Happy Mother’s Day!: Accidentally Pregnant, Conveniently Wed / Claiming His Pregnant Wife / Meant-To-Be Mother

If she wanted to play French farce, she could always slip out of her office by the back way, but that would only postpone the inevitable. Gianluca obviously wanted to see her and he wouldn’t be deterred—not by anyone. So hadn’t she better listen to what he wanted to say?

Aisling chewed the end of her fountain pen. ‘Won’t you send him in?’ she asked.

She put the receiver down and sat with the tension building up inside her. There wasn’t even enough time to look in the mirror she carried in her handbag, nor to put on some lipstick—and, besides, it was only a short journey from Ginger’s office to her own.

What if he caught her prettifying herself and thought she was trying to lure him into another sexual encounter? Aisling shuddered as—like someone caught in a bad horror film—she watched the door open and her heart sank.

For this was the man they called Il Tigre at his most threatening, looking just as she imagined his animal namesake might look the moment before it pounced.

Gianluca closed the door behind him, but he didn’t move. Just stood there, looking at her with a hostile black gaze—which was making her feel like some helpless innocent who had strayed into his path.

So don’t let him make you feel that way.

But it wasn’t easy under the circumstances—not when her heart was leaping against her ribcage in reaction to the muscular body and the shadowed beauty of his face—which was so still that it might have been carved from some dark stone. How could someone look so different? she wondered. It seemed a lifetime ago that those hard lips had been soft and responsive as they kissed her—yet it was only a few short weeks.

She tried to compose her face into some appropriate expression—but what was appropriate, in the circumstances?

‘Hello, Gianluca,’ she said as calmly as she could manage.

He didn’t return the greeting, just leaned back against the door, his hands moving down to rest on his hips, a movement Aisling tried not to react to, which wasn’t easy since, not only was it vaguely intimidating—it also meant that he thrust his hips forward in a way that was completely provocative as well as evocative. And, oh, the memories came flooding back in all their glorious, golden beauty.

She swallowed, remembering images that she had been trying to block—of his eyes, tight-closed with pleasure. The way he had breathed something exultant at the moment of his climax and the warm feel of his naked body next to hers. ‘This is a … surprise.’

‘Really?’ he clipped out. He was angry. Correction. He was furious—with a strength of feeling he was neither used to, nor liked—and he hadn’t quite worked out what was causing it. Was it because she had taken control of the situation by her sudden and totally unexpected disappearance? Or because he had been shocked to find she had gone, leaving his bed without a single word—leaving him lying alone amid the rumpled sheets as if he were just some kind of stud!

Yet the sight of her was making him ache, even though in theory it should have done the very opposite—because the woman who had writhed beneath him and slid all over him had disappeared, making him half wonder whether he had imagined the whole episode. Like a shooting star viewed in the night sky—brilliant yet so dazzlingly brief.

Gone was the floaty hairstyle and the foxy jeans—and back in place was one of her mannish suits with her dark hair so tightly pinned back that she might as well have had it shaved off.

‘Is this how you always behave?’ he demanded. ‘Don’t you usually hang around to say goodbye to your lovers, Aisling—or do you consider orgasm as a kind of farewell as well as the little death which the French always use to describe it?’

‘Shh! Please—keep your voice down!’ The words were out before she could stop them andAisling’s gaze darted nervously towards the closed door, praying that Ginger didn’t have her ear pressed to it. ‘I don’t want anyone to hear.’

‘You don’t want anyone to hear?’ He gave a mocking laugh of derision, but also a mental note of her vulnerability, and what had provoked it. ‘You mean you haven’t told your secretary you’ve been sleeping with one of the clients?’

‘Of course I haven’t!’ she retorted, until she realised that she was playing this all wrong. Calm it down, she told herself. Calm it down. Surely her disappearance should have set his mind at rest—made him realise that she wasn’t going to make a big deal out of it?

She tried the kind of smile that she imagined a sophisticated woman-of-the-world might turn onto one of her many lovers. ‘Anyway, there’s nothing to tell, is there?’ she finished brightly.

‘Nothing to tell?’ he echoed incredulously. ‘You let me take your clothes off and to enter your body and move inside you and bring you to orgasm and yet you describe this as nothing?’

‘Gianluca!’ Her cheeks flared with heat, and with the first heavy beat of desire. ‘Please!’

‘Sì? Che cosa hai? What is the matter with you?’ His mouth twisted with fury and with something else too—something which felt bizarrely close to jealousy. ‘Do you do this all the time, with different men? Different clients?’ he finished insultingly.

The accusation was like a knife-wound and Aisling gripped at the desk. ‘I don’t—of course I don’t! You can’t think that!’

‘Why not? Why should I believe you?’

Accusation blazed from his black eyes and Aisling felt weak. He really did think she was some kind of unprincipled pleasure-seeker! ‘Believe me if you want, or don’t!’ she said. ‘I don’t have to pass some kind of a morality test—especially with a man like you!’

There was a moment’s silence. ‘And what exactly is that supposed to mean?’ he questioned softly.

‘Oh, come on, Gianluca—don’t try to play the innocent with me. You’re an intelligent man!’ Her words were tumbling out thick and fast and Aisling could feel the threatening break of tears at the edge of them and wondered what had happened to her determination to stay calm.

Think of everything you’ve worked for, Aisling—don’t throw it away in a crazy moment of turbulent emotion.

Yet she couldn’t seem to stop herself, and maybe it was the cold, hurtful expression in his eyes—as if she had done something unspeakably wrong, instead of simply opting for damage limitation to avoid an awkward scene the following morning.

She swallowed away the threat of tears and drew a deep breath to steady herself. ‘Maybe you make love to lots of different women like that?’

‘Make love?’ His laugh was scornful. ‘Cara, please! I implore you not to dress it up into something it wasn’t. That had nothing to do with love, and everything to do with raw sex.’

Aisling recoiled, twisting her fingers together in her lap and digging the nails sharply into the fleshy part of her palm. She had known that all along and yet to hear him say so was oddly and profoundly wounding. And this was what she had feared, what she had warned herself she must never do—to read more into what had happened than he intended her to. Thank heaven she had left when she did—taken the upper hand instead of being shown the door and made to feel like some fallen woman.

‘Why are you here?’ she whispered.

Why indeed? Because he had woken up alone in bed the next morning, aching to possess her once more—only to discover the space where she had lain was empty? She had gone.

Gianluca was used to ending it where affairs were concerned … and then only when his appetite had been fully sated. And this time it had not. It had not just left him wanting her—it had left him wanting her more. For once, he felt at some kind of disadvantage and he didn’t like it. He didn’t like it at all. His mouth flattened into an implacable line—he wanted to lash out at her for the frustration he still felt.

‘You took my car,’ he said coldly.

Aisling’s heart kicked against her ribcage, hating herself for the terrible wave of disappointment which washed over her. What had she been expecting him to say? That he’d wanted to carry on holding her? That she was the kind of woman he’d spent his life waiting for? Oh, you idiot, Aisling. ‘How like a man,’ she lashed back. ‘To worry about his precious car.’

‘It’s not about the damned car!’ he gritted. ‘You made me look a fool! I woke in the morning and thought that you must have gone for awalk before breakfast.’ He shook his head as he remembered. ‘I went downstairs to find you but none of the maids had seen you. They looked at me in confusion, and then with embarrassment when they showed me your note.’

‘So you were worried about your reputation?’ Aisling queried acidly.

‘A concept which clearly does not concern you.’ He enjoyed seeing her wince—damn it, she could wince some more!

‘I left the car at your office,’ she defended. ‘I only borrowed it.’

‘You shouldn’t have taken it in the first place!’

‘Maybe I shouldn’t—but what was I supposed to do? I had a flight to catch.’

He raised haughty black eyebrows in a gesture of disbelief. ‘You don’t think that I would have driven you back to Rome—or got you onto another flight? Or even chartered a plane to take you back to London?’

Aisling stared unseeingly at the neat, uncluttered expanse of her desk. How incongruous it would sound if she told him that she’d awoken with a feeling of shame that she could have so compromised their professional relationship. And she had panicked, wanting to keep what little was left of the tatters of her pride. Running away had seemed the only way out at the time.

Deep down she had known that she’d behaved badly—but now she could see that she had thrown a poor light on more than her reputation. Because a woman who so bitterly regretted having taken a lover would look like a very indiscriminate woman indeed …

‘I’m sorry I ran out like that. I’m sorry I took the car,’ she said baldly and looked up into the cold black eyes. ‘There. You have your apology. What else do you want me to do about it?’

Conflicting thoughts began to spin around in his head and for once in his life, Gianluca wasn’t sure.

He wanted to tell her to go to hell!