It would not be much, but it would be essential. It would get her to the UK where she would try to live and work. Staying first with Mia and Matt, she’d use her contacts to get a job. See out her pregnancy, either as a designer or, at worst, a saleswoman. Her own business was finished—it had been since Luca had shown himself to be her mystery money lender.
Her own words seared in her memory.
‘I’d sooner starve in a gutter!’
She gave a thin smile. Well, it would not be a gutter, and she would not quite starve, but everything would go—from the last bolt of fabric to her racy little car. Luca could pick the bones of her business clean if he so wanted. But that was all he would get.
Nothing else.
Instinctively—protectively—Ariana’s splayed hand dropped again to her midriff...
Luca’s mobile was ringing.
‘Si?’His voice was curt as he took the call. He knew who it was, or he would not have answered.
‘There is news, Signor Farnese.’
The caller’s tone was neutral. Carefully so.
‘And?’
Luca’s expression did not change as he listened.
But something inside him changed.
His whole world changed.
Ariana gave a last glance around her bedroom. A pang smote her. She was losing what she had taken her adult life to build—an independence that was hers and hers alone. Now she must make a new life—for herself and her baby.
She hefted up her single suitcase—all she was taking with her. She gave a sour smile. Luca could make what use he wanted of her designer outfits. She would have no use for them as her pregnancy increased, nor in the penny-pinching life she must lead from now on. He could pass them on to the next woman whose life he destroyed.
But he didn’t destroy Mia’s life by marrying her—and he won’t destroy mine.
That was all that mattered.
Face set, she walked downstairs, letting herself out on to the street. She would post the keys to her accountant—he could hand them on to Luca Farnese.
Except that would not prove to be necessary.
Because Luca was waiting for her on the pavement.
He could see shock whiten her face, deepening the hollows under her eyes. She did not look well. Her un-made-up face was gaunt, her hair pulled back into a tight knot. And she was too thin. Surely she should be gaining weight, not losing it?
His eyes went instinctively to her waistline. She was wearing jeans and a cotton sweatshirt. He frowned. Had his information been wrong? For a piercing second emotion stabbed him—but he did not know what it was and he put it from him. She was still standing there, frozen with shock, completely motionless.
‘Going somewhere?’ he asked pleasantly.
He levered himself away from the bonnet of his car, drawn up half on the pavement.
‘Yes.’
A single word. Stony. As stony as her face.
‘But not, however,’ he informed her, his voice still pleasant, ‘where you thought you would be going.’ He paused. Then spoke again. ‘I’ve had you under surveillance since you walked out on me. You see, Ariana...’ and now he made his voice like silk ‘...you have a habit of lying, and so I questioned your claim that you had been protected from pregnancy as you asserted. Your visit to a pharmacy to buy a pregnancy test might just have been caution on your part, to check you weren’t pregnant—but your attending an antenatal clinic could only confirm that you were.’
Was it possible for her ashen face to whiten more? It did. He stepped towards her, taking her suitcase, tossing it into the boot of his car, then opening the passenger door.
‘We need to get going, Ariana. I want to be in Milan this evening, and it’s a three-and-a-half-hour drive.’