THE PENTHOUSE IN the grand old Edinburgh hotel was the last room on Isla’s shift. The irony didn’t escape her that she was now cleaning penthouses rather than occupying them.
She knocked on the door and called out, ‘Housekeeping.’ When there was no answer she swiped her pass key, opened the door and brought her cleaning trolley inside.
It was like stepping into another world—a world she had once briefly visited and fooled herself she could belong to... Had it only been five months ago?
Isla placed a protective hand over the slight swell of her abdomen, where the soft flutter of tiny developing limbs moving in their sac of amniotic fluid reminded her that in another four months her life would change yet again.
For ever.
Isla closed the door of the suite, tried too to close the door on her thoughts, but they lingered, floating around her head like black crows circling above a carcass. The carcass of her short but passionate relationship with her baby’s father.
Rafe Angeliri, who didn’t even know he was going to be a father.
‘Relationship’ was probably too generous a word to describe what she had experienced with Rafe. A fling. An affair. Two months of madness. Magical, mind-altering, body-fizzing madness. Two months where she had forgotten who she was, where she came from, what she represented. They had met in a bar and in under an hour she had ended up in bed with him. Her first ever one-night stand—except it hadn’t been a one-night stand because Rafe had asked to see her again. And again. And again. And within a few days they were enmeshed in a passionate relationship she hadn’t wanted to end.
But it had.
She had made it end.
Isla swept her gaze over the plush furnishings of the suite. During her fling with Rafe, spending a night in a luxury room such as this had become the norm. Sleeping between one thousand thread Egyptian cotton sheets, sipping French champagne from sparkling crystal flutes, eating at Michelin starred restaurants, wearing designer clothes and shoes and glittering jewellery that cost more than a car. Going to charity balls and opera and theatre shows and premiere red carpet events dressed like a supermodel instead of a foster kid from the wrong side of the tracks.
Trailer trash, tarted up to look like royalty.
The penthouse had been slept in the night before—the bed was rumpled on one side, the covers thrown back over the mattress in a way that snagged on her memory like a rose thorn on silk. Even the air smelled faintly familiar—a subtle blend of bergamot and citrus that made the skin on Isla’s arms lift in a tide of goosebumps, the hairs on her scalp tightening, tingling, tensing at the roots. The room seemed to have a strange energy, as if the presence of a strong personality had recently disturbed the air particles and they hadn’t quite yet recovered.
Isla gave herself a concussion-inducing mental slap, strode to the bed and stripped the linen off like a magician ripping a tablecloth from under a full setting of crockery. She had work to do and she couldn’t allow her imagination to get the better of her. She had made her own metaphorical bed and she was happy to lie on it.
Alone.
Telling Rafe about her pregnancy had never been an option. How could it be? She couldn’t risk him pressuring her into a termination. Couldn’t risk him rejecting her and the baby. She had experienced repeated rejections throughout her childhood. Even her own father had sent her back to foster care for others to raise. How could she risk Rafe sending her away? She couldn’t risk him offering to marry her out of a sense of duty. She knew first-hand how duty-motivated marriages worked out—with unwanted, unloved, unnurtured kids ending up in long-term foster care.
Isla remade the bed with the fresh linen from the trolley, stretching it over the mattress and straightening it to perfection, plumping up the pillows and neatly arranging them, along with the navy-blue scatter cushions and throw rug for the end of the bed. She stepped back to admire her handiwork when the door of the suite opened behind her.
Isla turned to face the guest with her best apologetic housemaid smile in place. ‘I’m sorry. I’m not quite fin...’
Her smile faded along with her apology and her heart leapt like a ping-pong ball and lodged high and tight in her throat. She couldn’t find her voice, couldn’t stop her heart from thudding against her chest wall like it was trying to punch its way out. Bumph. Bumph. Bumph. Her skin tightened all over her body, pulling away from her skeleton in panic. She ran her eyes over her baby’s father before she could stop herself, her gaze drawn to him by a force the passage of time hadn’t changed. There should be a law against looking so good, so fit and healthy and virile. So very irresistible.
Unlike her, Rafe Angeliri hadn’t changed in the three months since she had seen him last. His dark blue designer business suit and crisp white shirt paid homage to the superior athletic build it covered. Long muscled legs, broad chest and toned arms and an abdomen so hard and flat you could have cracked open a coconut. The open neck of his shirt revealed the tanned column of his throat and a tiny glimpse of masculine black chest hair. Aftershave-model-handsome, tall and lean with a clean-shaven, take-no-prisoners jaw, he commanded a room just by entering it. His slightly wavy black hair was neither long nor short but somewhere stylishly in between, brushed back from his intelligent forehead and curling against the edges of his shirt collar. The loosely casual hairstyle belied the relentless drive and meticulous focus of his personality.
However, his hazel eyes were even more cynical and there were vertical lines running down each side of his mouth that hadn’t been there before.
But there was one other difference Isla detected before he quickly masked it—shock. It rippled across his features, sharpened his gaze, froze his movements until he was as still as a marble statue. But only for a microsecond. He had always had far better self-control than anyone she knew, certainly better than her, and yet she had always prided herself on her ability to mask her feelings. How else had she survived all those childhood foster home placements with perfect strangers?
‘Isla.’ Rafe gave a nod that somehow managed to be both formal and insulting. ‘To what do I owe the pleasure of finding you waiting beside my bed?’
Isla stepped away from the bed as if it had suddenly burst into flames. Being anywhere near a bed when Rafe was within touching distance was a bad idea. A very tempting but bad, bad, bad idea. They had spent more time in bed than out of it during their short and volatile fling. Sex had brought them together in a thunderclap of attraction at their first meeting in a bar—an explosion of lust that had sent shockwaves through her entire body. She hadn’t really enjoyed sex until she experienced it with Rafe. It had been out of this world sex and even now she could feel the memories of it coursing through her body. Little pulses and tingles in her flesh—the flesh he had awakened with his lips and tongue, as if being in the same room as him triggered her body into remembering, longing, wanting.
Isla snatched up some fresh towels from her trolley, desperate to hide the slight bulge of her belly. No one was going to be cracking coconuts on her abdomen any time soon. She had never had a particularly flat stomach, which made her hope Rafe wouldn’t notice the slight change in it now. It had always surprised her that he had found her so attractive. She was nothing like the super-slim and glamorous women he normally dated. She was desperate to occupy her hands in case they were tempted to slap that imperious look off his too-handsome face. Or worse—pull his head down to crash his mouth against hers to make her