In an instant he was rewarded with a raging throbbing erection in his trousers, and the unwelcome reminder that not one woman since had turned his head or fired his libido. He was turned on like a schoolboy watching a woman undress for the first time. He couldn’t believe it.
Self-disgust made him snarl. ‘Well? What would that be? Tell me here and now, or I’ll have you thrown out on the street—because as far as I’m concerned we’ve concluded any business.’
Cara refused to be intimidated. She matched his actions, stepping closer, so that only inches separated them. She saw the flash of something in his eyes and felt emboldened. She seized the momentary confidence and drew on her towering sense of injustice. It washed away any concerns about what the ripple effect would be from telling him this news.
‘Well, unfortunately that’s not the case. That business would be the fact that I’m pregnant with your baby. I’m afraid the consequences of your revenge that night are more far-reaching than you’d anticipated.’
Try a lifetime!
Vicenzo went very still for a moment and then stood back, slashing a hand through the air. Something almost like relief crossed his features, making Cara’s insides contract as if to protect herself from pain.
‘Not possible. I used protection.’
Pain struck deep at his fervent denial. Cara’s hands clenched by her sides, and her heart thumped unevenly. ‘Well, it must have split or broken or something—because, whether you like it or not, I’m pregnant. With your baby.’
Vicenzo had a sudden image of Caleb and Maggie, and the way Caleb had been so tenderly protective of Maggie and her bump just moments ago. He fought off a wave of something suspiciously like nausea and comforted himself with the fact that Cara was lying through her teeth. She had to be.
He laughed derisively. ‘It took you two months to figure out a way to get back at me? And you’ve come up with this? What did you think would happen? That I’d jump to attention and beg you to marry me for the sake of our child? Couldn’t you find another poor deluded billionaire to take you in—Sebastian Mortimer, perhaps? The real father?’
Cara’s heart clenched so hard and so painfully that all she saw was black for a moment. She managed to stay standing and bite out, ‘I told you before. I did not sleep with that man and I couldn’t imagine a worse fate than marrying you. All I want is to let you know what your actions have led to—especially in light of your free and easy lifestyle. I don’t want to be accused of keeping your baby a secret when you’re wining and dining your latest model-turned-actress girlfriend.’
Vicenzo turned sideways and Cara acted on pure impulse, thinking that he was about to walk away, dismissing her again. The hurt was too much. She had to say something to make him believe her. She grabbed at his sleeve, stopping him. He looked down, his eyes like fli
nty ice.
Cara blurted it out before she could censor herself. ‘I hate to admit this to you, but I was a virgin that night.’ Bitterness laced her voice. ‘Not that you even noticed. This baby is yours—no one else’s.’ She gave a laugh that came out somewhere between a strangled cry and a moan of pain. ‘Do you really think that after that night I went looking for someone else to impregnate me, just so I could track you down and pass the baby off as yours?’
Vicenzo’s whole body stilled. He could hear the words, they were registering on his consciousness, but somehow he wasn’t aware of them, of their import. She had to be lying. Had to be. But then all too quickly a vivid memory came back of her standing strangely vulnerable in front of him, in that plain white underwear. He’d put her apparent gaucheness down to artifice. But there had also been that fleeting moment when he’d suspected—his mind seized on that thought.
It was too much to take in.
Shaking his head, as if to negate the awful suspicion running through him, gathering force as it did so, he said faintly, ‘Not possible.’
And yet as his eyes remained glued to Cara’s, in some sort of sick fascination, he registered her cheeks flushing, and she gripped his sleeve tighter. She spoke louder now, as if to hammer it home, to leave him in no doubt as to the veracity of her claims.
‘You can believe me or not, Vicenzo, but the fact is that I am pregnant and the baby is yours.’
He was looking down at her, his face carved from granite, eyes so harsh and forbidding that Cara couldn’t believe she’d ever seen any lightness or tenderness in their depths. And then suddenly something flashed to their right from the lobby area. Cara flinched. Then another flash came, swiftly followed by a dozen more. They both looked.
‘Dio!’
Vicenzo let loose with another expletive just as Cara realised what was happening. They’d been caught by the paparazzi. She’d seen them loitering by the entrance of the hotel but hadn’t really registered them, too nervous and distracted by the confrontation ahead of her.
Cara felt Vicenzo throw her hand off his sleeve, and in the same instant she sensed him about to reach to grab her arm again—no doubt to haul her off somewhere else and accuse her of orchestrating this too. She slid out from under his hand and pushed desperately through the shouting crowd, their questions causing her stomach to heave and her legs to turn to jelly.
‘Mr Valentini, is it true? Are you two having a baby? What’s her name?’
Stifling the panic rising in her throat, Cara pushed through the crush and finally made it to the door, terrified of Vicenzo catching her at any moment. She jumped into the first cab she saw outside the entrance. Breathing hard as it pulled away, she looked back just in time to see Vicenzo burst through the hotel entrance, looking after the cab, fury written all over his face.
Cara turned away and miserably gave her address to the driver before she closed her eyes. What had she just done? The preceding moments rushed back in all their glory, his presence no longer there to act as some sort of hazy filter for her words and actions. Sudden hot tears smarted behind her eyelids, and she pressed a fist to her chest to try and keep down the emotion that was threatening to rip through her.
She couldn’t believe that she’d let him get to her so much that she’d revealed everything—the true extent of her vulnerability and inexperience that night. And in doing so, not only telling him about the pregnancy, she’d thrown the door wide open to allow him back into her life, to devastate her even beyond what he’d already done… Because one thing was for sure: she didn’t expect for one second that Vicenzo Valentini would walk away from this.
CHAPTER FIVE
VICENZO slammed a fist into the palm of his hand. The lobby was going crazy behind him, as hotel staff tried to eject the photographers. Cara Brosnan was delusional if she thought she could threaten him with this pregnancy. And yet her fantastic claims—what she had just told him—she’d been a virgin—she hadn’t slept with Mortimer—all reverberated sickeningly in his head… Was it possible? Everything in him wanted to say no! But the suspicion was fast becoming a distinct possibility.
Just then the hotel’s revolving door hissed behind him, and he felt a hand slap his shoulder. He turned to see his friend standing there.