Текст книги "A Scandal, A Secret, A Baby "

Автор книги: Sharon Kendrick

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Текущая страница: 3 (всего у книги 14 страниц) [доступный отрывок для чтения: 6 страниц]

‘Per favore,’ he groaned. ‘Please.’

His heartfelt plea made something inside her snap, and despite revelling in her fleeting moment of power Justina knew she couldn’t wait any longer. Positioning herself, she slid down and slowly took his hard, silken length deep into her body. She heard him groan as he filled her and for a moment she couldn’t move. She wanted to fall against him. To collapse against his chest and hug him, clinging tightly as if she would never let him go. To tell him that nothing had ever felt as good as this and nothing ever would. But she wasn’t going to be passive, was she? Or weak. She was going to enjoy her body and make the most out of a situation she had never thought would happen.

Nor should it be happening, taunted a mocking voice in her head, but she shut the door on it as she began to move. Their warm bodies met and reacquainted themselves as she eased his throbbing shaft in and out of her eager flesh. She groaned as he played with her breasts, and when his thumb began to rub against her clitoris she flung her head back and gave a low and shuddering cry. It felt so amazing that she never wanted it to stop, but it didn’t last as long as she wanted it to. How could it, when they were both so close to the edge? She tried to prolong the erotic dance for as long as possible, but the hot waves were too powerful to hold back. Dark impulses danced over her skin as she gripped his shoulders and pushed her hips forward, driving him in right up to the hilt.

‘Justina!’ he gasped.

‘Dante!’ she moaned in response as she felt the first shimmering tugs hovering at the edge of her consciousness—and then, as she began to go under, he flipped her onto her back, his powerful body dark and tense as he drove into her with increasing speed. Her body felt as if it was exploding with pleasure as the first of the spasms hit her, and then she heard him give his own ragged cry as his head sank down against her neck.

Justina kept her eyes tightly shut as their bodies gradually grew still and felt a brief pang of melancholy wash over her. But she was damned if she was going to let it show. She wasn’t going to start dwelling on how amazing it had been because that was nothing new. And she wasn’t going to start wishing that they could go back to what they’d had before. Because they couldn’t, could they? You could never go back.

Even if you could she wouldn’t want to—not with Dante. Especially not with Dante. Because he was bad news. Or had she forgotten that? Had the urgent greed of her body made her conveniently push away the bitter truth? He’d hurt her more than she’d thought it was possible to hurt and he had the power to do it still. And he would. She knew that. She knew all about the complex factors which motivated him. She knew that he’d seen some of her behaviour as humiliation to his macho pride, and perhaps this was his way of getting even. Taking her body with careless disregard for her feelings.

She wriggled a little, aware that they were still locked intimately together. He was sleeping—or at least he seemed to be doing a good impression of sleeping, with the dark arcs of his long lashes feathering his sculpted cheeks. Once there would have been love as she looked at him, but that emotion had been replaced by a mixture of anger and regret. How could she have done that? How could she? She’d brought him up here to her hotel room and just had sex with him—without any of the usual preliminaries. And why, of all the men in all the world, did it have to be him and only him who could make her feel like this? The only man she’d ever been intimate with was the man who had hurt her. Who had destroyed her trust completely.

She felt him stir inside her. She felt his burgeoning erection and remembered how deliciously insatiable he’d used to be. Once he would have lowered his head to kiss her and started to make love to her all over again. But she wasn’t going to let that happen. Please give me the strength to push him away, she prayed—but Dante got there first.

His silent withdrawal from her sticky body seemed fraught with symbolism—all of it dark. He hadn’t said a single word, and the silence in the room seemed to be growing bigger by the second. He was levering himself up onto one elbow and appeared to be viewing her as dispassionately as a scientist might look into a petrie dish, to see what rogue organisms had sprung up overnight.

‘That was some sex,’ he said, and Justina met the cold expression in his eyes.

She kept her own response deliberately light. Don’t let him know how you feel. Hide your hurt, your anger and your shame and be the kind of woman he usually ends up in bed with. Casual. No-strings. She even managed to curve her lips into the faintest of smiles. ‘You liked it?’

Dante’s face darkened. ‘I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you how good you are.’ He paused and his voice took on an empty, hollow quality. ‘I’d forgotten quite how good.’

But he had never known her quite like that before, he realised. And, despite his own very comprehensive love life since they’d parted, he felt sick at the thought of her doing the same. He tried to tell himself that it was a good thing to realise that she’d changed. That she was no longer the sweet innocent he’d initiated into sex. He hadn’t expected her to be, had he? Had he?

‘I expect you’ve learnt a lot from all the other men you’ve known in the interim,’ he said.

Justina gave her naked shoulders a little wriggle. ‘I always make it a rule not to discuss other lovers when I’m in bed with a man. It strikes me as particularly bad manners.’

Her words made his mouth harden and he pushed back the rumpled bedclothes before getting out of bed. She watched as he headed for the bathroom, just as she’d watched him do so many times before. His naked olive body was magnificent, the perfect globes of his paler buttocks contrasting with the dark musculature of his powerful thighs.

He emerged minutes later and without another word reached for his clothes and began getting dressed.

‘Going?’ she questioned, still in that same studiedly casual voice.

He paused in the act of pulling on his shirt, his dark eyes flicking over her with a look which was half lust, half disgust. ‘I have a flight to the States in the morning. I told you that.’

‘Of course.’ She didn’t want him to think that she minded him leaving so she got out of bed herself, reaching for the silk robe which was lying neatly folded on the chair by the bed. ‘Would you like a drink before you go?’ she questioned. ‘I can ring down for coffee if you like. It’s a long drive back to London.’

A dark spear of jealousy lanced through him. Dante wondered if she knew how seasoned she sounded. As if she asked men that kind of question most days of the week. He saw her slide the slippery robe over her luscious nakedness and quickly averted his eyes. Maybe she did.

‘No, thanks.’

Justina began pulling the pins from her mussed-up hair and shaking it free. ‘Is there something particular in New York?’ she questioned. ‘Something which can’t wait?’

He curled his tie into a gleaming coil and slid it into his jacket pocket. ‘There’s a big party I don’t want to miss.’

‘Oh?’ He might as well have been talking about the stock market for all the emotion she put into her next question. ‘Something special?’

Dante looked at her. Her hair was now free of all the pins and had tumbled down around her shoulders and she was brushing it. It wasn’t as long as he remembered, but it was still thick and raven-dark. It made her look like some beautiful dark angel, he thought, and for a moment he wanted to kiss her again, to ravage her. To tumble her back down on the bed and thrust right into her all over again until he had emptied himself inside her. But he couldn’t. Or rather, he wouldn’t. Because while once had been a mistake, twice would be insanity. They were too different. They always had been.

He shrugged. ‘Just a party.’

‘Oh?’ Justina fought against the instinct which was telling her to leave it alone and instead let her finger hover over the self-destruct button. ‘Whose?’

‘A girl’s.’

Beneath her silk robe Justina felt her skin ice to goose bumps. Had he...had he done it again? Taken her to bed when he was in a relationship with someone else? Her heart felt as cold as her skin, but somehow she managed another of those light smiles—as if they’d just done nothing more daring than enjoy a cup of tea together, instead of romping wildly on the bed. Because she was not going to fall to pieces.

‘Well, drive carefully,’ she said. ‘And I hope you have a safe journey back to America.’

Dante’s mouth twisted. How dismissive she sounded. As if what they’d done had meant nothing. Because it had meant nothing, he reminded himself bitterly. They both knew that.

His mind began to play back an erotic tape of what had just happened. Justina straddling him. Justina riding him. The way he’d ridden her back until that sweet release had claimed them both. The forbidden ache of sex throbbed thickly through his veins and in that moment of renewed desire he despised himself almost as much as he despised her for what they had done.

But not enough to stop him from pulling her into his arms and lowering his lips to a mouth which was now closed and resisting. A couple of seconds was all it took for that resistance to vanish, for her lips to part again and allow his tongue to slip inside. A couple of seconds more and she was kissing him right back, her fingers tangling in his hair the way they always did when she was turned on. If he’d given it any longer he suspected that he could have taken her again—right there on the floor on which they stood. He suspected that if he slid one finger between her legs he could make her come in seconds, the way he’d always been able to do. And wasn’t he tempted to do just that? Wasn’t he?

But Justina was pushing at his chest with two balled-up fists and tearing her mouth from his. Her eyes were dark with anger as she took a few unsteady steps away from him, and her breathing was ragged as she struggled to control it.

‘You’ve got what you came for—now get out of here,’ she snapped, because never in her life had she felt so used. ‘Go back to New York and get the hell out of my life.’

For a moment they stared at one another as rage and desire simmered in the air around them, and then Dante picked up his jacket and slung it over his shoulder.

‘Goodbye, Justina,’ he said, and the smile which curved his lips was bitter. ‘Thanks for the memory.’

CHAPTER FOUR

THE NIGHTMARE COULDN’T possibly get any worse.

It just couldn’t.

As warm, fat raindrops teemed from the sky Justina hurried into a shop on the busy Singaporean street as fast as her bulky frame would allow—but it wasn’t easy. The huge swell of her baby made movement difficult, especially in the sultry heat which characterised this vibrant city. A minute was all it had taken for her to get soaked right through, and now she stood shivering as the icy blast of the shop’s air-

conditioning blasted over her damp skin.

Trying to conceal her shape behind a rack of designer clothes, she peered out through the blur of rain. People were hastily putting up their umbrellas. Others were standing huddled beneath bus shelters as they sought to avoid the daily spectacle of the tropical storm. Nobody seemed to be looking in her direction. Nobody at all.

Justina swallowed down the sudden dryness in her throat. Was she simply going crazy—imagining that someone was following her? That another photographer planned to leap out to take a picture? She couldn’t understand why the press were so interested in the fact that she was having a baby when loads of women had babies out of wedlock these days without stigma.

Yet she couldn’t deny the media interest—especially since the Lollipops Sweetest Hits had been re-released just before Roxy’s wedding and had stormed up the charts all over the world. She still had a public profile, which had become higher as a result of those renewed sales. On days where there wasn’t a lot of news around she could still sometimes find one of those rather depressing pieces about ‘unlucky in love’ Justina Perry hidden in the back pages of the newspapers—the ones which wondered why she was still single.

Only now she had given them an even bigger story—STILL SINGLE AND NOW EXPECTING! WHO’S THE MYSTERY FATHER, JUSTINA?

After she’d gone through the first stages of dismay and denial, she had tried to conceal her pregnancy for as long as possible—and when that had become out of the question she had stayed out of the limelight as much as she could. But the press were like hungry dogs. One sniff of a juicy story and they came looking. Lately there’d been a whole spate of articles speculating about the identity of her baby’s father—she was just praying that nobody had seen her disappearing from Roxy’s wedding with Dante D’Arezzo. That was the kind of snippet which would find its way into a gossip column, forever linking her name to the Italian billionaire.

‘Can I get you a chair, ma’am?’

Justina turned round to find a shop assistant regarding her with concern. Perhaps she was worried that the tired-looking Englishwoman was about to give birth in the middle of her shop and it wasn’t really Justina’s role to reassure her that she wasn’t due for another five weeks.

‘No, thanks. I’m fine. I’ll take a cab back to my hotel. The rain looks as if it’s stopping now.’

‘You’re sure, ma’am?’

‘Yes, thank you.’ From somewhere, she summoned up a smile. ‘Quite sure.’

But during her shivering journey back to Raffles Hotel, where she always stayed when she was in the city, Justina couldn’t seem to halt the thoughts which seemed determined to keep any peace of mind at bay. Round and round in her head went the indisputable truth. She was pregnant with Dante’s baby and terrified he would find out.

Distractedly, she rubbed at her temples. He was bad news. He was a player. He was everything that was dangerous in a man—especially where she was concerned. He had taken her to bed and soared with her to the stars before they crashed back down to earth again. And she couldn’t just blame Dante for what had happened, because she had been culpable, too. She’d practically ripped his clothes off and ravished him, despite all the terrible history between them.

She felt the sudden clench of her heart, but it was more with anger than with pain. She had been headstrong and stupid. She had given in to desire without thinking about the consequences and that’s why she found herself in this position. But there was no way she was going to go running to him. Not when he’d made it clear that what had happened had been a regrettable one-off.

She kept telling herself that interest would die down if she kept her counsel. She lived the kind of international life where it was perfectly acceptable to be vague about the identity of her baby’s father. The people she wrote songs for wouldn’t have cared if the devil himself had claimed paternity. The only person who was really interested was the London doctor whose care she was under—and he wasn’t making any moral judgements. That was the sum total of people it really affected. She certainly wasn’t relying on any help from her mother, whose reaction to the news had been entirely predictable—if a little sad.

‘I’m not ready to be a grandmother!’ Elaine Perry had snapped, not seeming to notice Justina’s white-faced response.

Justina had stared at the woman with whom she had such a complicated relationship. Her once-beautiful mother, who was unable to accept that her looks were now fading and who tried to compensate for that by slapping on far too much make-up. ‘But, Mum—’

‘Don’t “Mum” me! If you think I’m spending my time knitting bootees or acting as an unpaid babysitter, then you’re mistaken, Justina.’ A coy smile had followed as the older woman had fiddled with hair which was growing thinner by the year. ‘I do still have a busy social life of my own, you know.’

And Justina, feeling sick for all kinds of reasons, had not responded. What compassion could she expect from a woman whose life had been spent as mistress to a series of wealthy men she’d milked for every penny she could? Who was now reduced to living with some creepy and aging roué in the centre of Paris?

Justina still felt shaky as her cab drew up outside the hotel and she went inside to collect her key from the desk in the spacious lobby. The atmosphere of the iconic hotel usually had a soothing effect on her. The faded brocade chairs and tall potted palms always made her think of a more elegant time, and whenever she stayed there she felt part of it. Only today the magic of Raffles wasn’t working. She felt as if she was on a tiny raft, bobbing around in an unforgiving sea, with no real place to go and drop anchor.

Maybe she needed the restorative power of a deep bath and a strong cup of tea, and then she would—

‘Justina.’

Someone was saying her name in a way which only one person ever could. Disbelief made her skin turn to ice as she heard the voice which had haunted her waking thoughts and troubled dreams for the past seven and a half months. She shook her head in hopeful denial. She was imagining it. She had to be imagining it.

Slowly she turned to see the dark and forbidding figure of Dante D’Arezzo, and her heart began to flutter wildly in her chest. No. She wasn’t imagining it. Nobody else spoke like that. And nobody else looked like that either. Dante was here in the flesh—vibrant with life and looking immaculate in cool, pale linen, his face an intimidating study of dark fury as his gaze seared into her.

The angled slant of his cheekbones cast shadows over his features and his mouth was grim and unsmiling. She had never seen his powerful body look quite so tense. The only thing about him which moved was a little muscle which was flickering at his temple. For a moment she swayed with the sheer shock of seeing him, but maybe he’d anticipated that kind of reaction for his hand reached out towards her. Strong fingers clamped around her forearm to steady her, and she could feel the burning warmth of his flesh digging into her icy skin. And God forgive her but her body instantly thrilled to that touch, even though it was more the touch of a captor than a lover. She could feel her shivering response to him, and she wondered if he could feel it, too.

‘What...what are you doing here?’ she demanded shakily as his brilliant gaze scorched through her.

Dante’s heart began to accelerate with anger as he looked into her white face. What did she think he was doing here? Doing a leisurely tour of the Far East and bumping into her quite by chance? Did she imagine he was going to ask her to the bar to join him for one of the hotel’s famous Singapore Slings?

‘You and I need to talk,’ he said grimly.

Justina bit her lip as distracted, crazy thoughts began to rush into her head. What if she called out and told the staff that she was being harassed? Wouldn’t that sound bad, coming from a heavily pregnant woman? Wouldn’t he instantly be ejected from the hotel, and probably from the country itself?

She wasn’t so sure that he would. Dante could smooth-talk his way through most things. She could imagine him turning the full force of his charm on hotel security and managing to convince them that it was her hormones at work. And when it all boiled down to it her hormones were the only reason he was here. He wasn’t here because he missed her or because he wanted her back in his bed. He wanted to speak to her about something which was glaringly obvious to both of them and she must accede to his wishes. She owed him that much, at least.

‘Not here,’ she said, her throat so dry that her words sounded strangled. ‘We can go and have coffee in the Writers’ Bar and—’

‘No,’ he snapped, imperiously cutting through her suggestion. ‘I don’t intend to have this conversation while you play to the crowd, Justina. Take me to your room.’ He saw the brief look which hovered in her eyes and his mouth twisted with derision as he lowered his voice to a deadly hiss. ‘Oh, please don’t worry that I’m about to seduce you. Because let me assure you that’s the last thing on my mind right now. In fact, let me put it even more plainly, just so that we can be very clear about where we stand. If you and I were alone on a desert island I think I’d gladly embrace celibacy rather than risk coming within two feet of you, you manipulative little bitch.’

The vitriol in his voice made Justina’s hand fly to her lips in horror as she looked at him. Did he really hate her that much? But even if he did he had no right to talk to her that way. She was carrying a baby beneath her heart, and even if he wished it wasn’t his baby it was certainly her baby, and she would defend it with every ounce of strength in her body.

So stop letting him intimidateyou. Have the talk he wants—the talk you know you owe him.

Because wasn’t this what she had been expecting—and dreading—for months? Wasn’t this very meeting the reason why she’d taken on so many travelling commitments since discovering she was pregnant? Not daring to be in one place too long in case he found her, she had become a kind of bulky fugitive. A woman who was running away from the inevitable—only now the inevitable had caught up with her.

She shrugged. ‘Okay. We’ll talk. But it might be a good start if you stopped manhandling me like that.’ Pointedly, she glanced down at the olive fingers which were still gripping her forearm, and then up into the hard gleam of his dark eyes. But the terrible thing was that she liked him touching her. For all his cruel words, and her fear of what he wanted, she liked the way he made her feel. And, shamefully, it was deprivation rather than relief which washed over her when he let her go, and her footsteps were a little unsteady as she turned and headed for the staircase.

Justina was aware of people watching them as they made their way from the public area of the hotel towards the residential part and guessed they must make a bizarre couple. She was all damp and bedraggled after being caught in the tropical storm, and Dante looked so indomitable as he shadowed her, his savagely beautiful face and powerful body making every female guest in the building glance at him twice.

In silence they walked towards her suite, and the dark gleam of the wooden verandas, the raffia furniture and the scent of flowers drifting up from the courtyard garden failed to calm Justina’s mounting sense of anxiety. By the time she pushed open her door she felt like a piece of elastic which had been stretched so tightly that the faintest movement would violently snap it.

But she couldn’t carry on feeling frayed and vulnerable like this. She had to stay in control and remember that she was dealing with a man for whom control was key. Some primitive part of her wanted to leave the door open—but she knew that the sound of their voices would carry and she couldn’t risk that. With a heavy sigh of resignation, she closed it behind them.

‘I need to use the bathroom,’ she said.

It seemed almost too intimate a thing to say—which was a bizarre thought in the circumstances—but Justina needed to do more than relieve her pregnancy-weak bladder. Pride made her tug a brush through hair which was hanging down her back like rats’ tails, and to slick on some pink lipstick which seemed to be the only colour in her white face.

She still needed to suck in a deep breath as she prepared to walk back in and face him. She felt sick with nerves—the way she’d used to feel just before she went out on stage—only this was much worse. On stage, her crippling fears had used to vanish the moment she heard the first chord of music and professionalism began to kick in. Today she had no idea how she was going to react to what lay ahead of her. These were new and uncharted waters—and she’d never seen anything more forbidding than the expression on Dante’s dark face as she pushed open the door and walked into the lavish sitting room.

He was standing in front of the massive floor to ceiling windows which overlooked the veranda and yet somehow he made them look insignificant. His face was hard—like granite—and his eyes were cold as they flicked over the massive swell of her belly, as if he couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing.

‘You’d better sit down,’ he said heavily.

She shook her head. Damn him for trying to act concerned. If he was so concerned then he wouldn’t have leapt out at her like that, downstairs in the foyer. ‘I’d prefer to stand,’ she said.

For a moment Dante felt immense frustration shimmer over his skin. Wasn’t that typical of Justina? So damned independent that she’d refuse to do the sensible thing. Even though her face looked as pale as flour, she was stubbornly refusing to sit down simply because he had been the one to suggest it.

‘Have it your own way.’

‘I intend to. How did you find me, Dante?’

‘It wasn’t difficult. You don’t exactly blend into a crowd at the moment. I saw the erratic press reports about your...condition, and I worked out that the baby could be mine. I kept thinking that if that were the case you would contact me.’ There was a pause and his eyes burned into her. ‘I kept waiting for you to get in touch, and when you didn’t I thought...’

His words tailed off. He’d thought that maybe he’d been mistaken, that it wasn’t his baby at all. And hadn’t the thought of that eaten him up with jealousy? The idea that he might have been just one in a line of men who had graced her bed? But the feeling hadn’t left him, and neither had the strange certainty which had flooded through him. It had been certainty which had made him track her down. Which had made him board his private jet to Singapore, where he had been informed that she was staying alone in Raffles Hotel.

Intently, he stared at her, and he could feel the powerful beat of his heart thundering in his chest. The crazy thing was that he wanted to go over there and place the palm of his hand on her belly, as if to convince himself that this was real. And if he did that could he guarantee that the same dark hunger wouldn’t flicker into life, the way it always did? Why was it that, no matter how much he tried to convince himself otherwise, he could never seem to stop wanting her?

‘Is there something you need to tell me?’

Justina nodded as a wave of emotion threatened to overwhelm her, but somehow she held it back. Don’t act ashamed or intimidated, she told herself. Just deal with the facts. But it was far from easy, because as she faced the accusation in his eyes a terrible yearning threatened to flare up inside her. She found herself wishing this could all have been different. That they were the same two people they’d once been—a couple in love who were planning to be together for the rest of their lives.

But it was not like that. It was nothing like that. Pointless to waste her time wishing that it was. Pretend you’re doing a television interview, she told herself. Act calmly. Take the emotion out of the subject and try not to turn this into a confrontation.

Her voice was almost gentle. ‘Is that a roundabout way of asking whether you’re the father, Dante?’

CHAPTER FIVE

‘AM I?’ DANTE STARED at her, and his eyes had never looked colder than they did right then. ‘Am I the father of your baby, Justina?’

For a moment she hesitated, tempted to tell him no. Because wouldn’t that be easier all round? He could go back to New York and the life he’d made there. She would never have to see him again. Never. Financially—and hopefully emotionally—she could manage to be a good, single mother. Lots of women were.

But then she thought of the child she carried. The baby who was currently kicking beneath her fluttering heart as if it was trying out for a foetal football team. Could she wilfully deny her child the knowledge of its father just because that father didn’t love her? Wouldn’t that be the most selfish thing she could ever do—especially since she knew the pain and deprivation of growing up without a father? She knew how that could leave an empty hole which nothing could ever fill. She felt fiercely protective of this new life within her—and if she was being protective then that ruled out being selfish, didn’t it? It might be better for her if Dante was out of her life, but it wouldn’t be better for the baby.

‘Yes,’ she breathed—and then she said it again, so that there could be no going back. ‘Yes, you are.’

For a moment he said nothing. He could hear the loud ticking of a clock as a surge of adrenalin flooded through him—his body automatically gearing itself up for fight or flight. He stared down at the elegant table beside him, on which stood a bowl of fruit so perfect that it might have been made from wax. For a split second he wanted to smash his fist through it. To see the apples disintegrating into pulp and the squashed oranges spurting out their juice. The desire was so strong that his big hands clenched into tight fists and he almost raised one. Until he forced himself to face facts as well as to re-exert the habitual control which had momentarily threatened to desert him.

Don’t forget that this is a very single-minded woman, he told himself, as he stared into her wide amber eyes. Who will do anything to get what she wants out of life. He had witnessed her steely ambition first-hand. He had seen how she’d always put her career before him—it had been the main reason why he’d called off their wedding. So he needed to find out all the facts—not just the ones she had chosen to tell him.

‘How can you be sure it’s mine?’

Justina heard the rough challenge which distorted his voice. The question hurt—mainly because it sounded genuine and not asked simply as an attempt to insult her. Did he really think she behaved that way? Picked up men at weddings before taking them back to her room to have sex with them? She wondered how he would react if she told him that he was the only man she’d ever been intimate with, and that was how she knew he was the father. Would he laugh at her or simply pity her for spending the past five years without being able to move on?