In the Italian's Bed: Bedded for Pleasure, Purchased for Pregnancy / The Italian's Ruthless Baby Bargain / The Italian Count's Defiant Bride. Carol Marinelli

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СКАЧАТЬ CHAPTER SIX

      PRIVATELY Emma had often wondered how Jake would cope in a real crisis—the answer had surprised her.

      He had dealt with everything—and not just the prac-tical—had offered endless support as Emma struggled just to function. He had dealt with the rapid sale of her parents’ house when, two days after the funeral, a generous offer had come up to buy it, furnishings and all. And Jake had offered wise counsel when, on a particularly unbearable night, she’d confided to him what had happened with Zarios.

      ‘You’re best out of it, Em…’ He had held her hand and said all the right things. ‘Whatever he’s got going on with Miranda is just to keep the board of directors happy—it will be over in a few weeks.’

      And he had been right.

      Two weeks before the board’s decision and Zarios was again in the newspapers—but for all the wrong reasons.

      She’d read about him—unable to help herself—with a morbid curiosity, scanning the magazines and newspapers.

      D’Amilo Financiers shareholders were bracing themselves for the announcement, its share price hovering as the financial world held its collective breath and awaited details on the company’s new direction. For a while Zarios had managed to behave. Emma had winced at every photo of him walking hand in hand with Miranda, hopping on a plane and joining her in Brazil on a photo-shoot. His spin doctors had been working overtime, almost managing to convince the world that Zarios D’Amilo had changed—that this leopard now wore different spots.

      Till last week.

      No comment had been offered from Camp Zarios when Miranda had been dumped at the eleventh hour, just two weeks short of his father’s retirement. The papers were ablaze with the scandal, the share price had tumbled, and even the gossip magazines wavered in their dogged devotion to Zarios.

      After all, Emma thought, her lips curling in distaste as she’d read on, what reputable magazine could favourably report on a man who would end a relationship when he found out Miranda was unable to bear children?

      Zarios, as Miranda had tearfully revealed to the enthralled media, having sold her story for a record sum, had wanted a child, an heir, and had refused to commit to marriage until she became pregnant. Tests had recently revealed that she was infertile, and there were photos of the two of them coming out of the specialist fertility department at a top Melbourne hospital—Zarios looking boot-faced, Miranda in floods of tears.

      And, Emma had noticed with loathing, he wasn’t even holding her hand.

      Jake had been right—she was best out of it. And then suddenly her brother had changed his mind.

      Arriving at her door a couple of nights ago, grey and ashen, suddenly Jake had insisted that she went to Zarios for help.

      Emma felt nauseous at the mere recollection of the desperate conversation she had shared with her brother that night.

      ‘You hit Beth?’ she had asked, appalled at her brother’s confession.

      ‘I pushed her…’ Jake was as irritated as Emma was horrified. ‘And she fell. I was just trying to get past and she was in the way. Look, Em…’ in an attempt to soften her, Jake reverted to her childhood nickname ‘…how can I walk in now and tell Beth I’ve lost the house? She’s already threatening to leave. Surely Zarios owes you after what he did to you? You can sweet-talk him into a loan.’

      ‘He’s not going to pay off your gambling debts.’

      ‘Tell him it’s for you! Tell him that your business is in trouble—tell him anything, just keep me out of it. He’d never agree for me. He knows our parents’ house had been sold, that the money’s practically in the bank—it’s just till Mum and Dad’s money comes through.’

      ‘Even if he did give me a loan, which is highly unlikely, what are you going to tell Beth? How are you going to explain it in a couple of weeks’ time, when you have to pay me back?’

      ‘Things will be calmer then,’ Jake said. ‘If I tell her now, she’ll walk. She’ll take out a restraining order and I won’t see the kids.’

      ‘What if I go with you and speak to the bank? Maybe if you can sign a guarantee that the money’s coming.’

      ‘The guys I’m dealing aren’t going to wait for the bank to make up their mind, Em. I need…’ Jake gulped as he told her the appalling figure—he needed nearly one million dollars by the close of business tomorrow. ‘Every day that passes it goes up more…’

      Those poor kids…Emma almost wept as she pictured Harriet’s and Connor’s innocent, trusting faces. Poor Beth, too. God alone knew what she must be putting up with.

      What would her parents want her to do?

      ‘I can’t take this much longer, Emma.’

      There was her answer. So now, with Jake’s veiled threat still ringing in her ears, for the first time since her parents’ funeral Emma dressed carefully.

      But it took for ever.

      Since their death it had felt as if her brain was working in slow motion. Her stomach was knotted in constant tension and the simplest decision took for ever to make: which shoes to wear, hair up or down, even whether to apply make-up—all required a mammoth effort, one she didn’t want to make. And she’d never thought she would be making it for Zarios.

      The putrid words of their last conversation still rang in her ears at times. She hated what she’d said to him, but hated what he’d done to her even more. She could see clearly how he’d used her that weekend—she’d been nothing more than a small diversion in an otherwise boring weekend. Emma had played with the big boys, she realised, and only had herself to blame for getting well and truly burnt.

      And now she had to face him. Had to swallow her pride and ask the snake for help.

      Which was easier said than done. His work life, as Emma had found out when she had tried to contact him, was as capricious as his personal life—Rome one week, Singapore the next. He was flying from his office in Sydney down to Melbourne today, Emma had discovered on her third attempt to contact him, and surprisingly he’d agreed to meet her—or rather his secretary had arranged an appointment for 2:00 p.m. the following day, which had given her twenty-four hours to change her mind.

      As if she had a choice.

      She frowned at her dressing table as if it belonged to someone else, noticing that her hand was shaking as she stroked her make-up brush into powder. The two pink dots that appeared on her cheeks were just too much against her pale complexion and Emma wiped them off with a tissue, giving up on her face and grabbing her bag instead, clipping down the steep stairs of her flat. What the hell was the point of wearing make-up anyway? Nothing was going to disguise her humiliation—nothing was going to mask the shame of going to Zarios with a begging bowl in her hand.

      ‘My appointment was at two.’ Emma tried to keep the slightly desperate note from her voice. ‘It’s almost three now.’

      The receptionist gave her a pussycat smile, which without words told Emma in no uncertain terms that she was more than capable of telling the СКАЧАТЬ