Special Deliveries: Her Nine-Month Secret: The Secret Casella Baby / The Secret Heir of Sunset Ranch / Proof of Their Sin

‘Are you sitting down?’

‘You don’t sound in the least bit bothered!’ Holly ignored his question. Whilst she had been screaming like an enraged banshee, his tone of voice had been mild and unruffled. As it would be, she thought sourly, because he wasn’t the one having to endure a clutch of strangers with microphones hiding out in the shrubbery! Sooner or later, Claire and Sarah would have to go. They would be pursued, would probably love their fifteen minutes of fame and within seconds her story would have spread like wildfire through all the neighbouring villages and towns. That was how it worked in this part of the world. Lots of people knew her, had known her parents. She detested the thought of having her privacy invaded, her situation discussed and analysed on receipt of third-hand information. She was fully prepared to let Luiz take the blame for that occurrence.

‘I’ve had my fair share of nosy reporters. I’ve learnt how to deal with them.’

‘How?’ Holly practically shrieked.

‘Ignore them. If they ask any questions, just say “no comment”. They can only carry on hounding you for so long if you don’t give them any information to play with. Sooner or later they’ll get bored and give up.’

‘It sounds easier said than done,’ Holly imparted gloomily but she was no longer shaking like a leaf in a high wind. ‘And you never told me how they found me…’

‘I think we can call that Cecelia’s parting gift for me.’ Luiz had suspected that the paparazzi might descend. He had received a phone call from his ex only hours before he had left London, to be told that she had spoken to friends, including a certain journalist who was always eager for celebrity news and always keen to unearth details about him. It had taken Luiz all of two seconds to suspect that their break-up would have had him drooling with curiosity, particularly when he heard all the details, for she had guessed an unforeseen pregnancy and had hit jackpot, although her pathway to that conclusion had been highly illogical.

‘You would never go out with someone as fat as that,’ she had said maliciously. ‘Which means that the stupid cow must be pregnant. I hope you’re pleased with yourself, Luiz! You could have had me and instead you’ve landed a nobody who’ll probably fleece you! And just wait until your family hears!’

They hadn’t heard yet but it wouldn’t be long. Making that call and announcing the news that would inevitably reach them was not something Luiz was looking forward to. He suspected that he would have to weather his sisters’ jibes and the annoying comparisons they would make with Clarissa. His mother might be more lenient on that score, or at least would keep her opinions to herself, but the lack of plans for a wedding would upset her.

‘I don’t know what to do,’ Holly admitted, at the end of her tether. ‘I can’t go outside and see about the animals without being accosted. Claire and Sarah are in my sitting room but they can’t stay here all day. I’ve told Andy not to bother coming in.’

‘I guess he would have been upset at that,’ Luiz said absently, revealing how much he knew Andy and his endearingly preening ways whenever there was the slightest chance of a camera being pointed in his direction. ‘You can send Claire and Sarah out to see to the animals. Just make sure they don’t open their mouths. They’re responsible enough to keep quiet and they’ll probably enjoy the attention. You can send them out in a couple of hours’ time.’

‘Why then?’

‘Because I can’t work instant miracles from the other side of the world!

‘I’m not asking you to work miracles!’

‘Yet you telephone me in a rage to complain about your privacy being invaded even though you must surely know that I’m not in the country. Either you just wanted to make sure you realised how much you blame me for reporters in your back garden or else, deep down, you trust me to sort it out for you.’

Did she trust him to sort it out? What did that say about her, when she should have been planning a life of independence? When she had rejected his offer to kindly shackle himself to her for the sake of a pregnancy he hadn’t asked for?

‘It’s not a matter of trust,’ Holly prevaricated tersely. ‘I didn’t know who you were when we were going out. Having a bunch of reporters on my land taking pictures and badgering me for answers about what’s going on between us isn’t my fault. You’re the one with the big reputation and the gossip-column lifestyle. I phoned you because this would never have happened if it hadn’t been for you.’

‘What are you saying?’

‘I’m saying that I don’t like these people hanging around my house. I like my privacy. I’m saying that I wished I’d never met you.’ Never had a few simple words cut through her like those did. The silence strummed between them, the tension heightened by the fact that she couldn’t see his face, couldn’t read the expression on it.

But she didn’t take the words back. More than anything, she desperately wanted to make him see that she wasn’t a doll he could control—that the Holly of old who had absolutely adored him was not the Holly of the here and now who carried the hurt of knowing that he wouldn’t have come near her with a bargepole if she had known the extent of his wealth and influence. Who knew that, whatever arrangement he wanted, more than anything else he wanted to make sure that she couldn’t have a hold over his money.

Luiz was cold with anger at this surly display of petulance. With the hard, inescapable force of logic, however, he was compelled to concede that if they had never met she would probably be married to a local guy by now, someone unchallenging who went to the pub with his mates every Friday, held a season ticket to see the local football club and saved for a two-week holiday somewhere in sunny Spain.

It irked the hell out of him to think that she might actually have been happier with someone like that. He might have given her memorable and unforgettable nights; he might have made her body sing; they might have travelled down a thousand conversational highways and byways—but, in the end, he had lied to her and in the face of that everything they had shared was reduced to rubble. Free from the pressure of being a billionaire with a reputation, he had given her more than he could remember giving any other woman, yet she could still tell him in that flat, detached voice that she wished she had never met him.

He wanted to remind her that, lies or no lies, there was no other woman he could think of who wouldn’t have jumped at the chance of being his wife. He wanted to tell her that a pre-nup, against which she seemed to be unreasonably biased, was an insignificant technicality which would certainly not affect the financial comforts she would enjoy as his wife. But he suspected that she would find a way of throwing that back in his face.

‘You might want to remember that there are two of us stuck here,’ Luiz drawled. ‘My life has been equally devastated but hurling accusations at one another isn’t going to solve anything.’

In a heartbeat, Holly recognised what he was really saying. That, however much she claimed to regret ever having met him, the feeling was mutual. If he hadn’t met her, slept with her and had a pointless affair with her, he would not have landed up in a nightmarish parallel universe where life as he knew it was over. Having engineered the opening attack, she was deeply hurt by his admission. Clutching the telephone in her hand, she just wanted the ground to open up and swallow her whole. Her mouth felt as though it was stuffed with cotton wool and her eyes were burning.

‘Yes,’ she said stiffly.

‘So pack a couple of bags and arrange with Andy to come in later to see to the animals. I’ll get my people to come and rescue you. They’ll come via that dirt road across the fields that leads to the back of the cottage by the disused stable. You’ll get a call from my man; his name is Nicholas. He’ll call you when he’s about to arrive and you can send Claire and Sarah out. They will distract the reporters and you can slip out through the back door.’

‘I hate this cloak-and-dagger stuff…’

‘In which case, you can brave the paparazzi and their cameras and find yourself in tomorrow’s sleazy tabloid.’

‘How come none of this ever happened before?’

‘Because a high-profile billionaire businessman, a ditched ex-girlfriend who mixes with celebrities and a pregnant mistress looking after animals in the middle of nowhere has much more sale appeal than a guy who goes away for weekends. Reporters don’t follow trails unless they think the trail is going to lead them somewhere. In the past, coming out to see you at the weekends, I was under the radar. I wasn’t doing anything they cared about.’

‘And what happens next—after I’ve abandoned my life to get out of the spotlight? When am I going to be able to return?’

Luiz’s mouth thinned. ‘Abandoned’ was an emotive word. It would have been hard for her to make it any clearer that she didn’t want him in her life. Tough. Whether she liked it or not, he was in it and he wasn’t going anywhere any time soon.

‘Not in the foreseeable future,’ he said, without bothering to beat around the bush.

‘What does that mean?’ Holly cried.

‘This has all the makings of a soap opera and there’s nothing the gossip pages love more than a soap. Knowing Cecelia, she will be only too happy to stoke the fire out of revenge if she thinks it’ll make life difficult for me.’

Since when was it a crime to play a situation for his own gain? Luiz wondered. And this sudden development had the potential to work nicely for him. ‘Vengeful ex and pregnant country mistress; well, what can I say? The story could run… and run… and run… You might just have to get used to your sanctuary being trashed by reporters…’

‘But they’ll get bored once I leave.’

‘They’ll wise up to where you are and hot tail it down to London. The second you try to make it back up north, they’ll be in vigorous pursuit. You have no idea how determined a reporter can be once he thinks he’s onto a story that could sell…’

Holly was getting more worried by the second. It was true. Some people never seemed to be out of the glossies. Was that because hard-nosed reporters wouldn’t leave them alone? Was her life never going to return to normal?

‘I suggest you get down here. You can stay at my place. I’ll make sure that I leave America immediately and we can take things from there.’

‘But what about my sanctuary?’

‘Andy and the rest of your team can hold the fort. They’re perfectly capable. Oh, and before I forget, pack thoroughly. Include a passport. You have got one, haven’t you?’

‘Of course I have!’

‘Good, then bring it.’

‘But why on earth…?’ The question was left unanswered because Luiz was already informing her that he had to go, cutting short her curiosity and leaving her in a state of confusion and unrest.

Outside, judging from the quick peek through the curtains, the reporters seemed to be braced for the long haul and had retreated to their cars where they were lurking, smoking and chatting, having thoroughly disturbed her animals. The dogs were still barking, although less hysterically; the ducks were squawking and the various assortment of waifs and strays, from her donkey to the two pigs, were joining in the chorus.

Claire and Sarah were agog with excitement. Their eyes were like saucers. They both promised not to breathe a word to any of the reporters, and Holly trusted them both implicitly, but she could see that if this was their reaction then Luiz had hit the nail on the head when he had told her that their story could be fodder for nosy reporters.

As things stood, she had no option but to do as Luiz had suggested. Her immediate future was in his hands and, as she hurriedly packed a couple of bags, she feverishly wondered how things had come to this. She wondered what would have happened if she had never started pushing for more than was on offer. Would he have continued enjoying her enthusiastic, trusting, blind devotion until he got bored or decided that it was time to move on and find a proper candidate for a proper relationship, instead of a pathetic sap who was only cut out to be a fake girlfriend? How could you think you knew someone only to find out that the person you thought you had known was a chimera?

And now here she was, forced to do as he said because she couldn’t face the prospect of having her life invaded. It was a horrible nightmare. Three hours later, when finally the wheels of motion were beginning to roll and Nicholas, Luiz’s henchman, was ready for her, she had a splitting tension headache.

Sarah and Claire were thrilled to death at the prospect of running the gauntlet with the reporters, who they claimed were young and cute, and acting as decoys. It smacked of something out of a movie. They were ridiculously excitable, but the ploy worked, and for the next hour and a half Holly shared the same weird feeling that she was in a movie. The drive to the field, the helicopter ride, the silent drivers and, finally, the stealthy entrance into Luiz’s house, all felt unreal. Her life was no longer her own. But once she was in the house she felt completely protected. Luiz had left a message on her phone, informing her that he would be in early the following morning.

We’ll take it from there,’ his message had read. Until he arrived, Holly explored the mansion he called home. It was a distraction from dealing with the tangle of thoughts whirring round and round in her head. The last time she had been in the house, she had barely noticed the surroundings. Now, as she took her time exploring the multitude of rooms, she could truly appreciate the grandeur. Even the smallest details screamed ‘money’. There were no personal giveaways, no family pictures on display. The entire house could have been transposed into an upmarket lifestyle magazine and no one would have been able to guess the identity of its owner.

There was ample food in the fridge and, after a light meal, she retired upstairs to one of the guest bedrooms where she promptly fell into a deep, untroubled sleep. She was utterly exhausted. When she groggily surfaced hours later, it was to weak sunshine streaming through a crack in the curtains and, wriggling onto her side, to the sight of Luiz hunkered on a chair he had dragged and positioned next to the bed.

Disoriented, she could only stare for a few seconds. Had he just stepped into the house? He was in a pair of dark trousers and a white shirt, the sleeves of which he had shoved up to his elbows. She had to forcibly squash the rebellious bit of her mind that wanted to play with images of how those long fingers had touched her all over her body. Nostalgia for what now seemed like a time of innocence ripped through her and she had the strangest desire to burst into tears.

‘How long have you been sitting there?’ she asked instead, wriggling into a sitting position.

Thanks to the heavy curtains, it was still dark in the bedroom even though it was after ten, but not so dark that Luiz couldn’t see how her body had changed. Sexual awareness leapt through him and he adjusted his position on the chair.

‘Five minutes at the most.’ He stood up, flexed his muscles and strolled across to the window. ‘I came to wake you up but you were out for the count.’

‘I was tired.’

‘Understandable.’ Luiz had had time to do some serious thinking on the trip back to London. The harder he looked at the situation, the more he was convinced that marrying Holly was inevitable and for the best. Her pathetic cry of wanting a soul mate had opened his eyes to the ugly fact that, when and if this soul mate showed up, he, Luiz, would be reduced to playing second fiddle to a stranger who would be on hand to make decisions on the future of his child.

An even darker thought had occurred to him. This pregnancy would make Holly an extremely wealthy single parent because, whether she liked it or not, any child of his would enjoy the benefits of his enormous wealth and, by extension, so would she. What was to stop some sleazy charmer with an eye to the main chance from cosying up to her? She was soft, not one of those women who would be able to spot a slimeball from a mile away. ‘You’re pregnant and you’ve been hounded out of your house by reporters. Those two things would be enough to exhaust anyone.’

‘Are they… Have they followed me…?’

‘I had my picture taken a few times in front of the house,’ Luiz said with a shrug. ‘But I have a few beefy security guards at my disposal. No one gets too near. Besides, they probably know that answering questions isn’t my thing, which is why you make a much better target.’

‘I haven’t said a word to anyone!’

‘And they won’t give up until you do. These people can be determined when they’re in pursuit of a story. It’s their bread and butter. In fact, I could tell you some stories of friends who have had their lives wrecked by cameras poking through windows and telescopic lenses capturing each and every private moment…’

Holly blanched.

‘I know.’ Luiz oozed sympathy. ‘It’s a shocking thought but there’s no point evading reality. I’ve phoned and explained the situation to Andy. He’s going to take over running the place for the time being. You never told me that he had plans to move back down to London.’

‘He and Marcus are getting back together.’ Holly wondered what ‘for the time being’ meant.

‘Yes. He explained. He’s over the moon. I’ve offered him the temporary use of one of my apartments until he finds his feet.’

‘And he’s accepted?’ Somehow that reeked of treachery. She knew that Andy had been bowled over when the truth about Luiz’s background had surfaced, but to accept his handouts? Really?

‘Why wouldn’t he?’ Luiz said carelessly. ‘Not everyone’s hung up on making judgement calls about someone’s good character because they happen to be rich.’

Holly’s lips thinned. She refrained from telling him that it was all right for Andy. He hadn’t been lied to and deceived and told that he wasn’t good enough for a relationship. Besides, Luiz Casella was a fine one to talk. Hadn’t he made judgements about her based on her lack of money? Somehow she knew that to go down that road, however, would make her sound churlish and petty. Besides, how much mileage was there in opening up raw wounds over and over again?

‘But that’s besides the point. Did you bring your passport?’

‘Yes, but you didn’t explain why it was necessary.’

‘You once said that we should go on holiday together.’

‘That was when I thought we had a future. That was when I thought we could save up and take a trip abroad. Before I knew that saving up was something you didn’t have to do. In fact, before I found out that all you had to do was snap your fingers and you could go wherever in the world you wanted.’

She flushed because the last thing she wanted was to sound like an embittered woman, frustrated and disillusioned because the guy she loved hadn’t picked her for the last dance. ‘Sorry,’ she mumbled. ‘I do realise that bickering isn’t going to get us anywhere.’

‘You need your passport because we’re going abroad.’

It was something she had dreamed of. A trip away, just the two of them… It would have taken a lot of planning because she would have had to arrange supervision for her animals and—she had supposed at the time—he would have had to book time off with his boss. But the idea had never got off the ground.

Now she wondered, with his vast knowledge of the goings-on of the paparazzi, whether he had sidelined holiday chat because he hadn’t wanted to risk her finding out who he really was. Reporters wouldn’t have been interested in the Luiz Gomez he had claimed to be. At any rate, how ironic that her much wanted holiday with him had been suggested in these circumstances. How ironic that his suggestion of a holiday now had all the hallmarks of someone trying to run her life for her.

‘I don’t want to go abroad,’ she said firmly.

‘Your choice. If you want to take on the piranhas of the journalistic world, then be my guest. I am tough enough to deal with whatever gets thrown at me in the press, but I don’t think you are.’

‘I’m not quite the fragile person I once was,’ Holly informed him coolly and his mouth curved into a smile of pure amusement that instantly sent her zooming back to those halcyon days before the truth had come as a wedge between them.

‘Energetic… carefree… sexy… Those are things that come to mind when I think about you,’ Luiz murmured, still amused. ‘Fragile, not so much. Tree trunks never stood a chance when it came to being cut down to size to feed your fire. It was just one of the things I liked about you. So, fragile? Maybe not…’

The way those dark eyes were lingering on her made every bit of her burn. Even as she was telling herself that to be told that she wasn’t fragile was an insult, all she could think was that he had found her sexy. Not that she hadn’t known. He might have kept his real identity locked away, but when it came to the physical side of their relationship there had been no doubt as to the genuine fervour of his responses. Even as she was sternly recognising that she had to detach herself from him, erect defences to protect herself, she was succumbing to the glorious melting feeling he had always been able to induce in her.

‘That’s not what I meant,’ Holly said in a strangled voice while he continued to stare at her with that sexy half-smile, his head half-inclined. They were separated by the width of the room but her body was reacting as though he was right next to her, touching her. ‘Where would we go?’ She felt as jumpy as a cat on a hot tin roof when she thought about being alone with him, even though they had spent loads of time alone together.

‘Some place where we can’t be reached or spied on. Give it a couple of weeks and our riveting saga will have been superceded by something more exciting. Reporters are a fickle bunch.’

‘I feel as though I’m being steamrollered into this…’ He had been the one she turned to for advice for so long that she automatically voiced her concern aloud. Luiz felt a heady sense of powerful satisfaction at that instinctive inclination to yield to him.

‘Trust me,’ he drawled lazily, pushing himself away from the window and strolling towards the door. ‘It’ll be for the best.’

CHAPTER SEVEN

THERE WAS so much Holly was finding out about this man she had spent nearly two years loving, yet it seemed that there was room to find out still more. Beyond the reality of his background and wealth, she was also discovering the reach of his power and how fast things could move if he so dictated. It seemed he had an army of people at the ready to turn his commands into instant reality.

Having had a long bath, she emerged an hour and a half later to the sound of voices emanating from one of the many reception rooms. Caught in the weird situation of having been intimate with a man, and yet ignorant of a huge tranche of his life, Holly was uncomfortable with the notion of making herself at home. Somehow it didn’t feel right just to breeze into his kitchen—which wasn’t the kitchen she had disingenuously assumed he would have but a masterpiece of high-tech modernism—in order to make a cup of coffee, using a machine which looked as though it would require a degree in engineering to master it.

Nor would she have felt comfortable settling in one of the sofas and switching on the television—if there even was a television concealed somewhere in the sitting room. At any rate, there was no time for watching telly. She had to talk to him, clarify exactly what was going on. She followed the sound of the voices which led her to the enormous conservatory at the back of the house and a sight that made her mouth fall open inelegantly.

Sprawled on one of the chairs, Luiz was absently switching his attention between his laptop, which lay open on a small glass table next to him, and two women who were busily unpacking several boxes and carrier bags stuffed with clothes. He looked up as soon as Holly appeared.