Pregnant by the Billionaire: Pregnant with the Billionaire's Baby / Mistress: Pregnant by the Spanish Billionaire / Pregnant with the De Rossi Heir

She had assumed, naïvely, that they would be having lunch in a restaurant, not in the privacy of another hotel suite.

Could she handle being alone with Sin again? Did she want to be alone with Sin again?

What choice did she have? Once she was back in England she would be safely out of his reach, but until that happened she had to go along with Sin’s belief that she was still interested in renewing her contract with PAN. At any price, apparently!

‘Very well,’ she accepted briskly. ‘But it will have to be a very brief lunch,’ she added warningly. ‘I really do intend getting on an earlier flight back to England tomorrow.’

‘I’ll make our—conversation, as brief as I can, Luccy,’ Sin said dryly.

Luccy felt the colour warm her cheeks as she heard the innuendo beneath that statement.

If Sin thought she was going to bed with him tomorrow lunchtime then he was going to be very disappointed!

CHAPTER SIX

‘DO TRY and lighten up, Luccy,’ Sin murmured as Luccy, having refused his offer of a glass of the chilled white wine, now refused to sit down either but instead stood tensely across the sitting-room of the penthouse suite of the Sinclair Hotel. ‘Maybe if we attempted a little polite conversation?’

‘Is that even possible?’ She shot him a scathing glance, her appearance very businesslike in a white silk blouse and fitted black trousers, her hair secured in a neat chignon.

‘I don’t see why not,’ Sin said lightly as he sat down on the cream sofa. ‘Tell me about your family. Do you have siblings? Parents?’

‘Well, of course I have parents, Sin,’ she came back sarcastically.

His mouth tightened. ‘I meant ones that are still alive.’

Luccy sighed impatiently. ‘Yes, I have a mother and father, both still living, and whom I love very much. I also have a sister, Abby. She’s going through a very messy divorce at the moment,’ she added with a frown.

‘That’s a pity.’ Sin also frowned. ‘Any children involved?’

‘Two.’ Luccy nodded.

‘Even more of a pity,’ he sympathised.

‘I think so, yes,’ Luccy said abruptly.

Her sister Abby’s eight-year marriage had been a disaster almost from the beginning, and was one of the reasons that Luccy had always steered shy of relationships herself. The main reason, in fact.

Abby had been eighteen and three months pregnant with Alice when she and Rory had married so hastily. But it had been obvious within weeks of Alice being born that Abby and Rory should never have married each other, the attraction that had been between them when they had first met, and which had resulted in Abby’s pregnancy, having very quickly turned to resentment on Rory’s part and discontent on Abby’s. But instead of ending the marriage as they should have done, Abby and Rory had added to the mess by having Josh just a year after Alice had been born.

After eight years of unhappiness the two of them had finally decided to admit defeat and get a divorce. But even that had turned into a battleground as they wrangled, not just over the children, but the house and everything in it.

Not a shining example of marital bliss for Luccy to want to emulate any time soon!

‘What about you, Sin?’ she queried. ‘I know you don’t have any siblings, but you mentioned your mother is still alive…?’

He nodded. ‘She moved back to her beloved Savannah after my father died, but she comes back to New York on a regular basis.’ The affection could be heard in his voice. ‘She—ah, I believe our lunch has arrived.’ He stood up to answer the knock on the door. ‘I took the liberty of ordering for both of us. I hope you don’t mind.’

Luccy didn’t mind in the least—as long as Sin didn’t question the fact that she might not be able to eat what he had ordered!

She could smell the fish before Sin had even removed the domed silver covers from the plates, her stomach instantly churning in rebellion, feeling the slight sheen of perspiration that appeared on her top lip even as she fought back that nausea.

She lost that particular battle as soon as she looked at the medley of fish laid out so beautifully on the plates. ‘Bathroom!’ she choked weakly.

Sin looked up in astonishment. ‘What?’

‘Bathroom!’ Luccy repeated desperately. ‘Now! Unless you want me to be ill all over the carpet!’

‘Second door on the left,’ Sin told her slightly dazedly, staring after her in consternation as she made a mad dash down the hallway.

What the hell was going on?

‘When were you going to tell me?’ Sin demanded harshly several minutes later when Luccy returned to the sitting-room, her face deathly white.

Luccy stared at him as he stood across the room so broodingly tall and seething with explosive anger.

She moistened dry lips. ‘Tell you what?’

‘I advise you against treating me like a fool, Luccy,’ he warned coldly.

‘Heaven forbid anyone should do that!’ She shook her head, determined not to be cowed by the ruthless expression on his face, or the dangerous glitter in those arctic grey eyes. ‘But I’m really not sure what you want me to say—’

‘I really do advise you to stop right there, Luccy!’ he said in a carefully controlled voice. ‘Do not compound the seriousness of this situation by lying about the reason you were ill!’

Luccy swallowed hard. Sin couldn’t know. He might suspect, but he couldn’t actually know!

‘I must have eaten something that disagreed with me,’ she dismissed lightly. ‘Probably one of the canapés last night. But I’m fine now,’ she said reassuringly.

Sin’s hands clenched at his sides, and his teeth were clamped together so tightly that his jaw actually ached, both in an effort to hold onto his temper. He rarely, if ever, lost control, his anger tending to take the form of icy deliberation rather than a fiery explosion.

But this woman was seriously in danger of pushing him beyond that icy control. He very much doubted that she would like the result if that were to happen!

‘You’re telling me that’s the reason you were ill just now?’

‘Of course.’

‘I don’t believe you,’ he growled.

She gave an unconcerned shrug. ‘That’s your prerogative, I suppose.’

Sin looked at her searchingly, easily noting the changes in her now that he knew what he was looking for: there were dark shadows beneath those bewitching blue eyes that indicated a lack of sleep, her cheeks were more hollow than they had been, and there were lines of tension beside her unsmiling mouth.

His gaze moved lower. She was still incredibly slender, but he was sure that her breasts were slightly fuller than he remembered…

He wasn’t wrong in his conclusion, Sin was sure that he wasn’t!

He had spent the time while Luccy was in the bathroom considering all the options—including that she might have eaten something that disagreed with her. But the more obvious reason for her sudden nausea was the one that refused to go away…

‘When were you going to tell me, Luccy?’ he insisted.