If the cap fits,' Charlie sneered, lifting stormy blue eyes to his, and was even more incensed. Jake was so suave, so in control. He was immaculately clad in a tailored slate-grey business suit, and he should have looked incongruous in the casual setting, but he didn't. He looked magnificent, swaying back on his heels waiting... and watching.
The silence lengthened, and the tension. Biting her lips, she reined in her temper. 'What are you doing here, Jake?'
She was no fool. His passionate embrace on arriving had been nothing more than his high-handed way of manipulating her feelings in front of Dave. But no matter how hurt and suspicious she was, she still wanted Jake. She had ached and cried over him for five painful weeks, in a roller-coaster r
ide of emotions, ecstatic when he called and plagued with doubt when he didn't. Ashamed of her weakness, she tilted her chin. 'Apart from insulting my friend, that is.'
Jake studied her with fixed attention, his dark eyes gleaming below thick black lashes. He wondered if she had any idea how desirable she looked, her lovely face flushed with anger and her chin tilted at a defiant angle. 'I don't wish to argue with you over your friend.'
'I bet you don't,' Charlie mocked, the picture in the magazine still fresh in her mind. Jake was a two-timing snake. 'Enjoy yourself in New York, did you? I hear you met up with your old friend Melissa,' she snarled and watched as his black brows drew together in a frown.
'You saw the magazine article,' he said, with a smug smile dawning that made her want to knock it off his face.
'Dinner good, was it? Or was the smile on your face for the afters you were anticipating?'
'Very good, and it was for a very good cause,' Jake said silkily. Charlotte was jealous and, much as he was tempted to play her along, there were more important matters at stake here. 'Melissa is an old friend, and, yes, before you ask, we were lovers, but it was over months before I met you. She left me for another wealthy man who, as it happens, was her date at the dinner—not I.'
'She left you!' Charlie exclaimed. Furious with the man, she still found it incredible that any woman would willingly dump Jake d'Amato.
He shrugged. 'It was no big deal. A mutual parting of the ways.' Charlie was inclined to believe him, because she knew from personal experience Jake was a workaholic and she doubted any woman was a big deal to him, including herself. 'But enough about my past love life. It is the present I am here to talk about, and preferably not in public view.'
Only then was Charlie aware there were a few guests strolling around the garden. She went from outraged anger to mortification in one second flat.
'Unless of course you would like everyone in the hotel to know you are pregnant. After all, you had no hesitation in telling my housekeeper before me. That is why you called me, isn't it?' he demanded curtly.
Fiery colour burned her cheeks. Her Italian must have been better than she thought. Jake knew she was pregnant. As if that were not bad enough, so did almost everyone in the hotel, and she had a horrible suspicion that if Jake ever discovered he was the last to find out, he was not going to be delighted.
'I—I—uh, yes. And it seems like a good idea to talk in private,' she said, her huge eyes studiously avoiding his. 'If you'll follow me, my home is around the back. Over there, the west wing, actually.'
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHARLIE heaved a sigh of relief when they finally reached the safety of her sitting room without encountering anyone. 'Would you like a drink? Tea or coffee?' She headed for the kitchen, and turned. 'Or something stronger,' she suggested politely. Jake was standing in the middle of the room, big, dark and threatening.
'No, thank you. I've had a stomach full of your English tea.' By the grim glance he gave her, he'd had enough of her as well.
Charlie ran clammy hands down her shorts, hovering in the kitchen doorway, uncertain what to do next. Her shock and delight at his arrival had quickly changed to fury and finally embarrassment. She should never have made that phone call. "I—I take it you got my message,' she said, swallowing nervously, her heart beating like a drum in her chest.
'Yes.' His dark eyes didn't leave her face as he moved to stop a few inches in front of her. 'Interesting, Charlotte: your knowledge of Italian has improved enough to tell my housekeeper you are pregnant, and I am going to be a papa. Not something I appreciated,' he said through gritted teeth. 'Nor having to disturb my pilot on a Sunday and fly halfway across Europe to discover the truth.'
She had never seen him so angry. It was in every line of his big taut body, intimidating in its intensity. 'You could have just phoned,' Charlie murmured when he continued to stand and stare grimly at her, and she lowered her eyes, unable to meet the hard censure in his.
The call had been foolish, she knew, but then she had been hurting badly. She had told him she loved him, laid her heart on the line in the hope he cared, and yet he had not called her for a month—and to see a picture of him in a magazine with another woman... She had flipped. Her hunger for him was an ever-present ache; the longing to see his rare brilliant smile, to hear his voice, to touch him, haunted her dreams.
'No, I could not,' he said. 'A phone call wouldn't do for me. I want to be looking into your eyes when you tell me I am going to be a father.' His dark eyes narrowed to angry slits, and he caught her chin with a thumb and finger and forced her to look at him. 'Are you pregnant, Charlotte?'
'Yes, I am,' she said bluntly. She was thrilled and excited at the prospect, but also frightened, and she wanted nothing more than for Jake to take her in his arms and tell her it would be all right. But by the look on his face she doubted he would.
'And just when did you fall pregnant?' he demanded roughly.
'Seven weeks ago.' She still had not got over the shock that she had got pregnant the first or second time she had made love. 'How unlucky is that?' Charlie didn't realize she had spoken her thought out loud until his hand fell abruptly from her chin and he stepped back and looked at her as if she were contaminated. She saw the humourless smile that twisted his firm lips and flinched at the venom in it.
'Unlucky?' His dark eyes held tightly leashed rage. 'For me, maybe, but damned convenient for you. Amazingly, it is exactly how long we have known each other.'
Jake was madder than hell. It was so obvious: she had put him squarely in the frame as the father...but was he? No woman had enraged and inflamed him as comprehensively as Charlotte. He had tried to put her out of his mind,but his body would not let him, a galling admission to make, but not one he intended to act on. His dark eyes raked assessingly over her. The tiny white shorts hugged her hips like a second skin, and her stomach still appeared flat, but perhaps her breasts were a little fuller... No! He didn't want to go there. Yes, he did. But he had no intention of being conned by a blue-eyed little gold digger, however desirable, his hard eyes sweeping back up to her lovely face.
Isn’t it rather early to have a pregnancy confirmed?' he queried with biting cynicism. 'Unless the woman in question is eager to get pregnant.'
'Not if you are as sick as a chip every day for three weeks,' she flashed, looking up at him, and stopped. 'You don't believe me,' she said slowly. She could see it in his eyes, in the cynical curl of his lips. She shook her head, and, turning away from him, she crossed to the sofa and collapsed onto it, folding her arms around her waist, suddenly cold. It had never occurred to her Jake wouldn't believe her.