battery. I’ll take Anna to collect her van later.’
‘Now, hang on a minute!’ Incensed by his assumption that he could call the shots, Anna swung round to face him—and then wished she hadn’t. Because just looking at him, at the upward drift of one strongly marked sable brow, the slight querying smile on that wide sensual mouth as he waited for her to expand on her explosive objection, made her heart leap, her mouth feel as parched as desert sand, her pulses race as she remembered—
Smothering a groan, feeling the fight ebbing out of her like water down a drain, she capitulated.
Pointless to avoid the interrogation any longer. The longer she spent dodging That Question, the more uptight and jittery she would become. It couldn’t be good for her baby.
Flinging Nick an apologetic smile, she said dully, ‘Thanks, pal. I’ll see you later. There’s stuff I’ve got to talk over with—him.’ And if that sounded rude or ungracious, tough.
She didn’t feel even remotely gracious as Francesco ushered her in her mother’s wake as the older woman headed back to the kitchen. Just sick to her stomach.
CHAPTER THREE
‘I REALLY must go and dress properly. What can you be thinking of me?’ Beatrice fluttered as she held the door open for them to pass through and tried to hide her ungainly rubber boots beneath the hem of her dressing gown at the same time—a feat which required considerable contortion. With a sideways curious glance at Francesco’s darkly handsome, smoothly polished yet formidable bearing, she added on a breathy rush, ‘I won’t be a moment, and in the meanwhile—Anna, do offer your guest coffee.’
She did no such thing, forcing herself to stand her ground and not be intimidated by her unwelcome guest’s aura of remote and chilling dislike.
So he was appalled by the thought that he might have fathered a child on a nobody who came from a family that was seriously down on its uppers? A nobody who was OK for a brief, easily forgotten holiday fling, but as for anything more meaningful or long term—definitely not.
‘Well?’ Anna sliced into the stinging silence. She lifted her chin to a proud angle, then winced as her baby gave her a hefty kick to remind her of its sturdy existence. Hopefully her unborn child wasn’t picking up on the bad vibes between its parents, she thought worriedly.
Automatically she laid a reassuring hand on the mound of her distended stomach—a gesture which Francesco followed with glittering grey eyes.
‘I think you know the answer to that,’ he stated, his smooth-as-rich-chocolate voice edged with the harshness of acid. ‘And before you tell me whether or not I am the father of your child, be warned. The truthfulness of your answer can be verified, or not, by a simple DNA test.’
He meant it, too! Her half-formed plan to name some fictitious guy and then wait for him to accept it with thankfulness and make a smart exit from her life bit the dust.
As that uncomfortable fact sank in, every scrap of colour leached from her face, leaving her features pinched and her deep green eyes enormous. Since his callous betrayal it had been a relatively simple matter to thrust him out of her head and keep him out, using all her will-power and her instinctive need to protect herself and her precious baby from hurt.
But seeing him again, up close and personal—and what could be more personal than making a baby between them?—was doing terrible things to her emotional equilibrium. Swaying on legs that were no longer strong enough to hold her upright, she pressed her fingertips to suddenly aching temples.
At the speed of a jet plane in a hurry two strong hands were steadying her, easing her down on to a hard kitchen chair.
His starkly explosive expletive brought colour back to her face as he straightened and stood back a pace, his feet planted apart, his fists bunched into the pockets of his beautifully tailored trousers. Towering above her, he looked darkly menacing, impatience stamped onto each impressive feature.
Stiffening her spine, and dredging up the resolve that had served her so well in the past, refusing to be intimidated, Anna clipped, ‘There’s no need to swear! And, since you ask—yes, you are the father. You were the first and the last!’ She huffed in a deep breath, furious with herself for ever fancying herself in love with such a callous, arrogant creature.
He had the information he had come for now. No way was she going to wait and see which way he ran with it. She said firmly, ‘Just understand this: I want nothing from you. Ever. No one will ever hear of your relationship to my baby from me. So you might as well go back to your latest squeeze right now!’
Stark silence greeted her outburst. The strong features were taut, pallor showing beneath the warm olive tones of his skin. Anna tried to guess what he was thinking and couldn’t even begin to.
‘That is the truth?’ Narrowed, penetrating eyes received her mute nod of confirmation and Francesco turned, paced over the uneven flags to stare out of the dingy window.
His child. Flesh of his flesh! His heart clenched.
Dark eyes blazed. His child! Sired on a woman as sneaky as a feral cat. Playing the part of a wide-eyed innocent, pretending she didn’t know who he was, enchanting him. And all the while plotting and scheming. Cleverly manipulating a hardened cynic into the sort of lovelorn idiot that a male over the age of fifteen had no right to be!
And priming her ham-fisted father. How else would he have known that a mere million was peanuts to the man his daughter had ensnared, his for the asking?
Her one mistake.
Besotted, he’d been on the point of asking her to be his wife, offering a lifetime of devoted commitment—something he’d set his face against since he’d been in his late teens. Had she told her father to keep his greedy mouth shut, have patience, then, still besotted, he would have married her, showered gifts on her, secured her family’s financial future and lived to bitterly regret it once the scales—as they inevitably would have done—had fallen from his eyes and he’d seen the woman he’d believed to be the love of his life for what she really was.
And as for that vehement statement that she wanted nothing from him—he’d sooner believe the moon was made of cheese! Wait until the child was born, and she’d be there with her demands.
At the sound of the door opening Francesco swung round, his mind assessing the problem he faced like a well-oiled machine, emotions relegated to the area of his brain labelled ‘non-productive’, fit only to be ignored.
‘Signora.’ Beatrice Maybury’s slight frame sported a shabby tweed skirt and a twinset of indeterminate colour. Her long plait was wrapped around her head like a coronet. ‘Is your husband in? I would like to speak to you both.’ And get this mess sorted out once and for all. No arguments.
‘I—’ About to chide her daughter for her uncharacteristic lack of manners—for just sitting there like a block of stone, not providing coffee for her guest or even asking him to sit, by the look of it—she changed her mind. Recognising authority, troubled by the sudden and unwelcome feeling that yet another catastrophe was about to descend on her weary head, she nodded in mute obedience and fled.
‘There’s no need to drag my parents into this.’ Anna, petrified by his now brooding silence, was stung into speech. ‘They don’t know you from Adam.’
‘I have met your father,’ Francesco countered on a splintered bite. ‘Remember?’
How could she forget? He’d dropped by, stayed long enough to scribble that Dear John note, and left to take up a more exciting project. ‘I’m surprised you reminded me!’ she uttered furiously, scornful of the arrogance of a man who could calmly introduce the subject of his bad behaviour without turning a hair.
Some of her abundant crinkly hair had fallen down into her eyes. She swiped it away and stated, ‘I’m trying to explain—if you’ll shut up and listen—that they don’t know who the father of my child is. Nobody does. And as that’s the way it’s going to stay, you