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CHAPTER TWO

‘I’M WARNING you, Scarlett, that if you don’t take this Marciano contract on I’m out of here,’ Roxanne threatened early on Thursday morning. ‘This is what I’ve been hoping for ever since I graduated. It’s what we’ve both been waiting for. You can’t do this to me—damn it, you can’t do it to us.’

Scarlett bit her lip, her eyes flicking to the clock again, which seemed to be gathering momentum every time she looked at it. She had less than twenty minutes to get into the city to meet Alessandro and give him her final answer. She had barely slept for the last forty-eight hours, agonising over what to do. Seeing him again had brought everything back, all the heartache and crushing despair of his disbelief and rejection.

‘I know you’re worried about some of the clauses in the contract,’ Roxanne said. ‘But we’ve handled complicated contracts before and sailed through without a hitch. This is an offer too good to pass up. Besides, you know how tight this industry is. If word gets out you turned aside a deal as big as this for personal reasons, how will we hold our heads up professionally?’

Scarlett sank her teeth into her lower lip. ‘I know, but…’

‘Don’t blow this, Scarlett,’ Roxanne said. ‘If you haven’t signed on the dotted line when you get back to the studio later today, I want you to buy me out of the business.’

Scarlett felt her chest begin to thud with alarm. ‘You know I can’t afford to do that, Roxanne. It will ruin me. I have no savings, and getting a personal loan would be impossible right now.’

‘You’ve lied to me for close to four years, Scarlett,’ Roxanne said bitterly. ‘You told me Matthew’s father had died in a car accident in Italy. Do you realise how that makes me feel? Totally betrayed. I thought I was your best friend.’

Scarlett met her friend’s wounded gaze. ‘I know I should have told you, but I was so upset and confused when I came home. It seemed easier to tell everyone Matthew’s father had been killed in an accident. I couldn’t bear the questions from Mum and Sophie. They would have driven me mad. I wanted to tell you so many times, especially after all you’ve done for me, but I had to consider Matthew too. How is he going to feel in the future to hear his father wanted nothing to do with him?’

‘I realise all that, but what’s so hard about taking on several-hundred thousand dollars or more of business?’ Roxanne returned. ‘Get in the real world, Scarlett. So what if he doesn’t believe Matthew’s his kid? That’s his loss. This is a business transaction. Put your private issues aside and get on with the job.’

‘It’s not that simple…’

Roxanne gave her a penetrating look. ‘You’re not still in love with the guy, are you?’

‘No, of course not,’ Scarlett said with an affronted huff. ‘It’s just that he’s…he’s…’

‘Very attractive,’ Roxanne offered helpfully. ‘And super-rich.’

Scarlett glared at her. ‘You know I’m not that sort of person, Roxanne.’

Roxanne blew out a breath. ‘No, you’re not, more’s the pity. You’re way too kind to people. You let them walk all over you.’

‘If you’re obliquely referring to the Underwood account, then don’t,’ Scarlett said with a little scowl. ‘I felt sorry for Louise Underwood—her husband was a total brute. I couldn’t leave her with all those bills to pay when he ran off with his mistress.’

‘We’re running a business not a charity, Scarlett,’ Roxanne said. ‘And, speaking of business, you’d better scoot or you’ll never get there in time.’

‘I’ll get a cab rather than try and park,’ Scarlett said as she grabbed her bag and sunglasses. ‘God, I wish there was some way out of this.’

‘There is,’ Roxanne said. ‘You sign the contract, you do the work, you say goodbye. Easy.’

Scarlett opened the studio door and grimaced. ‘You think.’

When Scarlett arrived at the old Arlington in the city there were various workmen on site, as the building was in the first stages of being gutted. Scaffolding was wrapped around the outside, and the front doors were pinned back to keep them open, but even so the fine dust in the air made her nose start to twitch.

She walked across the threadbare carpet-runner to the reception desk, but she had to step aside as a worn sofa was carried past her to the service lifts. She carried on once the men had moved past, but the reception area was deserted, as the hotel had closed down several weeks ago.

She turned and looked up at the winding staircase and locked gazes with Alessandro, who was standing on the next floor looking down at her. She felt her stomach fold over itself and her heart start to race as he came down the stairs, the sound of his footsteps echoing throughout the cavernous foyer.

‘Hello, Scarlett.’

Scarlett felt the skin on her bare arms lift in goosebumps as he came to stand in front of her. His slightly wavy hair was glossy black with moisture, as if he had not long showered. She could smell the exotic spices of his aftershave, and the clean, male scent of his body, and her brain flooded with images of how he had looked wet and glistening in the shower.

‘I was not sure you would come,’ he said.

She blinked at him, her mind still back in the shower, her heart beating so quickly she could hear a roaring in her ears. ‘Um…I need the money…’ she said, but instantly regretted it when she saw the way his eyes hardened slightly. ‘I mean, business has been slow over summer, and I don’t want to get in too far over my head…or anything…’ She bit her lip, hating that she sounded so unprofessional. She was usually so brisk and efficient with potential clients, but Alessandro was not just a client.

He was her little son’s father.

Alessandro looked down at her for a lengthy moment. He had spent the last two days thinking about her, wondering what it would be like to have her in his bed again.

This reaction hadn’t really surprised him; after all, he had felt the same way the first time he had met her. He could feel it now, the pulse of sexual attraction crackling in the air that separated them. Seeing her again had brought back a rush of memories of how responsive she had been in his arms. He had never experienced anything like it before or since. He felt his groin tightening even now, thinking about the pleasure her body had given him so uninhibitedly. Her slim, golden sun-kissed limbs had snaked around his, her body rocking and shuddering with the spasms of release, until he had exploded with mind-blowing pleasure time and time again.

He was glad now he hadn’t told her he had fallen in love with her four years ago—certainly not after the way she had tried to deceive him. That would have been the ultimate in humiliation, to have had her know how deeply he had cared for her while she had been cleverly masterminding her plot to hoodwink him.

‘So you have decided to work for me after all, Scarlett?’ he said into the too-long silence.

Scarlett moistened her mouth with her tongue, her stomach feeling as if a large nest of bush ants had been disturbed inside it. ‘Yes… Yes, I have…’

‘Because you need the money.’

She swallowed twice before she could find her voice again. ‘It’s as you said—a big contract. It’s also a very time-consuming one. I have some other clients that I—’

‘Your business partner Roxanne Hartley can see to those while you work for me.’

‘This is too big a job to do single-handedly,’ she said. ‘Roxanne will have to be in on it, as well as one or two other freelance designers.’

‘I will leave you to make the necessary arrangements,’ he said. ‘I am sure you are more than capable of assembling a design team to manage this project.’

‘It’s not just that.’ She took a breath to calm herself and continued. ‘I’m concerned about how things are…between us.’

His eyes narrowed ever so slightly. ‘What do you mean?’

She hoisted her handbag over her shoulder as she ran the palms of her hands down the sides of her skirt. ‘We’re not exactly friends, Alessandro.’

‘We do not need to be friends in order to get down to business, Scarlett.’

‘As long as this remains strictly a business arrangement,’ she said with a pointed glance.

His expression contained a hint of mockery. ‘Are you saying that for my benefit or your own?’

Her eyes flared. ‘What do you mean by that?’

The brown flecks in his eyes darkened to the colour of espresso coffee. ‘You can still feel it, can’t you, Scarlett?’ he said in a low, sexy drawl. ‘You can feel that throbbing tension that fills the air as soon as we are in the same room together. I felt it the other day, and I know you did too.’

‘That’s complete and utter nonsense,’ she said with a little toss of her head. ‘Anyway, I told you, I’m seeing someone.’

‘What is his name?’

Scarlett stared at him, her mind going completely blank. ‘Umm…I’d rather not say.’

‘How long have you been involved with him?’ he asked, still pinning her with his gaze.

Scarlett pursed her mouth and glared at him irritably. ‘I thought I was here to discuss the refurbishment of this building, not the details of my personal life. Now, can we get on with it, please? I have a full list of appointments, and I have to pick up my son at five-thirty.’

He held her gaze for a pulsing moment, but she couldn’t decide what was going on behind the screen of his hazel eyes.

‘Excuse me,’ he said as his mobile started to ring.

Scarlett watched as he looked at the caller ID and frowned as he moved a few metres away. It gave her a chance to observe him while he wasn’t watching, but she couldn’t help wondering who he was talking to in such rapid-fire Italian, his voice sounding edgy and annoyed.

She drank in the sight of him—the long legs, the flat stomach, and the black silky hairs at his wrists where his shirt cuffs were casually rolled up. He looked every inch the successful and powerful man; the world was at his fingertips, and there was nothing he couldn’t do if he put his mind to it.

Except acknowledge his son as his own.

Scarlett hated recalling the night she had told him about her pregnancy. She shrank back from the memories, but they marched right through her paltry blockade as they had done so many times before…

‘Alessandro, I have something to tell you,’ she had said as soon as he had come in from his office in Milan.

He’d placed his briefcase on the floor at his feet and leaned down to kiss her lingeringly on the mouth. ‘Mmm,’ he’d said, lifting his head momentarily. ‘You have been eating chocolate again.’

She’d rolled her lips together and tried to smile, but her stomach had felt like it was unravelling. ‘I know you’re going to be terribly shocked,’ she’d said, capturing her lip with her teeth before adding, ‘I can’t believe it happened myself… I should have been more careful. I know it sounds stupid and naïve but I just didn’t realise how easy it was…’

He’d smiled and tipped up her chin with the pad of his fingertip. ‘Let me guess. You have run out of credit on your mobile phone, no?’

‘No, it’s not that…’ Her stomach had tilted again at his touch.

‘I told you before, cara, money is not an issue with me,’ he’d said, stroking her cheek with his thumb. ‘I was the one who encouraged you to stay on in Milan for a few extra weeks, so it is only fair that I give you an allowance to tide you over.’

‘No, I don’t want to take money from you, Alessandro,’ she’d said. ‘I won’t do it. I can get a job in a café or something if I run out.’

He frowned with disapproval. ‘No, I do not want you working in a hot, crowded café. I like coming home to you fresh and happy to see me.’

‘It’s not about money,’ she said. ‘I have some savings from home I can transfer in any case.’

His thumb stopped moving as he held her gaze. ‘You do not like the thought of being paid to be my lover?’

She frowned at him. ‘Of course I don’t like the thought of it. That’s positively archaic, Alessandro. People don’t do that, or at least not in the circles I move in.’

His expression was still unreadable as he looked into her eyes. ‘I want you to be my lover, and I do not mind paying you to stay with me.’

Scarlett felt her breath stall in her chest. ‘For…for how long?’

His thumb moved to her bottom lip and grazed it tantalisingly, his eyes holding hers like a magnet. ‘How long would you like to stay in Milan?’ he asked.

Her heart began thumping irregularly again. ‘How long do you want me to stay?’ she asked softly.

He kissed the corner of her mouth. ‘The way I feel right now, I want you to stay for a long time—a very long time.’

Scarlett let out her breath in a long stream of relief. She had longed to hear him say he loved her, but it was almost as good knowing he wanted her to stay indefinitely.

‘Alessandro…’ She stepped up on tiptoe and kissed his mouth in a series of hot, passionate little touchdowns of her lips on his. ‘I love you. I didn’t think it was possible to love someone so much and so quickly, but I do,’ she said, gazing up at him rapturously. ‘I love being with you. I love it more than anything in the world.’

He smiled again and brought her closer, his hips pressing against hers. ‘I know you do, and I enjoy being with you too. Now, tesore mio, tell me what you were so intent on telling me when I came in the door. I am all ears—is that how you say it in English, hmm?’

‘Yes…yes, it is.’ She took a little breath and announced baldly, ‘Alessandro, I’m pregnant.’

He released her so abruptly she stumbled, only just managing to right herself because there was a priceless marble statue close by. She faced him, one hand still holding the statue, her stomach feeling like it was going to drop down between her suddenly trembling legs.

His expression was thunderous with anger, his eyes like chips of murky-coloured ice as they locked on hers.

‘Vio slut ripugnante!’ His words were laced with venom. ‘Vio whore ripugnante.’

Scarlett’s eyes went wide with shock; she had been in Italy long enough to recognise a savage curse when she heard one. Although she had expected him to be surprised, and perhaps a little angry, to have him call her such horrible names was so unexpected she stood without speaking or defending herself for far too long.

‘You tried to trick me into asking you to marry me,’ he went on in the same cold, hard tone. ‘You did not just want my money in exchange for a little affair—you wanted everything, did you not?’

‘Alessandro—’ She choked on a frightened sob. ‘Why are you carrying on like this? I thought you cared for me. I—’

She flinched away as he stabbed a finger in the space between them. ‘Siete una frode affamata dei soldi deceitful,’ he snarled.

She swallowed against the burning ache in her throat. ‘I’m not sure what you’re saying. Please, can you speak in English?’

He stepped closer, one of his hands coming down on her wrist like a manacle. ‘You are a deceitful, money-hungry cheat,’ he translated viciously, his eyes flashing with sparks of brown and green. ‘You are a filthy slut, a filthy whore.’

Scarlett pulled against his iron hold. ‘Stop it, Alessandro, please, you’re hurting me.’

He flung her arm away and glared down at her. ‘You are good at this, I will admit that, Scarlett. But then you are rather accurately named, are you not? You are a scarlet woman if ever there was one.’

She stood as frozen as the statue beside her. ‘Don’t say things like that, Alessandro,’ she said, her heart squeezing in pain. ‘You know I’m not like that.’

His bark of humourless laughter had an edge of cruelty to it. ‘You opened your legs for me within three days of meeting me, but now of course I know why. You were looking for a father for your illegitimate child. You backpackers are all the same, screwing whatever comes along just for the hell of it. You got caught out and had to find a substitute father in a hurry. Who better than me, a knight dressed in Armani?’

Scarlett could scarcely believe what she was hearing. The malevolence in his tone was so foreign to her. She had never seen him lose his temper. He had never spoken to her so coarsely; she wasn’t sure how to deal with it, or indeed how to defend herself. It seemed so out of character; it terrified her that the man she had given her heart and soul to had suddenly changed into someone else entirely.

‘Get your things and get out of my house,’ he bit out. ‘I will give you ten minutes to do so.’

The hammer blows of panic inside her head made her vision start to blur. Her mouth was dry, her heart feeling as if it had been backed over by a truck. Her stomach churned with the nausea that had plagued her for days on end, but she fought against it valiantly as she tried to come to grips with what was happening.

She took a couple of deep, calming breaths. ‘You don’t mean that, Alessandro,’ she said, keeping her voice soft and low. ‘You know you don’t. Darling, what’s come over you?’

His eyes blazed as they looked down at her, his lips pulled tight by a rage so intense she instinctively moved back a step.

‘You cannot possibly be carrying my child,’ he said, with a flinty glare.

She nervously moistened her mouth. ‘But of course it’s yours, Alessandro. I’ve only been with you.’

His lips curled back in a sneer. ‘Itete trovando!’

Her chest tightened another painful notch. ‘Please speak to me in English, Alessandro. I don’t understand you.’

‘You are lying!’ He shouted the words so loudly they bounced off the walls, the echoes falling like slaps against her ears.

Scarlett was struggling not to cry. ‘I’m not lying. I’d only had one lover before you, and that had been over a year before we met. How can you possibly doubt me?’

‘You had been travelling for weeks with that Kirby man, but you tossed him aside as soon as you met me, no doubt because his wallet was running a little dry,’ he said.

‘That’s not true! I have never slept with Dylan. I told him and the others to leave without me, because I wanted to spend more time with you.’

His expression was cold with contempt. ‘That was just a very clever act to worm your way into my affections, was it not?’

Her face fell. ‘No…no. That’s not true. How can you say that?’

‘I can say it because it is true,’ he said. ‘You tried to set me up to pay for your bastard child, but there is one thing you miscalculated about me.’

She swallowed the thorny knot in her throat. ‘Alessandro, you’re not making sense. We’ve made love hundreds of times, a lot of times without protection. I went on the Pill too late. I thought it would be safe, but it obviously wasn’t.’

His sneer turned to a snarl. ‘I have heard of such ploys before. The unplanned pregnancy is a handy way of forcing a man into marriage, but these days it is all too easy to prove paternity.’

‘I’ll have a test done to prove it,’ she said with rising despair. ‘Then you’ll have to believe me.’

His eyes raked over her from head to foot. ‘I have all the proof I need. Now get out of my life.’

She looked up at him in stunned shock. ‘You surely don’t mean to throw me out on the streets at this time of night?’

His face was set in stone. ‘It is where you belong, is it not?’

Scarlett opened her mouth to protest, but he had already turned to call one of the household staff, issuing a short, sharp command to have Signorina Fitzgerald’s belongings packed immediately and brought to the front door.

Once the servant had scurried away, Alessandro turned back to Scarlett with another look of contempt. ‘I must congratulate you on your ingenuity,’ he said. ‘I have been pursued by many women, but no one has ever got close enough for me to invite them to live with me, albeit temporarily.’

A bubble of anger inside Scarlett finally found its way to the surface. ‘I was only ever a temporary diversion for you, wasn’t I?’ she said. ‘You were only interested in a summer fling, and for your own convenience asked me to move in with you. You were never going to make things permanent between us.’

‘Permanency is not something I have ever or will ever aim for in my relationships,’ he said. ‘I value my freedom too much.’

‘You’re going to end up a lonely old man with no one to love you,’ she said, her heart sinking as the servant came down the huge staircase, carrying her backpack.

Alessandro gave a scornful sneer and opened the front door as wide as it would go. ‘Goodbye, Scarlett.’

She picked up her backpack where the servant had placed it and slung it awkwardly over one shoulder, her eyes now streaming with tears. ‘You’re going to regret this one day,’ she said, her voice breaking over the words. ‘I know you will. You will hate yourself for not believing me.’

‘The only thing I will regret is allowing you to fool me into thinking you were not like other social-climbing women,’ he said. ‘Now, get out before I have you thrown out.’

Scarlett stepped down the stairs with only her pride to keep her upright. She walked stiffly towards the wrought-iron gates, her heart splintering into thousands of pieces as she heard the front door of his house click shut with ominous finality behind her.