BOUGHT FOR HER BABY

Taken for her body…and her baby!

These men always get what they want—

and the women who produce their heirs will be their brides!

Look out for all of our exciting books this month:

The Marciano Love-Child

Melanie Milburne

Desert King, Pregnant Mistress

Susan Stephens

The Italian’s Pregnancy Proposal

Maggie Cox

Blackmailed for Her Baby

Elizabeth Power

Only from Harlequin Presents EXTRA!

ELIZABETH POWER was born in Bristol, U.K., where she still lives with her husband in a three-hundred-year-old cottage. A keen reader, as a teenager she had already made up her mind to be a novelist. But it wasn’t until a few weeks before her thirtieth birthday, when Elizabeth realized she had been telling herself she would “start writing tomorrow” for at least twelve of her first thirty years that she took up writing seriously. A short while later, the letter that was to change her life arrived from Harlequin. Rude Awakening was to be published in 1986. After a prolonged absence, Elizabeth is pleased to be back at her keyboard again, with new romances already in the pipeline.

Emotional intensity is paramount in Elizabeth’s books. She says, “times, places and trends change, but emotion is timeless.” A powerful storyline with maximum emotion, set in a location in which you can really live and breathe while the story unfolds, is what she strives for. Good food and wine come high on her list of priorities, and what better way to sample these delights than by having to take another trip to some new, exotic resort? To find a location for the next book, of course!

Blackmailed for Her Baby

Bought for Her Baby

Elizabeth Power

BLACKMAILED FOR HER BABY

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

EPILOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

‘ONE more take, Blaze! That’s it! Toss back that glorious mane of yours and smile. Smile up at the child. She’s your daughter, remember. Higher! Lift her higher! Perfect! That’s beautiful, darling! Bea-u-ti-ful!’

The gushing praise from the cameraman was as synthetic, Libby thought, as the relationship between herself and the giggling baby suspended high above her head. Like the nickname someone had given her at the outset of her career that had helped propel her up the ladder to supermodel status following a chance discovery at a small fashion show she had paraded in for a local charity.

What did it matter to the Press and the public that she was weary of pretending? That behind the shining trademark of her heavy red hair, the clothes and make-up and the pure artifice in standing in a summer meadow, promoting an exclusive range of skincare, which purported to make her skin as soft as that of any baby’s, she was still just Libby Vincent. Or rather Vincenzo, she thought with a pained mental grimace. An average girl from an average background, who couldn’t run away from who she really was no matter how hard she tried, or from the far from average burden of guilt she carried everywhere.

‘OK! That’s it! Beautiful, darling. Perfect!’

With an indiscernible sigh, she brought her arms down and the child with them, mercifully relieved that the shoot was over. She didn’t think she could have endured another second.

The snowy fabric of her peasant skirt brushed her slender calves as she trudged back through the long grass. The baby she was reluctantly cradling crooned up at her, revealing two small white teeth, its little button nose wrinkling as it grasped her camisole with one tiny pink hand.

Libby dragged air through her lungs, a longing of such intensity sweeping over her that for an endless moment she couldn’t seem to breathe as she fought the urge to clasp the infant fiercely to her.

Keeping a tight rein on her galloping emotions, her flawless features rigid as stone, somehow she made it back to the mobile make-up unit, where the rest of the team were waiting.

‘Here.’ The emotion clogging her throat made her sound decidedly curt as she thrust the child towards its mother, while the baby, obviously sensing the tension in Libby, began to bawl, her eager little arms outstretched as the other woman took her, leaving Libby to spin determinedly away.

‘Isn’t she a cutie?’ Fran, a mature brunette with two growing boys of her own, couldn’t help drooling as Libby approached, seeking only the seclusion of the huge green trailer behind them.

Beneath the make-up that Fran had applied so expertly earlier, Libby’s face felt like a tight, tense mask. ‘If you say so.’

‘You’d forgotten, Fran.’ It was the cynical voice of Steve Cullum, one of the technicians who had once asked Libby out and received the same polite brush-off for which she was renowned with the opposite sex. ‘Blaze doesn’t do maternal. Or any other sort of relationship for that matter.’

It was something the Press often speculated about. Her past. The lack of men in her life. Even, at times, her sexuality.

“Beneath the fire, is there only ice?” one tabloid newspaper had printed after she had refused to give them an interview, share with them her views on love, on marriage, on children.

And why should she? she thought bitterly now. These things were private. Which was why, unsurprisingly, they had never found out her real name, never been able to connect her with Luca.

Anguish speared her as she thought about the boy she had married; about the tragic waste of life when he’d been killed in that car accident less than a year later. She had loved Luca; had had plenty of thoughts and feelings then. But that was a long time ago, before her emotions had been numbed by events and actions that were too damning even to think about; when loving had come naturally and she’d believed that happiness was everyone’s birthright—even hers.

Inwardly she ridiculed herself for her gross naïvety. Because of course that was before she had met the prejudice and disapproval of the Vincenzo family. Before she’d felt his father’s tyranny; known the cutting censure of Luca’s darkly commanding older brother.

A prickly sensation lifted the hairs on the back of her neck as the disturbing features of Romano Vincenzo reared up before her eyes. A man who was lethally attractive and ruthlessly uncompromising. A man definitely not to be crossed. It hadn’t just been mutual dislike that she had shared with Romano Vincenzo. It had been something more. Something much stronger and intensely profound that she had never been able to put a name to, and which she certainly wasn’t going to waste any time wondering about six years on.

It was all in the past, and over the years she had become adept at hiding her emotions, which she did now, crushing her unwelcome reverie beneath a bright smile as Fran asked, ‘Are you coming to the party tonight, Blaze?’

‘You try and stop me!’ It was a first-rate performance she was giving and she knew it; knew also that it was one she would have to keep up until she could change, get back to the Porsche and slam out of there, away from the turmoil of her unwelcome thoughts; of memories—resurrected by a simple skin-cream commercial—which she couldn’t bear to face. ‘After a week of staying in every night, getting up at four am and coming here to be bitten by mosquitoes,’ she forced out laughingly over her shoulder, ‘I’m going to party till dawn!’

Well, what had he been expecting? Romano thought, standing there in the trailer, when Libby, not looking where she was going, almost collided with him. That she had changed?

He caught her small gasp, felt her warmth and closeness and the pure femininity of her washing over him on a sensual wave.

‘Buon giorno, Libby.’ His senses, normally so controlled, were leaping into overdrive, making his heart race, his voice take on a husky quality as he watched the colour drain from the smooth texture of her high, Slavic cheekbones, saw her lush red mouth open in a gesture of pure shock.

‘I’m sorry, Blaze…’ Fran’s voice followed her in, quickly contrite, breaking in on the whirling chaos of her thoughts. ‘I meant to tell you. I’m sorry, Mr Vincenzo…’ The woman’s tone had changed in deference to the tall, tanned Italian hunk looming there in the aperture of her mobile studio and whose dark designer suit couldn’t conceal the hard masculinity of the man beneath. ‘I hadn’t forgotten you were waiting…’

Romano’s sleek black hair gleamed like jet as he gave a curt nod before reaching around the stunned Libby and pulling the trailer’s sliding door closed with a rattling firmness that blocked out Fran and the rest of the world.

He hadn’t changed, some small functioning part of Libby silently acknowledged. A high-profile entrepreneur, with that overall impression of lithe fitness and impeccable style, he still dominated any room he happened to walk into, still held sway over others with that bred-in-the bone confidence and effortless authority.

‘Wh-what are you doing here?’ Struck by the ridiculous notion that her thoughts must have conjured him up, Libby found herself as she’d always been in this man’s company, a mixture of tongue-tied nervousness and challenging rebellion. And then, as shock receded and rational thought took over, she was urging in a voice strung with blind panic, ‘What’s wrong? What is it? Is something the matter?’

Some racing emotion darkened the long green eyes gazing up at him from beneath their rich mahogany lashes as they had done from the covers of countless glossy magazines over the years.

‘Not that I know of.’

He saw her eyes close, the pressing of those long, feathery lashes against the alabaster skin a response he understood and accepted, though not without a measure of surprise.

‘How long have you been here?’ Weak-kneed with relief—from this unexpected encounter with Luca’s brother—Libby tried to get a grip on her errant thoughts.

‘Long enough.’

His deeply-accented voice was as rich as she remembered it, his face as hard-boned and as classically structured, from his high intellectual forehead, straight nose and that forceful, darkly shadowed jaw to those penetrating black eyes that had always seemed to probe right down into the depths of her soul.

Her nostrils flaring, guardedly she demanded, ‘Why didn’t you make yourself known?’

His wide masculine mouth compressed, a mouth that could curl with disdain or make a woman’s bones melt in the blaze of one smile. ‘And miss watching the nation’s loveliest model playing at doting motherhood?’

His double-edged compliment hit home hard and she swept determinedly past him, the brush of his jacket as their shoulders collided sending a tingling friction across her bare skin.

She gave a nonchalant little shrug, her feelings held on a throttle-tight leash. ‘It isn’t a role I’d normally have chosen.’ In fact she had tried to refuse the job, but it was her agent who had warned her of the inadvisability of turning down such opportunities and who had won in the end.

Something flickered in Romano’s eyes beneath his midnight-black lashes.

‘Is that why you handed the kid over like she was a sack of potatoes?’

‘Did I?’ It was hard trying to pretend he wasn’t unsettling her when even to her own ears her voice was shaking. ‘I thought I was being careful.’

The firm mouth tugged downwards. ‘As careful as you were when you handed over Giorgio?’

‘Giorgi?’ The name escaped her like a helpless little plea. He’d said there was nothing wrong, but something had to be because in all these years he had never chosen to patronise her with so much as a social call. ‘He’s all right, isn’t he?’

It was only a heartbeat before he answered, and yet it seemed an eternity.

‘That hasn’t worried you for the past six years. So why should it suddenly concern you now?’

She couldn’t tell him how much she had grieved for the baby son she had been forced to hand over so cruelly; how much she ached to see him, know him, her concern for his welfare and her need to be with him an excruciating pain that tore at her constantly no matter how many days, weeks, months or years dragged by.

‘You wouldn’t be here if it didn’t concern Giorgio,’ Libby breathed, feeling like a slave begging for mercy from a powerful master who held the key, not just to her happiness, but also to her very existence on this earth. ‘Are you going to tell me what it is?’ Her eyes were dark pools against the pale oval of her face. ‘Or are you taking some sort of warped satisfaction out of seeing me suffer?’

‘Suffer?’ A thick eyebrow arched darkly against his tanned forehead. ‘You? I don’t think so, Libby. A moment ago you had nothing on your mind but partying until dawn.’

Libby felt something snap inside of her and the next moment, to her own horror, she was flying at him, fingers clamping like angry claws onto the expensive cloth of his jacket, her teeth clenched in an agony of frustration.

‘Are you going to tell me? Or am I going to have to rip it out of you?’ she sobbed, suddenly all too conscious of his physicality and the sheer power of him, the knowledge that he could subdue her with just one gram of his latent strength should he choose to do so.

Fortunately he didn’t. Instead he caught her angry hands and held them against his chest, bringing her startlingly alive to the hard warmth of him beneath the impeccable cut of his clothes.

Some hot emotion burned in the incredibly dark gaze resting on her lips, strangely at odds with the deepening furrow between his eyes. ‘Easy. Take it easy,’ he advised hoarsely.

If he was truthful with himself, Romano thought, he was shocked by the strength of her reaction to what had, after all, been his unprovoked taunts. But what human being wouldn’t feel justified in making them? he vindicated himself with his jaw clenching. Knowing exactly what made this single-minded little opportunist tick? But perhaps that was the reason for her wild and totally unexpected outburst. Guilt, it occurred to him suddenly. She’d be less than human if what she had done hadn’t left her with some measure of remorse, so perhaps she had suffered. Because she was human, and very much a woman, two aspects he was vitally aware of now as he became conscious of the slender bones of her wrists beneath the hard pressure of his fingers, felt the life that was pulsing through her like the fluttering of a frantic sparrow so that he had to harden his swerving convictions and try to focus on her as the heartless little gold-digger she had proved herself to be, because he could deal with that.

‘So there’s a flame beneath the fire,’ he recognised mockingly, obviously wise to that unkind headline about her. ‘But then we always suspected I’d be the one to bring it out in you, didn’t we, cara?’

‘Wh-what are you talking about?’ Libby stammered. He couldn’t have the slightest notion of the way he had used to affect her—still affected her!—could he? she wondered hectically. Couldn’t have guessed how he had plagued her troubled dreams even when she was happily married to his brother. But that was only because she had been so young, so overawed and intimated by him, she exonerated herself. Because she had loved Luca! She still loved Luca!

And Giorgio…

Her green eyes clouded over now as fear and grief, despair and a repression of feelings that she wasn’t equipped to deal with coalesced with her maternal longing so that she swayed unsteadily under the weight of them.

‘I think you’d better sit down.’

Catching his husky recommendation, shockingly aware of one iron-strong arm across her back, Libby did as she was told, dropping down onto the chair angled away from the mirror and Fran’s pots of creams, mascara wands and lipstick phials.

Rocking back on his heels, Romano dragged in a deep breath. She wasn’t going to like hearing what he had to say.

Wedging her hands between her knees to stop them trembling, Libby stared up at him as though he had just descended from a cloud.

‘Would you mind repeating that?’ she whispered.

His features were passive, his eyes hard and assessing. ‘I think you heard me, Libby.’

Yes, she had, she realised, stunned, disbelieving. She hadn’t yet come to terms with the fact that Romano Vincenzo was actually here—on the shoot—let alone got her brain round the demands he was suddenly making. In a minute, she thought, she would wake up and find that this was all some crazy dream, yet contrarily she knew he was anything but a figment of her imagination.

Here in this superficial world she inhabited, where everyone called her ‘Blaze’ and no one cared a jot for her beyond how well she could pretend to love the product they wanted to sell, he was the only representation of anything real; of her past, of which he was a vital part; of Luca and the girl she had once been. Only he knew who she really was. Or thought he did, she corrected bitterly.

‘You want me to go to Italy with you?’

To see Giorgio…

She had never once expected that any member of the Vincenzo family would allow her to do that, let alone insist upon it.

She was trembling so much that she had to do something—anything—so she got up, moving like an automaton over to the couch where she had left her own clothes. Mindlessly, she started to peel off the skirt she had worn for the commercial with fingers that shook.

Watching his brother’s widow, Romano couldn’t believe how calmly she could carry on functioning as though he had said nothing, his eyes dark, judgemental slits in the hard lean, structure of his face.

Coldly he regarded the way the virginal fabric slithered down her long, golden legs, pooled alluringly around her ankles, the way she stepped nimbly out of it in nothing but her lacy white camisole and briefs.

‘Had it been left to me I would never have entertained the thought of coming here,’ he stated with grim assurance. ‘I did so only because of a five-year-old who can’t understand why it is that he doesn’t have a mother. Who’s trying to make sense of what it is he’s done wrong.’

Libby choked back a small stifled cry as Romano continued, deaf and blind to how he was hurting her.

‘A kid who’s so distressed at being goaded by his peers he doesn’t want to go to school any more. Won’t sleep. Won’t eat properly. Won’t even play with his friends.’ A five-year-old going on six who couldn’t be placated with a new pony or a trip to Disneyland. Who foolishly believed his Zio Romano could make anything happen—including bringing home the mother who didn’t want him!

The child had been pushing him and pushing him until Romano—always able to solve the most intricate problems in his multi-faceted business empire—didn’t know what else to do. His trusting nephew. A bright, intelligent kid. Luca’s son.

He hadn’t realised just how many problems the boy had until recently. His mother had been right, though, he accepted grudgingly. His father would never have let Libby Vincent—as he’d recently discovered she called herself—near his grandson. That was if she had ever entertained any desire to see Giorgio, which he strongly doubted. The demands of a growing, energetic youngster would simply have put paid to her shallow, artificial life!

She was tugging off her camisole and, unable to help himself, Romano gazed broodingly at the willowy arc of her raised arms as she pulled it over her head, at the smooth, golden contours of her slender back.

Her skin was the texture of silk, her tapering waist amazingly small above the gentle flare of her hips. Unashamedly, as she turned slightly, his gaze flickered upwards to the outer curve of one beautifully shaped breast and desire kicked him in the loins, making his breath lock beneath the hard cage of his ribs.

She was a model. Just a face and body to promote whatever lucrative opportunities came her way. She was used to undressing in front of others. Yet now, as he found himself resenting every other man who must have seen her like this, he realised that her power to ensnare was as strong and as lethal to him now as it had ever been.

Because he had been bewitched by this girl! Had fallen under her spell from the first moment he had met her and she had fixed him with those proud yet wary emerald eyes. Wary, because she had known at once that he could see right through her; recognise—just as his parents had—what a scheming little gold-digger she was.

And yet that still hadn’t stopped him wanting her—stopped him envying Luca—or from lying awake at night, mentally beating himself up for allowing himself to become totally captivated by his younger brother’s wife.

She had appeared like a breath of spring in a jaded world, possessing a quiet maturity that went way beyond her years. But that cultivated innocence that was the other side of the coin—and which sometimes almost roused in him a ludicrous desire to protect—hadn’t fooled him. She was as heartless as he’d believed her to be—and as mercenary.

She was pulling on a cheesecloth shirt, for which he was extremely grateful, because even the reminder of what this girl was really like couldn’t cool the fierce desire she aroused in him, more strongly now, if that were possible, than she had in the past.

Tensely Libby fumbled with the buttons of her shirt, glaringly self-conscious of the way Romano had been looking at her ever since she’d unthinkingly pulled off her clothes. As if he wanted to wrench the rest from her body, she realised, with heat tingling along her nerve-endings, reawakening her to the frightening power of his sexuality.

‘My son is giving you problems and your family suddenly decides it wants to invite me back into its oh-so-loving circle!’ Her injured little statement was strung with all the bitterness she had harboured towards the Vincenzo family since she had been a vulnerable and powerless teenager.

‘Not the family,’ he negated tersely. ‘My mother is against it. And my father—as I’m sure you must know—is dead.’

Yes, she knew that. It had made all the papers six months ago. The demise of a man as wealthy as Marius Vincenzo didn’t go unreported. There had been a piece about Romano too. It was that that she had soaked up with the thirst of someone parched while knowing that they were drinking from a poisoned well. It had been a brief account of how an important area of Vincenzo-held interests—once floundering under Marius Vincenzo—had started to flourish again when his son had taken over to pull it out of stormy waters and, with his head for business and fearless judgement, shares had rocketed now that he was fully in command. His achievements really were quite remarkable. Since the demise of Luca’s grandfather, there was no doubt among the Vincenzo males where the real influence and talents really lay.

‘I’m sorry,’ she uttered curtly, experiencing a pang of guilt because she couldn’t feel any regret. Marius Vincenzo had been a tyrant and she had disliked him more than it was possible to dislike anyone. ‘For you, that is,’ she felt she had to add, because it wasn’t in her nature to be hypocritical. ‘And your mother,’ eventually she decided to tag on.

Sophia Vincenzo hadn’t liked her, any more than her overbearing husband had. In fact the only thing she had had in common with her rather frosty-tongued mother-in-law was that they had both loved Luca. A love that had festered hatred on the woman’s part towards Libby after the death of the woman’s favourite and idolised younger son.

The light from the high windows of the trailer emphasised the hard lines around Romano’s mouth as he dipped his head, acknowledging her. Her condolences had surprised him though. She had had as little time for his parents as they had had for each other, he thought cynically, remembering the farce of a united front his parents had shown to the world.

‘Well, then,’ Libby accepted pointedly, telling herself not to get too excited, hope for too much, though every cell was leaping from even the smallest chance of seeing her son again. ‘If your mother’s against it, there’s little more to be said, is there? After all, she’s his guardian.’

‘No.’

That incisive response brought Libby’s gaze flying to his. He was so big and darkly dominating in the confined area of the trailer that she could feel him, touch him, breathe him in almost, his lethally magnetic presence with the subtle spice of the cologne he used infiltrating the space around them, percolating the very air she needed to fill her lungs.

‘My mother’s too weary these days to cope with an energetic child. I’m the boy’s official guardian now.’

‘But I thought…’ Libby’s words tailed off. How could it be possible? Her son. Her baby. In the care of Romano Vincenzo? The man who had made his distrust of her felt in the way his parents had never done. Subtly and with a hard-edged intelligence that had hurt even more because, surprisingly, there had been odd times when he had shown snatches of consideration towards her.

‘You thought what, Libby?’ His hard mouth twisted with bitter derision. ‘That he’d be handed over to someone else? Packaged off as just a nuisance? In the way?’

As he thought she had packaged him off when Luca had died?

‘So you see, cara,’ he said with a controlled softness that sent shivers through her yearning insides, ‘whatever you decide to do, or how you act or decide to treat my nephew, you’re only answerable to me. Well?’

One thick eyebrow moved questioningly as she reached for her jeans. She could sense his eyes following her every movement as she pulled them on, hips moving with unintentional sensuality in her keenness to wriggle into them, her breath quickening from what he might be thinking, and from the sudden reckless speculation of what it would be like to have those long, dark hands shaping every curve of her lissom frame.

‘Well what?’ she challenged acridly, pushing the fitted shirt into her waistband, her movements agitated from the outrageous and unwelcome images that had suddenly invaded her mind. ‘I come back and fill the gap in Giorgio’s life until you suddenly decide you don’t need me any more?’ She couldn’t bear that. Didn’t think she could cope with the heartache of parting from him again once she had been allowed to play even a small part in his life. And yet she would! she resolved desperately. No matter how much it cost her emotionally, she would do it! Just to see him. Be with him again. Hold him in her arms, if only for the shortest time.

‘It’s Giorgio who needs you,’ Romano reminded her coldly. ‘I, fortunately, have been spared that particular privation.’

His words stung, as he’d intended them to.

‘Have you really?’ It was a shrill little retaliation as she battled not to give him the satisfaction of knowing it. Proudly she faced him with her head held high. Yet now, as her eyes clashed with the glittering depths of his, she was shocked to recognise the familiar desire she’d become accustomed to seeing in the eyes of nearly every man she met, only with this man she could tell it was a dark obsession for which he despised himself.

Way down inside her something throbbed. Some equally dark emotion she didn’t want to acknowledge.

‘Why do you hate me so much, Romano?’ For all her maturity her voice still quavered as that eighteen-year-old’s had done. ‘Is it because you hold me responsible for Luca’s death?’

His features seemed to darken from a well of repressed emotion. Clearly it still hurt to talk about the brother who had been six years his junior.

‘I’ve never blamed you for that.’

‘Well, bravo!’ Libby’s head came up in a toss of flaming cynicism. ‘Why not? Your father did!’

‘But I’m not my father!’ He was only barely restraining a surprising degree of anger, as something in what she had said sent a surge of colour slashing across his hard-boned cheeks. A second later, however, and he was back in control, though his features were still rigid as he said with marked acceptance, ‘Luca was careless in his driving that day—and he paid for it.’ He saw a shadow cross her face, swift as a bird, leaving a crease between the fine arches of her velvety brows. ‘And hate,’ he said now, ‘is rather too strong a word I’d use to describe any emotion I felt in connection with you. Hate is the flip-side of love—’ his tone derided, his sharp eyes assessing her for every change of expression, the smallest chink in her wavering composure ‘—and I think we’d both agree that whatever else was bubbling under the surface of our relevant personalities, love certainly didn’t come into it.’

Uncomfortably, Libby swallowed. However had they managed to get on to this?

Deciding though that he was merely trying to unsettle her, she ignored the prickly tension creeping through her to say, ‘So if I did agree to what you’re asking, what am I expected to do at the end of it all? When things improve? Just walk away?’

‘That shouldn’t be too difficult for you.’

Libby’s breath seemed to catch in her lungs as his remark drove into her like an antagonist’s spear.

‘How do you know what would be difficult for me? How do you know what it’s like? What it’s ever been like for me?’ she challenged, her flush deepening, her breasts rising and falling heavily from a long-buried anger that had no outlet, no hope of ever being assuaged.

‘My heart bleeds for you,’ he said, one long, tanned hand coming to rest on his ribcage. He knew only too well about women who gave up their babies for a better life!

‘You don’t have one!’ From the little she had read about him, there didn’t seem to be one woman among this very eligible billionaire’s acquaintance who could keep him interested for more than a few months, let alone commit him to undying devotion to her!

He laughed without humour, long ebony lashes drooping, concealing the darkened depths of his beautiful eyes. ‘That, cara mia, is rich coming from you. How much more heartless can you get than a woman who abandons her child?’

‘I didn’t abandon him!’ Pain, raw and crushing propelled Libby to her feet. She could feel his contempt beating against her like a tangible thing. ‘Anyway, I’m not the first woman ever to have had a baby adopted!’

‘No, you’re not the first by any means,’ Romano agreed, disdain twisting his mouth as he delivered with hard incision, ‘but it takes a certain kind of girl who can hand over her baby purely for cash!’

Libby felt as if she’d been hit in the solar plexus, the cruelty of his statement almost making her double up. She had to restrain a strong urge to punch her late husband’s brother right back between his spectacular eyes.

He must, however, have seen the anguish corrugating her forehead because he said with quiet, yet unmistakable censure, ‘It does sound rather distasteful, doesn’t it?’

Raw with emotion, Libby couldn’t answer. Nor could she get to grips with the fact that he could actually believe it.

‘Dio sa! You don’t deserve it, Libby. But I’m offering you the chance to make amends.’

‘Make amends?’ She looked at him obliquely, hot, angry tears smarting against her eyes. Just who did he think he was? Her judge and jury? ‘How magnanimous of you!’ she bit out, her defences in shreds. But, needing to ease the ever-present guilt, redeem herself in her own eyes if no one else’s, she was crying out in bitter denial, ‘I didn’t sell my child!’

The firm masculine mouth tugged with grim scepticism. ‘Find a way of telling that to Giorgio when he grows up.’

Pain darted across Libby’s already tortured features, pale now against the rich red lustre of her hair. ‘That surely isn’t what you…what your parents…’ She couldn’t bring herself to finish. It was too awful even to contemplate that they might have said as much to the little boy.

‘You think I’d be—’ he broke off, his eyes hard ‘—let anyone be that cruel?’

A surge of relief lifted Libby’s chest. Luca’s brother might feel only contempt for her, but he did seem to have some sensitivity where Giorgio was concerned.

‘I have evidence of it, Libby,’ he went on in those deep, relentless, self-assured tones. ‘You were paid…’ He paused before spelling out the exorbitant sum of money that his father had drafted into her bank account on the handing over of her eight-week old son. ‘And unless my accounts are well and truly—what is the expression?—up the creek—there isn’t any doubt that all the money was cashed within a few months.’

Well, he owed me something! Libby wanted to scream, though nothing had, or ever could, compensate for, or ease the loss of her child.

‘Yes, I cashed it,’ she uttered vehemently, because she had no intention of explaining to this hard-headed Italian who had formed so many erroneous opinions about her what she had done with the money. He was a Vincenzo after all and, with the exception of Luca, just like the rest. ‘I had to live.’

‘Si.’ There was only raw cynicism in his reply as his gaze fell on a back issue of a leading magazine someone had left on the cosmetics shelf. The cover featured a Ferrari with Libby draped over its gleaming red bonnet, dripping with the gold jewellery she had been advertising. ‘And quite well if that fancy car you drive out there and that string of homes you appear to own besides your expensive London apartment are anything to go by. One in Jersey. A couple on the continent. Two beach houses in Florida. Not bad for a girl who started out without a bean to her name.’

No, she had all that, she accepted gratefully. But, just like with the money, it was none of his business, and she was darned if she’d be made to feel accountable to him for why she had invested in so many homes!

Her chin coming up, exposing the pale line of her throat, she said simply, ‘Are you sure there isn’t anything else you’d like to throw at me?’

His dark gaze plundered hers as though searching for something beyond their defensive green depths.

‘I appreciate that you have commitments. That it isn’t going to be easy for you to…drag yourself away.’ Carefully chosen words, Libby felt, to make each statement a precision-aimed snipe. The lining of his jacket gleamed darkly as he reached for something in his inside pocket, the action exposing the dark shading of body hair through the fine material of his shirt. ‘So name your price,’ he invited silkily. ‘I’m sure together we can come to a suitable figure.’

To see Giorgio? He thought she needed payment before she’d consider helping her son!

‘How dare you?’ She lashed out at the black leather folder he was opening, almost hitting it out of his hands. ‘Get out! Get out of here if all you can do is stand there and sling insults at me!’

From the way his brows lifted, clearly her reaction had taken him unawares. His hands were remarkably steady, though, as he repocketed the offending cheque-book. ‘Forgive me,’ he said coldly. ‘I forgot. These days Vincenzo money doesn’t hold the same attraction for you that it did.’

‘No, that’s right,’ Libby breathed, hating him more with every second that passed. If he wanted to think the worst about her, then let him think it! ‘And as for my car and all my houses…I do have my image to think about!’

She thought he would come back with some further cutting remark, but all he did was stand there looking down at her for a few dissecting moments from his superior height.

Eventually he took something out of his wallet, handed it to her. A card with the familiar Vincenzo logo printed at the top. ‘I’ll be here in London for a couple of days, ‘ he stated in a cool, unperturbed voice. ‘If you’ve a glimmer of conscience or compassion behind that beautiful face of yours—call me. It might do you good to step down into the real world for a while—see how the other half lives.’

His comments flayed as he pushed back the sliding door, his broad shoulders filling for a moment the gap he had created, before he stepped lithely down from the trailer and strode away.

Staring after his lean, elegant figure, Libby felt frustrated tears bite behind her eyes. The real world, he’d said. Was that what he called the Vincenzo mansion and its accompanying millions? When it was his and his family’s world that had taught her how the other half lived! The half who could buy anything, threaten anything, just as long as they got exactly what they wanted, when they wanted it, regardless of who got hurt!

Her knuckles whitening as she gripped the open door, anguish a crushing weight in her chest, she almost gave in to the urge to call him back. Tell him that she would go to Italy with him. Now if he demanded it of her. Agree to anything he stipulated just so long as she could see Giorgio again. But he was already folding himself into the low sports saloon parked in front of her own favoured Porsche that he had spoken of so critically, and the next instant the powerful car was growling away.

Without even bothering to cream off her make-up, Libby packed up her few belongings and followed his example. The day, accommodatingly bright and cloudless for the shoot, was turning overcast as she headed back to the city and the rain had set in heavily before she had got very far. She tried to keep her mind on her driving, but even concentrating hard on the wet road through the double speed of the windscreen wipers couldn’t keep the bitter memories at bay.

CHAPTER TWO

SHE had still been at college when she had met Luca Vincenzo.

Motherless, with her father pensioned off early through ill health, she had been waiting tables at weekends and during term holidays in a chic little bistro in the Sussex village where she lived, eager to contribute in whatever way she could to their frugal finances.

She couldn’t deny that her unusually photogenic looks and striking red hair, which she accepted without a trace of vanity, helped to get her noticed with the customers, bringing in more than a fair share of tips from admiring male members of the clientele, from whom she always managed to pleasantly but firmly distance herself.

Luca had been the one exception to the rule. A handsome Italian boy with a daredevil attitude to life, he had dined there every night for a month, wooing her with his crazy Latin charm and that hint of devilry in his sparkling dark eyes until she took his threat of hiring a helicopter and lowering himself onto the top of Nelson’s column, where he promised to stay until she put him out of his misery and agreed to go out with him, as serious. It was only after she had laughingly consented to that she discovered exactly who he was; what a wealthy, respected and—in his own words—stifling family he had been born into.

Braking to allow a van to pull across into her lane, she remembered how much her father had liked Luca. As he’d liked Luca’s grandfather, Giovanni Vincenzo, she recalled fondly, whom he’d worked for, prior to his forced retirement, as head gardener on the man’s large country estate fringing the village. When Giovanni Vincenzo had died, it was Luca’s father, Marius, who inherited the family empire. Preferring to run his international enterprises from his native Italy, he had turned the house into a conference centre and country club and, with the exception of a few small properties, sold off the rest of the estate.

Earmarked for a responsible position in the family business, Luca had spent that summer getting experience at the conference centre that still remained in Vincenzo hands. At twenty-one and three years older than her, Luca had seemed like a man of the world, Libby thought, looking back. Well-travelled. Exciting. Although it was his warm humour and the feeling that he wasn’t wholly appreciated by a family who wanted to curb his adventurous spirit that had endeared her to him. A family, she thought disparagingly now, who were far too busy multiplying its millions to take much interest in anything Luca wanted.

Head over heels in love, when he had asked her to marry him after only a few weeks she didn’t even have to think about it, she remembered sadly, trying to focus on the road through the spray thrown up by the van in front of her. They had been married almost immediately in a small private ceremony in the local register office with only her father and another waitress from the bistro as witnesses. It had all seemed so exciting and romantic at the time. It wasn’t until her new husband had taken her to meet his parents in their restored castle in Italy that she had realised how strongly they’d objected to Luca’s marrying her. Regardless of her studies, she was just a part-time waitress with no money and no prospects, and in their eyes an opportunist and a gold-digger. Their unveiled coolness towards her could have been chipped at with an ice-pick, his mother’s unrestrained remark privately to Libby that she had anticipated a far more suitable match for her son leaving Libby in no doubt as to exactly where she belonged. Anywhere but in the close-knit Vincenzo family circle!

As she steered her car through the slow-moving, increasingly heavy traffic, it still hurt to remember her in-laws’ attitude towards her, even though she had tried desperately to win their respect. Because of the conditions his father had laid down, she had had plenty of opportunity. They were to live in the castle, he had stipulated unswervingly. Otherwise he would take it to mean that their son was no longer a Vincenzo.

Luca had been all for walking out, Libby recalled, until she had persuaded him against it. The last thing she had wanted was to be responsible for a break-up between her husband and his family.

‘They’ll come round. You’ll see,’ she had naïvely reassured him, unaware of how influencing him to stay only served to reinforce her in-laws’ derogatory opinion of her. After all, she thought with cutting poignancy now, if she had allowed Luca to oppose his father she would have been walking away from the fortune he would have eventually inherited, wouldn’t she?

The van in front of her stopped dead, causing her to ram on her brakes. Through her obscured vision she could just make out that there were traffic lights ahead.

Berating herself for her lack of concentration, she tried to steer her thoughts back to the present. But the floodgates of her past, blown apart by that earth-shattering visit from Romano, had unleashed a torrent of unwelcome memories and, now that they had free passage, nothing could stem the flow.

Romano had been working abroad, she remembered, when Luca had taken her to Italy, but had come home within a few days of their arrival, sent for, she was sure, to meet, vet and generally dissect his younger brother’s new wife.

At twenty-seven, Romano Vincenzo had already been a powerful player in the family’s global commercial empire. Where Luca was warm, witty and handsome, Romano Vincenzo was cold with a serious mind and an incisive intellect, linked with that raw animal attraction that transcended mere good looks. It wasn’t just the hard structure of his face and that athletically built physique that made one notice him, Libby accepted resentfully, watching the rain streaming down the windscreen. It was everything about him—and he had it in bucketfuls. Presence. Personality. Poise.

Standing there in the castle’s imposing drawing room, he had intimidated her from the first, asking her questions about herself, innocent enough on the surface but leaving her feeling as though he was testing her with every perfectly articulated syllable, while his richly accented English ran like honey off his well-trained, interrogative tongue! Consequently, nervous and awkward in his presence, she had cloaked herself in a confidence she was far from feeling.

Sometimes during that first trip home of his she’d glanced up to catch him watching her, the dark absorption in those penetrating eyes disturbing her as much as she was sure it had been his intention to, before he’d resumed whatever it was he had been doing and turned dispassionately away.

It was the day he was due to fly back to whatever area of the Vincenzo empire was calling him that stood out in her memory. Having said his goodbyes to the rest of the household, he had come out onto the terrace, where she had been emerging from the pool after seeking some relief from the strained atmosphere inside the house.

‘It’s been more than…interesting meeting you, Libby,’ he’d told her silkily, his dark, executive image doing untold things to her equilibrium as she’d stood there in nothing but her skimpy bikini. ‘In fact it’s been rather remiss of me, but I do believe I haven’t yet kissed my brother’s new bride.’

She’d held herself rigid as he’d placed his hands on her wet shoulders, heart thumping against her ribcage, back stiffening in rejection as his lips impinged in no more than a brotherly gesture on her burning cheek.

‘You claim to love Luca, but I think we both know differently, don’t we?’ he’d challenged with a menacing softness, his warm breath fanning her hair, his scent and sound and touch an assault on her screaming senses before he’d picked up the briefcase he’d set down on the tiles and stridden away.

Staring broodingly after his broad back, she had wondered if he’d sensed the way that simple gesture had made her blood race through her, and if he’d guessed at her mind’s screaming rejection of the sensations that had ravaged her even from that briefest contact with him.

He probably thought he was irresistible to her! she remembered thinking hotly, because his ego was enormous enough and because, just like his parents, he believed that her interest in Luca lay only in what she could gain financially.

The incident, though, had unsettled her. Even remembering it now caused an icy little shiver to course down her spine. It was the cold realisation that it was entirely possible to love one man while still being shockingly aware of another—even if you didn’t like him, she thought, grappling with the gear stick as an impatient hooting from the car behind jolted her into realising that the lights had changed. And she certainly hadn’t liked Romano Vincenzo! The feelings he’d aroused in her had been irrational, born only out of a kind of warped fascination coupled with dislike, and nothing like the warm, tender feelings she’d shared with Luca.

On the move again, she recalled how elated she had been when she’d become pregnant almost immediately, and how her joy had been tempered by the sudden worrying turn of her father’s health. With no one to look after him, she’d made frequent visits back to England, the long periods she’d spent caring for him instead of being in Italy with her husband adding yet another detrimental mark against her in her in-laws’ eyes.

As she brought her car into the familiar tree-lined square, the memory of that time and everything that followed pressed down on her like a dark, suffocating cloud.

When she had gone into labour, unexpectedly here in England, given birth to a healthy baby boy, her life should have been complete. But it hadn’t worked out that way, she reflected achingly. Luca had had that accident rushing to the airport to be with her, and his parents, already despising her more than she could have believed possible, had no qualms about blaming her for his death. After all, if she’d been there where she belonged instead of abandoning her husband and her responsibilities, their son would still be alive, his mother had sobbed accusingly to her over the phone.

It was something Libby had been all too conscious of, but having it spelt out by someone else—someone who loved him just as much as she did—was almost too much to bear.

It was several weeks later when she’d gone back to Italy to collect a few of her and Luca’s things that they had dropped their bombshell.

They wanted to adopt Giorgio. Bring him up as their own. Couldn’t she see that the boy would have a far more privileged and stable upbringing with them than he would with a sick grandfather and a single mother? How could she allow their grandchild to be deprived of all they could offer him? How could she be that selfish? they had asked her when, horrified, she’d refused at first even to give any headroom to such an unthinkable idea. She’d wanted to look after her baby herself—and care for her father. She’d known there would be difficult times ahead, but she’d manage, she’d determined. Wouldn’t she? After all, other girls did. It had continued to be impressed upon her, though, how selfish she was being. That she didn’t have her child’s interests at heart. Even her father had tentatively suggested that perhaps she ought to consider the Vincenzos’ offer very carefully. She was young—had her whole life in front of her. Had she considered the enormity of what she was taking on?

Tortured and afraid, she had clung desperately to Luca’s child. She could never give him up! She couldn’t! Though the pressure to do so had been almost overwhelming, she might not have given in. Not if Marius Vincenzo, determined to wear down her resistance, hadn’t come up with that cruel ultimatum…

Blindly, she left her car in the reserved parking bay outside the rank of exclusive Georgian apartments and, dodging the rain, raced up the steps, shutting her mind to the bitter choice the man had given her. She couldn’t relive it—couldn’t think about it now.

She only knew as she rode the lift up to the first floor—let herself into the welcoming haven of her own apartment—that when she had been forced to sign that piece of paper, handing over her son to Luca’s family, she had been too young and too worried about her father to see beyond her naïve hopes in believing that one day she would get her baby back.

A persistent ringing of the doorbell had Libby reluctantly answering it. Since abandoning all thoughts of going out, she’d bathed and changed and she certainly didn’t feel like seeing anyone tonight.

‘Surprise!’ Fran and about a dozen others carolled from the front doorway, before breezing in brandishing bottles of champagne.

‘As it was obvious you weren’t coming to the party, we decided to bring the party to you,’ a young woman Libby didn’t even recognise announced, her voice raised above the animated conversation and laughter.

‘I can’t. Really, I can’t face this now,’ Libby protested over the sound of corks already being popped, glasses being hauled out of her china cabinet. Someone had switched on her CD player, and a sea of bodies began gyrating to a deafening rhythm.

She wanted to scream at them to get out. After meeting Romano today there had been no question of attending the end of the assignment party. She had had a lot of decisions to make, appointments to cancel. On top of which her thoughts were in turmoil and her head was thumping.

‘Are you all right?’ Fran shouted to make herself heard above the noise.

‘No, I’m not!’ Libby yelled back. ‘I just want to be alone!’

‘You always do!’ Fran’s more mature features were contorted in friendly chastisement. ‘We thought it would do you good not to let you get away with not turning up for yet another party. We thought…Hey! Are you OK?’ The make-up artist looked genuinely concerned, but trying to compete with the din in her flat was hurting Libby’s throat.

With a hopeless shrug she swept away from them all, towards the sanctuary of her bedroom.

‘Everybody! Everybody! Blaze doesn’t need this!’ From behind the closed door, she heard Fran’s futile attempts to make her protests heard. ‘I really think we ought to go!’

Someone turned up the music. After a few moments the sound burst intrusively into the bedroom as the door opened and then closed again, admitting a penitent-looking Fran.

‘I’m sorry, Blaze. I didn’t realise,’ the woman expressed, as Libby flopped limply down onto the bed. ‘We really were only thinking of you. I tried…. What’s this?’ Fran’s sudden diversion drew Libby’s eyes to the single bed and the little white album lying on the coverlet that she hadn’t had chance to put away. ‘What is this?’ The woman was picking it up, surveying the embossed gold lettering on the leather-bound cover and, despairingly, Libby saw her taking in the first two pages of photographs, then the subsequent blank white pages that told their own story. ‘Am I imagining this…’ the woman’s puzzled gaze lifted from the few appealing baby photos to clash with Libby’s ‘…or does he look like…?’ Fran’s voice tailed off, her mouth an open circle of disbelief. ‘Yours?’ she whispered, dumbfounded.

Leaping up, Libby grabbed the incriminating album and snapped it shut. ‘He belonged to someone else,’ she said quickly, her voice noncommittal. Well, it was true, wasn’t it? she thought achingly. And if it got out that she had married into the Vincenzo family—one of the richest families in Italy—was the mother of Luca Vincenzo’s son, then because of her celebrity status Giorgio would be hounded by the Press, and his little life would cease to be his own.

Fran gave her a sidelong glance. ‘Belonged?’ she echoed gingerly and, when Libby said nothing, ‘I’m sorry,’ the woman sighed, guessing that something had gone terribly wrong in her young friend’s life, but clearly didn’t want to probe too deeply. ‘You never said.’

Libby shrugged. ‘It’s in the past.’ Only it wasn’t. It never would be, she thought, speared with wanting. Giorgio was hers—part of the here and now—and all she wanted was for this rowdy uninvited crowd to leave so that she could ring the boy’s uncle and tell him that she was ready to go with him. That she would throw in her job, her flat, and every commitment she’d made and leave now—this minute—with nothing but the clothes she stood up in just as long as she could see her baby again.

Hastily she stuffed the album into a drawer. ‘Promise me you won’t say anything to the others?’

‘Of course not,’ Fran uttered in compliance, and Libby didn’t doubt that the woman would be as true as her word. ‘Was there some connection with that gorgeous hunk who turned up on the shoot today? Did you have an affair with him or something?’

‘No!’ Fran knew that there was no man in her life, and that she didn’t date, so an eye-catching specimen like Romano showing up would naturally arouse her curiosity.

‘He seemed pretty possessive. The way he slung that door closed in my face. Only a lover behaves like that.’

‘No!’ Libby denied with a vehemence that had one of Fran’s dark brows lifting in patent scepticism. Why would she think that? Libby thought angrily, guessing that while her friend knew when to let the subject of a lost child drop, the possibility of such a ruthlessly attractive male as Romano Vincenzo as a candidate for Libby’s bed was too much even for the discreet Fran to ignore.

The music was still pounding away in the sitting room. Animated shouts with the rhythmic thud of feet reverberated through the apartment. Suddenly a loud banging was cutting insistently through the pandemonium.

‘Your neighbours?’ Fran suggested with a grimace.

‘Oh, good grief!’ If it was, then they had every right to complain. ‘Help me get rid of this lot, will you?’ Libby appealed despairingly to her friend.

‘I will,’ Fran promised, giving her an affectionate squeeze. ‘After all, it was my fault you got stuck with…’ Her words were drowned beneath a wall of sound as the bedroom door opened and the blond technician who had been on the shoot peered round it.

‘Having a tête-à-tête?’ His words were a little slurred, Libby noted, guessing that he had already been drinking heavily before he’d arrived and was clearly the worse for too much champagne. ‘I thought for a moment the lovely Blaze had got herself a man in here, but I should have known better, shouldn’t I?’

‘Leave it, Cullum,’ Fran advised, wiser now to what made Libby such a loner.

Steve Cullum, though, Libby noticed, looked aggressive enough to swing a punch at someone, and hurriedly she made to defuse the situation.

‘Let’s go back and join the others,’ she suggested to him in a placatory tone, pushing him gently back into the other room so that she could go and answer the persistent thudding on her front door.

‘Only if you’ll dance with me.’

‘All right. All right,’ she promised recklessly. ‘After I’ve answered the door to whoever’s out there first.’ Humour him. Don’t be offensive, she warned herself, knowing from experience that it was the only way to handle drunks. ‘Someone turn the music down!’ she shouted, making a move towards the hall.

‘Turn it up!’ The technician was grabbing her arm, shouting at the top of his voice, ‘Turn it up! Blaze wants to dance! Blaze wants to dance with me!’

Libby tried to resist as he spun her round in the middle of the floor and, with his arms crossing her chest, pulled her back against him, forcing her body to sway with his to the raucous music.

His aftershave lotion was cloying, and his alcohol-stained breath was revoltingly warm against her throat. Somewhere in her repulsed brain it registered that the banging on the front door had stopped. That the neighbour had given up all hope of being heard and gone—probably to call the police!

‘Come on, baby, dance. You know how to move.’ The scoop-necked sweater she had changed into when she’d showered had slipped off one shoulder and the man’s mouth was suddenly moving, hot and moist, across her bare flesh. Trapped in his arms, she jerked her head aside, but he only laughed and tightened his hold on her.

In a minute, she decided, she was going to elbow him—hard!

The only thing that stopped her was the shocking silence as the music was cut dead, along with every other sound in the room.

All eyes were turned towards the CD player and the man in the impeccable dark raincoat and executive suit who was straightening up beside it. And it wasn’t just the formality of his clothes but that hard air of command that set him apart from everyone else in the room.

Romano Vincenzo!

Stunned, Libby could only gaze speechlessly at his strong, tanned face and those glittering black eyes, which, focusing only on her now, flared, like those proud nostrils, with unequivocal anger.

‘I think you’d better ask your friends to leave.’ His recommendation fizzed with seething displeasure.

Barely able to grasp that it must have been him who had been thundering on the door—that someone had let him in—Libby could only despair at the compromising position in which he had walked in and found her, locked as she still was in the technician’s arms. Things couldn’t look worse, she thought, knowing that it wasn’t the first time that he had caught her in a situation like this.

‘Romano!’

It was all she could utter as Steve Cullum lifted his head to demand in a slurred voice, ‘Are you suggesting I quit this party and walk out of here—just because you said so?’

Beneath his rain-splashed coat, Romano’s shoulders squared. The last thing he wanted was trouble. But the sight of Libby, the girl who had plagued his thoughts and got under his skin as he had allowed no other woman to do—filling him with self-disgust when she was married to his brother—and who still aroused the same complexity of emotions in him—not only living it up after all he had told her today without a care for her child, which just went to prove just how heartless she was, but also crushed against that lecherous drunk, which she was obviously consenting to, only fuelled his anger, filling his veins with cold, jealous fury.

‘That’s exactly what I’m suggesting.’ Anger blanched the skin around his taut upper lip. ‘Unless you’d rather be thrown.’

Feeling the technician’s body tightening up behind her, Libby sucked in a breath. The last thing she wanted to witness was a brawl. But one step forward from the man who was taller, broader and light-years ahead in the fitness stakes than the inebriated Steve Cullum had the technician instantly backing off.

‘OK, mate. OK. Keep your shirt on.’ Hands held up in acquiescence to the other man’s dominant will, he moved grudgingly away, while the others, bottles in hand, their eyes fixed on Romano, also started filing out, muttering their goodnights to Libby as they yielded to an authority they recognised as one not to be tested.

‘Still denying it?’ Fran grimaced as she moved past Libby.

Denying what? Libby asked herself, quietly fuming. That Romano Vincenzo was her lover? Because he was certainly acting like one, she thought angrily, her aching head throbbing even more from the thought of being alone with him; from imagining the scene she didn’t want, but which she knew would inevitably follow.

‘Are you going to be all right?’ the lingering Fran whispered protectively to her.

Libby darted a glance towards Luca’s brother. His sheer physical presence and that dark charisma sent something like untapped electricity crackling across her nerve-endings.

‘Of course,’ she croaked, not at all sure she would be before Fran, too, went the same way as the others and the front door banged loudly behind them all.

An interminable silence filled the flat as Libby faced hard, unrelenting features across the carpeted space of her sitting room.

‘What the devil did you think you were doing?’ Her voice shook with her own hot emotion. ‘What gave you the right to come in here and speak to my guests so rudely?’ Hardly guests! she thought with a mental grimace, immensely relieved that he had driven them away, even if she didn’t approve of the way he had done it.

‘Forgive me if I broke up such a wildly enjoyable party.’ The deep tones were anything but contrite. ‘I would have thought even you would have had the decency to skip the good time when you’ve just been informed of how much your child needs you. Obviously it means far less to you than entertaining your precious friends!’

‘They aren’t my friends!’

His head cocked to one side. ‘No?’

‘Well, only one of them is and—’

‘Evidently!’

Libby stifled a small, despairing sigh. It was clear he meant the man who had been forcing his attentions upon her.

‘Steve Cullum was drunk,’ she emphasised, as though that would somehow vindicate her. ‘And they came here uninvited!’

‘But it didn’t take you long to get into the swing of things!’

Which is what it would have looked like, Libby realised, especially if he had heard Steve shouting to everyone that she wanted to dance, which he probably had!

‘I was going to ring you,’ she said.

‘When? Tonight?’ His eyes were steel-hard, his voice sounding blatantly unconvinced. ‘Or tomorrow—after the hangover?’

Well, of course, he would think that, Libby despaired.

He looked like an avenging angel, from the flawless sheen on his coat to the striking force in his unrelenting features. There were raindrops glistening on his black hair, she noticed now, watching, mesmerized, as one fell from the thick strands to meet the startling contrast of his immaculately white collar.

She opened her mouth to speak, to assure him that not a drop of alcohol had passed her lips, but he cut across her protest, saying smoothly, ‘You forget. I know you, Libby.’ There was a cruel reminder in his softly spoken words. ‘Perhaps even better than Luca did.’

‘That’s what you think,’ she argued bitterly, and from the way his mouth pulled down one side knew exactly what he was remembering. Hadn’t he stumbled upon her here in England, five months pregnant, supposedly caring for her father, but instead living it up with friends in his father’s country club? He hadn’t listened to her excuses then, so she didn’t see any reason why he would listen to them now. ‘What did you want anyway?’ she asked wearily, turning her back on him.

He watched her clearing up glasses, stoop to pick up a cushion, toss it onto a chair.

He’d come back to apologise, he reflected with self-chastening mockery. To apologise for the way he had spoken to her today. It had been unwarranted, he’d decided afterwards, especially offering to pay her to accompany him back to Italy. Knowing the manager of the hotel where she was supposed to be tonight, he had tried to ring her there, and been relieved to learn that she hadn’t attended the party after all. She had gone up a few notches in his estimation then and, as he’d made his way to her apartment, he’d been doubly ashamed of his behaviour, but his desire to make amends, he realised grimly now, had been far too premature!

The wide scoop-neck of her top had been pulled down on one side—probably by that inebriated lout who had been manhandling her, he thought—while her hair lay like a twist of fire against the pale silken slope of her shoulder. He felt a kick in his gut from watching the sway of her marginally curved hips as she went through into the kitchen, his eyes resting on her small, tight denim-clad bottom, his teeth clamping together from the host of temptations that he knew had once ensnared his brother.

‘We parted on a rather unfortunate note,’ he answered her from the kitchen doorway. ‘It was my intention to rectify that.’ After all, he could hardly persuade her to go back with him with threats and insults, he’d assured himself earlier, but that was before he had come up here, seen first-hand what little feeling this girl really had. ‘In the circumstances,’ he breathed, his anger with her spilling over from mere disillusionment into something hot and irrationally possessive, ‘it seems all I have to apologise for is spoiling your fun!’

That it had even occurred to him to apologise for anything was unimaginable to Libby. The great Romano Vincenzo contrite? Even the thought of it was laughable.

A bitter little smile touched her mouth as, finding his proximity in the doorway of her small kitchen too unsettling, she couldn’t think of anything to say.

She wanted to move away from him back into the larger room, but one darkly clad sleeve was stretched across the doorway, effectively blocking her way out.

Libby swallowed. ‘C-could you let me pass, please?’

His eyes, probing into the wary depths of hers were far, far too disturbing. ‘Of course.’ She caught a waft of his cologne as he dropped his arm and she inhaled sharply, every nerve cell honing to his scent, his warmth, the closeness of his strong, hard body. But he didn’t move and without looking at him she made to brush past him, stifling a small startled cry as his arm came up unexpectedly again, trapping her there against the doorjamb.

‘Let me go!’

He laughed softly at her proud, indignant features. ‘I wasn’t aware that I was holding you.’ His other hand came to rest disconcertingly just above her other shoulder.

Breath locking in her lungs, Libby darted a cautious glance up at him. Her heart was pumping as fast as if she had been running hard. ‘You’ve got nothing to gain from this.’

She didn’t know why she said it, every nerve tingling with apprehension and something far more complex as he turned her towards him, surveying her with a twist of cruel mockery on his lips.

‘On the contrary,’ he murmured, gazing down into her flushed and guarded features, ‘I think I’ve got a great deal to gain.’

His thumb moved caressingly over the bared, heated flesh of her shoulder, his touch so light—just a whisper of sensation—that she might have been imagining it if it hadn’t been for the way her breasts ached from her sick reaction to it, or for the shaming impulses that seemed to be causing implosions throughout her body, weakening her bones from a dark and shattering desire.

She wondered what it would be like to be pressed against his hard warmth, feel that devastating mouth—all that she could focus on now—clamped over hers; the startling realisation that he was drawing her towards him causing her mouth to part on a small gasp, her head to drop back in involuntary invitation to him so that his face went out of focus as he dipped his head and her wild and reckless craving became reality.

Sensation piled upon sensation as his mouth came down hard over hers, hostility meeting desire in one sizzling cauldron of hot, ungovernable expression.

He hadn’t shaved since this morning and the angry graze of his jaw was a delicious friction against her soft skin as his mouth plundered hers with punishing thoroughness.

Libby groaned into his mouth, her mind despairing even as her body welcomed it, welcomed the arms that were suddenly tightening like steel bands around her, bringing her shockingly alive to the whipcord strength of him beneath his impeccable clothes and to the startling awareness of just how turned on he was.

Her errant, adolescent dreams about him, she realised, hadn’t prepared her for this! Nor had she imagined she could know such…wanting…

With another small groan—induced only by desire now—she leaned into him, mind and body yielding together in some crazy sacrifice to an irrational need.

She hated him—and yet she wanted him!

Her limbs weakening with that acceptance, she clutched at his broad shoulders like someone clinging to a precipice, her red-tipped nails curling desperately against the dark, damp fabric of his raincoat.

Driven by her response, Romano felt his body hardening with an urge that made it almost hurt. It would be so easy to forget himself; to take her and all that her gloriously feminine body promised. He had wanted this girl for far longer than he cared to remember; wanted her so much she was the only woman who had ever made him disgusted with himself for entertaining such thoughts about her, especially while she was married to his brother. While he had had to bear it in silence, ignore the way her big doe eyes swept coyly away from him like some shy little virgin’s whenever he spoke to her on some occasions, while on others they had seemed to challenge his with a sophistication well beyond her years!

But now there was no reason for restraint.

He jerked her against him, catching the small, stifled cry she uttered as though she was fighting her own battle between rejection and desire. But the thought of Luca and the mercenary way this girl had behaved was already cooling his ardour. Was he being extremely unwise even considering taking her back with him?

Confusion registered in her emerald eyes as he steeled himself to draw away from her. What was he thinking of? Could he not do without this added complication right now?

‘Since it was your clear intention to wind up in someone’s bed tonight,’ he none the less felt compelled to taunt softly, ‘perhaps you should make it mine? I can give you pleasure if that’s what you’re so hungry for, Libby. And I think I can guarantee you more satisfaction than you’d have found in the arms of that drunken lout who was here just now.’

Libby couldn’t move—couldn’t think—aware only of one long, tanned finger making light, sensuous circles over her bare shoulder and the tap, dribbling into the sink, that someone must have used and neglected to turn off properly.

All she could focus on was what Romano—her late husband’s brother and the man she despised—was suggesting, while her brain made unwilling comparisons with the man who had been there earlier. Romano Vincenzo wouldn’t force himself on a woman the way Steve Cullum had. He wouldn’t need to. He would be subtle, using his voice and his lips and hands with such articulated skill…

Reminding herself again of just who he was, head dropping back against the doorjamb, she was determined not to let him see how much his suggestion had fazed her. Heart pounding in her breast, her temples throbbing from her headache and her outlandish response to him, somehow she managed to query pointedly, ‘Are you propositioning me?’

His smile was without warmth. ‘And wind up in the same bitter-sweet trap as my brother?’

So he wasn’t. He was only playing with her, she realised. Weighing her reactions—which had probably been behind the reason for that kiss—just to see how easily he could get his brother’s scheming little widow into his bed! And she had fallen into his trap! Even if he had been more than a little out of control himself. Those black eyes still glinted with hot primal desire, yet behind it burned open hostility too.

With a surprising degree of force she pushed at the arm that was blocking the doorway and got herself out of his disturbing sphere, catching his soft laughter as she wrestled with the fact that even touching him like that gave her a whole host of unwelcome responses to deal with.

‘We’ll leave the day after tomorrow.’

His change of subject was so abrupt that it unbalanced her for a moment, shaken as she was from the shaming way she had responded in his arms.

‘What?’ Swinging to face him, she couldn’t stop herself wondering what woman wouldn’t fall victim to his dark attraction. Even now his stark masculinity was making her stomach muscles curl like brittle leaves.

‘I gathered from that comment you made about ringing me that you have decided to heed my request and come back with me. Or am I being naïve in presuming that you’ve even allowed it any headroom with so much else going on in your life?’

An angry retort sprang to her lips, but wisely she bit it back. It would have been futile anyway, she told herself on a frustrated little sigh.

Wearily she said, ‘Yes, I’m coming.’

‘Good.’ He strode away from her, turning in the doorway to assess her; her bright, dishevelled hair, the dark half-moons under her emotion-strained eyes and her cheeks, which she knew were flushed from more than just a pounding headache. ‘Get a couple of good nights’ sleep. I wouldn’t want my nephew to see any remaining traces of the good-time girl in his mother.’

Tight-lipped, Libby swung away from him, her arms clutched tensely around herself to stem the urge to hit him rather than take any more of his jibes.

‘And cara…’ the endearment was so out of character at that moment and so sexily soft, she thought she was imagining it as she turned round with her arms still locked around her and met the cruel mockery on his lips. ‘…turn off that tap.’

CHAPTER THREE

‘WHAT have you got in here?’ Romano grimaced a couple of days later at the airport when he was hauling her suitcase out of the boot of the large chauffeur-driven saloon. ‘Next spring’s whole fashion collection?’

Libby dragged in a breath. Naturally he would think that, she thought waspishly, her tone brittle as she answered in the only way she knew he would expect her to. ‘Bang on the nail!’

He sliced her a glance as he slammed the boot closed, hitting it twice to indicate to their driver that he could pull away. ‘Thinking of partying while you’re staying out there with us in Italy?’

‘I could be,’ she responded, keeping pace with his stride as he guided her towards the busy terminal. Nothing was further from her mind, however, and, deciding that she was carrying this charade a little too far, she added in defence of herself, ‘Well, I wasn’t quite sure what to bring or…how long I’d be staying.’ A ton weight seemed to press down on her chest as she said that. ‘I’ve also brought a few things for Giorgio.’

Like what? Romano thought. Things to soften him up to make up for the years she hadn’t been around? What was she hoping to do? Buy her way into the kid’s affections?

With features cast of stone he considered how easily she had given him up—as women like her could—without a backward glance, without a second thought as to how he would feel all the time he was growing up. Whether he was well. Being kindly treated. Happy.

As he held back for her to precede him through the automatic door into the terminal, he wondered if perhaps he was being too hard on his brother’s widow. After all, she had agreed to come, which was more than he had expected, he conceded with a grim compression of his mouth, and she would naturally want to try to win Giorgio’s trust in the only way she probably knew how.

The journey in the private jet was a far from relaxed one for Libby, sitting there uncomfortably aware of Luca’s darkly brooding older brother in the seat opposite.

He had made small talk with her at first about inconsequential things, controlling the conversation, taking the lead. Then he spent the rest of the time working on his laptop on the narrow table in front of him, his ebony head bent, his mind anywhere but with Libby, who sat gazing at the rain streaming down the small round window beside her, listening to those deft, dark fingers moving with surprisingly alacrity over the keys.

‘Do you want anything?’ he asked when a pretty stewardess came and enquired if she could bring them some refreshment, glancing up at Libby in a way that made her stomach flip.

Only for these nerves to stop plaguing me! she prayed silently, shaking her head. She couldn’t eat or drink. Not now. Not when she was only a couple of hours away from seeing her baby again.

‘It might be some time before you get another chance.’ Romano’s expression held a surprising degree of concern. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes, I’m sure,’ Libby replied tightly, but couldn’t tell him that she was too knotted up inside to swallow a thing.

What would Giorgi look like? she wondered, fearful of being rejected. He wouldn’t remember her, but would there be a bond there? A tug of something he’d recognise? Would he take to her? Or would she just be a total stranger walking into his life?

A cold, sick fear trickled through her as she considered the alternative. It would be his birthday in less than three weeks. Was he old enough yet to have begun to despise her for what she had done? And if he was, would he ever forgive her? Judge her less harshly if he knew how much she had wanted to see him? How hard she had tried—and how many times—only to be denied access on every occasion?

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