‘I assure you...on my honour...that I was not the man involved and that I profoundly disapprove of such activities.’
Holly remained unimpressed. How did she credit that he had honour? How was she supposed to believe him? He had been protecting his family by remaining silent? How did that work?
‘I do believe it would be wiser to take this meeting out of my big fancy office to somewhere more comfortable,’ Vito continued, his smooth diction acidic in tone. ‘I have an apartment in London. My driver will take you and you can relax there until I can join you for lunch.’
Knocked right off balance by that suggestion coming at her out of nowhere, Holly actually found herself thinking about the offer of lunch. Telling him about Angelo in an office setting felt wrong to her as well, and then a little voice in the back of her brain that sounded alarmingly like Pixie told her to wise up and think about the invitation he had made. And at that point the coin finally dropped for Holly and she grasped how Vito had chosen to interpret her sudden reappearance in his life. She wanted to kick herself for not foreseeing that likelihood, but she wanted to kick him even harder for daring to think that he could have a chance with her again. Certainly not with what she now knew about his partying habits!
‘I haven’t come here for another hook-up,’ Holly stated with an embarrassed force that made her voice rise slightly. Behind her mortification lurked a great well of burning resentment.
Did he really think that she was so desperate for sex that she would travel all the way to London for it? How dared he assume that she was that keen, that easy? Well, she certainly hadn’t taught him that she was a big challenge the night they first met, Holly conceded grudgingly. But, my goodness, that one night must have been as good on his terms as he had said it was if he was willing to do it again. Or maybe he was simply a sex addict? Anything was possible. When Holly had snapped back at him about his money and his fancy office and his debauched partying, she had also picked up on his surprise. He had assumed she was a quiet, easy-going little mouse but Holly wasn’t quiet when her temper was roused. And right now her temper was rising like lava in a volcano. The past fourteen months had been very challenging, and working all day after a sleepless night had become her new norm. Having no way of contacting her son’s father, who had handicapped her by giving her a false name, had only added to her stress.
Vito tensed. ‘I didn’t say anything about that. No expectations...’ he murmured silkily, lean brown hands sketching an eloquent arc in the air as if to nullify her suspicions.
‘Of course you have expectations...but, in this case, I’m afraid it’s not going to happen. You had your chance and you blew it!’ Holly snapped back, striving to hang on to her temper.
His brows drew together. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
Holly rolled her eyes, her lush mouth compressed. ‘A timely little reminder that if you had really wanted to see me again I did leave you my phone number.’
‘No, you didn’t,’ Vito insisted.
Holly tensed even more, angry that she had let that reminder fall from her mouth. ‘I left a note thanking you for your hospitality and I printed my phone number at the bottom of it.’
Vito groaned. ‘I didn’t find a note when you left. Where did you leave it?’
‘On the shelf in the fireplace.’ Holly shrugged dismissively, keen to drop the subject.
‘If there was a note, I didn’t see it,’ Vito assured her.
But then he would say that, wouldn’t he? Holly thought, unimpressed. Of course he had found the silly note she had left behind and he had done nothing with it. And in doing nothing he had taught her all she needed to know about how he saw her. She had gone over the events of that morning in her mind many, many times. She was convinced that Vito had gone out for a walk to get a break from her. For him the fun of togetherness had already worn thin. He had ignored her note most probably because he’d been relieved to find her already gone. He had seen that night as a casual one-night stand that he had no desire to repeat.
‘Whatever. It’s pointless to discuss it after the amount of time that has passed. But let me spell out one fact,’ Holly urged thinly. ‘I didn’t come to see you today for anything...er...physical. I came to see you about something much more important.’
At her emphasis, Vito raised a level dark brow in cool query mode, his wide sensual mouth tightening with impatience. And she could feel the whole atmosphere turning steadily colder and less welcoming. Naturally. She had taken sex off the lunch table, as it were, and he was no longer interested in anything she might have to say to him. And why would he be interested? She was poor and he was rich. He was educated and she was more of a self-educated person, which meant that she had alarming gaps in her knowledge. He was hugely successful and a high achiever while she worked in dead-end jobs without a career ladder for advancement. It was incredible, she finally conceded, that they had ever got involved in the first place.
‘More important?’ Vito prompted, his irritation barely hidden.
Defiance and umbrage combined inside Holly. She had held on to her temper but it was a close-run battle. His assumption that she was approaching him for another sexual encounter had shocked her, possibly because she had persuaded herself that they had shared something more than sex. Now she saw her illusions for the pitiful lies that they were, lies she had told herself to bolster her sagging self-esteem while she was waddling round with a massive tummy.
‘Yes, much more important,’ she confirmed, lifting her chin and simply spilling out her announcement. ‘I got pregnant that night we were together.’
Vito froze as if she had threatened to fling a grenade at him. He turned noticeably pale, his strong bone structure suddenly clearly etched below his skin by raw tension. ‘You said you were on the pill—’
Holly wasn’t in the mood to go into the intricacies of missed pills and antibiotic treatment. ‘You must know that every form of contraception has a failure rate and I’m afraid there was a failure. I got pregnant but I had no way of contacting you, particularly not when you had given me a fake name.’
Vito was in shock. Indeed Vito could never recall being plunged into such a state of shock before. Everything he had assumed had been turned upside down and inside out with those simple words... I got pregnant.
‘And do you usually reintroduce yourself with a very evocative Santa hat and a sprig of holly when this happens?’ he heard himself snap without even mentally forming the words. ‘Is this some sort of a scam?’
Holly’s small shoulders pushed up, along with her chin. ‘No, Angelo is not a scam, Vito. He was born eight months after that night.’
‘You come here without a word of warning and throw this announcement at me like a challenge,’ Vito ground out in condemnation, no fan of major surprises in his life, as yet not even capable of thinking of what she was telling him. The prospect of having a child had long struck him as a possibility as remote as the moon. He had known fatherhood was on the cards somewhere down the line if he married Marzia but he had also known that neither of them were in any hurry to start a family.
‘No, I did not. If I challenged you it would be an awful lot tougher!’ Holly shot back at him furiously. ‘Tough was waitressing until I was eight months pregnant and being in labour for two days before I got a C-section. Tough is working as a childminder and a shelf-stacker and never getting enough sleep. You wouldn’t know tough if it leapt on you and bit you...because in your whole blasted spoilt-rotten life you have had everything handed to you on
