a certain journalist who was always eager for celebrity news and always keen to unearth details about him. It had taken Luiz all of two seconds to suspect that their break-up would have had him drooling with curiosity, particularly when he heard all the details, for she had guessed an unforeseen pregnancy and had hit jackpot, although her pathway to that conclusion had been highly illogical.
‘You would never go out with someone as fat as that,’ she had said maliciously. ‘Which means that the stupid cow must be pregnant. I hope you’re pleased with yourself, Luiz! You could have had me and instead you’ve landed a nobody who’ll probably fleece you! And just wait until your family hears!’
They hadn’t heard yet but it wouldn’t be long. Making that call and announcing the news that would inevitably reach them was not something Luiz was looking forward to. He suspected that he would have to weather his sisters’ jibes and the annoying comparisons they would make with Clarissa. His mother might be more lenient on that score, or at least would keep her opinions to herself, but the lack of plans for a wedding would upset her.
‘I don’t know what to do,’ Holly admitted, at the end of her tether. ‘I can’t go outside and see about the animals without being accosted. Claire and Sarah are in my sitting room but they can’t stay here all day. I’ve told Andy not to bother coming in.’
‘I guess he would have been upset at that,’ Luiz said absently, revealing how much he knew Andy and his endearingly preening ways whenever there was the slightest chance of a camera being pointed in his direction. ‘You can send Claire and Sarah out to see to the animals. Just make sure they don’t open their mouths. They’re responsible enough to keep quiet and they’ll probably enjoy the attention. You can send them out in a couple of hours’ time.’
‘Why then?’
‘Because I can’t work instant miracles from the other side of the world!
‘I’m not asking you to work miracles!’
‘Yet you telephone me in a rage to complain about your privacy being invaded even though you must surely know that I’m not in the country. Either you just wanted to make sure you realised how much you blame me for reporters in your back garden or else, deep down, you trust me to sort it out for you.’
Did she trust him to sort it out? What did that say about her, when she should have been planning a life of independence? When she had rejected his offer to kindly shackle himself to her for the sake of a pregnancy he hadn’t asked for?
‘It’s not a matter of trust,’ Holly prevaricated tersely. ‘I didn’t know who you were when we were going out. Having a bunch of reporters on my land taking pictures and badgering me for answers about what’s going on between us isn’t my fault. You’re the one with the big reputation and the gossip-column lifestyle. I phoned you because this would never have happened if it hadn’t been for you.’
‘What are you saying?’
‘I’m saying that I don’t like these people hanging around my house. I like my privacy. I’m saying that I wished I’d never met you.’ Never had a few simple words cut through her like those did. The silence strummed between them, the tension heightened by the fact that she couldn’t see his face, couldn’t read the expression on it.
But she didn’t take the words back. More than anything, she desperately wanted to make him see that she wasn’t a doll he could control—that the Holly of old who had absolutely adored him was not the Holly of the here and now who carried the hurt of knowing that he wouldn’t have come near her with a bargepole if she had known the extent of his wealth and influence. Who knew that, whatever arrangement he wanted, more than anything else he wanted to make sure that she couldn’t have a hold over his money.
Luiz was cold with anger at this surly display of petulance. With the hard, inescapable force of logic, however, he was compelled to concede that if they had never met she would probably be married to a local guy by now, someone unchallenging who went to the pub with his mates every Friday, held a season ticket to see the local football club and saved for a two-week holiday somewhere in sunny Spain.
It irked the hell out of him to think that she might actually have been happier with someone like that. He might have given her memorable and unforgettable nights; he might have made her body sing; they might have travelled down a thousand conversational highways and byways—but, in the end, he had lied to her and in the face of that everything they had shared was reduced to rubble. Free from the pressure of being a billionaire with a reputation, he had given her more than he could remember giving any other woman, yet she could still tell him in that flat, detached voice that she wished she had never met him.
He wanted to remind her that, lies or no lies, there was no other woman he could think of who wouldn’t have jumped at the chance of being his wife. He wanted to tell her that a pre-nup, against which she seemed to be unreasonably biased, was an insignificant technicality which would certainly not affect the financial comforts she would enjoy as his wife. But he suspected that she would find a way of throwing that back in his face.
‘You might want to remember that there are two of us stuck here,’ Luiz drawled. ‘My life has been equally devastated but hurling accusations at one another isn’t going to solve anything.’
In a heartbeat, Holly recognised what he was really saying. That, however much she claimed to regret ever having met him, the feeling was mutual. If he hadn’t met her, slept with her and had a pointless affair with her, he would not have landed up in a nightmarish parallel universe where life as he knew it was over. Having engineered the opening attack, she was deeply hurt by his admission. Clutching the telephone in her hand, she just wanted the ground to open up and swallow her whole. Her mouth felt as though it was stuffed with cotton wool and her eyes were burning.
‘Yes,’ she said stiffly.
‘So pack a couple of bags and arrange with Andy to come in later to see to the animals. I’ll get my people to come and rescue you. They’ll come via that dirt road across the fields that leads to the back of the cottage by the disused stable. You’ll get a call from my man; his name is Nicholas. He’ll call you when he’s about to arrive and you can send Claire and Sarah out. They will distract the reporters and you can slip out through the back door.’
‘I hate this cloak-and-dagger stuff…’
‘In which case, you can brave the paparazzi and their cameras and find yourself in tomorrow’s sleazy tabloid.’
‘How come none of this ever happened before?’
‘Because a high-profile billionaire businessman, a ditched ex-girlfriend who mixes with celebrities and a pregnant mistress looking after animals in the middle of nowhere has much more sale appeal than a guy who goes away for weekends. Reporters don’t follow trails unless they think the trail is going to lead them somewhere. In the past, coming out to see you at the weekends, I was under the radar. I wasn’t doing anything they cared about.’
‘And what happens next—after I’ve abandoned my life to get out of the spotlight? When am I going to be able to return?’
Luiz’s mouth thinned. ‘Abandoned’ was an emotive word. It would have been hard for her to make it any clearer that she didn’t want him in her life. Tough. Whether she liked it or not, he was in it and he wasn’t going anywhere any time soon.
‘Not in the foreseeable future,’ he said, without bothering to beat around the bush.
‘What does that mean?’ Holly cried.
