sparked so outrageously to life between them. She’d tried to continue working, but with his hot gaze all but stripping her naked right there in the middle of the party it had been almost impossible.
‘So why did you do it?’
He walked slowly round her and she turned, needing to keep him firmly in her line of vision, and inwardly she cursed the lack of sight in her left eye that she’d been born with. She wanted to tell him to stand still, but she hated people knowing, and thanks to the operation she’d had as a child and the contact lenses she wore there wasn’t any need to explain endlessly any more.
She took a deep breath. Honesty was the best way, and if he wanted to know why she’d gone hand in hand with him to his hotel room she would tell him. ‘It was the first anniversary of my father’s death, and I guess I wasn’t my normal self.’
His penetrating gaze slid down her body and she swallowed down the nerves that were threatening to get the better of her. ‘And is this your normal self?’
‘Yes,’ she snapped, hurt by his scathing tone.
She knew she looked nothing like the woman he’d taken to his hotel room. Not only that, she knew she was far from the self-assured woman who’d carried out her job dressed up to the nines in borrowed clothes and fresh out of the beauty salon. That woman had been so far removed from who she really was it was almost laughable—except Dante Mancini didn’t look the least bit amused.
‘Va bene. That can easily be sorted.’ He reached towards her and pushed her hair back from her face so gently it might almost have been an intimate and loving gesture—almost.
Shocked by the heat of his fingers as they grazed her face, she stepped back. ‘What do you mean, that can easily be sorted?’
‘The woman I met in London exists. She was very real as she smiled at me, enticing me with her beautiful green eyes. She was also very real as I undressed her, kissed her and made love to her.’
She bit down on the urge to tell him that woman had never really existed. That night she’d been someone else, driven by the need for physical contact and the spark of sexual attraction which had exploded as they’d first made eye contact. Since that night she’d lost her job because of her dalliance with a client and discovered that she was pregnant. The woman he remembered would never be able to exist again. Already she’d changed.
‘That may be so, but I have no intention of being that woman again. All I came here to achieve was making you aware of the fact that you are to be a father.’ Inwardly she cursed her impulsiveness at coming to Rome. What had she been thinking? That love and happiness would follow?
‘And now that I am aware we will do things my way.’
He strode back to the windows and stood looking out over Rome as the early winter sunshine danced on the rooftops of a city she’d always longed to visit.
‘We will do no such thing.’ Again she questioned her motives for being here. ‘I want nothing. You can go back to your wild lover-boy existence. Goodbye, Dante.’
She took a deep breath as he squared his shoulders against her verbal attack, then walked briskly to the door of his office. All she wanted was to escape. To run away and hide so she could nurse her wounds and rebuild her damaged dreams of a happy-ever-after. How stupid she’d been to harbour any hope that he would stand by her, take on the role of father. What she’d read in Celebrity Spy! should have been enough to extinguish those hopes long before she’d boarded the plane.
She heard his curse before she saw him as he put himself between her and the door, and she wondered if he’d guessed she couldn’t see him from her left side—or anything else, for that matter. Was he exploiting the weakness she took such great pains to conceal?
‘Let me pass,’ she demanded as anger and disappointment collided inside her, making her voice sharp and fierce.
‘You are not going anywhere. We have things to discuss, things to settle.’
‘Such as?’ She folded her arms beneath the knitted poncho she’d opted for early this morning as she’d left her small flat in London.
* * *
Dante looked at Piper and fought the urge to step back and let her go. He knew she was capable of walking away with something he’d never wanted—a child. But his business mind had worked overtime as she’d spat fury and fire at him. Piper carried his child—the one thing that might now be the answer to all the problems which had erupted since that damn article.
‘My child.’
He couldn’t and wouldn’t think any further about the plan that had formulated in his mind.
‘The one you tried hard to deny could even be yours until I mentioned the paternity test?’
The accusation in her voice cut deep, touching a part of him he hadn’t known existed.
‘You are carrying my child, my heir, and no matter how that has come about I will support you. Of that there is no question.’ Outwardly he was in control...inwardly his past mistakes rushed at him. But he couldn’t turn his back on his flesh and blood. He might have got it wrong in the past, but this was his child. ‘But naturally there will be conditions attached.’
‘I don’t want your grudging support, Dante. I want more than that from you for my child—or nothing at all.’
The indignation in her voice reverberated around the office and her green eyes looked so fierce he actually wanted to kiss her. To feel her lips against his once more and kiss away all that fury, replacing it with the passion he knew only too well existed within her.
‘I don’t care what you say you want. You wouldn’t have come all this way to tell me you are carrying my child if you didn’t want something, Piper.’ He liked the feel of her name on his tongue, but still suspicion niggled at him. ‘Perhaps I was right the first time. Is it money that will buy your silence?’
Her green eyes blazed with fury and anger emanated from her in palpable waves. ‘I want no such thing, and I can see I have made a very big mistake in thinking you would be even remotely interested in our baby.’
She turned and grabbed the door handle, pulling the door open, but his reactions were quick and he pressed his palm against the door, slamming it shut before she’d even opened it wide enough to walk through.
‘You are not going anywhere until this is sorted, mia cara.’ He leant close to her left ear and whispered his warning, surprised when she jumped away, turning to glare once more at him. The threat in his voice had made her look vulnerable, and his proximity made her as nervous as a kitten, but still she pulled herself together and prepared to fight.
‘I am not your mia cara.’ She all but spat the words at him, like a wild cat which had been cornered. ‘And I want nothing from you. Forget you ever saw me.’
How could he forget her when ever since that night in London she’d been in his thoughts? An unnamed lover who’d given him her virginity and a night he would never forget.
Benjamin Carter’s suggestion floated once again on the periphery of his thoughts. Piper’s arrival at his office couldn’t have been more perfectly timed. Her news—unwelcome at any other time—fitted perfectly into his rapidly forming plan. He needed a wife and she carried
