The Brunelli Baby Bargain

There had been one other.

Cesare closed his eyes, but it did not stop him hearing her voice in his head. Sometimes he thought she had been an erotic figment of his imagination, but his imagination would not have been capable of conjuring such vivid memories. He heard her voice saying things that nobody else had dared, but every word and every accusation had been true.

‘Gutless wonder’ had perhaps been a little harsh, but a flicker of a smile crossed his face at the recollection—his response at the time of her comments had not been such a tolerant or objective one.

She had become the innocent—though provocative—focus of all the inner rage and impotent fury that consumed him.

His nerve endings had been exposed and stripped bare—perhaps just by her voice. The husky quality certainly had the ability to dig its way under a man’s skin.

She had said things that nobody else would, things that had needed saying. She had ripped away his defences with a few observations and made him feel what he had been trying not to—pain!

She had tapped into the protective hollowness that he had been carrying around.

The sex had been something else—a mistake, but the sort that he would like to make again, he mused, a reflective smile playing around the corners of his lips.

‘People always walk on eggshells around you,’ Tim retorted, snapping Cesare out of his reverie, ‘because you intimidate the hell out of them.’ That much at least had not changed since the accident.

‘You’re suggesting I’m not a fair man? That I’m a bully?’ Cesare asked, sounding interested rather than offended by the possibility.

‘I’m suggesting you’re a man who sets himself high standards and expects others to live up to them, but not everyone has your—focus.’

It had taken more than mere focus for Cesare to overcome the personal demons that had arisen after he’d suffered losing his sight.

It had taken a will of steel.

‘About this girl…?’

Cesare’s fingers drilled an impatient tattoo on the desk. ‘You know my opinion of this sort of pointless political correctness, so why waste this woman’s time and mine?’

‘She was included by mistake, her name is Sam…’ Tim’s explanation trailed away as he added coaxingly, ‘Couldn’t you just see her?’ The moment the words left his lips a flush mounted his fair, freckled face and he broke off before saying awkwardly, ‘I mean…’

Cesare lifted a sardonic brow. ‘I know what you mean, Timothy,’ he said, amusement in his voice. ‘And I do wish you would stop trying so hard to spare my feelings. But, no, I will not…see her. I can hardly be accused of sexual discrimination towards women in the workplace. Is it not a fact that we employ more women in senior management positions than any other comparable company?’

‘Yes…’

‘I have no problem with women in the workplace—it is just a woman in my office I do not want.’ He found the idea of having unseen eyes filled with pity following him around the office intolerable.

‘This one might be different.’

‘You mean she might not be caring and compassionate and she might not be unable to perform incidental tasks like sorting my diary because she is so busy oozing empathy and protecting me. It didn’t matter how rude I was—’

‘And you were.’

‘It didn’t matter.’

‘She still fell in love with you! I should have your problem,’ Tim muttered.

A spasm of distaste contorted Cesare’s dark lean features as he snorted. ‘Please do not confuse that sort of soppy sentimentality with love.’

CHAPTER TWO

‘I WON’T fall in love with you.’ Sam felt pretty safe in making this statement, though obviously she wouldn’t have felt as comfortable if she had been discussing falling in lust.

She had fallen deep and desperately in lust with this man about ten seconds after she’d set eyes on him. Lust had made her principles and self-respect vanish in a hot flash of indiscriminating hormones…

But love was a very different kind of beast; love bore no resemblance to a bolt of lightning that robbed you of your ability to think; love wasn’t about chemicals; it happened gradually, it grew in strength and it endured.

Lust, on the other hand, was made of much more flimsy material. It had no staying power…which was why Sam could look at Cesare now and feel nothing but…oh, God, looking at him was not a good idea!

The sound of her voice made both men turn their heads in her direction and Sam was forced to rapidly re-evaluate the staying power of her lust.

The hormones were still there and active!

She knew Cesare couldn’t see her but it felt as though he were staring right at her.

Sam’s heart was pumping so fast she could hardly drag air into her lungs.

Cesare looked so different. Would he shrug off the veneer of cultured sophistication as easily as he might shrug that impeccably tailored jacket over his broad shoulders…?

Well, she wasn’t going to hang around to find out, Sam reminded herself as the image of Cesare in her head began to shed more than his jacket!

‘I’m not here about the job, Mr Brunelli.’ And she wasn’t here to lust after his body. Lusting was what had got her in this mess to begin with!

His incredible eyes, sloe-dark and framed by preposterously long, curling ebony lashes, were trained directly on her face. Sam felt as if that piercing stare were seeing, not just her face, but the thoughts in her head, and as these thoughts involved him wearing very little it was a deeply disturbing feeling.

Cesare stilled, his hands clenching into fists at his sides as the deep little voice with the unique husky resonance hit him like a slap in the face.

He’d searched for her and been unable to find her, the woman who had appeared in his life then quietly vanished leaving only the scent of her body on his bed sheets to show she had not been a dream.

She was here. She had found him. A slow smile curved his lips as anticipation uncurled in his belly. After the accident his sexual appetite had gone into hibernation, but had been re-awoken with a vengeance by the owner of this voice. When she had vanished so, inexplicably, had his desire.

It was back!

Cesare’s deep voice cut through the stretching silence. ‘Leave us, Tim.’

Tim, who was walking across the room to Sam, stopped in his tracks at the curt request. Cesare could feel the other man’s astonished stare, but ignored it.

‘Leave you?’ Tim echoed as if he couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing. His glance slid to Sam. ‘With her?’

‘Yes.’ One corner of Cesare’s mouth lifted and he sketched a sardonic smile.

Sam’s sense of insecurity deepened. She had mentally prepared herself to expect one thing, but this wasn’t it! Not only had Cesare’s appearance undergone a transformation, so had his manner.

The Cesare Brunelli in Scotland had been struggling with demons of self-doubt as he came to terms with what had happened to him. He had been angry and frustrated, his manner abrasive and belligerent.

This man, with his air of unstudied authority, looked as if he’d never experienced a moment of self-doubt in his life!

‘I’ll call if I feel in danger, Tim.’

And what will I do if I feel in danger? Sam thought as she drew a deep breath. She already felt in danger—of losing her mind if nothing else.

This is what I wanted, she reminded herself. But suddenly being alone with Cesare Brunelli no longer seemed so desirable.

‘Hold on, Tim,’ Cesare ordered, and Tim paused. ‘What does she look like?’

‘Pardon?’

‘Is she a blue-eyed blonde, a brown-eyed brunette…?’

Cesare already knew that her face was level with his heart, he knew that her figure was correspondingly petite and the skin that covered those delicious slight curves was smooth and silky. It was a shock for him to recognise how often during the intervening weeks he had thought of the face he had traced with his fingers, the face with the small, determined chin, tip-tilted nose and wide, lush mouth. His musing had been frustrated by the inability to put a colour to her eyes or to know the shade of the long silky tresses he had speared his fingers into and smoothed from her brow.

‘She has deep blue eyes—very blue—and auburn hair,’ Tim said, without looking to check the details. He then looked embarrassed and threw Sam a self-conscious and apologetic look. ‘Sorry.’

Sam shook her head. ‘It isn’t you who has no manners.’ Neither did he have an aura of raw sexuality that made it impossible for a person to relax in his company.

The pointed comment drew a hastily cut-off chuckle from Tim, who then quickly vanished.

The door closed with a click and she took a deep breath. ‘I’m…’

Cesare tilted his head to one side. Red hair explained the temper and meshed perfectly with his mental image. ‘I know who you are, cara. You seem to have made quite an impression on Timothy,’ he stated, not looking entirely pleased by this observation. ‘So a blue-eyed redhead…?’

‘I hardly think the colour of my eyes is relevant.’

‘Possibly, but as we are on such intimate terms… Now, I don’t think we were ever formally introduced…Sam…?’

To his mind a boy’s name was entirely inappropriate for the most feminine woman he had ever encountered.

‘How did you know that it was me?’ She shook her head and directed her wary gaze at his face. ‘You couldn’t, you can’t…’ Unless…?

She took a stumbling step backwards as he began to cross the room towards her, moving with confidence as he negotiated his route past several obstacles including a chair that stood in his way.

If she hadn’t known already it would never have crossed her mind that he was blind.

Maybe he wasn’t any longer?

His next mocking words revealed he had read her thoughts.

‘I may be blind, cara, but I’m not stupid.’

But I am, she thought as she stared at his mouth and thought about it on her skin… She shivered and wrapped her arms around herself protectively. She was glad that he could not see the giveaway action.

‘Then how?’

‘Your voice is very distinctive.’ Low and smoky with a sexy little rasp. The muscles along his taut jaw tightened as his resentment stirred. Like an annoying tune, he hadn’t been able to get that husky sound out of his head.

Or her.

Sam’s fingers clenched and she said quickly, ‘A lot of people have a Scottish accent.’

But only one had that voice.

Cesare had not doubted for one second that this was the woman who had spent that night in Scotland with him. ‘And your perfume…’

He swallowed hard, causing a visible wave of contraction beneath the brown skin of his throat. His nostrils flared as his body responded to the warm floral female scent in his nostrils.

‘I don’t use perfume,’ she protested hoarsely.

He had stopped close enough so that all she had to do was reach out and she could touch him, and she felt an almost overwhelming compulsion to do just that.

This was crazy! She hadn’t come here to revisit this insanity, Sam thought as she gulped and tried to tear her eyes from his beautiful face. She failed—the man was totally compelling.

‘And now the mystery woman has a name…’ The indentation between his eyebrows deepened. ‘Sam…?’

The way he wrapped his tongue around her name sent an illicit shiver down her spine.

‘Samantha, but everyone calls me Sam.’

‘I prefer Samantha.’

Sam was wondering how to respond to that when without warning he stretched out his hand. She closed her eyes and swayed as the sensitive tips of his long brown fingers trailed slowly down the curve of her cheek.

‘So you are real. I was beginning to wonder, but for the scratches on my back I might have decided you were a figment of my imagination.’

The hot, mortified colour flew to Sam’s cheeks as she lowered her gaze, unable to maintain eye contact even though he couldn’t see her.

‘Look, I expect you’re wondering why I’m here.’ She’d started to wonder much the same thing herself… This was something that could have been done at a distance—clinically.

But then you wouldn’t have seen him, pointed out the sly voice in her head, and isn’t that what you really wanted…?

Cesare shook his head. ‘No, I assume you want something. I’d like to flatter myself and think it is my body, but…’

A choking sound escaped Sam’s throat. ‘You’re really not that fantastic,’ she told him as the erotic images playing in her head stood witness to her whopper of a lie.

‘That’s not what you said at the time… “Perfect, utterly perfect” were words mentioned several times, I think, and you also appeared to have a very high opinion of my abilities in bed.’

‘If you were any sort of a gentleman you wouldn’t have brought that up.’

‘I’m not.’

She shook her head. ‘Not what?’

Her stomach muscles clenched as the corners of his lips lifted in a slow predatory smile. ‘A gentleman, cara, not in any sense of the word, but then it wasn’t my beautiful manners that made you jump into bed with me, was it?’

‘I can’t believe I ever felt sorry for you!’ she gasped, glaring at him.

His head went back as though she had struck him. With nostrils flared and a thin white line etched around the sculpted outline of his lips, he retorted in a voice edged with ice, ‘So you slept with me because you felt sorry for me?’

Sam’s brow puckered into a frown as she returned to a mystery she had still not fully resolved to her own satisfaction. ‘I really don’t know why I did it—I’m always so sensible.’ She gave a perplexed shake of her head and sighed. ‘I knew what I was doing, I knew it was crazy, but it was as if…’

As he listened to her faltering response the hostility drained from Cesare’s expression. ‘You just had to in the same way you had to take your next breath.’

Sam looked up, amazed to hear her own feelings so simply but accurately expressed. ‘Exactly like that!’ Then, realising what she had just admitted and to whom she had admitted it, she blushed to the roots of her hair and added defensively, ‘I don’t feel sorry for you any more.’

The wolflike smile that revealed his even white teeth made Sam wonder if she had been too subtle in her effort to make the point that the madness had passed and she no longer felt unable to control herself.

‘But we are forgetting the formalities, Samantha.’ He said her name as though testing the taste of it on his tongue before inclining his dark head and announcing formally, ‘I am Cesare. But of course you already know this…you are here. The only question remaining is still why?’

The why was something she was still working her way around to. ‘I didn’t know your name when I…when we…’

‘Went to bed because you were consumed by pity—I must say you hid it well.’

The sardonic insertion brought a flush to her cheeks. ‘Oh, I didn’t feel it then, not until I saw your picture in an article.’ She had not believed for a moment that the man described as the financial genius of his generation was the same man she had spent the night with. Then she had read the brief paragraph that mentioned an accident that had robbed him of his sight and the subsequent calling-off of his marriage to a well-known actress.

‘And now you have discovered a new depth of feeling for me?’

Sam, baffled by the ironic suggestion, shook her head. ‘I…’

‘Now you deeply regret, in hindsight, leaving while I was sleeping?’

The guilty colour climbed to Sam’s cheeks. ‘That was… I…’ How could she explain the fact that she had been too embarrassed to hang around, that she’d never woken up beside a man before and she had panicked?

‘No need for explanations—I understand this change of heart totally.’

‘I doubt that,’ she muttered drily.

‘Oh, yes, I know from experience how people’s attitudes change when they discover how much money I have.’

It took the space of several seconds for Sam’s brain to translate the sarcasm. Teeth clenched, she levelled an angry, glittering violet-blue-eyed glare at his lean, sardonic face.

A man who had such a jaundiced view of human nature was not likely to greet the news he had fathered a child with an open mind.

‘For the record, I don’t care about your money.’

Cesare was conscious of a feeling of irrational disappointment as he dragged a hand through his dark hair—she was the same as everyone else after all.

What was her angle?

Cesare had never been a man who indulged in one-night stands and he considered men who slipped away like thieves in the night were displaying at the very least bad manners. He saw no reason not to apply the same rules to women.

And while her walking out on him had initially made him as mad as hell, once the anger had worn off he had realised she had just given and not asked for anything in return, which in his world made her pretty unique. Alas it now seemed that she was not so special.

‘Of course you don’t.’

His cynical drawl made her want to hit him. ‘And if I was as cynical as you…’ She drew a deep breath and bit back the retort, forcing herself to continue with more moderation as she added honestly, ‘I really had no idea who you were when I…we…at the time, and quite honestly I wish I still didn’t. But I was researching for an article and your photo…’

‘Researching…?’

Sam misread the edge in his voice as skepticism and she raised her chin in defence.

‘Actually, I work for the Chronicle,’ she said, trying to sound casual and failing—she still got a buzz from people looking impressed when she told them her job.

Cesare did not look impressed. In fact he couldn’t have looked less impressed. ‘You’re a journalist?’

‘Yes…’ Hearing the defensive note in her voice, she bit her lip and added, ‘I happen to be very good at what I do.’

‘I do not doubt it.’

His sneer left her in no doubt that this comment was not intended as a compliment.

‘I take it you have a problem with journalists.’

Cesare bared his teeth in a snarling smile, giving himself a moment to contain the fury he could feel hammering inside his skull before he responded in a voice that was wiped clean of all emotion save contempt.

‘I suppose it is a job that would suit someone with no moral scruples.’ The person who had interviewed the family of the child he had pulled from the burning car had certainly had nothing that approached a moral. They had added to the anguish by asking the parents while their child lay critically ill if they felt responsible for Cesare’s own loss of sight.

The careless observation drew a gasp of startled anger from Sam’s lips.

‘I try not to generalise and I admit that most journalists I know would stop short of lying their way into someone’s bed to get a juicy story,’ Cesare said, shaking his head. ‘I should have, but you know I didn’t see this one coming… I should have known there is no such thing as a free lunch.’

An open-handed slap landed with a resounding crack on the side of his face, the force of the blow sending his head sideways.

Shame and shock rolled over Sam as she pressed both hands to her heaving chest. She had just seen red when he made that snide remark. It might not have been deep and meaningful to him, but he didn’t have to trivialise and make the night sound so cheap and nasty.

She was shaking. She had never struck anyone in anger in her life…it wasn’t in her nature.

Just as it wasn’t in her nature to have a one-night stand.

It was this man! Tears of frustration swam in her eyes as he added insult to injury by laughing.

‘You think this is funny?’

One hand laid against the red mark on his lean cheek, he lifted his broad shoulders in an expressive shrug. ‘At last,’ he drawled, ‘I’ve found a woman who doesn’t make any concessions to my disability. If only you weren’t also a callous, manipulative little bitch you might well be the perfect PA…or even,’ he added, his voice dropping an octave to become so sexy and suggestive that a flash of heat was sent across the surface of Sam’s skin, ‘the perfect mistress.’

‘If that’s the post you’re interviewing for I can see why you’re struggling to fill it!’ she snarled, thinking how a job like that would have them queuing around the block! ‘No wonder your fiancée left you!’

She watched as he tilted his head slowly to one side. There was no suggestion in his expression that the jibe had hurt him, but she felt a surge of guilt anyway.

‘It was in the article I read,’ she admitted gruffly. And she, like, she suspected, most of the people reading it, had not for one second believed that the separation between the glamorous couple had preceded the accident that had left the billionaire blind.

‘And I was downstairs when Candice…so are things all right between you now?’

Her fishing trip went unrewarded. ‘Is this professional interest?’

There was that sardonic inflection in his voice again. ‘Your love life doesn’t interest me professionally or otherwise.’ Though she seemed to be doing a pretty good impression of someone who did care. ‘I’m sorry,’ she added, feeling the focus of her anger shifting to the woman who had left the man she loved when he needed her.

What kind of woman did that?

A beautiful one, she thought as an image of the blonde actress in the sexy red dress formed in her head. Sam had put the immediate strong wave of antipathy she had felt towards the article’s photo of the actress smiling up at Cesare down to the strong resemblance the woman had to the one Will had dumped her for. Now Sam had seen Candice in the flesh she knew that she had been doing the actress an injustice. She was far more beautiful in reality, oddly enough, also more real was the antipathy that Sam felt towards her.

The pity in Sam’s apology caused Cesare’s brows to twitch into a straight line.

‘You are sorry for what?’ he enquired warily.

‘Well, that she left you, of course!’ Sam retorted, her voice cracking with dislike and aggravation as she immediately contradicted herself by adding, ‘Though I don’t blame her, because you may be blind but you’re still a total bastard. You know, I really wish that I had slept with you for a story…because if I had I would be feeling a lot less stupid now!’ she declared shrilly.

‘Then if not for a story, why did you sleep with me?’

Sam ignored the question. She’d had practice—she’d been doing just that to the ones in her own mind for the last twelve weeks. ‘You think I’d write about what happened? You think I want to advertise the fact I slept with you! You think I want my family and friends to know?’ She shook her head and told him grimly, ‘Nothing could be farther from the truth. I’m ashamed of what I did!’

Having listened to her emotional diatribe with an expression approaching boredom, he leapt on her last comment.

‘You think sex is something to be ashamed of?’

The suggestion brought an angry flush to her cheeks.

‘Only sex with you! I’ve had relationships—I was engaged.’ He really does not need to know this, she told herself.

‘Engaged?’ For some unfathomable reason Cesare experienced a flash of searing anger at the image that went with this statement.

‘Yes, engaged! For your information I have a perfectly healthy attitude to sex! I’m not some sort of repressed…’ She stopped, just managing to cut her retort short of total suicidal disclosure—it turned out she needn’t have bothered.

CHAPTER THREE

‘VIRGIN?’ As Cesare spoke the memory of Sam’s hoarse cry of wonder echoed in his head, but as the memory dredged up feelings he did not want to examine he pushed it away.

Now, the suggestion drew a strangled cry of dismay from her throat.

He arched a dark brow. ‘You thought I wouldn’t notice?’

‘Hoped.’ Sam bit her lip as the admission escaped uncensored.