expensive hotel, patronised by the seriously wealthy? He’d thought he was onto a good thing—until he’d faced the reality of Rylands, denuded of anything worth selling, neglect evident everywhere you looked.
That had been before. A few weeks later Cissie had thrust one of the glossy society magazines her mother took under her nose, a scarlet nail jabbing at a photograph.
‘That’s the guy you hooked up with on Ischia. I thought he looked sort of familiar, but I couldn’t place him—it must have been the scruff he was going around in. He must have been incognito—not a minder or a fancy yacht in sight! He’s always in the gossip columns of the glossies. He’s worth trillions—you lucky cow! Do you keep in touch?’
‘No.’
‘Pity. Hook him and you’d be set for life! Mind you, to be honest, these holiday flings aren’t meant to last, and I guess he’d be a handful—terrible reputation with women!’
Shrugging, she’d turned away, barely glancing at the photographed Francesco Mastroianni, his white dinner jacket contrasting with his fatally attractive dark Latin looks, complete with arm candy. Her mind had felt fried. He hadn’t been after her non-existent family money, as she’d first thought.
Just sex.
But in the short time between arriving in London and phoning her he’d met someone who could give him better sex—someone more sophisticated. Creep! Oh, how she hated men who used women as playthings, to be picked up and then chucked away when a more exciting prospect came into view!
So what right had he to look at her now as if she were beneath contempt?
Heaving herself away from the door, she told herself that if anyone deserved contempt it was him, and rushed to turn on the grill.
She was a professional. She would do the job she’d been hired to do, ignore him and, when the evening was over, she’d put him right out of her head again. She would not, not ‘accidentally’ knock his wine glass over into his lap, or drop a loaded plate on his hateful head. She couldn’t afford that sort of satisfaction. To get a reputation for gross clumsiness would mean she’d never work in the area again.
But if he dared give her that contemptuous look one more time she’d be sorely tempted!
She was pregnant!
His?
Francesco had to force himself to eat. Force himself to ignore Anna Maybury as she served them. Force out the occasional monosyllable that was his sole contribution to the otherwise animated conversation, oblivious to the come-ons that were steaming his way from the sultry redhead his cousin had produced for his delectation.
Not interested. Not remotely. Grimly sifting facts.
Anna had been a virgin. He hadn’t used protection that first time, too blown away to even think of it.
Lost. He’d been lost in a wildly churning maelstrom of unfettered emotion—an experience so new and vivid he’d felt as if the whole of his life up until that moment had been a theatre of shadows.
The child she was carrying could be his. Unless—
Aiming for casual, he leaned back, hooked an arm over the back of his chair and, ignoring the redhead’s pouting smile, tossed into the conversation, ‘Your caterer? How pregnant is she, do you know?’
Three pairs of taken-aback eyes stared at him. It was Silvana who wanted to know, ‘Why do you ask?’
Because I might be about to be a father and not know it. Aloud, he responded with deceptive idleness. ‘I wondered if we, collectively, might be required to act as midwives.’
An irritating tinkle of laughter from the redhead—he couldn’t remember what she was called—and an apprehensive glance from Guy towards his wife, who answered. ‘Seven months, according to Cissie Lansdale. Cissie’s a sort of partner on Anna’s catering business—a bit feckless, I think the word is. She usually helps out with the waiting—but not tonight, apparently. Guy, darling—our glasses are empty.’
As her husband did the honours with a second bottle of Valpolicella, Silvana confided, ‘Personally, I think a woman in her position should be resting, not—’ she waved a languid hand over the table ‘—doing this sort of thing. Of course she doesn’t have a husband to lay the law down, and her mother’s a feeble thing—not in good health, I hear. Besides, I suppose they need the money. The father’s hopeless. He married into that family. They once had real standing in the area. But he squandered everything or lost it.’
‘Bad investments followed worse ones, I hear,’ Guy put in as he sat down again.
‘You seem to know a lot about them,’ Francesco commented, reflecting uneasily that seven months was spot-on. The child would be his unless immediately on her return home Anna had jumped into bed with someone else. But that didn’t seem likely, given that at that time she’d been banking on reeling him in. She’d been expecting him to follow her to England, so she would not have wanted some other guy hanging around to stir up trouble, he decided forensically.
Making a huge effort to stop a black scowl from forming, and stopping himself from marching straight into the kitchen and demanding to know the truth, he listened to his cousin’s answer.
‘It was necessary when we first came here to introduce ourselves to the better families so they could advise us on local reliable and honest tradespeople. A permanent housekeeper is to arrive next week, but there are others.’ She took a sip of her coffee and arched one finely raised brow at him over the central flower arrangement. ‘Plumbers, electricians, a man to do the garden, caterers—that sort of person. The pregnant girl came highly recommended.
‘Now, why don’t we retire to the sitting room while the pregnant one clears away? One Grappa, I think, and then Guy and I will go up and leave you two to relax by the fire and get to know each other properly.’ A big smile in Francesco’s direction as she got to her feet. ‘I know Natalie wants to discuss some charity ball I’m sure you’ll be interested in.’
Like hell he would! Deadpan, he met the redhead’s over-sugared smile. Introduced by Silvana as ‘a friend from London’—an organiser of glittering events for some charity or other—she was certainly a looker. And available. And he was going to have to endure a weekend of having his cousin throwing them together. He would have to let this Natalie know that he was as interested in the female of the species as he was in settling down to read through the telephone directory from cover to cover. And try to be kind about it.
And tomorrow, first thing, he would visit Rylands and demand to know if the child the woman who’d made an idiot of him was carrying was his.
The dishwasher had finished its cycle. Wearily, Anna replaced the contents back in place in the huge Victorian floor-to-ceiling cupboard. Her feet were burning and her back was still aching.
Half an hour earlier Mrs Rosewall had found her repacking the cool boxes and handed her a cheque.
‘The meal was perfect. Are you almost finished?’
‘Everything will be back as it was in half an hour or so. I’m just waiting for the dishes to finish. Unless you’d prefer me to leave now?’ Said without any real hope.
She’d been longing to get away—well out of the orbit of Francesco and his current woman. But from experience she knew that her clients wanted their kitchens to look as if they’d never been used. That was what they paid her for. And they wanted full value for money.
And this one was no different. ‘No hurry. I just wanted to tell you that my husband and I are retiring for the night, but my cousin and his young lady will be in the sitting room and I don’t want them to be disturbed. Just let yourself out quietly. And, while I think about it, could you cater for lunch on Sunday? My guests will be driving back to London in the afternoon, so nothing too heavy, I think.’
Anna hadn’t even considered saying yes! The fee would be more than welcome, but no way would she put