds of laughter. She hated that he’d observed her in those private moments. Moments she’d never reveal to anyone… And just like that, her appetite fled. She put down her knife and fork.

Not missing a thing, Zac said, ‘You aren’t hungry?’

Rose held back the urge to be defensive. She’d only left a couple of bites on her plate, and forced herself to be civil. ‘Maria’s cooking is sublime…but I don’t think I’ve eaten so much or so consistently since before my mother died.’

‘How old were you when she died?’

Rose kept her face blank, feeling the familiar tug of grief that never left. ‘Fourteen. She battled cancer for four years…’

The truth was that their health insurance hadn’t been enough to guarantee her mother the best of care, and even though she’d been well taken care of there had been time spent on waiting lists that had meant her illness had taken hold and triumphed.

Which was why Rose had had such a panicked reaction to her father’s illness, imagining the same thing happening all over again…

Zac brought her back to the present. ‘And your father?’

Her insides tensed. She hated this ongoing deception. Truthfully, but vaguely, she answered, ‘He’s in upstate New York.’

‘And no brothers or sisters?’

Rose shook her head, avoiding his eye. ‘No, just me.’

‘That must have been rough after your mother died.’

She looked at him again, surprised, and said quietly, ‘It was. My parents were devoted to each other…it nearly destroyed my father…but he had me to think of.’

Her father had lost a part of his soul when his beloved wife had died, and Rose hadn’t begrudged him that.

Feeling raw, and realising they were straying far too close to danger areas, Rose desperately tried to think of something to divert Zac’s attention. She seized on what she’d noticed in the village the previous day. ‘When I went to the market with Maria yesterday I visited the local church.’

Zac sent her a dry look. ‘To repent for your sins?’

Rose fought the urge to scowl, or to rise to Zac’s bait, even as a part of her quickened at this chink of dark humour.

She ignored the comment, saying, ‘My mother was religious and I got used to going into churches with her, where she’d light candles for different friends’ various ailments and worries.’ She continued quickly, in case Zac was inclined to make any more barbed comments. ‘There’s a pretty graveyard by the church, so I went in to have a look, and I noticed that Valenti seems to be a very prominent name here… It was all over the graveyard, actually—easily the most common family name.’

Rose stopped talking when she saw Zac’s hand tighten on his wine glass. He was still looking at her, and she saw him pale slightly under his olive skin. Suddenly he stood up, his chair making a harsh sound on the stone terrace.

Completely perplexed by his reaction, Rose put down her napkin and said hesitantly, ‘Zac…?’

She got up and walked over to where he stood, facing out over the countryside. Dusk gathered around them, lengthening the shadows. Rose felt as if she’d intruded onto something intensely private.

She looked up at his strong profile. And then, before he even said anything, it clicked. This was why he looked so at ease here and spoke fluent Italian. He was from here. This was his land. She could see it now, stamped indelibly onto his proud features. That aquiline Italian profile. She said faintly, ‘They’re your relations… But how…?’

A muscle pulsed in Zac’s jaw, but eventually he said, ‘My father. He was Luca Valenti. Born and raised here in the village. He worked in the local mine until he emigrated to New York when he was twenty-five, looking for a better life.’

Rose frowned, not comprehending. ‘But your parents… I mean your mother…she is—’

He cut in, looking at her now, and said almost accusingly, ‘She is not who you think. Jocelyn Lyndon-Holt is my grandmother—not my mother.’

‘But how?’ Rose couldn’t get her head around it. She caught Zac’s dry look and said, ‘Well, obviously your mother must have been…’

‘Her daughter. Her only child. Simone Lyndon-Holt.’

Rose realised then that she’d never really given much thought to why Zac had taken the name Valenti; she’d gone to work at the Lyndon-Holt house shortly after he’d left and had vague memories of the press assuming at the time that he’d plucked it from obscurity. But it was his name—his actual real name.

‘But how did your mother meet your father if he was—?’

‘An immigrant?’ Zac supplied with a bitter tone.

Rose half shrugged and nodded. She was the daughter of immigrants, so she hadn’t meant it like that.

He sighed and ran a hand through his hair, clearly reluctant to speak of this. But Rose was too greedy for information to tell him he didn’t need to go on. This, she was just discovering, was her child’s heritage. Its real heritage.

‘My mother met my father when he was hired as a labourer to work on the grounds at the house. She was twenty-one and promised in marriage to a man from a family of similar standing. She was ripe for rebellion after a lifetime of being brought up in that mausoleum and, after meeting my father, she broke off her engagement.’

There was no mistaking the bitterness in Zac’s tone now, and his mouth was a thin line. Rose suspected that he wasn’t just talking about his mother’s experience and her heart squeezed.

‘By all accounts their affair was passionate, and my father encouraged my mother to elope with him—which she did. They got married in upstate New York, and by the time they came back she was pregnant with me.’

Rose was aware of her heart pounding with dread, wanting to know more but not wanting to know at the same time, because it wouldn’t be good. How else had Zac ended up with his grandparents posing as his parents?

‘When they returned to confront my grandparents—to present them with a fait accompli—my grandfather, who was still alive at that point, told my mother she was dead to them and that if she crossed the threshold again they would ensure my father would be run out of the country, exposed for not having a proper working visa. Needless to say they cut her off from her inheritance and all funds.’

Zac glanced at Rose for a moment before looking away again.

‘My father wanted to bring my mother back here, to Italy, but her pregnancy was difficult so they had to stay in New York to ensure her safety—and mine.’

Rose wondered if that was why Zac had made sure she had access to doctors and a hospital, and why he’d been concerned about her well-being earlier.

He was continuing. ‘Things got fraught. My father was under more and more pressure to earn money to support them. He was working four jobs at one point, and it was while he was on a construction job that he was involved in an accident.’

Rose sucked in a breath.

‘He was taken to hospital, but he had no ID with him and he was barely conscious. He slipped into a coma and it was a week before my mother was able to track him down. The shock made her go into early labour, and by the time I was born—a month prematurely—my father had died.’

Rose put her hand up to her mouth, as if that could stifle the shock she felt.

Zac’s voice was leached of all expression now. ‘My mother was destitute by then—cut off from her parents and qualified to do nothing except be a social butterfly. In her desperation she did the only thing she felt she could do. She took me to them and asked them to take care of me. They told her that they would only take me in and care for me under one condition: if she left and never returned.’

‘Oh, God… Zac…’

But he continued relentlessly. ‘All they cared about was having a male heir. My grandmother had only had one child—my mother—and my grandfather had never forgiven her for that, so they seized the opportunity to restore the balance when they could.

‘My mother left that day and a week later her body was washed up on the shores of the East River. My parents had kept her disappearance quiet, somehow, and her death barely got a mention in the papers. The scandal was simply absorbed into Manhattan society and hidden—like countless other scandals. I was accepted as their child…as if it was entirely normal for a couple in their late forties to emerge with a baby out of nowhere. As I grew up I heard talk of an older sister who had committed suicide, but I never knew who she really was.

‘Years later, on the morning I was due to get married, a woman came to visit me—she was an old friend of my parents…someone who had lived in the same building as them. She’d been pregnant at the same time as my mother… She told me everything, and also that my mother had gone to her after she’d left me with my grandparents, torn apart but knowing that she’d done the only thing she could to ensure my security and future. She’d made this friend of hers promise to keep an eye on my progress, and one day, when she felt the time was right, to tell me the real story. When I confronted my grandparents they didn’t even deny it.’

Zac stopped talking, and Rose asked quietly, ‘Why did you never go public with this?’

His jaw clenched, and then he said, ‘I told my grandparents that if they left me alone to get on with my life, cutting all ties, then I’d let them keep their rotting skeletons in the closet. It was enough at the time for me to take my father’s name as my own.’

Rose reeled. She longed to reach out and touch Zac, who seemed so remote, but she couldn’t. All she could say was, ‘I’m so sorry. Your parents didn’t deserve that, and neither did you.’

He looked at her, cynicism stamped into his features, twisting them. ‘Oh, I don’t know… I had a privileged upbringing, wanted for nothing. Every opportunity was afforded to me. There was even talk of me running for office in the distant future…it was all mapped out.’

His barbed sarcasm grated on Rose’s nerves, and she said in a low voice, ‘I know that it can’t have been easy—or else why would you have left as soon as you knew?’

Zac turned to face her fully and said with quiet devastation, ‘You don’t know anything of what it was like. The only reason I’ve divulged this to you is because I want you to understand what’s behind my determination to bring this child up as a Valenti. Nothing will stop me, Rose.’

After a long, intense moment he turned and walked back to the table, picked up his half-empty glass of wine and downed it in one swallow, and then left the terrace.

Rose hugged her arms around herself and thought, I do know what it’s like, actually. She’d lived in that house too, albeit in the staff quarters, and only while working. She could imagine all too well what that cold and sterile environment must have been like for a small child who carried the genes of his Italian immigrant father but didn’t even know it.

And clearly Zac saw her as just another part of the ongoing betrayal of his parents.

Rose looked out sightlessly over the moonlit countryside as her hand dropped instinctively to feel for her small reassuring bump. Emotion gripped her. How could she deny this child its true birthright now? After everything Zac had just told her? No wonder he had reacted the way he had to the news of a baby.

Rose had never felt more powerless than she did right at that moment, or more alone. She wanted desperately to be able to do the right thing…but how?

CHAPTER EIGHT

AS ZAC STRODE into the villa the following evening, after a day in Siena at the hotel, he was battling all sorts of emotions that had never ruffled his life before now. Primary of them all was regret—for having spilled his guts so comprehensively to Rose the previous evening.

There was a handful of people who knew the truth about his heritage, and now she was one of them. She, of all people, who had the potential to damage him the most.

But he’d been blindsided when she’d unearthed something as simple as the fact that the name Valenti was a local one. And who the hell went for a walk in a graveyard anyway? Rose. The woman who remained like quicksilver—impossible to pin down, shimmering and throwing up different facets, and still refusing to behave as he expected her to.

The emotion in her eyes last night had reached into his gut and squeezed hard. It had reminded him too forcibly of that first night, when she’d looked at him with such naked yearning only to run out on him.

The familiar refrain sounded in his head: it was all part of an act. In every moment of those two meetings she’d been aware of exactly what she was doing and who he was. And she was doing it again.

Once she’d known she was pregnant she could have tried to evade him in Manhattan and sought refuge with his grandmother, but she hadn’t. She’d come to him when he’d sent for her and she was here now. So she was canny enough to keep him on her side. Or perhaps this was something she and his grandmother had agreed on… The not knowing killed him.

He shoved away the regret for spilling his guts. He was glad he’d told her how it was. Glad that she now knew he would stop at nothing to keep his child away from the poisoned Lyndon-Holt inheritance. She could pass that message on to his grandmother.

Zac stopped in his tracks at the pool and felt irritation rise when he saw it was empty. He’d looked in every conceivable place that Rose might be. Where the hell was she?

Unbidden, the memory of carrying her sleeping form into the villa the previous afternoon rose up. The way she’d felt in his arms—so slight, yet solid, all those soft curves curled into him so trustingly. When Zac had deposited her on her bed he’d stood looking down at her for a long time, certain she was just feigning sleep. But she hadn’t woken. She’d just lain there, breathing evenly, tempting him on so many levels that eventually he’d walked out in disgust.

A sharp metallic noise suddenly emerged from the nearby kitchen area, along with a colourful curse. Welcoming the distraction, Zac followed the sound. He was intrigued, because he knew it was Maria’s evening off.

When he stood in the doorway of the kitchen it took a moment for his eyes to register what he was seeing, and when they did a ball of sheer heat and lust exploded in his solar plexus.

Rose was barefoot and wearing a loose and flowing knee-length flowered sundress. Her cheeks were flushed with exertion. Her hair was tied back, but unruly tendrils clung to her visibly damp skin.

And all Zac wanted to do was go over to her, lift her onto the massive kitchen table behind her, strip off that dress, bury his aching erection into the hot, tight sheath between her legs and finally find some release.

His body screamed with need.

He gritted his jaw hard, clawing back control.

Other things finally registered on Zac’s overwrought brain: a delicious smell of cooking and the fact that Rose was biting her lip and holding her hand under the tap. When it finally dawned on him that she’d hurt herself he was by her side in an instant, taking her hand and looking at the red welt.

‘What happened?’ he demanded in a harsh voice. ‘What are you even doing in here?’

Rose would have jumped ten feet in the air if Zac hadn’t been holding onto her hand and looking at her as if she’d just stolen the Crown Jewels. Shock and fright at his sudden and overwhelming proximity made her yank her injured hand back and place it under the cold water again.

‘I just burnt my hand on a baking tray. I was making dinner… Maria left me instructions.’

Thankfully Zac was no longer touching her, but he was still too close and all but breathing fire down her neck.

She wasn’t prepared to see him like this. She’d been vacillating all day between telling herself that she had to be honest with Zac now, in light of what he’d revealed, and then remembering the signed contract and its non-disclosure agreement, and her father…still so vulnerable.

She couldn’t trust Zac—no matter what he’d told her. He hated her so much… Why wouldn’t he take an opportunity to punish her by allowing her father to suffer? Even though deep down she suspected that he couldn’t possibly hurt an innocent person, still it was too great a risk.

‘Maria left you to cook dinner? She usually just leaves food in the fridge.’

Water splashed from the tap onto Rose’s dress and she was very aware of her casual attire and bare feet next to his suited glory. He must have been in business meetings…

She struggled to focus. ‘I told her I’d look after it— I wanted to try her lasagne recipe.’

She felt embarrassed now—exposed. As if it might be obvious that she’d been indulging in an extended version of that illicit little daydream she’d had, pretending that this was her home and she was cooking for people who loved her. This wasn’t her home and never would be. This was just a relocation of her gilded prison.

‘Is your hand okay?’

Zac’s voice broke through her fevered recriminations. She lifted it out from under the water and could see that the red was dying down to a faintly throbbing pink line. She turned off the tap. ‘It’ll be fine. The lasagne is almost cooked, if you want some—’

‘I didn’t bring you here to be my cook, Rose.’

She wrapped a damp towel around her hand and glared at him, hating his effect on her. ‘I know exactly why I’m here, Zac. I like cooking and I was making dinner for myself—and possibly you if you wanted it—that’s all.’

His eyes swept over her in a searing glance and she felt every particle of her skin prickle in reaction. And then he backed away, almost as if something about her was contagious. No doubt she presented a pretty picture: sweaty, burnt, smelling of food…

‘I’ve got tickets to the opera in Siena this evening. You eat, and we’ll leave in an hour.’

Rose opened her mouth to reject Zac’s non-offer, but he was already walking away from her before she could respond. And then she thought mutinously: Hang Zac Valenti. For whatever reason, he was offering her a night at the opera. She wouldn’t let him ruin a chance for her to get out and see more of this amazing country.

And as for her ridiculous daydreams of cooking for loved ones…? Well, cooking for one wasn’t so bad, and the rest of the lasagne would freeze well.

The fact that this brought back painful memories of the period after her mother’s death, when her father had taken to working late in order to avoid coming back to the house that reminded him of his wife’s absence, wasn’t so welcome. Because Zac Valenti was the last person who should be inspiring feelings of wanting to nourish and connect.

Zac had expected some equanimity to be restored once he’d got out of that kitchen and away from all the delicious smells of home cooking, and the even more tantalising and earthy image of Rose, fairly glowing with a kind of erotic domesticity that Zac had never encountered before.

He could remember stumbling into the kitchen of his grandparents’ house one day when he’d been about six and looking around in wonder at this alien place full of delicious smells and people and things. Until his nanny had come and scolded him for wandering off. That had literally been the first time he’d seen a kitchen.