Hot-Blooded Italians: Sicilian Husband, Unexpected Baby / A Tainted Beauty / Marriage Scandal, Showbiz Baby!

‘I am not a whore,’ she answered quietly. ‘You know that. That’s a cheap slur to make.’

His voice was equally quiet. ‘Maybe I knew it was the only one you would understand.’

Their eyes met in the most honest moment of communication they’d had all day and Emma could have wept at the way he was trying to hurt her. This whole scenario had been intended as a solution—and yet it seemed to have spawned a rash of unsightly problems of its own along the way, and she couldn’t for the life of her work out how they were going to come to some sort of compromise.

Vincenzo had dragged his gaze from her white face and was looking around him now, as if barely able to believe the surroundings in which he found himself. The faded sofa with a faint white frill where some of the stuffing was spilling out. The tired paintwork and the pale rectangles on the wall where pictures must once have hung and then been removed. The overriding sense that this was simply somewhere temporary—a place for life’s losers.

‘You…dare to bring my son up in a place like this?’ he questioned unsteadily. ‘To condemn him to a life of poverty.’

So he had not disputed the paternity claim! Relief washed over her but was quickly replaced with fear. And curiosity.

‘So you accept that he’s yours?’

Vincenzo chose his words carefully. He had expected to walk into the nursery and to see a baby—and to feel nothing more than he would feel for any baby. And perhaps there would have been a flare of jealousy, too—at being forced to confront the physical evidence that the woman he had married had been intimate with another man.

But it had not been like that. In fact, it had been like nothing he could ever have imagined. Because he had known immediately. On some subliminal level it had been instant—as if he had been programmed to recognise this little boy. He had seen photos of himself as a baby—and the similarity between himself and this infant was undeniable. But it was more than that. Something unknown had whipped at his heart as he’d looked down at that sleeping infant. Some primeval recognition. Some bond stretching back through the ages, as well as a blood line to take him into the unknown future.

‘What is his name?’ he demanded as he realised he didn’t even know his son’s name.

‘Gino.’

‘Gino,’ he repeated softly. ‘Gino.’

He said it quite differently from the way she did—pronounced it as it was probably intended to be pronounced—but the expression on his face belied the slight sense of wonder in his tone. There was something so forbiddingly unfamiliar about the way he was looking at her—something so icy cold and critical as his gaze swept over her. And Emma knew that she had to be strong—hadn’t she told herself that first thing this morning, at the beginning of a day which seemed to have stretched on for an eternity? She must not let him intimidate her.

‘So where do we go from here?’ she asked.

His eyes narrowed. She was still wearing her coat. So was he—but only a fool would remove it in these sub-zero temperatures. Was his son warm enough? Gino. This time he tried the word out in his mind and a dark swirl of unknown emotion began to weave distorting patterns around his heart.

Suddenly he stepped forward, his hand snaking out to bring her up close and hard into the heat of his body, her fragility sending his senses into overdrive. His free hand roved over her bottom, feeling its faint curve beneath the soft wool, splaying his fingers there as his heart began to pound, his arousal soaring as he ground its hard heat against her. ‘Feel how much I want you?’ he grated.

‘Vincenzo!’

There was a bleak and glittering look of finality in the black eyes before he drove his mouth down on hers and this time his kiss was punishing; angry. If kisses were supposed to be demonstrations of love, then this was their very antithesis. But that didn’t stop her responding to it—Emma couldn’t seem to prevent herself, no matter how much the voice of reason screamed in her ears to try.

And wasn’t there some primeval sense that the man who held her was the acknowledged father of her child? Now that he had seen Gino, seen him and accepted him—hadn’t that somehow forged some kind of unbreakable bond between the three of them? Some ancient, golden trinity which had been completed by Gino’s birth. Oh, you fool, Emma, she told herself. Inventing fantasies because they’ll make you feel better about doing…this…

‘Vincenzo!’ she moaned, opening her mouth beneath his—feeling his masculine heat and sensing the urgent tang of his desire. He had started to unbutton her coat now, and she was letting him. Just letting him push the fabric aside and skim his palms down over her hips. And now he was rucking her dress up, brushing his way negligently up to the apex of her thighs, and Emma felt herself wriggle impatiently, scraping her own hands across the broad reach of his shoulders, wanting to rip the coat away from him. Wishing that all their clothes could disappear, as if by magic. ‘Vincenzo,’ she said, again—more urgently this time.

He felt the plunder of his mouth on hers, the fierce thunder of his heart—his body so hard that he felt he might die if he didn’t plunge deep inside her molten softness. For a second he responded to her. Circled his hips against hers in a provocative and primitive enticement as old as time, and she swayed against him, as if he were sucking her towards him with some magnetic and irresistible force. He could rip her panties off as she liked them to be ripped, could straddle her until she screamed and bucked beneath him.

And then, as abruptly as he had caught her close to him, Vincenzo dropped his hands and let her go—not reacting when he saw her knees buckle, her hand reach out to grasp the arm of the sofa, to steady herself.

‘What am I thinking of?’ he questioned, as if speaking to himself, his voice distorted by the sound of self-disgust. Hadn’t he been tempted just then to do it to her one more time—despite the fact that she had kept his son hidden from him? To maybe dismiss the driver and take her to bed for the night and wake up in the morning to the sound of his son?

But wouldn’t that weaken his bargaining position if she sapped his appetite with her sweet sexuality tonight? And if he left her now, he would leave her aching, and wondering… For Vincenzo knew that surprise was the most effective element of all when you were bargaining hard for something.

‘Ah, Emma,’ he said in a voice of molten steel. ‘Too many times I have listened to my body where you are concerned, mia bella. Too many times have you used your pale sorcery to ensnare my body and to make me so hungry with need that I cannot think straight, but not now. For this is too important. Now I need to think with my head, instead of with my…’

His mouth twisted as a quick, downward glance indicated the source of his discomfort and he saw the flush of colour which flared along her cheekbones. How could she still blush like an innocent virgin, even while she had just been writhing in his arms like a red-hot alley cat? He stepped back from her, further away from her temptation, his face growing shuttered. ‘I shall return here tomorrow morning, at nine.’

Something in his voice alerted her to trouble. Real trouble. ‘Return for what, exactly?’ questioned Emma, trying to keep her own voice calm.

He raked his hand back through his tousled black hair. Wouldn’t she just love to know what was going on in his mind? ‘You’ll just have to wait and see,’ he declared softly.

CHAPTER EIGHT

EMMA spent a long, sleepless night—wondering how she could have been so stupid as to let herself be seduced by Vincenzo and lay herself open to all kinds of misinterpretation. She knew what his whole crazy, Sicilian attitude towards women was like. He would have considered her to have behaved wantonly—hadn’t that much been obvious in the icy way he had looked at her? From the way he had dropped his hands from her body as if he had been holding something dirty and contaminated?

He clearly felt nothing but contempt for her, and if she continued to behave in a way which would only increase that view, then she was just weakening her own position.

Because she should never for a moment forget who she was up against; a man who represented the full might of one of the richest and most powerful families in Sicily. She had seen the light of battle flare in his black eyes—and Emma wasn’t stupid. She had something which Vincenzo had yearned for all his adult life—his son and heir—and if they were no longer together as man and wife, then wouldn’t he go all out to try to win custody?

As the pale light of dawn crept through the curtains she pulled the duvet close round her shivering body wondering how she could ever have been so naïve not to have anticipated this. Had she thought when she first went to him that Vincenzo might behave like a civilised human being—when he had never behaved with a shred of civility in his life? Because everything was black and white in Vincenzo’s world. Women were sluts or they were virgins. Mistresses or wives. And she was never going to be able to change that.

So what would he do next?

As she climbed wearily from her bed, she tried to put herself in the mindset of her estranged husband. Would he try to prove her as an unfit mother? Would he attempt to use against her the very thing that she had gone to him for help with?

Pulling on a pair of old jeans and the thickest sweater she could find, Emma washed her face and hands and then went into the kitchen to make herself a cup of coffee before Gino awoke.

He slept later than usual. Which was absolutely typical, she thought. The one time she could have had a bit of a lie-in and here she was—prowling around the cottage, her nerves stretched tight as an elastic band, unable to settle to anything until at last Gino woke and she was able to hug his warm little body close to her.

She was mashing up some banana for his breakfast when the doorbell rang and she suddenly realised that she hadn’t even brushed her hair properly. Still, at least Vincenzo wouldn’t think that she was going on an all-out effort to…to… Emma frowned. How had he put it? To use her pale sorcery. But that was the trouble with Vincenzo—even when he was insulting you, he put it in such a way that it made you want to melt when you thought about it afterwards.

So don’t think about it, she told herself fiercely as she pulled open the door, her defensive expression dying when she saw it was Andrew standing there, a bowl of eggs in his hand and a rather rueful expression on his face.

‘Morning, Emma,’ he said gruffly, holding the bowl out. ‘I’ve brought you these. One of the farmers sent them over and I thought you might like them.’

Emma blinked. ‘Oh. Well, thanks, Andrew—how lovely. We’ll have them for tea.’

He was looking rather pink about the ears. ‘Er, is it all right if I come in for a minute?’

Surreptitiously, Emma glanced at her watch. It was still before nine—Vincenzo was unlikely to turn up this early. And even if he did, she was separated from him, wasn’t she? She happened to have a life—and that life didn’t include him or his old-fashioned view on how she should live it.

‘Of course,’ she said brightly. ‘I’m just about to feed Gino—do you want to put the kettle on and we can have a cuppa?’

He filled the kettle up and then turned to her, shifting from one foot to the other as if he were standing on something hot. ‘It’s just that I feel bad about announcing a rent increase when I know you can’t really afford it. So why don’t we forget we ever had that conversation?’

Emma blinked. ‘Forget it?’

‘Sure. After all,’ he continued, with a shrug, ‘you’re a good tenant—and the place is pretty ropey, really. You can carry on as you were, Emma—I shan’t mind.’

Emma turned her grimace into a smile as she poured out two steaming mugs full of tea and handed him one and then sat down to start feeding Gino. If only he had told her this before—then she needn’t have ever gone to Vincenzo, cap in hand and asking for some kind of divorce settlement.

But that wasn’t really true, was it? She had needed to speak to Vincenzo some time and maybe the rent increase had just brought matters to a head. She couldn’t keep running away from him all her life, burying her head in the sand and avoiding the inevitable—because it had been inevitable that Gino would one day meet his father.

But at least Andrew’s words had taken the sting and the urgency out of her situation. Removed that terrible, tearing feeling of panic.

‘That’s very sweet of you, Andrew—and I appreciate it.’

‘No. Don’t mention it,’ he said gruffly, stirring his tea for a moment before looking up, his eyes curious. ‘One of the groundsmen said there was a big car here last night.’

Emma’s paused, the banana midway to Gino’s mouth, before he grabbed for the spoon himself. ‘Is there something written into my tenancy agreement which forbids that?’ she questioned lightly as she helped him spoon it in.

‘Of course not. It’s just that you don’t often have visitors, and I—’ His head jerked up.

Gino’s squawk from the high chair meant that Emma hadn’t heard the knock at the door until it was repeated loudly—and so she barely noticed that Gino was shoving a fistful of pureed banana into her hair.

‘There’s someone at the door,’ said Andrew unnecessarily.

She wanted to tell him to leave—to spirit him away, or smuggle him out of the back door, until she realised that she was thinking like a madwoman. Hadn’t she vowed to be strong? So stop acting as if you’re doing something wrong. Andrew was her landlord and he had a perfect right to be here.

She pulled the door open to find Vincenzo standing there and her heart leapt in her chest. For this was a casual Vincenzo—a different creature entirely from the office billionaire who had seduced her so effectively yesterday. Today he was dressed in dark jeans and a dark jacket. An outwardly relaxed Vincenzo—and somehow all the more dangerous for that. Like a snake asleep in the sun who, when disturbed, would lift its head and stare at you with its deadly and unblinking eyes.

‘Good morning,’ she said, thinking that the very greeting was a complete fabrication—because what was good about this particular morning?

He didn’t acknowledge the welcome—his gaze instead flicking over her shoulder to survey the scene behind her. The baby sitting in a high chair, surrounded by mess—his attention caught by the noise at the door—and he was staring directly at Vincenzo, his dark brown eyes huge in his face.

Vincenzo felt a hot, almost painful curve around his heart as he stared back at the little boy with the same fascinated interest. But he was inhibited from doing what he really wanted, which was to walk straight over there and to pluck him out of the high chair, because there was a man—yes, a man—sitting in Emma’s kitchen with his feet underneath her table and drinking a cup of tea. What was more, he had not risen to his feet as one of Vincenzo’s employees would have done.

‘And who the hell are you?’ he demanded icily.

‘I beg your pardon?’ said Andrew.

‘You heard me. Who are you and what are you doing here, in my wife’s kitchen?’

‘Your wife?’ Andrew jumped to his feet and turned to Emma—his expression one of dismay and accusation. ‘But you told me your husband wasn’t on the scene any more!’

‘Oh, did she?’ came the dark, silky question from the other side of the room.

This was like a bad dream, thought Emma. She swallowed. ‘I think perhaps it’s best if you go now, Andrew.’

Andrew frowned. ‘You’re sure you’ll be okay?’

It was sweet of him to have asked—but, with a slight feeling of hysteria, Emma wondered what solution her landlord was about to offer to help get her out of this situation. Throw the simmering Sicilian off the premises perhaps—when he looked like some dark and immovable force? She managed a smile. ‘I’ll be fine,’ she said reassuringly.

An awkward kind of silence descended while Andrew let himself out of the front door and the moment it had closed behind him Vincenzo turned to her, his face a study in repressed fury.

‘You have been sleeping with him?’ he demanded in a low voice, aware that there was a child in the room.

Angrily, she flushed. ‘What do you think?’

‘I think that he does not look man enough to cope with your voracious sexual appetite, cara—although it might explain why you were so unbelievably hot for me.’ His black eyes scorched into her. ‘But you haven’t answered my question.’

‘Of course I haven’t been sleeping with him,’ she breathed, hurt and indignant and shaking. But he had now turned away—as if he couldn’t care less what the answer was. As if asking it had been nothing but careless sport designed to embarrass and humiliate her. And he had managed, hadn’t he? Achieved just that with flying colours.

Instead, he was walking towards the high chair, where Gino was still staring up at him with the engrossed attention which an eager member of the audience might give to a stage hypnotist.

He stood looking down at him for one long, immeasurable moment while his heart struck out a hard and heavy beat. ‘Mio figlio,’ he said eventually in a voice which was distorted with pain and joy. ‘My son.’

Inwardly, Emma flinched at the raw possession in his voice even as she marvelled that Gino—her son—was not backing away from Vincenzo, the way he usually did with strangers.

But Vincenzo is not a stranger, is he? He is as close a blood relative as you are. And maybe Gino recognises that on some subliminal level.

‘Vene,’ Vincenzo was saying softly, holding out his hands. ‘Come.’

To Emma’s astonishment, the baby blinked and played coy a couple of times—leaning back against the plastic chair and turning his head from this way to that as he fixed Vincenzo with a sideways glance. But Vincenzo didn’t push him, just continued to murmur to him in the soft, distinctive Sicilian accent until at last Gino wriggled a little and allowed Vincenzo to scoop him out of the high chair and into his arms.

Gino was letting someone he’d only just met pick him up and cuddle him! Emma’s world swayed. She felt sick, faint and, yes…jealous. That Vincenzo should so effortlessly win the affection of everyone he wanted. ‘He…he needs a wash,’ she said shakily, blinking her eyes furiously against the sudden prick of tears, barely able to believe what she was witnessing.

There was a pause as Vincenzo flicked his gaze over her. At her matted hair and pale face—broken only by two spots of colour at the centre of her cheeks. At the faded jeans and bare feet—worn with a bulky sweater, which so cleverly concealed the petite curves which lay beneath.

He did not know of another woman who would dare to appear before him in such a careless state, and when he looked at her objectively, it was hard to believe that she was his wife. And yet those big blue eyes still had the power to kick savagely at his groin. To twist him up inside. ‘And so do you, by the look of it,’ he bit out.

Knowing that she was about to cry, Emma fled into the bathroom—locking the door behind her—and turning on the shower to drown the muffled sound of her shuddered breathing. She let the water cascade down onto her face to mingle with her tears as her troubled thoughts spun round like a washing machine. What had she done? What had she done? Opened the floodgates to Vincenzo’s involvement—not just in her life, but in the life of Gino, too. And he had come rushing in with a great dark swamp of power and possession.

At least there was enough water in the antiquated tank for it to be piping hot—and as she washed the banana out of her hair it struck her that for once she was not running against the clock. She normally showered while Gino was sleeping, and often the water was tepid.

Of course, in her distress she hadn’t brought a change of clothes in with her. So she wrapped herself in the biggest bath towel and wound a smaller one around her damp hair and self-consciously walked back through to reach her bedroom, steeling herself to see Vincenzo in her sitting room. But he hadn’t even noticed her come in. He had other, far more important things on his mind.

Still carrying Gino, he was walking around the small room, stopping to peer at small objects—a photo of her mother here, a little clock she’d inherited there. And all the while he was speaking softly to Gino in Sicilian, and, directly afterwards, in English. And Gino was listening, fascinated—occasionally lifting his chubby little finger to touch the dark, rasping shadow of his father’s jaw.

He’s teaching him Sicilian, Emma realised, acknowledging the sudden bolt of fear which shot through her. But standing wrapped in a towel was no way to remonstrate with him, even if remonstration was an option—which she guessed it wasn’t, not really.

Black eyes looked up over the silky tangle of Gino’s head and met hers and he found anger vying with desire. But there was a child in his arms, a child who would be confused and frightened by any display of anger, and so Vincenzo forced himself to ask her a cool question. ‘Good shower?’

‘Lovely, thank you.’

He held her gaze as he let desire in. ‘Icanimagine,’ he said softly, eyes now drifting to the soft swell of her breasts visibly curving beneath the thin material of cheap towel.

Now she was shivering with more than cold and Emma turned her back on him, hating the mixed messages he was sending out to her and the way they were making her feel. It was as if he wanted to weaken her in every way he could—first, by being proprietorial with Gino and then by that unspoken, sensual scrutiny. She felt in a complete muddle—as if the Emma of yesterday had disappeared and now a stranger had taken her place.

She dressed quickly, choosing a pair of clean jeans and a different sweater; her normal, daily, practical and presentable uniform, which never in a million years could be described as flattering. But Emma was glad. She was unwilling to ‘dress up’—to look as if she might be trying to make an impression on him. Or have him accuse her of playing the temptress again.

Only when she’d brushed her hair and given it a quick blast of the dryer did she take in a deep breath and go back into the sitting room, where Vincenzo was now standing with his back to her, holding Gino and looking out down the garden at the spreading chestnut tree, as she herself had done a million times before.

Gino heard her first, for he turned in his father’s arms and then gave a little squawk and began to wriggle towards her and Emma held out her arms and took her son, burying her face in his curls to hide the great rush of unknown emotion which was threatening to swamp her.

His arms empty without the baby’s warm weight, Vincenzo walked back towards the window, his heart beating very loud and very strong, more shaken than he had anticipated. And when he turned to look at Emma, to look at her cradling the child in what he considered to be a completely over-the-top way, his mouth hardened.

She glanced up, trying to read his expression but failing as she encountered a stony black gaze which gave absolutely nothing away. But why should that surprise her? Apart from those first few, heady months—when they had been rocked by the power of sexual attraction masquerading as love—she never had been able to tell what was going on in that head of his. He didn’t ever tell her. He didn’t do confidences, he’d once told her. As if talking about feelings made a man look weak.

‘Do you have any coffee?’ he questioned unexpectedly.

She felt wrong-footed. ‘Probably not the kind you’re used to. I keep it in the fridge,’ she said, and then pointed at one of the kitchen cupboards. ‘There’s a cafetiere in there.’

‘So you have not adopted the foul, instant-coffee habit of your countrymen,’ observed Vincenzo caustically as he began to set about making a pot with the air of a man to whom the kitchen was unfamiliar territory.