Fascination: The Sicilian's Ruthless Marriage Revenge

‘Perhaps I had better come to the nursery with you …?’ she offered huskily as Marco continued to grip.

‘Perhaps you had,’ Cesare allowed wryly, resisting his nephew’s efforts to return to Robin’s arms as he strode off towards the nursery. Robin had no choice but to hurry after him if she didn’t want her hair pulled out by the roots.

Marco grinned at her over his uncle’s shoulder, still hanging on to her hair, and Robin returned that grin now that she was no longer under Cesare’s close scrutiny.

Because Cesare had been wrong earlier today when he had claimed her marriage to Giles had ended because she’d avoided getting pregnant.

She hadn’t avoided it at all.

She hadn’t been able—wasn’t able—to give Giles the children he wanted to carry on the Bennett name.

Robin hadn’t been too worried when she didn’t conceive during the first year of her marriage—had just assumed that it would happen when it happened. But as the months passed with no sign of a baby, Robin had decided she ought to visit a medical specialist.

The first of many such visits.

There had followed two years of tests. The keeping of charts. Followed by more tests.

But no baby.

The tests had shown that there was nothing wrong with either Robin or Giles’s fertility—that Robin simply hadn’t conceived. Her specialist had advised that perhaps they should think of adoption, that sometimes in cases like theirs, where no reason could be found for the lack of conception, with the pressure taken off the mother became pregnant quite naturally. Giles had refused to even consider adoption, had wanted a child of his own blood or not at all.

That child—a son—had been born to Giles and his second wife only two months ago.

Leaving Robin with the certainty that she had to have been the one at fault.

The end of her marriage meant that she would never have a child now, that she was doomed to a marriageless and a childless future. For how could she marry any man and expect him to accept that she could never give him a baby?

Except that Cesare Gambrelli, although he didn’t know it, was now offering to marry her and give her the child she couldn’t have herself.

A baby she had fallen in love with on sight!

CHAPTER FIVE

‘COULD I pOSSIBLY . . . freshen up before dinner?’

Cesare turned at Robin’s halting request, which intruded on his dark and brooding thoughts as the two of them left Marco’s nursery together a few minutes later.

He had thought he would catch her off guard by presenting Marco in that way, and yet Cesare knew that he was the one who felt unsettled by the encounter.

It really was totally inexplicable to him why Marco had taken such a liking to Robin; she had certainly done nothing to encourage him.

The baby had screamed when Cesare had returned him to his cot, his little arms reaching up imploringly to Robin. But Robin had remained completely detached as Cesare laid the baby down, before tucking him beneath the covers with his favourite teddy bear at his side.

Robin’s aloofness towards Cesare he could understand and excuse, but her coldness towards Marco he could not accept. The baby had already lost his mother—even if he wasn’t really old enough to have realised it—and Cesare had no intention of allowing Robin to maintain that ridiculously cool attitude towards him just because she wasn’t in control here.

Because, no matter how she might wish it otherwise, he still had every intention of making Robin his wife. And sooner rather than later!

‘Use the bathroom there.’ He gestured dismissively and he continued to stride towards the sitting room, definitely feeling in need of more champagne.

‘Thank you,’ Robin accepted quietly, before escaping into the bathroom.

When she looked at her reflection in the mirror over the sink, she could see her eyes were overbright.

She was in love!

Not with Cesare Gambrelli.

Nor with any other man.

But with a six-month-old baby who had captured her heart at first sight!

She sat down weakly on the side of the bath, breathing deeply in an effort to calm her racing pulse.

Marco was adorable—absolutely adorable. And it had felt so good when she’d held him in her arms, so achingly right; he was the baby she had dreamt of having for so long—so much so that she had been reluctant to relinquish him to Cesare when the time had come.

What did she do now …?

Cesare Gambrelli had told her he intended marrying her. That he intended for her to be Marco’s mother.

How she wanted the latter, if not the former.

But the price was being Cesare’s scorned and despised wife—a woman he had only married to settle what he called a blood feud. Did she want that?

Yes!

Cesare didn’t know it, but he was offering her something she had thought she would never know—a joy Robin had thought for ever denied her. Now that she had met Marco, held him, felt the warmth of him, been the recipient of his beautiful smile, there was no way she would be able to walk away from the chance to be his mother.

She knew she daren’t let Cesare see how deeply her emotions had been affected, already knowing him well enough to realise that if he thought he was actually giving her something she so desperately wanted, then he would use that advantage to bend her totally to his arrogant will.

Yes, now that she had seen and held Marco she fully intended marrying Cesare—but it would be on her own terms, not his …

‘We may as well go through to dinner,’ Cesare announced when Robin rejoined him in the sitting room, her hair once more in a neat chignon and looking again like the coolly detached woman who had arrived at his apartment less than half an hour ago.

Once Robin was his wife, Cesare had decided as he sipped his champagne and waited for her to rejoin him, he had no intention of giving her any choice but to become Marco’s mother. With time, he hoped she would learn to be at ease with with the child, to love him as he deserved to be loved.

‘Fine,’ she accepted distantly, before preceding him into the dining room that he indicated.

A woman any man would be proud to have on his arm, Cesare knew, as he watched the gentle sway of her hips as she walked in front of him.

Or in his bed.

‘Have you decided what it is you wish to tell your father about our forthcoming marriage?’ Cesare prompted, once he had seen her seated opposite him at the small, intimate table he had requested be laid for their meal together.

Robin eyed him warily. ‘I believe I told you earlier that nothing has been settled yet concerning a marriage between the two of us?’

Cesare gave a hard smile. ‘Fight it all you want, Robin, but the marriage will take place.’

She hadn’t given herself away, Robin realised with relief. And she dared not do so, either, because if Cesare even half guessed at how she had fallen for Marco, then all her bargaining power was spent. And she had little enough to start with!