Claiming His Secret Love-Child. Cathy Williams

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      ‘No, I don’t want to take money from you, Alessandro,’ she’d said. ‘I won’t do it. I can get a job in a café or something if I run out.’

      He frowned with disapproval. ‘No, I do not want you working in a hot, crowded café. I like coming home to you fresh and happy to see me.’

      ‘It’s not about money,’ she said. ‘I have some savings from home I can transfer in any case.’

      His thumb stopped moving as he held her gaze. ‘You do not like the thought of being paid to be my lover?’

      She frowned at him. ‘Of course I don’t like the thought of it. That’s positively archaic, Alessandro. People don’t do that, or at least not in the circles I move in.’

      His expression was still unreadable as he looked into her eyes. ‘I want you to be my lover, and I do not mind paying you to stay with me.’

      Scarlett felt her breath stall in her chest. ‘For…for how long?’

      His thumb moved to her bottom lip and grazed it tantalisingly, his eyes holding hers like a magnet. ‘How long would you like to stay in Milan?’ he asked.

      Her heart began thumping irregularly again. ‘How long do you want me to stay?’ she asked softly.

      He kissed the corner of her mouth. ‘The way I feel right now, I want you to stay for a long time—a very long time.’

      Scarlett let out her breath in a long stream of relief. She had longed to hear him say he loved her, but it was almost as good knowing he wanted her to stay indefinitely.

      ‘Alessandro…’ She stepped up on tiptoe and kissed his mouth in a series of hot, passionate little touchdowns of her lips on his. ‘I love you. I didn’t think it was possible to love someone so much and so quickly, but I do,’ she said, gazing up at him rapturously. ‘I love being with you. I love it more than anything in the world.’

      He smiled again and brought her closer, his hips pressing against hers. ‘I know you do, and I enjoy being with you too. Now, tesore mio, tell me what you were so intent on telling me when I came in the door. I am all ears—is that how you say it in English, hmm?’

      ‘Yes…yes, it is.’ She took a little breath and announced baldly, ‘Alessandro, I’m pregnant.’

      He released her so abruptly she stumbled, only just managing to right herself because there was a priceless marble statue close by. She faced him, one hand still holding the statue, her stomach feeling like it was going to drop down between her suddenly trembling legs.

      His expression was thunderous with anger, his eyes like chips of murky-coloured ice as they locked on hers.

      ‘Vio slut ripugnante!’ His words were laced with venom. ‘Vio whore ripugnante.’

      Scarlett’s eyes went wide with shock; she had been in Italy long enough to recognise a savage curse when she heard one. Although she had expected him to be surprised, and perhaps a little angry, to have him call her such horrible names was so unexpected she stood without speaking or defending herself for far too long.

      ‘You tried to trick me into asking you to marry me,’ he went on in the same cold, hard tone. ‘You did not just want my money in exchange for a little affair—you wanted everything, did you not?’

      ‘Alessandro—’ She choked on a frightened sob. ‘Why are you carrying on like this? I thought you cared for me. I—’

      She flinched away as he stabbed a finger in the space between them. ‘Siete una frode affamata dei soldi deceitful,’ he snarled.

      She swallowed against the burning ache in her throat. ‘I’m not sure what you’re saying. Please, can you speak in English?’

      He stepped closer, one of his hands coming down on her wrist like a manacle. ‘You are a deceitful, money-hungry cheat,’ he translated viciously, his eyes flashing with sparks of brown and green. ‘You are a filthy slut, a filthy whore.’

      Scarlett pulled against his iron hold. ‘Stop it, Alessandro, please, you’re hurting me.’

      He flung her arm away and glared down at her. ‘You are good at this, I will admit that, Scarlett. But then you are rather accurately named, are you not? You are a scarlet woman if ever there was one.’

      She stood as frozen as the statue beside her. ‘Don’t say things like that, Alessandro,’ she said, her heart squeezing in pain. ‘You know I’m not like that.’

      His bark of humourless laughter had an edge of cruelty to it. ‘You opened your legs for me within three days of meeting me, but now of course I know why. You were looking for a father for your illegitimate child. You backpackers are all the same, screwing whatever comes along just for the hell of it. You got caught out and had to find a substitute father in a hurry. Who better than me, a knight dressed in Armani?’

      Scarlett could scarcely believe what she was hearing. The malevolence in his tone was so foreign to her. She had never seen him lose his temper. He had never spoken to her so coarsely; she wasn’t sure how to deal with it, or indeed how to defend herself. It seemed so out of character; it terrified her that the man she had given her heart and soul to had suddenly changed into someone else entirely.

      ‘Get your things and get out of my house,’ he bit out. ‘I will give you ten minutes to do so.’

      The hammer blows of panic inside her head made her vision start to blur. Her mouth was dry, her heart feeling as if it had been backed over by a truck. Her stomach churned with the nausea that had plagued her for days on end, but she fought against it valiantly as she tried to come to grips with what was happening.

      She took a couple of deep, calming breaths. ‘You don’t mean that, Alessandro,’ she said, keeping her voice soft and low. ‘You know you don’t. Darling, what’s come over you?’

      His eyes blazed as they looked down at her, his lips pulled tight by a rage so intense she instinctively moved back a step.

      ‘You cannot possibly be carrying my child,’ he said, with a flinty glare.

      She nervously moistened her mouth. ‘But of course it’s yours, Alessandro. I’ve only been with you.’

      His lips curled back in a sneer. ‘Itete trovando!’

      Her chest tightened another painful notch. ‘Please speak to me in English, Alessandro. I don’t understand you.’

      ‘You are lying!’ He shouted the words so loudly they bounced off the walls, the echoes falling like slaps against her ears.

      Scarlett was struggling not to cry. ‘I’m not lying. I’d only had one lover before you, and that had been over a year before we met. How can you possibly doubt me?’

      ‘You had been travelling for weeks with that Kirby man, but you tossed him aside as soon as you met me, no doubt because his wallet was running a little dry,’ he said.

      ‘That’s not true! I have never slept with Dylan. I told him and the others to leave without me, because I wanted to spend more time with you.’

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