Escape for Easter: The Brunelli Baby Bargain / The Italian Boss's Secret Child / The Midwife's Miracle Baby

‘I remember.’ It was still hard to believe, even more so now that he had conquered the demons of primitive fear he had been wrestling in Scotland. Did he resent the fact she had seen him when he was not totally in control?

‘In case you didn’t recognise it, that was black humour.’

‘No, that was bad taste.’

‘I’m famous for it.’

Sam couldn’t respond to the quip; her facial muscles felt locked in a tragic expression. ‘Look…’ She paused, wondering what to call him. She couldn’t call the father of her child Mister! ‘Look, Cesare—’

Some emotion she could not interpret flickered at the backs of his eyes. ‘Was that so hard?’ he asked.

Her eyes widened. Even though he couldn’t pick up on the cues of body language and facial expressions everyone took for granted, he was scarily perceptive.

‘Was what so hard?’

‘Saying my name.’

She was too emotionally whacked to prevaricate. ‘Yes, it was.’ And why not? Anything connected with him was hard work!

‘Cesare, the fact is I’ve had a bad day. The last person in the world I want to see is you!’ Unable to stop them, she felt the tears start to roll down her cheeks once more and she wiped them away with the back of her hand.

‘Sometimes it helps to talk about it.’

‘For goodness’ sake, don’t turn kind and understanding now—not unless you want me to cry all over you, and that isn’t a pretty sight,’ she warned him darkly.

Cesare, who was well aware that even the most generous of critics could not have termed his recent actions either kind or understanding, reached out and touched the side of her cheek. She twisted her head away, but not before the shiver that ran through her body communicated itself to him through his fingertips.

‘The advantage of being in the company of a blind man, cara, is you can relax about the way you look and not worry about bad-hair days.’

He might not be able to see her face or read her body language, but Sam recognised with a sense of dismay that she felt more exposed on every level when she was near him.

‘I could never relax in your company.’ She bit her quivering lips and added before he could read something revealing into her retort, ‘I tried to talk to you…Cesare, and all it got me was a headache. Look, I’m sorry. I know you were only trying to do the right thing by suggesting we get married…you’re Italian and the family thing is…’

She stopped as her shoulders began to shake with the effort of biting back the sobs that were locked in her throat. Her head sank to her chest as she began to sob in earnest.

Her muffled cries tore at Cesare’s heart the way no woman’s tears ever had.

He took a step forward and walked into an unseen obstacle. Stepping over it with a curse, he extended his hands and felt the silky top of her head. She lifted it and his hands slid to frame it. He moved a thumb across the wetness of her cheeks.

She sniffed and covered his hands with her own, but, instead of pulling them away, they stayed there holding his in place. ‘Sorry, this isn’t about you. I have to focus.’

Cesare told himself the same thing a hundred times a day—he had to focus and stay in control. When he spoke he did so from experience—he knew that ignoring feelings did not make them go away. ‘No, you need to let go.’ She had been there when he had let go and had taken the full brunt of his rage when he had.

The rest of his sentence remained unsaid as she suddenly walked into his arms, burrowed her wet face into his chest and said in a voice muffled by his sweater, ‘I need you to shut up and hold me.’

For a second Cesare didn’t react at all to the imperious command. Inner conflict was tearing him apart, which made no sense—there was only conflict when someone wasn’t sure they had done the right thing, and Cesare, not a man afflicted with self-doubt, was sure.

He had been able to view the situation with total objectivity. The ability to have a clear overview without getting bogged down with emotional irrelevancies combined with luck was a talent that had helped make him a very wealthy man. He was discovering that it wasn’t easy to retain a grip on that objectivity when his arms were filled with a soft, weeping woman. Her scent flooded his senses and his arms closed around her.

Feelings, strong and unfamiliar, stirred as he stroked her hair and felt her quivering body relax. He slid the bulky wet coat she wore off her shoulders and moved his hands in a soothing motion down her spine. Then he propped his chin against the top of her glossy head and tried to keep things in perspective.

There would be other jobs.

But that wasn’t the point and Cesare knew it. He had known it when he had rung the proprietor of the Chronicle and called in a favour, but he had rationalised his actions—that was harder now when he was seeing the consequences up close and personal.

Very close!

Her curves slotted into his angles as if they had been made to complement each other. He tried to think about why he was doing this, but thoughts of having her soft and warm underneath him kept intruding.

He had been angry and in shock; his pride had been hurt when she had called him second best. He was still assailed by a need to hear her retract that statement, an odd desire for a man who had never given a damn for anyone’s opinion of him.

What she thought of him was not relevant, though he would clearly be more comfortable married to someone who didn’t hate his guts.

They must be married.

His immediate move after she had left his offices had been to cancel his trip back to Italy the next morning. His next had been the call to Mark James to call in a favour. The man had not been entirely happy at the request to interfere with what was, he pointed out, a purely editorial decision, but he had obliged anyway.

Samantha would not be offered a contract.

It seemed reasonable to Cesare to assume that being without a job would make the fiercely independent Samantha appreciate the insecurity of her position. She would be in a more favourable frame of mind to consider his proposal, or at least not dismiss it out of hand.

The irony was not lost on Cesare. He had spent his entire adult life escaping the clutches of women with designs on him—or at least his money—and now he was being forced to employ deception and dirty tactics in order to sell himself as a good marriage bargain.

Cesare had pushed aside any disquiet he felt about employing such methods; he would do anything to ensure that, unlike himself, his child would not be brought up without a father. That his child would never feel as though he didn’t belong. Parents wanted for their children the things they had been deprived of and he was no exception.

While she gave vent to her pent-up emotions Sam was unaware of anything but the shelter and security Cesare’s arms offered. She ought to have pulled away the second she became aware of anything else, like the heat and hardness of his body and the male, clean, musky scent of his skin, but she didn’t. She stayed there, her eyes tight shut, wanting the moment to last.

Cesare was the cause of, not the solution to, her problems, which made the fact she felt safe for the first time in weeks in his arms all the more bizarre.

She was losing it, she told herself.

Hands flat against his chest, she pushed away.

There was an awkward silence.

‘S-sorry about that. You were in the wrong place at the wrong time, I’m afraid.’

He arched a brow, the roughness in his deep voice masking the emotions he felt hearing the catch in her voice. ‘Things will look better in the morning—is that what they say?’

‘Not in this case. I lost my job today.’ Why was she telling him this?

Without waiting for him to respond, she walked into the sitting room and took up a cross-legged posture on an armchair. When she looked up she saw he had followed her and was feeling his way along the wall.

For a moment she was lost in admiration and awe for the way he had adapted. She could imagine nothing more terrifying than walking into somewhere strange and not having a clue of where she was. Yet he betrayed no hesitation. His dominating presence radiated confidence and immediately made the small room feel a lot smaller.

There was no doubt Cesare Brunelli was a very remarkable man—even if he was extremely aggravating.

‘There’s a chair just to your left.’

Cesare accepted the information with a nod and felt for the chair before he lowered himself into it.

‘Why did you lose your job?’

‘It turns out I’m not as good at what I was doing as I thought. Do you dislike bad journalists less than competent ones?’

He frowned. ‘Is that what they said? That you were…’

‘Hopeless.’ She shrugged and stared at her fingers clenched in her lap. ‘Not directly,’ she admitted with a twisted smile. ‘But it’s fairly obvious.’ A person had to accept facts even when they were unpalatable.

Cesare was annoyed by the flat acceptance in her voice. He had manipulated the situation, he had wanted her to feel vulnerable—just not this vulnerable. She was a fighter; she’d been fighting since the moment they had met!

Somehow it felt wrong to him to hear her sound so resigned and defeated.

‘So you’re going to give up.’

Sam lifted her head, the anger she had heard in his voice, the anger she assumed was aimed at her, etched in the taut lines of his face.

‘I didn’t have you down as a defeatist,’ he added.

His harsh contempt stung. ‘I’m not, I’m a realist.’ She glared at him and realised she still had no idea why he was here.

She supposed it had something to do with the baby, but what? Her eyes widened then narrowed as an unpleasant suspicion took hold; her hands clenched, her heart felt heavy and cold like ice in her chest. If he dared suggest she get rid of the baby…

‘What will you do? Stay with your parents?’

‘Dad died when I was ten, Mum died last year.’

‘I’m sorry.’

There was caution in her expression as she searched his face. His sympathy seemed genuine. His mouth distracted her as it always did. She felt a stab of guilt and tore her eyes away. Staring that way when he couldn’t see felt like an intrusion. She was invading his privacy like some sort of voyeur.

She gave a little noncommittal grunt and added, ‘It wasn’t totally unexpected—she’d lived with illness for years. She’d been in remission before and beat it when it came back, but last time…’ emotion clogged in her throat as she struggled to keep her voice level ‘…she didn’t.’

The prosaic little sniff made something tighten in Cesare’s chest. He could not see her face but he knew she was frowning, terrified that he would think she was courting his sympathy.

How did he know that?

‘Are your parents alive?’

‘Very much so.’

‘I suppose you’re worried about what they will think about the baby.’

‘They are busy with their own lives.’ His father had discovered the joys of parenthood the previous year when he turned sixty. His new wife was twenty-two. His mother’s attention was focused on his teenage half-sisters and keeping herself youthful looking for her husband—she had never admitted to the cosmetic surgery but the lines kept magically disappearing.

‘Will you tell them?’ As Sam asked the question she wondered whether he was thinking there would be no need if he persuaded her to terminate the pregnancy.

Cesare smoothly steered away from the subject of his family. ‘So what are your plans, then?’

‘Look for a new job.’ She glared at him and thought, And keep my baby. ‘I need to pay the rent. You never know, my experience as a cleaner might be useful. I might come to you for a reference.’

She watched his lips curl into a smile and knew he was going to say something that she wouldn’t like—or maybe like too much? Her problem was her reactions to Cesare were so incompatible with the common sense everyone said she possessed.

His voice dropped an octave as he observed smokily, ‘The talents I could verify might not get you the sort of job you’re after, cara.’

She knew he was trying to insult her, not seduce her, so the thrill of excitement that made her stomach muscles quiver was all the more inexplicable.

‘If all you can do is make snide, sarky comments like that you might as well leave—you might as well leave anyway!’ she yelled. ‘Unless you have any better suggestions.’ She blew her nose and tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear as she fixed him with a suspicious stare.

‘I do actually.’

Sam tensed. ‘I’m listening…’

‘Did you mean it yesterday?’

She eyed him warily. ‘Mean what?’

‘Mean me being blind had nothing to do with you knocking back my proposal.’

‘Yes, it didn’t.’ He was probably relieved today that she had refused.

‘Prove it.’

The challenge brought a furrow to her brow. ‘How?’

‘Say yes now.’

CHAPTER SEVEN

SAM jerked back in her seat as though someone had struck her.

‘You still want me to marry you?’ She gasped hoarsely.

Cesare gave a fluid shrug. ‘Why not? You are carrying my child, Samantha. Nothing has changed except your ability to support yourself.’ He angled an enquiring brow and tilted his head to one side in a listening attitude.

Sam would have given anything to tell him it didn’t matter, that losing her job made no difference—but it did.

She glanced down at the hand laid against her still-flat belly. ‘Do you think I don’t know that?’ She chewed absently on her lower lip and sighed. ‘It’s ironic, really—I thought for a second you might have been here to suggest…’

Sam stopped, very conscious that he was alert to every nuance in her voice. He seemed to possess the disturbing ability to hear not only what a person said, but also what they didn’t say.

‘You thought I was going to suggest what?’

The admission came out in a defiant rush. ‘I thought you might not want me to go ahead with the pregnancy.’

He looked blank for a moment. ‘Not…’ Then he froze.

Sam watched the dark colour run up under his skin, deepening his naturally dark complexion and then receding, leaving him deadly pale.

With unwilling fascination she watched his chest lift as he struggled to contain the outrage that was written into every hard line of his expressive face.

When he finally spoke his low voice vibrated with the strength of his feelings. ‘Dio Mio, you thought that I would ask you to terminate the pregnancy?’ He broke off and slid into a flood of extremely angry-sounding Italian.

Sam stubbornly struggled to cling to the shreds of her defiance in face of his display of incandescent rage. ‘I can see how it would seem like a solution to you.’ She winced, thinking that she sounded like a sulky, petulant child. Why, she despaired, did she always end up feeling as though she was at fault where he was concerned?

Cesare’s nostrils flared as he sucked in a deep breath. It was nice to know what a high opinion she had of him. ‘You see nothing, cara!’ he ground from between clenched teeth. ‘Except what you wish to see! I am the bad man in your story, but this is not a story and if it was it would not belong to you alone.’

‘Very cryptic. Are you trying to make a point?’ she challenged.

He inclined his dark head in a jerky motion. ‘This is our story…our child. And a child needs two parents.’

‘They generally have two. It isn’t optional, unlike marriage.’ She jumped to her feet to put some distance between them and began to pace the room angrily.

‘There is no need to bounce around in that emotional way.’

‘I’ll be as emotional as I like,’ she retorted.

‘This marriage will be a paper arrangement…’

She cut across him shrilly. ‘You’re talking as if it is inevitable and, anyway, what are you talking about…paper arrangement?’

‘Marriages do not have to be for ever.’

His own parents’ marriage had not been. His father—a serial adulterer—had walked out on Cesare’s tenth birthday and the contact with his absent parent during the rest of his childhood had been limited to Christmas cards and the odd birthday present—usually a month or so late.

Cesare was determined that his own son would never be the little boy inventing the marvellous trips his father had taken him on to friends who had full-time fathers. His mother had done her best, but once she had remarried her new family—including three younger half-sisters—had obviously been the main focus of her attention.

Cesare had never quite belonged.

Sam stopped within a foot of his chair and said wistfully, ‘I’d rather thought my marriage would last the test of time. Of course a man who is willing to take on another man’s child might not be so easy to find.’

Cesare was silent as the words sank in—another man bringing up his child. Another man sharing a bed with Samantha.

The pressure in his temples increased, the dull throb became a deafening pounding.

But there was no hint of fury in his voice when he responded coldly, ‘I hardly think now is the moment to be emotional.’ The need to get his point across was more important than recognising the hypocrisy of the criticism. ‘I am offering you a practical solution. Life as a single parent is not a bed of roses.’

‘I’m aware of that,’ she snapped, angry because he had neatly tapped directly into the escalating anxieties that were giving her nightmares. She had no job, the rent on her flat was astronomical and the place was not suitable for a baby, let alone a small child. What Cesare was offering, as cold, clinical and unpalatable as it seemed, would solve all her immediate problems.

She was well aware that most women in her situation would not view being offered marriage by an eligible billionaire as a problem. She should be thinking of the baby as he was, not herself. It wasn’t as if he wanted to be saddled with a wife, but he was prepared to make that sacrifice.

‘You cannot support even yourself.’

She pushed aside her tortured reflections and threw him a humourless smile. ‘I see you prescribe to the kick-them-when-they’re-down school of thought.’ On anyone else the dark line scoring the razor-edged angle of his incredible cheekbones might have been suggestive of embarrassment, but he wasn’t anyone else and she seriously doubted if he stocked the sentiment. ‘Thanks for the concern, Cesare,’ she said, laying on the insincerity with a trowel. ‘But I’ll…we’ll manage.’ Even she could hear the note of hysterical uncertainty in her voice.

His lips curled as he directed a black stare of hauteur in her direction. ‘I do not wish my child to manage. I wish my child to have a stable upbringing, a father….’

‘And you think I don’t.’

His dark lashes lowered, brushing his cheeks. ‘A mother should put the needs of her child ahead of her own wishes.’

Sam gasped. ‘That is low, Cesare, even for you.’

He looked irritated and ran a hand through his hair, causing it to stick up at the front. ‘What do you expect? You won’t listen to reason, you’re too stubborn and idealistic and…Dio mio! Do you not realise how your life would change as a single parent? Job satisfaction would be very low on your list of priorities. You would be forced to take work that paid, but did not necessarily offer you the challenges you need.’

‘Challenges,’ she echoed bitterly. ‘I don’t need challenges, I need—’

‘Security,’ he finished for her smoothly.

‘Well, if I’m short of cash I can always do a kiss and tell. I still have contacts. Just imagine,’ she invited, ‘what the tabloids would pay.’

Cesare leaned back in his chair and Sam was irritated to see that he didn’t look too bothered by the idea of his name being splashed all over the tabloids. ‘Is that a threat?’ he asked in a conversational tone.

‘Could be.’

‘The trick with threats is to never make them if you have no intention of following through.’

She eyed him with intense dislike. ‘You would be the expert on threats.’

He smiled. ‘If I make one you can be sure that I will follow through.’

Sam lowered her eyes before the irony hit her. She was dodging the stare of a man who couldn’t even see her! He could intimidate her, though, without even trying. And Sam had no problem believing he would follow through with any threats he made—none at all.

Cesare was a dangerous man—she had known that from the moment she saw him. Her problem was she had a sneaking suspicion that that was part of his attraction for her. He was the forbidden fruit and to her eternal shame she couldn’t look at him without contemplating taking another bite out of him!

‘You have an original way of proposing, I’ll give you that.’

‘You wish me to go down on one knee and declare undying love?’

The sarcasm caught Sam on a raw nerve she hadn’t known she had and she covered her reaction with a display of flippancy. ‘Why not? I could do with a good laugh.’

Cesare ignored her mumbled facetious retort and turned his head so that all she could see was the pure, perfect lines of his patrician profile. ‘Laughing would not be out of the question. You are dwelling on the negative aspects of this marriage, but there are some more positive ones. Let us be serious for a moment.’

The suggestion filled Sam with deep foreboding.

‘You are an ambitious woman. I could help you.’

‘If I’m going to get anywhere it will be on my own merits!’

‘So we will leave nepotism aside for one moment. Marriage to me would give you the luxury of being able to pick and choose your next career move—on your own merits—or, on the other hand, should you wish you could take time out and spend time with the baby. The point is the choice would be yours.’

‘You’re a good salesman,’ she conceded, her expression abstracted as she dropped to her knees beside his chair. ‘But the thing about pacts with the devil is that they sound terrific until you read the small print and then you realise you’ve signed your soul away. So what do you get out of it? Why marriage?’

‘The devil—surely that is typecasting?’

Sam ignored the dry interruption. ‘Surely it would be a whole lot simpler to just make some financial provision for the baby?’

‘Possibly,’ he conceded. ‘But the legal rights of a father when he is not married to his child’s mother are, as I understand it, virtually non-existent, and I, cara, wish to have an equal say in how our child is raised.’

‘So that’s what this sudden desire to get married is about?’ It was totally irrational to find his motivation hurtful. It wasn’t as if she wanted him to love her or anything.

‘Partly,’ he admitted. ‘It is not a bad thing either that with a wife in the background I will hopefully not attract those women who wish to hold my hand while I cross the road.’

‘So that will be my job.’

‘No, I don’t think I’ll change the present arrangement, Paolo does not want to marry me. Besides, I suspect you would be more likely to lead me under a bus.’

‘Don’t give me ideas,’ she growled before she subsided into thoughtful silence. Although she could not seriously consider his crazy suggestion, she was starting to fully appreciate the vulnerability of her situation. Losing her job this way had served to emphasise the fact that she just couldn’t take anything for granted.

What if anything happened to her?

What if she became ill or worse…? What would happen to her baby then?

There was always her brother and his wife, but the young couple were struggling financially themselves and the last thing they needed was her adding to their problems.

‘What are you thinking?’ Cesare probed as the silence stretched and he struggled to hide his growing impatience. It frustrated him that he could not see her face.

‘You usually seem to know.’ Sam chewed on her lower lip and thought that sometimes he knew what she was thinking before she did. ‘Who is Paolo?’