Читать книгу Postcards From…Verses Brides Babies And Billionaires - Rebecca Winters - Страница 42

SHE WAS DEFINITELY being followed.

Nicole tightened her grip on the stroller’s handlebar and picked up her pace. The same black Jeep had already made its way past her three times as she took her morning walk through the village. Two men sat inside, their dark sunglasses doing nothing to disguise the fact that their attention was focused entirely on her. As the vehicle slowed to a complete crawl a short distance behind her, she felt the familiar prick of ice-cold terror in her throat. It was officially time to panic.

The cobbled laneway that led up to her farmhouse was still slippery from the light April drizzle. Her ballet flats scraped against the stone as the breath whooshed from her lungs with effort. A gleeful squeal sounded from within the cocoon of pink blankets as the stroller bounced and swayed. Nicole forced herself to smile down at her daughter through tight lips, summoning an inner calm she wasn’t quite sure she possessed. They were nearly home. She would lock the door and everything would be fine.

As she rounded the last bend that led to La Petite, she slowed to a stop. The gateway was filled with vehicles, and a line of cars stretched further up the lane. A dozen figures stood in wait with cameras slung around their necks. Nicole felt a humming begin in her ears as her blood pressure instantly skyrocketed.

They had found her.

Thinking fast, she pulled off her light jacket and draped it over the stroller’s hood. They descended quickly, the crowd of men forming a circle around her as the cameras began to flash. She kept her head down, and the air seemed to stretch her lungs to breaking point as she tried to move forward. They seemed to gather more tightly around her. Apparently the addition of a child made absolutely no difference to the paparazzi’s definition of personal space.

A man stepped forward, blocking her way. ‘Come on—a quick photo of the young ’un, Miss Duvalle.’ He smile was shark-like, sharp-toothed and dangerous. ‘You’ve kept this hidden quite well, haven’t you?’

Nicole bit down hard on her bottom lip. Silence was the key here. Give them nothing and pray that they went away. The sudden jarring sound of a car horn was just what she needed as the black Jeep appeared in the lane behind her. The vehicle began pushing its way through the crowd, forcing the photographers to scatter. Taking advantage of the distraction, she moved as fast as she could, pushing hard through the throng.

It seemed like a lifetime before she crossed the gateway onto her own private property. They couldn’t enter without breaking the law, but she wasn’t so naive to think that she was somehow out of their reach.

She would never have privacy here again. The thought brought a choking sob to her throat.

She resisted the urge to look over her shoulder and focused on retrieving her keys from her handbag with trembling hands. Once she was finally inside, she slid the deadbolt into place and scooped Anna up into her arms. Her daughter’s warm cotton scent soothed her nerves, giving her a small moment of relief through the haze of blind panic. The sun shone through the windows, brightening the room and filling the space with light. Anna’s sparkling blue eyes smiled up at her, so peaceful and unknowing of the situation they were in.

She needed to find out what was going on. Now. She gently settled her daughter on a soft mat surrounded by toys, then quickly got to work. It wasn’t an easy task to fire up the ancient computer that had come with the farmhouse. One of her first resolutions upon moving to the French countryside from London had been to throw away her smartphone and stop checking the showbiz news. Still, she made sure to keep a phone charged for emergencies. One that only made and received calls—that was all she needed.

It seemed like hours before she could finally type a few keywords into the search engine on the dusty screen. She immediately wished she hadn’t bothered.

‘Billionaire Marchesi’s Secret Love Child Uncovered!’

Seeing the words in black and white filled her with ice-cold dread. She scanned through a few lines of the anonymous interview before turning away from the screen in disgust. Was her life always going to be sordid entertainment for the masses? She bit her lip hard as she dropped her head into her hands. She wouldn’t cry.

This wasn’t supposed to happen to her here. The tiny village of L’Annique had been her sanctuary for more than a year now. She had fallen in love with her kind neighbours and the quiet, almost humdrum atmosphere. Unlike in London, where her name was synonymous with scandal, here she had been free to raise her daughter in peace. And now this quiet village would be overtaken by the storm of her old life catching up with her.

Every penny from the sale of her London town house had been poured into her new beginning. Uprooting herself again would bankrupt her. And if she ran they would follow her—of that much she could be sure. She didn’t have the kind of power it took to protect her child from the media.

There was only one person she knew who did. But the man she was thinking of didn’t deal with idle tabloid gossip. Rigo Marchesi wouldn’t even think of trying to help her. She was surprised the media had even dared to cross him with the sheer power of his family name. Luckily for him he had a whole team of PR people to deal with this. Nicole would be left, alone once again, to pick up the pieces and deal with the aftermath.

She parted the curtains to peer out at the crowd, frowning at the sight of the men and their cameras being herded further down the street. Two police cars full of officers had arrived and they were quickly moving all the people and vehicles down the lane and out of view.

A second black Jeep had joined the first, this one with blacked-out windows. A handful of men in dark suits stepped out and began fanning across the premises and down each side of the laneway.

Nicole felt her breathing slow to a dangerous pace, and the air rushed in her ears as she watched the last man step out of the vehicle. He was tall, wearing a sleek suit and dark sunglasses. She bit her bottom lip hard as he finally turned to face her, removing the glasses from his face. A moment of utter stillness passed before she released her breath in one slow whoosh.

It wasn’t him.

For a moment there she had honestly thought… Well, it didn’t matter what she’d thought. Right now the tall, suited man was walking up to her front door.

Pushing her hair behind her ears and clearing her throat, she opened the door with the latch in place, so that she might survey the imposing stranger through a comfortable three-inch gap. Something about him was vaguely familiar.

‘Miss Duvalle?’ He had a hawklike gaze and spoke in her native English, albeit with a strong Italian accent. ‘My name is Alberto Santi. I work for Signor Marchesi.’

She felt cold humiliation prick at her memory. This was the man who did all the jobs that Rigo wouldn’t lower himself to do. He wore the same disapproving glare now as he had the night he’d guided her across a crowded room, away from his employer’s mocking laughter.

‘I am here to help you.’ He spoke calmly.

‘You have some nerve, showing up at my door.’ She shook her head, moving to close the gap, but found the door blocked by a polished leather shoe.

‘I have orders to bring you under the protection of the Marchesi Group.’

‘I don’t take orders from Rigo Marchesi.’ She crossed her arms in front of herself. She knew whom these orders were from. Knew the kind of ruthless power she was faced with here.

‘Perhaps I phrased that poorly.’ The man forced a smile to his thin lips. ‘I have been sent to offer you assistance. May I come in so that we can speak privately?’

Nicole thought on it for a moment. It wasn’t as if she had a whole lot of other options. Perhaps at least he could organise some sort of protection for them. She stood back, unclipping the latch and motioning for him to come inside.

He moved through the doorway and took in the surroundings of her simple home with quick, disapproving efficiency. He looked back down at her. ‘Miss Duvalle, my team has already contained the area, as you can see.’ He gestured to the men standing guard at the gateway to her property. ‘We would prefer it if you had no more contact with the media until we have a chance to resolve the matter privately.’

‘That’s kind of difficult, considering they are camped out on my doorstep.’

‘Which is why I am here. A meeting has been arranged in Paris to address this…situation. If you choose to cooperate you will be offered every assistance.’

The way he called it that—a ‘situation’—made it sound like such a nuisance. A minor fender-bender in the Marchesi fashion empire’s shipshape working schedule. These people had no appreciation of the fact that her entire life had been upended for the second time in less than two years.

‘I have no control over this situation, Mr Santi, as you can see. So I doubt that I can help anyone to resolve it. All I need is to keep my daughter out of this mess.’

‘The media will not relent—you know this,’ he said gravely. ‘Surely you expected the attention?’

‘Why on earth would I expect this?’

The man shrugged and looked away, making it clear what he meant. Nicole felt cold shame wash over her. Just as she had on the last occasion this man had passed on a message from his employer. She shook her head in disgust. Of course Rigo would think that she had willingly pawned her child off to the tabloids. She was Goldie Duvalle’s daughter after all, wasn’t she?

Shaking off the hurt and anger, she forced herself to speak. ‘Just to be clear—if I decline to come with you will the police stay to protect my privacy?’

‘I’m afraid not.’

Well, there it was. She felt the skin on her arms prickle. It was clear she was being given an ultimatum. Get in the car and go and make a deal with the devil or stay put and be trapped in her home while the vultures circled.

Sure, she could always leave and find some new place. But with this much attention on them she and Anna would never live a normal life again. They hadn’t managed to get a clear photograph of her daughter yet, but they would. And with the scandal of her parentage she would become infamous.

She knew what that life was like. She had lived it. And she would never put her child under that kind of microscope. But now…would she be able to ensure Anna’s privacy with this scandal surrounding them both? She didn’t have the kind of financial power it took to control the media, to keep her daughter’s innocent face off the front pages.

Her chest tightened. Anna was too young to be aware of the drama unfolding around her. But Nicole knew better than anyone that awareness would come with age. Memories of her own childhood threatened to surface. She could almost feel the familiar stifling pressure to perform for the public.

She shook her head and paced to the window once more. The thought of those men outside, wrestling with each other to take photographs of her daughter to sell to the highest bidder… It stirred something deep and primal inside her. This was exactly why she had walked away from her old life in the first place.

She didn’t want Rigo’s help, but she wasn’t stubborn enough not to recognise that she was in desperate need of it. She was certain he would want this whole episode erased as soon as possible. He had made his stance on fatherhood abundantly clear once already, hadn’t he?

She would go to Paris. She would sacrifice her pride and ask him for help. The story would be silenced and they could all return to normality.

The European headquarters of the Marchesi Group was a gargantuan chrome-and-glass tower in the heart of Paris. It was a relatively new building, and its acquisition had been one of the first changes to his family’s historic fashion brand that Rigo Marchesi had made upon taking his seat as CEO five years previously.

There had been outrage when he had moved the company’s flagship building from Milan to Paris. But Rigo had a vision for the future of his company, and that vision required change.

Keeping his finger on the pulse of the modern business world was what made him a great leader, along with his razor-sharp negotiating skills and a clean-cut, dependable reputation. His unconventional choices had already seen profits skyrocket, and his family name restored after the steady downward decline of the business during the decade preceding his rise to CEO.

Great leaders were never caught by surprise. Rigo glowered at his computer screen as he stirred a spoonful of organic sweetener into his double espresso. Great leaders were not waylaid by a scandal that had apparently already been live on the internet for several hours. Above all, great leaders did not get publicly vilified by the world’s media mere weeks before the biggest deal of their company’s history was about to be completed.

Downing the hot coffee in one go, he stood up and paced across to the window.

Nicole Duvalle had been a blip. A moment of madness that had somehow bypassed his usually crystal-clear judgement. Rigo did not do mindless pleasure. He made sure that the women he took into his bed had their own careers to take up most of their time, just as he did. He was selective in his affairs and had no time for the kind of woman who was simply attracted to his net worth.

And yet when it had come to Nicole his logic had failed him. He’d got caught up in the blinding attraction between them and thought to hell with the consequences.

Well, the consequences were here now, and Miss Duvalle had no idea what she had just started.

Rigo turned as the glass door to his office opened and Alberto entered. His right-hand man looked rumpled and nothing like his usual pristine self.

‘I trust your day has gone to plan?’ Rigo raised a brow in question.

‘She walked out after less than five minutes.’ Alberto exhaled harshly. ‘They offered her the deal and she point-blank refused it.’

Rigo was silent for a moment, leaning back against the desk. He’d be lying if he said he hadn’t expected this outcome. If Nicole was as money hungry as her mother she would hardly accept the first pay-off she was offered. He had only offered the money to get the story settled quickly, out of the courtroom.

The deal he was currently negotiating with French jewellery icon Fournier was time sensitive. The family-owned company had been initially reluctant to merge with such a large corporation, and it had already taken months to get to this point. Rigo gritted his teeth, feeling his jaw tighten with frustration. How could one interview cause this much mayhem?

Already he had been notified of shareholders jumping ship and rumbles amongst the board members. His late grandfather had left a black spot on the Marchesi name that had almost bankrupted their eighty-five-year-old brand. After his own father’s tireless work to put the business to rights, there was no way Rigo would let this shake them.

If his own shareholders were nervous, then he was damn sure Fournier were nervous, too. And he didn’t blame them. Eighty per cent of their market was female. A new CEO who had apparently left his conquest pregnant and out on the street was bad for business.

Even if was a blatant lie told by a ruthless gold-digger.

‘Where is she now?’ Rigo asked.

Alberto looked uneasy for a moment. ‘The child needed to sleep, so we put her in one of the company apartments on Avenue Montaigne.’

‘She rejects the deal and you immediately set her up in luxury accommodation?’ He raised a brow. ‘Alberto, you are a soft touch.’

‘We couldn’t risk the press getting wind of her location yet,’ Alberto said hurriedly.

‘Forget about it. I will just have to fix this myself,’ Rigo growled, grabbing his suit jacket.

It was time for him to reinforce what he apparently hadn’t made clear enough to her the last time.

He would not be made to look a fool.

Ignoring the uncomfortable burn in her stomach, Nicole scraped the rest of her half-eaten meal into the bin and poured a small glass of white wine. She needed to unwind and get rid of this nervous energy so that she could formulate a plan. A plan that did not involve being holed up at the top of a fancy apartment tower like a scared defenceless princess.

She walked over to the windows, looking at the lights of Paris twinkling in the dusk.

Her old life had been filled with nights like this, drinking wine and gazing out at the lights of countless beautiful cities. But no city had ever felt like home—not even London. ‘Home’ was what she had been trying to create in L’Annique. A stable, solid place where Anna could grow up, go to school, have her first kiss. All of those normal things that young girls were meant to go through. And instead they’d been forced to flee, to accept help from the one man she had promised herself she would never turn to, no matter how hard things got.

She sank down onto the suede sofa and closed her eyes. It had taken over an hour to get Anna to sleep in the absence of her usual routine. She needed to pull herself together. After all, children felt their mother’s anxiety, didn’t they? Their entire life had fallen to pieces and she only had herself to blame.

She took a long sip from her wine and gazed anxiously out the window at the dark street below. Alberto had assured her that they were guaranteed privacy here, that they would be safe from the press until they came to an agreement. And that was all that Nicole needed right now—until she figured out what the hell her options were.

The luxury apartment was on the third floor of an exclusive building not far from the Champs-Elysées. It was all high-gloss modern minimalist furniture and white walls—not very child friendly or lived-in.

Honestly, what on earth had she been thinking to come here? Of course they wanted to pay her off, she cursed silently, kicking off her shoes and tucking them underneath herself. She had expected to be met with a gag order of some form, but not an outright pay-off in return for her lies. She needed help, but the deal she had been offered came at a price much too high for her to pay.

She had barely thought about Rigo in the weeks before all of this. That had been no mean feat, considering she looked into her daughter’s cobalt-blue eyes every single day. It had been more than a year since she had looked into the identical blue eyes of her one-night lover.

Maybe on some level she had half hoped he would be there today. She wasn’t sure she would have been able to be quite so calm if he had been.

A knock sounded on the door to the apartment. Nicole stood slowly. Alberto had said no one would know her location here except for him…and his boss.

‘Who is it?’ She stood in front of the closed door, feeling her heartbeat pound against her ribcage.

‘You know who it is, Nicole.’

She felt the deep baritone of his voice vibrate right down to the soles of her feet. She fought the sudden need to turn tail and run. She stood frozen, amazed at her own ridiculous nerves. Her stomach seemed to be flipping over in circles as she reached out and laid her hand on the doorknob.

She swung the door open and there he was. Six foot two of pure Italian male, his short dark hair perfectly coiffed to match his immaculately tailored suit.

‘May I come in?’ he said, the subtle hardness of his tone belying the seemingly polite request.

Nicole stepped back, opening the door wide and gesturing for him to enter.

She was aware of his cobalt-blue gaze sweeping over her as he moved into the apartment. His eyes still had the ability to make her breath catch. No doubt he was taking note of how much she had changed since they’d last met. She became acutely aware of the fact that she was about ten pounds heavier, her plain brown hair hadn’t seen a stylist in over a year and she had stains from Anna’s supper all over her jeans.

She self-consciously tugged the hem of her plain white cotton shirt down lower on her hips.

Rigo leaned casually against the bar in the open-plan kitchen. His arms were crossed over his impressive chest and he continued to stare at her, waiting.

‘Nothing to say, Nicole?’ he asked.

‘I would say it’s nice to see you again, but we both know that would be a lie.’ She avoided his gaze, staring at a point to the left of his shoulder. ‘I suppose I should be honoured that you’ve even bothered to speak in person.’

His brows raised a centimetre. ‘Believe me, I have a thousand things I would much rather spend my time doing than this.’

‘At least we’re being honest.’ She shrugged, telling herself not to be hurt by that statement. She had no reason to be hurt. They were practically strangers. He might be her daughter’s biological father but they had only ever spent one night together. She felt heat reach her cheeks as she thought of what that night had involved.

Rigo didn’t seem to take any notice of her heightened colour. ‘Oh, I wouldn’t say we are being honest at all, Nicole,’ he drawled. ‘If you’re angling for more money, then I am afraid you are wasting your time. You’re lucky I am offering you anything at all and not dragging you into court for slander.’

‘I don’t want a single cent from you.’ Nicole crossed her arms defensively. ‘All I want is for the press to back off and give me back my privacy.’

Rigo let out a harsh bark of laughter. ‘Oh, that’s your play, is it? We both know you threw away any right you have to privacy the moment you dragged my name through the mud.’

‘I had nothing to do with this.’ She met his eyes without hesitation.

‘This is not a game, Nicole.’ His voice took on a dangerous tone. ‘I made it clear the last time we met that I am not a man to mess with.’

‘I would have been quite happy never to lay eyes on you again. Your ego is so large it’s amazing you can even get out of bed in the morning.’ She narrowed her eyes, the anger she felt finally rising to the surface.

Rigo took a step forward, a half-smile breaking across his harsh features. ‘Now, this is interesting. So far I’ve witnessed Nicole, the innocent temptress, followed by Nicole, the damsel in distress.’ He raised one brow. ‘But I think this passionately angry version is my personal favourite.’

Nicole was speechless. The way he looked at her, his eyes filled with such disdain… It made the hair on the back of her neck prickle. How had she ever thought that this man had felt anything close to what she’d felt that night? He was a complete stranger right now. The idea that they had ever been anything so romantic as lovers was poetic nonsense. The harsh reality was that they were simply two people who had had sex.

Once upon a time she might have thought they shared a connection. That for one night in his bed she had somehow been special.

She had been so naive.

‘Rigo, you are threatening to sue me because of gossip that I have no control over.’

‘Then, why have you not tried to deny it?’ he countered.

‘My silence is the most you’re going to get. I don’t deal with the press anymore.’

‘You will make a public statement that the child is not mine, Nicole.’

His mere presence was so commanding that she would be a fool not to feel intimidated by the demand. She fought the emotion welling up in her chest. It was ridiculous to feel hurt at his words after so long. After all, he had made his position on fatherhood quite clear. But still, a part of her had always hoped he would come in those weeks afterwards.

Even as she’d lain in hospital, terrified to hold her tiny premature daughter, she’d held hope that his world had shifted as profoundly as hers had. That he would instinctively know he had become a father.

Indignation won out over the sadness, and she stood up a little taller, meeting his gaze head-on. ‘I told you that I was pregnant with your child. You chose not to be a part of it, and that is fine. But I will not publicly tell lies and go against my principles as a mother just to protect your damn family name.’

He shook his head with disbelief. ‘Do you honestly think I would have let you run off like you did unless I was completely sure that I was not the father of your child?’

Nicole walked to the kitchen counter and began digging down to the bottom of her handbag. Her fingers finally closed on the object she sought, and she turned back to meet his cold gaze once more.

‘I’m telling you that you were wrong, Rigo.’ She held out the photograph. ‘Anna is your daughter and here is the proof.’