as she got to her feet. ‘I know Natalie wants to discuss some charity ball I’m sure you’ll be interested in.’
Like hell he would! Deadpan, he met the redhead’s over-sugared smile. Introduced by Silvana as ‘a friend from London’—an organiser of glittering events for some charity or other—she was certainly a looker. And available. And he was going to have to endure a weekend of having his cousin throwing them together. He would have to let this Natalie know that he was as interested in the female of the species as he was in settling down to read through the telephone directory from cover to cover. And try to be kind about it.
And tomorrow, first thing, he would visit Rylands and demand to know if the child the woman who’d made an idiot of him was carrying was his.
The dishwasher had finished its cycle. Wearily, Anna replaced the contents back in place in the huge Victorian floor-to-ceiling cupboard. Her feet were burning and her back was still aching.
Half an hour earlier Mrs Rosewall had found her repacking the cool boxes and handed her a cheque.
‘The meal was perfect. Are you almost finished?’
‘Everything will be back as it was in half an hour or so. I’m just waiting for the dishes to finish. Unless you’d prefer me to leave now?’ Said without any real hope.
She’d been longing to get away—well out of the orbit of Francesco and his current woman. But from experience she knew that her clients wanted their kitchens to look as if they’d never been used. That was what they paid her for. And they wanted full value for money.
And this one was no different. ‘No hurry. I just wanted to tell you that my husband and I are retiring for the night, but my cousin and his young lady will be in the sitting room and I don’t want them to be disturbed. Just let yourself out quietly. And, while I think about it, could you cater for lunch on Sunday? My guests will be driving back to London in the afternoon, so nothing too heavy, I think.’
Anna hadn’t even considered saying yes! The fee would be more than welcome, but no way would she put herself anywhere near that womanising creep again!
‘Sorry,’ she’d declined, resisting the urge to rub her aching back. ‘That won’t be possible.’
Now, after a final look at the spotless kitchen, she got into her old raincoat, shook her hair free and let herself out. Too tired to hurry, she was drenched when she reached her van and loaded the cool boxes in the back.
It had been a nightmare of a night. The shock of seeing him again had got to her, brought it all back when she hadn’t wanted to so much as think about him again. But it was over now, she reminded herself with almost tearful gratitude, and she forced herself to look on the bright side.
Sensibly telling herself that she never need set eyes on him again, she clambered in behind the wheel.
The way that redhead had been positively drooling over him had made her feel nauseous, and the horrible feeling that he must have noticed her pregnant state—how could he miss it?—put two and two together and know that the baby was his had been argued away as she’d grilled the kebabs.
Callously, he wouldn’t want to know. What had happened on Ischia was just one in a long line of forgettable flings. He would dismiss the matter, reasoning that if she had fallen pregnant it was her own fault and she could deal with it.
Which was fine by her!
With his heart successfully painted as black as his midnight hair, Anna pushed him roughly out of her mind and turned the key in the ignition.
The engine gave a tortured whine—and died. After the fourth attempt Anna had to concede that the battery was dead. Sternly resisting the temptation to bawl her eyes out, she rooted in her handbag for her mobile. It was entirely her own fault. Nick had advised her to splash out on a new battery, but she had kept putting it off because every spare penny was needed to pay the service bills at Rylands and put food on the table.
The fruitless search for her mobile continued—until Anna had to concede that she must have left it at home. Banging her small fists against the steering wheel, she yelped ‘Stupid! Stupid!’ then slumped in exhaustion in her seat, facing the unpalatable fact that she would have to go and knock them up.
‘Them’ being Francesco and his current squeeze! The Rosewalls had long since retired for the night. And for all she knew so had Francesco and his lady. The thought galvanised her. It had to be all of eight miles back to Rylands. It was pouring with rain. If she weren’t pregnant she would walk it. But as it was—
Francesco permitted himself a small Grappa as the redhead vacated the room. Huffily.
Too edgy to settle, he paced the room, glass held loosely in one hand. Used to fending women off, he usually managed it with finesse. Not tonight. He hadn’t been brutal. Just cold, clipped, concise.
Tickets for the charity ball she was organising didn’t interest him. Neither did meeting up for lunch when they were back in town. His schedule was too tight to allow room for any socialising in the foreseeable future.
At which point she’d gone to bed. Alone.
So he should be able to relax. But he couldn’t. Seeing Anna Maybury again had rekindled all the shaming memories, had brought everything he was doing his damnedest to forget back into unbelievably sharp focus, and her advanced state of pregnancy had deeply unsettled him, raising questions he knew he had to have answered.
The morning, when he could confront her, seemed an unendurably long way away.
Her heart quailing, Anna pressed the doorbell. The rain had turned her hair into dripping rats’ tails, and the front of her overall was soaking because the bump meant she couldn’t fasten her old waterproof. She felt sick with nerves, and knowing she must look pretty dreadful didn’t help.
But she had to contact Nick—ask him to come and collect her—and that meant facing Francesco, speaking to him, asking for the use of the Rosewalls’ phone.
The alternative was trudging home along narrow, isolated lanes. The chance of flagging down a passing motorist was a remote one at this time of night, and the likelihood of seeing a light at the windows of one of the scattered cottages or farmsteads was almost non-existent.
As the door swung open in answer to her summons at last she stiffened her spine, barely glanced at Francesco’s hard, handsome features and managed to get out, in a disgracefully wobbly voice, ‘My van won’t start. May I use the phone?’
Silence. Then, above the relentless sound of the rain, she heard his harsh indrawn breath, found her eyes tugged up to his. Hardened grey steel.
And not even the beguiling accent could soften the impact of his rawly savage question. ‘Tell the truth, for once in your life. Is the baby mine?’
CHAPTER TWO
FLOUNDERING, stunned by such an in-your-face enquiry, Anna decided that it would be more dignified to ignore the question rather than give in to the compulsion to fling What do you care? at him.
Woodenly, she elaborated on her request, hammering home the fact that a way out of her present dead van difficulty need be the only point of contact between them.
‘I need
