Читать книгу Secret Heirs Collection - Кейт Хьюит, Коллектив авторов - Страница 17

SEVERAL WORDS LODGED in Susie’s head with dagger-like precision. Explosion. Player in the game. And finally, Whether either of us wants it or not…Mrs Burzi….

‘We’re both overwrought,’ she managed in a strangled voice. ‘You need a few days to take this in.’

She glanced wildly at the door and wondered whether she could make a sprint for it.

‘You’re not going anywhere, so you can forget eyeing the doorway like it’s the promised land, and I don’t need a few days to think about this. I’ve already thought about it and come up with the only possible solution.’

‘To marry you? That’s the only possible solution?’

‘What else?’

The sexy, teasing man she had fallen in love with had gone. In his place was this cold-eyed stranger, addressing her in a voice that could freeze water.

‘I take full responsibility for the mess we’ve ended up in. It’s the first time I have ever come close to any kind of lapse in taking precautions.’

‘You should hear yourself!’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘The mess we’ve ended up in…an explosion in your life…’ Tears stung the back of her eyes. ‘How can you be so…so…callous…?’

‘I’m not being callous.’ Sergio flushed darkly and continued to stare at her.

‘A few hours ago,’ she slammed into him bitterly, ‘you were dragging me in here so that you could make love to me…’

‘You weren’t protesting.’

‘I never said that I was!’ Her eyes flared and she held his stare with mutinous, stubborn persistence.

His change should come as no big surprise. He had never been in it for more than the sex and now his true colours were showing—because whether he magnanimously chose to take responsibility or not the fact was that circumstances had changed horrendously for him.

He wasn’t aiming to be callous. For him it was truly an explosion in his life—and a mess. It just wouldn’t occur to him that those words would be the last ones she might want to hear.

‘I don’t want to get into a huge argument with you,’ Susie told him wearily. ‘But I’m not going to marry you. And quite honestly I have no idea why you would want to marry me. Especially when you had such a dramatic “learning curve”, with your father marrying the wrong woman and then suffering for his mistake. Why would you want to marry the wrong woman?’

‘Circumstances are somewhat different in our case, wouldn’t you say? For a start, you aren’t decades my junior, and you didn’t actively seek me out so that you could extract money from me.’

‘That’s not what you thought when we first met! And you came here because you needed to satisfy yourself that you hadn’t made a mistake. No point taking unnecessary chances.’

‘It’s not going to further this situation if we keep delving into the past. That’s over and done with.’

‘It still doesn’t change the fact that I won’t marry you. We’re not living in the Dark Ages, Sergio. What would be the point of sacrificing our lives just because we happened to make a mistake? People make mistakes all the time, but it doesn’t mean that they condemn themselves to paying for it for the rest of their lives.’

Sergio took every single word that left her mouth as a personal affront.

Marriage had not crossed his radar in any way, shape or form…ever. Yet he knew that had he offered what he was offering now to any of the women he had dated in the past they would have bitten his arm off in their enthusiasm to accept.

Not only had she turned him down, she had done so without a hint of apology or remorse, and she had told him in no uncertain words that he was not up to scratch, not what she was looking for.

‘So tell me how you see this situation playing out?’ His voice was icy. ‘You remain living where you are? In a flat that is barely big enough for one person, far less two? With temperamental central heating and appliances that don’t work unless they feel like it? Do you envisage romantic times as a pauper, having to swaddle my baby in layers of clothes or risk frostbite? Or will you take up the other option of running back home to Mummy and Daddy and living under their roof for the foreseeable future? Because—and let’s be brutally honest here—your job won’t pay the way.’

‘I haven’t thought that far ahead,’ Susie said faintly. ‘Of course I know that it’s not going to be feasible to stay where I am…’

‘So the Mummy and Daddy option will come into play. Is that it?’

‘That’s not what I said!’

‘Then what exactly are you saying?’

‘As you know, my parents have an apartment in London…’ But she cringed at the thought of taking them up on what would be their inevitable offer. Probably not even an offer. They would insist.

She had spent too many years doing her best to maintain her independence, and somehow she just knew that if she caved in to parental pressure at this point—even well-intentioned parental pressure—she would fall into a trap from which it would be nigh on impossible to escape.

‘Over my dead body.’

‘We could work something out,’ Susie muttered, staring at the ground. ‘Okay, I accept that my job doesn’t pay enough…isn’t stable enough… And I…’ She swallowed painfully as a vision of her limited options raced through her head like the steel jaws of a trap, propelling her into a place she fought hard against. ‘I don’t want to run crying to my parents for financial assistance. It’s bad enough that they’re going to try and shove it down my throat the second they hear that I’m pregnant.’

‘They won’t do any such thing if they’re aware that you’re financially being taken care of by me.’

‘I don’t want to be taken care of financially by you!’ She closed her eyes, breathed deeply, opened them and stared at him without blinking. ‘I might not be one of life’s great financial successes but I’ve never wanted to rely on anyone. How do you think you’re going to feel when you’re stuck having to dole out money to me?’

‘Don’t worry about how I’m going to feel. I’m fully capable of handling my feelings. And, whether you want to rely on someone or not, you now don’t have an option.’

‘This isn’t how I saw my life going,’ Susie said quietly. ‘I always thought that I would find Mr Right and everything would be done in the correct order. Love…marriage…babies…happiness and contentment and growing old together…’

Instead, how had she ended up? Pregnant by a man who had only ever seen her as a bit of fun—a guy who felt condemned to do the honourable thing and marry her for the sake of a baby he hadn’t asked for.

Sergio’s jaw hardened. This was not what he wanted to hear. Anecdotes about her ideal life weren’t relevant, given the circumstances.

‘I mean,’ she continued, ‘what sort of life would we have together? This was always going to fizzle out sooner rather than later…’

There was a pause that lasted only a heartbeat as she foolishly prayed for him to jump in and announce that that would not necessarily have been the case. He didn’t. What had she expected?

‘And now you’re proposing we artificially sustain it so that we can be shackled together. In the end, don’t you think that you’ll resent me? Feel chained? Who wants to be a prisoner of their own good intentions?’

‘There’s no need to be dramatic.’ Sergio swept aside her speech with an impatient wave of his hand. ‘Two out of three marriages end up in the bin, and they’re generally the ones that kick off with the starry-eyed belief that the good times will last for ever. A union that is approached from the point of view of a business arrangement stands a far better chance of lasting the course.’

‘And naturally this would be one of those “business arrangements”?’

‘Neither of us was braced for this situation, but now that it’s occurred we can’t indulge in regret and hand-wringing and it’s not helpful for you to dwell on what you would have ideally wanted. This may come as a shock, but it’s not an ideal world.’ He paused. ‘There’s no reason why we can’t make this work. You want to moan about chains and shackles? I don’t know how many chained, shackled prisoners fall into bed with one another and make love like tomorrow may never come…’

Inappropriately, he felt himself harden. The way she dropped her eyes and licked her lips nervously only served to accelerate the surge in his libido.

Susie couldn’t meet his eyes. Everything was unravelling at the speed of light and yet she couldn’t help herself—couldn’t turn off the full-frontal attack his proximity made on all her senses even as she resented his stupid assumption that sex might somehow make up for everything else that wasn’t there. Like love.

‘Why did you come back here with me?’ Sergio drove on remorselessly. ‘You knew you were pregnant but you didn’t come back here so that you could tell me and we could talk this out…’

‘I wanted… I don’t know…’ She backed away from an answer that would demonstrate just how powerful his effect on her was. ‘I shouldn’t have. I should have taken some time out to really get my head round this and then I should have approached you in a…a more neutral setting.’

‘By which you mean anywhere devoid of a bed? Why don’t you admit it, Susie? You came back here because you wanted to sleep with me. You wanted me to make love to you…to touch you in all those places you like being touched. Bit rich to talk about self-sacrifice and chains and shackles when you can’t wait to jump into bed with me, wouldn’t you agree?’

Susie squeezed her thighs tightly together. He made it sound so straightforward. A business arrangement with the added bonus of good sex.

Except she didn’t want a business arrangement, and good sex didn’t last for ever. If she married him she might get the guy she loved, but that didn’t mean she would end up with the guy of her dreams because those were two completely separate issues. The man of her dreams could only ever be the man who returned her love. What she would end up with would be a nightmare from which she would never be able to escape.

She would be trapped, loving him, and her love would make her desperate and clingy and needy—just the sort of woman he would end up despising. He would find excuses to work later and later, and eventually he would end up having an affair with someone like Alex…a clever, sophisticated woman who could hold his interest once the lust had gone. She, on the other hand, would be left at home to bring up the baby. She would spend half her time crying and the other half trying to regain his attention.

‘I should leave…’ she breathed defiantly.

‘You should be honest with yourself,’ Sergio returned with equal cool speed.

There were staring at each other in this difficult situation like combatants in a ring, but he could still feel the intense electricity between them, sizzling like a live charge.

‘The passion between us hasn’t waned because you’re carrying my baby. It’s a start.’

‘Passion fades—what then?’

‘We’re going to be having a child and I won’t be a part-time father. I’m not going to let someone else enter your life and slip into the role of being the man who’s there all the time, making the joint decisions, while I show up on a weekly basis trying to play catch-up.’

‘It wouldn’t be that way,’ she said uncomfortably. When she thought about some other man coming along and sweeping her off her feet her mind went blank.

‘And how are you going to feel down the line?’

‘I don’t know what you mean…’ She looked at him, confused.

‘When I find someone else…when she comes along with me on those weekly visits…gets to know our child, takes an interest, has input into my decision-making process…’

Susie felt the colour leave her cheeks. Of course he would find someone else. He wasn’t a man who would be inclined to spend too much time celibate. He was rich beyond belief, even more powerful, and it would be a matter of seconds before he became an object of pursuit.

She imagined what this fictitious pursuer would look like and it played on all the old insecurities she had—all the feelings of inferiority that she had spent a lifetime trying to put behind her. She would be hard as nails and ready to get stuck in when it came to all sorts of decisions that were none of her business. She would be a clever, brutally tall blonde, with a razor-sharp bob and a repertoire of hard and fast notions on how to bring up other people’s kids.

And she, Susie, wouldn’t be able to do a thing about it. She certainly wouldn’t be finding solace in the arms of another man. No, she would be lurking in front of the television with the sound down, counting the minutes until her child was returned to her.

Furthermore, even if Sergio stepped up to the plate financially—which she knew he would, however hard she objected—he would still be a billionaire, able to afford anything and everything.

She had nightmarish visions of him buying up a toy store while she hovered in the background, clutching a bag of sweets and offering a trip to the park, hoping it proved a more successful lure.

‘Well?’ he prompted, snapping her out of her cruel reverie. ‘How is that scenario sounding?’

‘We can come to some kind of agreement on the financial side of things. As for the rest… Sergio, I’m exhausted. I’ve had this shock…on top of the wedding…I’m hardly thinking straight. I feel dead on my feet.’

He looked at her, seeing the dark circles under her eyes for the first time. He shot to his feet and then screeched to a halt in front of her.

‘Okay. You’re right. We can carry on this conversation tomorrow. Right now I can see you probably need to…relax…’

‘Relax?’ Susie grimaced. ‘I don’t think I’ll be doing any of that any time soon.’

‘Come back with me,’ he urged tersely. ‘You can’t possibly intend to return to that dump.’

‘“That dump” happens to be my home.’

‘Only because you’re too proud. Have you ever felt that it’s your home? Somewhere you look forward to getting back to every evening?’

No, Susie thought wearily. It was the sort of place any person would choose to avoid at all costs.

The enormity of her situation crashed over her like a tidal wave, ebbing away to leave in its wake feelings of despair and robbing her of her naturally upbeat optimism. She didn’t want to return to her parents who, however hard they tried, would not be able to resist the occasional observation on the direction her life had taken.

Lord help her if they found out that Sergio, the father of her baby, had proposed marriage—had offered her all the things most women in their right minds would accept with alacrity. For them, it would be a no-brainer. They would be shocked and appalled that she had turned him down.

‘That’s not the point…’

‘You moved there because you refused to accept help from your family, and I can understand that, but now isn’t the time for your pride to dictate your actions. You don’t only have yourself to consider. You have a baby to think about as well.’

‘And what do you suggest? I’m not going to marry you. Sex isn’t enough. Not for me.’

She wasn’t going to accept his proposal, he thought. There was no way he intended to contemplate a negative response to what he wanted, but at the moment reminding her of all the benefits that came as part of the package deal if she married him wasn’t going to work.

‘I’ll find you somewhere to live. I have a number of apartments in central London…but I’m thinking that they might be a little too close to the City for you.’

Thinking creatively and outside the box. Wasn’t that his speciality? There was always more than one way to secure your catch. He lowered his eyes, inclined his head to one side and gazed thoughtfully into the distance.

‘It would be a hassle for you, being in the centre of London,’ he mused. ‘In fact I’ll bet you find it pretty hectic even being where you are—and that’s away from the chaos of the City…’

‘It can feel a bit overpowering sometimes.’ She relaxed slightly. She didn’t want to argue with him. ‘I had to come to London for the work…’

‘Or you would have stayed out in the country? Growing up in Yorkshire must have acclimatised you to great open spaces…’

‘My parents told you where we lived?’

‘It must have come up in conversation.’

‘A lot seems to have “come up in conversation”…’ There was resignation in her voice rather than irritation, however.

It was obvious that her family hadn’t been able to be in the same space as him for longer than two seconds without divulging everything there was to divulge about her childhood. They were so desperate to hang on to the first guy she had brought home who wasn’t a loser. She wondered what other little stories they had come out with… Her first steps? First words? First crush on a boy at the age of nine?

But then they had believed that Sergio was a proper boyfriend, hadn’t they? Instead of a guy who wasn’t into making long-term plans and certainly wasn’t into love and marriage.

Sergio shrugged. ‘So here’s what I’m thinking…’

He leaned forward, all business now, and Susie looked back at him with guarded eyes.

‘You don’t want to marry me…and you’re right—I can’t force you. Naturally I believe that it is better for a child to have both parents, just as I believe that ours would be a union that stands every chance of working. We’re physically good together, and you can’t take away the fact that sex plays an intrinsic part in any relationship. However, if I cannot persuade you of that simple truth, then so be it.’

Having been on the roller-coaster ride of having him propose to her, she was now dazed at the sudden turn the ride had taken—and, if she was being honest, a little taken aback.

So much for his enthusiastic proposal. It hadn’t taken him long to fall in line with what she had said—that marriage would be a ridiculous sacrifice, way beyond the bounds of duty. Why didn’t she feel happier?

‘I’m glad you see where I’m coming from…’

‘I see it,’ he murmured. I just don’t accept it. ‘But back to what I was talking about…’

She focused, even though her mind was still whirring on a different plane.

‘I intend to find you somewhere a little further out.’ He raised his hand, as though predicting an interruption. ‘Still accessible to central London, but with more of a country feel. Richmond… Yes… Somewhere like that would do very nicely. Naturally you would want somewhere to carry on painting? That’s the good thing about what you do—you can work from the comfort of your home. No nasty commuter trips into London.’

‘You’re going to rent somewhere for me?’

‘Buy,’ he corrected. ‘I’ve always thought that renting is the equivalent of throwing money down the drain. And,’ he carried on quickly, because he could glimpse her pride beginning to make an unwelcome appearance, ‘it won’t just be for you. It will be for you and our child. It won’t be big or spectacular, so you needn’t start trying to put boundaries around what would and wouldn’t be acceptable to you.’

‘I wasn’t about to do that.’ Susie blushed and looked away. He knew her so well that it was scary. ‘Am I allowed to have a say in this house? Or do I get presented with it as a fait accompli?’

‘It’ll be a joint decision…what else?’

And in the meantime he was allowing her to carry on living in her little rented hovel.

Now that she was pregnant Susie realised just how awful a place it was. As a young, single person, she could weather all the drawbacks, but when she thought of bringing a newborn to the place she shuddered.

In the end she flitted between her parents’ house in Yorkshire and her London apartment. They had taken the news better than she had hoped—and, after what Sergio had said to her about misreading some of their reactions in the past, putting her own personal spin on situations that only existed in her head, she was accepting of that. She didn’t try to probe behind what they said, looking for hidden depths and meanings that weren’t there. She didn’t try to open up any cans of worms.

Besides, she didn’t seem to have the luxury of time on her hands to question and analyse and jump to conclusions.

She was busy looking for somewhere else to live and finding nothing. Busy trying to work out how her life was going to pan out with Sergio as a permanent part of it, but without the solid bond of marriage to glue them together. Trying to come to terms with the choices she had made because they were good choices.

He spoke to her every day, and usually several times. He insisted on visiting her at her place and made absolutely no move to try and coerce her into moving in with him. He respected her decision to take herself off to Yorkshire at a moment’s notice. If he resented her decision not to tell her parents that he had proposed, then he hid it well. He was a man who wasn’t emotionally involved—just doing the right thing because he had no choice.

And he kept his distance.

For the past seven weeks—ever since she had broken the news to him—he had not made any effort to touch her…except occasionally, in passing, the brush of his hand on her arm, his finger wiping something from the side of her mouth…little passing touches that sent her blood pressure into orbit and made her realise, with something bordering on utter misery, that she was the only one affected.

She didn’t even know what he did and with whom when she wasn’t around—when she was in Yorkshire, or back in her dingy flat trying to get her head round doing the illustrations for a job for which she had now been commissioned.

And of course she couldn’t ask, could she? She had taken their relationship to the level of business and he had fallen in. He was doing just what she had told him was acceptable—contributing financially and, frankly, being morally supportive—taking her out for the occasional meal, and once actually cooking something for her at her flat when she hadn’t felt like eating out. It had been a charade of domesticity that had cut her to the quick.

She had laid down her boundaries and he was simply respecting them.

So asking him if he was seeing anyone was totally out of the question.

But she wondered. He no longer wanted her. That physical urgency had disappeared. She thought that her changing body probably didn’t help.

She was still wondering now, as she stepped off the train onto a packed platform bustling with tourists and people going who knew where?

Spring had morphed into a lovely summer. Having had no morning sickness to speak off, she was now finding the hotter weather more difficult to deal with. She felt tired most of the time. Her breasts had shot up by two whole sizes and she hadn’t been exactly flat-chested to start with.

She had turned into a beach ball.

Suddenly demoralised, she dragged her pull-along case through the crowds, bumping into people and vaguely apologising while her thoughts whirled between Sergio and what he was doing, and with whom, and how she would react when she found out.

The glare of the sun was strong outside and she shaded her eyes for a few seconds, getting her bearings, pleased that she had decided to opt for a taxi rather than the Underground. She felt exhausted. Her parents, who now seemed to be around all the time, where before they had always been jetting off to some glamour spot or another, had fussed around her, trying their best to feed her up.

‘First grandchild for the Thornton line!’ Susie had heard her mother trill merrily down the line when she had been talking to her sister, Kate.

She was still away in her own little world, dragging her feet to the taxi rank, when she felt a hand on her shoulder. She jumped and spun round, to find herself looking straight into Sergio’s dark sunglasses.

All at once her heart began to beat wildly and her body did all those things she was always telling it not to do whenever she was with him. Her pulses raced, her mouth went dry, her nervous system threatened to go into meltdown.

‘What are you doing here?’

‘I’ve come to collect you.’ He nodded to where Stanley was parked illegally by the kerb and simultaneously removed her bag from her clutches. ‘At least you’ve listened to me and decided against battling on the Underground, but I still think you should let Stanley drive you up when you want to visit your parents.’

She smelled of the sun and the countryside. He occasionally suspected that it was a smell he had become accustomed to because it seemed to follow him everywhere he went.

‘I might be pregnant but I can still travel very well by myself. Besides, it’s more convenient to get there on the train.’

When she had first discovered that she was pregnant and contemplated how he might react to the news she had foreseen a lot of things—but she hadn’t foreseen that he would rein in his natural need to control everything, to be the winner in the game…that he would bend to what she wanted.

He was considerate and he was nice. And the nicer he was, the more churlish she felt, and she had to stifle the inappropriate thought that she didn’t want nice, she wanted passionate.

He was being nice now, and all she wanted was to fling herself at him and feel those sexy, sensuous lips on her, feel his hands on her body. She missed that so much.

She stole a sidelong look at his clean, strong, chiselled profile and the sweep of raven-black hair combed away from his face. The sunglasses were still on and she couldn’t read the expression on his face.

She brushed past him, settling herself into the back seat of the car, and began chatting to Stanley, with whom she had struck up a pleasant friendship over the time she had known him. His two loves in life were cars and baking, and he began telling her about a new recipe he had tried for ciabatta bread.

‘Pipe down, Stanley,’ Sergio ordered. ‘How many times…?’

‘There’s some folk who are actually interested in what I have to say…sir!’

Sergio sighed heavily and his eyebrows shot up, but he didn’t prolong the conversation, instead smartly shutting the glass partition so that they were enclosed in a private cocoon in the back of the car.

‘That was very rude.’ Susie sat back and closed her eyes to block him out, but she was keenly aware of him with every pore in her body.

‘Stanley would be shocked if I was ever anything but. As a matter of fact there’s a reason why I showed up here to collect you, Susie.’

She turned to look at him, suddenly nervous. ‘What is it?’

Was he about to tell her that she had been replaced? That he was seeing someone else but not to worry, because he would still make sure she was financially taken care of…still make sure that he kept showing up to offer her support…because she was, after all, carrying his child.

A fact which he seemed to have taken on board with effortless ease. Although for all she knew he might spend every second on his own cursing the day he had invited her to sit at his table so that she could escape the horror of her blind date.

‘I have a surprise for you,’ he drawled, leaning against the car door.

‘I don’t like surprises. In fact I hate them.’

‘You’re going to like this one.’ He held her eyes steadily and smiled. ‘You’re now the proud owner of a house in Richmond—within spitting distance of the park…’

‘What?’

‘It’s time you cleared out of that hovel,’ Sergio told her bluntly, ‘and you’ve spent the past two months getting nowhere very fast.’

‘So you went behind my back and just…picked some random place to speed things up?’

‘I accelerated a process that wasn’t getting anywhere.’

‘And when did this process of acceleration begin, exactly?’

‘I spotted it a while back but it wasn’t yet destined for the market.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘It means I made the owners an offer they found difficult to refuse, but I didn’t want to say anything because they could have backed out at any given moment.’

‘And now?’

‘And now, like I said, you own a house.’

‘You should have told me. You can’t just make big decisions like that without consulting me! I’ll probably hate it—what then?’ She was being horribly unfair, but he made her feel like a parcel in need of urgent delivery. He was just so…controlled and efficient…

‘If you do,’ Sergio said with infuriating calm, ‘we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. And in the meantime…’

‘In the meantime…what?’

‘Try not seeing all the negatives.’

Left to her own devices, he wouldn’t have put it past her to dig her heels in, deliberately finding nothing so that she could head up to Yorkshire, far away from him and his intervention.

And he wasn’t having that. Oh, no. There was no way he was going to let her run away from him…