The Italian's Pregnant Cinderella

by Caitlin Crews

  Even if there hadn’t been evident security, there to patrol the boundaries of the Cassara estate, it wasn’t as if she could simply walk off and expect to get away. The estate didn’t appear on any maps. It was so resolutely unmappable, in fact, that her mobile kept suggesting she was in the center of Florence.

  She might have set off anyway, because Italy had been populated for thousands of years and she was bound to find someone if she walked far enough, but it wasn’t just her she had to think about these days. And she didn’t feel she could risk herself when she had the baby to consider.

  It turned out that she could spend a lot of time brooding about that, too.

  But it wasn’t until later that first day that she truly realized exactly what it was that Cristiano had planned for her.

  There was staff, but they only nodded and excused themselves. It became clear very quickly that they’d been instructed not to speak to her. Hours later, she found herself standing on one of the many patios, staring out at fields as the fog rolled in.

  It was beautiful. And it was also...empty. No cars, no traffic. No signs of life. No indication that there was anything here, or anywhere near, but her.

  Isolation to go along with her imprisonment, she understood then. Not just prison, but solitary confinement.

  “You cannot expect me to live like this,” she told him over the phone when she called him, shortly after that unpleasant revelation. “How can you remain in Milan, leaving me to molder away out in these fields?”

  “Stranded in the prettiest prison on earth.” His voice was a dark rasp that should have horrified her. It didn’t. “My heart bleeds.”

  “I’ve lived in cities almost all my life.” Because the oppressive silence of the hill town she’d grown up in haunted her still. The only sound had been the wind. And the endless judgment of the citizens. But she didn’t tell him that. She hardly liked admitting it to herself. “Do you really think I will take to the pastoral experience? I’ll explode if I stay here.”

  “There is no if, Julienne.” His voice was glacial. As immovable as he was. “You will stay right where you are. Your every need is attended to and who knows? Perhaps a spot of quiet contemplation will do you some good.”

  “And what of you?” she snapped back at him, gripping her mobile so tightly she was surprised it didn’t snap in half. “Do you plan to live your life as if you don’t have a woman and a baby hidden away out here like some syphilitic eighteenth century nobleman?”

  “Enjoy the fresh air,” he growled at her. “Indulge in la dolce vita. You are at the Villa Cassara, after all. The sweet life is guaranteed.”

  And it was only when he’d rung off that it occurred to her that really, he hadn’t had to take her furious call in the first place. It wasn’t as if the grand head of the Cassara Corporation answered his own phone, unless he wished it.

  If he wanted to truly isolate her, if he wanted to keep her caged up here, there wasn’t a single thing she could do about it unless she wanted to call the police.

  Assuming there were police to call, this far away from anywhere.

  Julienne wasn’t proud of herself for crying, but she couldn’t stop. Not for days, off and on. She blamed her hormones. But then, as one week ticked over into the next, something else kicked in.

  She was a survivor, after all. She’d survived her beginnings in France, which was more than some could claim, her own poor, lost mother among them. And she hadn’t accidentally survived it. She’d been prepared to do the unthinkable to rescue herself from that life. It made her stomach hurt to think of it now, but if Cristiano hadn’t been sitting at that bar in Monte Carlo, someone else would have been. Some other man.

  And Julienne would have done what she needed to do.

  That thought often brought her shame. But now, left to her own devices in her lovely Tuscan prison, she decided instead to think of it as a strength.

  She would do what she needed to do, because she always did.

  Because that was who she was.

  In this case, stranded here as she was, she had to accept that there was no way out. Unless she wanted to pull off an elaborate scheme that would involve stealing one of the vehicles—and behaving as if she wasn’t pregnant. Maybe it would come to that, but first, she thought she’d try something else.

  She’d always been extraordinarily good at doing her research. This had been a Cassara residence for generations. What she needed to do was gather as much information as possible where she was, and see where it led her.

  And the more information, the better.

  Because she intended to use it as a weapon.

  * * *

  “What do you mean, ‘there are reporters’?” Cristiano asked in icy disbelief.

  His secretary stood on the other side of the large desk and...quailed. When Massimo was normally unflappable. It was his superpower, in fact. Cristiano couldn’t say that he liked the evidence that even the dependably immovable Massimo could look anything but in total control of all things, all the time.

  Julienne, a voice inside him said. Foreboding, perhaps. Or simply a warning.

  Because it couldn’t be anything else.

  “From what I can gather, sir, there are some questions about your grandfather’s relationship with a woman,” Massimo said, his face studiously blank. “A woman not your grandmother.”

  Cristiano ground his teeth together, but could not bring himself to speak.

  Maybe that was a good thing.

  Massimo gazed back at him as if, given his preference, he would have chopped off his own head rather than said such a thing. “I’m only repeating what the great mess of them had been shouting down in the lobby.”

  “The mess of them,” Cristiano repeated. He had to fight for every scrap of advertising space across all media, but a whisper of scandal brought the vultures out in spades. But then, this was something he knew all too well after a lifetime as his father’s son.

  Cristiano wanted to do some shouting of his own. But he refrained.

  Barely.

  “They want to ask you questions about your grandparents, I believe,” Massimo said apologetically. “And also, I’m afraid, about Sofia Tomasi.”

  Sofia Tomasi. A name Cristiano had hoped never to hear again.

  His grandfather had died five years ago. Piero Cassara had personally built on an ancient Italian fortune to create Cassara Chocolates, the finest luxury chocolate brand in the world. And he had been a man of honor. So claimed the papers, his employees, even his rivals. Anything Cristiano knew about being a man—and not a sad example of one—he’d learned from his grandfather.

  But his private life had been somewhat less sweet than the family business, particularly when thrust under the lens of public perception.

  Cristiano wanted nothing to do with his grandmother, a bitter, dour old woman who still lived in a corner of the Tuscany estate, cared only for her own company, and was happy to tell anyone who asked that she’d turned her back on her husband, her marriage and her family long ago. Before Cristiano’s uncle had died, in fact.

  That she had never cared for her husband was an accepted fact of the Cassara storyline. Her parents had pressured her into marrying him, she’d done her duty, and once her two sons were born she’d wanted nothing to do with any Cassaras ever again. Cristiano had long imagined her his own, personal fairy-tale witch—hunkered down in a cottage on the edge of the property, bristling with malevolence anytime he ventured near.

  He’d thought nothing of it. Just as he’d thought nothing of Sofia Tomasi, the woman his grandfather had called any number of things over the years. Housekeeper. Friend. Companion.

  Mistress, Cristiano thought now.

  Though the tabloids would start using much worse words, now they knew.

  He supposed he’d always known what she was to his grandfather. Like his grandmother, i
t wasn’t a story that bore repeating. It was simply a fact. Accordingly, no one had commented on the relationship in years, at least not in Cristiano’s hearing. Because everyone already knew about it, Cristiano had thought. And because whatever provisions his grandfather had made for Sofia, they had not been in his will, and thus had never been subject to public review or comment.

  But there was one person who could not have known about Sofia, or the Cassara family’s tacit agreement that she was far, far better for Piero than the angry old woman in the cottage ever could be. And that one person was currently at loose in the villa, clearly digging around in things she shouldn’t.

  Worse, Cristiano had put her there.

  Meaning he had no one to blame for swarming reporters and a breaking new scandal his grandfather would have detested but himself.

  He dismissed Massimo, even managing to thank the man. Meanwhile his jaw actually ached as he clenched it, so tight it was a miracle his teeth didn’t shatter.

  “I have told them to disperse,” Massimo said as he walked out of Cristiano’s office. “If they do not, I will contact the police.”

  Cristiano nodded, but there was no getting around what he needed to do, no matter how little he wanted to do it. He had done his best to carry on as usual, pretending there was no woman off in Tuscany and certainly no pregnancy to contend with. Because he had no earthly idea how to handle either one.

  And he was not a man who usually suffered from uncertainty.

  But he certainly couldn’t have Julienne stirring up trouble and breathing life into old scandals that should have stayed buried with his grandfather.

  He would have to go to her.

  “I will have to go her,” he said aloud, as if thinking it wasn’t enough. “Damn her.”

  By the time the helicopter landed near the villa, his temper hadn’t cooled a bit. If anything, being back in these rolling fields spiked with cypress trees with the scent of rosemary in the air only made it worse.

  Cristiano had been raised mostly in Milan. His father had preferred the city, with its infinite bad choices spread out for him to choose between at his leisure, and he had been deeply scornful of the countryside where he’d been raised. Cristiano had always preferred it here, though he’d known better than to state a preference for anything. He associated the rolling fields and undulating hills so strongly with his grandfather that even now he expected to see the old man waiting for him. His seasons here at the villa were the only times in his life he’d ever really felt right.

  You should not have brought her here, you fool, he told himself sharply as he made his way toward the sprawling main house his grandfather had restored and rebuilt over the years, so it felt appropriately storied and historic even though every detail had been modernized.

  He braced himself as he walked inside, not sure what he expected. The statuary to be upended and left in chunks, perhaps. As if she’d pillaged the place in the week or so since he’d sent her here.

  But everything was as he’d left it. And as he liked to leave it in the state his grandfather would recognize if he walked in the door this very evening, Cristiano didn’t know how to feel about the fact that Julienne had done the same. Somehow that didn’t seem to match a woman who would ring up the tabloids in the next breath.

  He wandered through the rooms that looked precisely as they always had, with the same priceless art on the walls and the same furniture that managed to be both sophisticated and comfortable at once. A hallmark of the villa, and in many ways, how he recalled his grandfather, too.

  Cristiano wandered across the grand atrium in the center of the building. It was open to the deep blue Tuscany sky above, bursting with flowers, trees and the small pool he knew was stocked with plump, lazy fish.

  On the other side, he did not find Julienne in the bedroom suite that had been set aside for her. Or any of the other suites in that wing of the house. And he could admit that he was beginning to feel the faintest sense of unease as he retraced his steps, looking in the various salons and studies and reception rooms, many of which had stood empty since his grandfather’s death.

  And that was where he found her.

  He stopped in the door of the library, watching the light stream in from the great domed skylight above, carefully directed into the center of the space and the table that stood there. And not toward the floor to ceiling shelves that lined the walls. Julienne sat at the table, looking perfectly at her ease. Papers, books, his grandfather’s collection of personal letters and a pad she was using to jot down notes were spread across the surface of the center table as if she’d made it her office.

  He wanted to charge in and sweep the whole mess of it to the floor, but he couldn’t seem to move. Because she was more beautiful than he remembered.

  And God help him, but it caught at him. She caught at him and he had no earthly idea how to stop her.

  Cristiano could no longer remember, now, how he’d managed to keep himself from noticing her all these many years. When she’d been nothing to him but another employee, if more ambitious and dependable than most. How had he turned this greed in him off? And why couldn’t he do it again?

  Her hair was not up in its normal twist today. It swirled down around her shoulders, gleaming gold in the sunlight. She had a faint frown of concentration between her brows, which he wanted to smooth with his fingers. And she tugged her lower lip between her teeth as she scribbled something on the pad before her.

  And everything inside him was fire and fury, regret, and that other thing he couldn’t quite name. That ache that he couldn’t define and was doing his level best to ignore.

  He didn’t know when she became aware of him. But he knew when she did, even though she didn’t react at first. She finished writing whatever she was scribbling on her pad, set her pen down with what struck him as unnecessary precision and only then lifted her gaze to his.

  “You’ve sicced the press on me?” he demanded, his voice not much more than a growl, because that was better than analyzing the punch of her gaze. The way it made him want to rock back on his heels. Though he did not. “Do I need to confiscate your mobile, Julienne?”

  “You can do that.” Her voice was as cool and mild as her expression. Cristiano believed neither, not when he could still feel that punch. “But then you would have a much bigger problem.”

  “I find that difficult to believe.”

  “You’ve chosen not to deal with me,” she said, her eyes dark. “And lucky for you, I am accustomed to taking your orders. But you will find my sister more difficult to control.”

  “Is that it?” He didn’t quite laugh, but he felt...bigger, suddenly. More in control of this mess he’d made. “Your little sister is the threat? Your big gun?”

  Julienne smiled. “A key difference between Fleurette and me, among many others, is that she never liked you all that much to begin with.”

  And Cristiano didn’t understand the pull he felt to this woman. He hadn’t understood it that night in Monaco. He certainly hadn’t understood it in the six long months that had followed. Today, when by rights he should despise her for discussing his family’s business with reporters, he found himself leaning against the doorjamb instead. Almost lazily, when he was never lazy.

  Almost as if this was some game they played.

  “Impossible,” he heard himself say, icily sardonic. “My charm is legendary.”

  “You are a distinctly charmless man,” she replied. And there was no reason why Cristiano—who had never given a moment’s thought to whether or not he was considered charming by anyone—should feel a sense of outrage at her offhanded, matter-of-fact tone. “You are known chiefly for your intensity, as I think you are well aware. And now, it seems, your upsetting criminal behavior.”

  Cristiano considered her, feeling as distinctly charmless as she’d called him. “I wonder that you did not call the police rather tha
n the press, if your upset is so great.”

  She smiled again, but it was a different sort of smile. Far more of a weapon than the politely cool one he’d seen in the office.

  “I realize this is not sitting well with you, Cristiano, but you are the father of this baby.” Julienne rose then, clearly pointing her belly in his direction. In case he might have forgotten. “And it is not exactly ideal to have the father of my baby locked up forever in prison, as you surely would be if I called the police and explained to them that you’re keeping me here against my will.”

  “You could walk to Florence, cara. It is not so many kilometers from here.”

  “It is, in fact, many hundreds of kilometers to Florence. I checked, and when the maps on my mobile failed, I asked one of your guards.”

  Cristiano wanted to hurl something back at her, but he was struck by all that light cascading down from above, bathing her in it. She glowed. There was no other word to describe it. He tried to tell himself it was a trick of the light, but somehow, he knew perfectly well it was not. It was her.

  Julienne was...blooming.

  Like the flowers outside in the atrium, she reminded him of spring. Bright and sweet and glowing, like the Roman goddesses who had once been worshiped on this same plot of earth.

  “You want my attention, is that it?” he asked, forcing himself to stop thinking about goddesses and glowing. “Is that why you sent me your message in the form of a pack of reporters?”

  He could hear the danger in his own voice. He thought she heard it too, because she did that thing with her chin. That defiant tilt, as if, left to her own devices, she might fight him.

  “It’s the baby that needs your attention, Cristiano.”

  And he had to grit his teeth against that word. Baby. Against all the things that happened in him when he thought of it.

  Because he knew better. He knew what he was.

  “Neither you nor the child will want for anything.” His lips thinned. “What more can you require of me than that?”