Bound to the Tuscan Billionaire

by Susan Stephens

  This was just the opportunity Cass had needed to quit the address Marco’s people held on file for her and start over. She got a job at another supermarket, which paid just enough money to rent a small house in a nearby village. Her new home was tiny, but she loved it. She had put up a notice in the local post office, offering her services as a gardener, and to her surprise she was soon fully booked. With that and her work on the tills she was almost too busy for regret—until the day she fainted on the job, and an elderly lady she was serving asked her if she was pregnant...

  ‘No. Of course not,’ she protested, laughing at the absurdity of the question. ‘What makes you think that?’ But even as she spoke, a spear of alarm stabbed deep.

  ‘A strong, healthy girl like you has no reason to feel faint—unless you’re ill, which I doubt. I’ve had six children myself,’ the old lady confided, ‘so I know the signs.’

  ‘I’m sure you’re wrong...’

  Cass tried to laugh it off, while all she wanted to do was to leave the store and rush to the pharmacy to pick up a pregnancy test, but she had to wait until she finished work.

  It was the longest working day of her life. Back home, she stared at the test in shock. The thin blue line didn’t lie, according to the instructions. But Marco had used protection, so how could this happen?

  Quite easily, those same instructions informed her as she scanned the printed sheet.

  No protection is foolproof.

  Well, they’d got that right, and she was the fool.

  * * *

  ‘A call from Signorina Rich?’

  Marco sat back in his leather seat, staring out across the majestic skyline of Rome. His secretary knew never to interrupt him unless it was to announce his next appointment, or unless it was a matter of vital importance, so Cassandra must be kicking up a fuss. The lack of her pained him, but the fact that she had walked out on him without a word had ended it as far as he was concerned. How long had it been now? Almost three months? What was so important she had to call him at the office? Had she changed her mind about the cheque?

  ‘I have a ten o’clock meeting,’ he snapped, frowning.

  He drew breath to give himself a chance to weigh up the facts. Cassandra was back in his life, asking to speak to him. He needed to think about this for a few moments.

  Calm reason triumphed. They hadn’t expected to hear from each other. When something was over it was over, as far as he was concerned.

  ‘Tell Ms Rich I’m too busy to take her call, but I’m happy to send her cheque on.’

  Thoughts of Cassandra plagued him for the rest of the day, and flashbacks kept him from his work. These were not just of Cassandra, but of the past. Maybe because their pasts were quite similar he was thinking back to that frozen Christmas Eve when the man he had called Papa had thrown him and his mother out on the street, cutting them off without a penny or a word of farewell.

  His mother must leave with nothing, the man he had thought was his father had instructed. That was the price of betrayal. More disillusionment followed when his mother had explained that Papa wasn’t his father, and that the man who had fathered him had been an odd job man around the house, and now that man was gone too.

  Even though their circumstances had been much changed, to begin with the two of them had rubbed along well enough. His mother hadn’t been a fool, but the unrelenting hardship of their new life had eventually ground her down, and she’d begun to drink to blot it out.

  Cassandra’s mother had been a drunk too, so Cassandra knew how it felt when a mother chose to lose herself in a bottle of liquor, rather than care for her child.

  When his mother had died he had found ways to make himself useful—carrying trash for restaurants in return for a good feed and carting logs for the rich folk who could afford them. He had vowed that one day he would go to school, and one day he would be rich.

  And Cassandra?

  She had been cast adrift in just the same way, and she was a survivor too.

  With a frown of impatience he got back to his work and vowed not to allow thoughts of Cassandra to distract him. He relied on no one. He shared his past with no one. He never had. He couldn’t afford this sort of disturbance to his working day. There must be no more calls from Cassandra.

  ‘Your ten o’ clock appointment is here, sir...’

  ‘Thank you. Send him in.’

  Closing the book on Cassandra Rich, he turned his attention back where it belonged, to the business that had never let him down.

  * * *

  Precious time was passing and Marco was still refusing to take her calls. Soon it would become obvious that she was pregnant, and he had to know. She had called her godmother in Australia and, typically, her godmother had shared Cass’s delight. She had asked who the father was, and when Cass had enthusiastically said she’d be doing this alone, her godmother had immediately offered to come home. Cass had had to insist that this wasn’t necessary, and had pointed out that her godmother’s time with her son was precious. Cass had friends around, as well as the best of medical care, and she promised to get in touch with regular updates.

  Marco’s refusal to speak to her was one difficulty she had no intention of burdening her godmother with, Cass thought as she placed yet another call to Fivizzano Inc. She was tired of speaking to the same PA and receiving the same firm, but polite answer: ‘I am sorry, signorina, but Signor di Fivizzano cannot take your call. He’s too busy today.’

  She would have to be back at the supermarket for her lunchtime shift in ten minutes, Cass realised, glancing at her phone. She had called Marco every day at different times of day, hoping that eventually she’d be put straight through to him. She still couldn’t believe that she’d slept with such a cold-hearted man—or that she had never asked for his private number, but there was no point in regretting that now.

  The same PA picked up, and Cass received the same stock answer, but this time she interrupted before the PA had a chance to hang up. ‘I’m sorry...did you say Signor di Fivizzano is too busy to speak to me?’

  ‘That is correct, signorina. I do apologise—’

  ‘He wasn’t too busy to sleep with me.’ She paused—not that she needed to as the silence was crushing. ‘He wasn’t too busy to make me pregnant. Could you tell him that, please? Thank you,’ she added politely before she cut the line.

  Sitting back, she firmed her chin. The die had been cast. She’d done her part. She wanted nothing from Marco in the material sense, but it was her duty to let him know. What he did next was up to him. What she did next would be all about her baby’s future.

  * * *

  He didn’t say a word when his red-faced PA recited Cassandra’s call back to him, but his mind was racing.

  ‘Thank you.’ His curt nod of the head revealed nothing of the turmoil inside him.

  A child?

  He had given life to a child?

  How could that have happened when he was always so careful?

  Had he been so careful that night? Hadn’t he been out of control for the first time in his adult life...because of Cassandra, and the way she had made him feel?

  He was never out of control. He was confident on that point. But had he been as meticulous as he usually was when it came to using protection? They had indulged so many times it was hard to be certain. He had been consumed by a fever of lust and so had she. He’d never known anything like it, which made her behaviour afterwards—leaving him without a word of explanation—all the harder to understand. Until he brought up the past and put what he’d learned from it into the equation.

  This ruse had been used before, he remembered, getting up to pace the floor—false pregnancies, floods of tears, women trying to tell him that it was better without using protection, and of course they were on the Pill. Not one of those women had been telling the truth. He
’d had them all investigated. There were no babies, just dishonest women looking for an easy ride.

  Did that sound like Cassandra?

  He didn’t want children. Why would he, with his history?

  Could he find feelings? Could he buy them? Since learning that he’d been unwanted, he had learned not to care. He’d been doing that for too long now to change, and a child needed more. A child needed everything.

  He struggled with the thought that Cassandra had done this on purpose to secure a meal ticket, like other women, like his mother. But was he the father of her child? Cass hadn’t been a virgin when he’d met her. How could he be sure?

  He couldn’t go on like this. Thoughts of Cassandra were interfering with his life. He’d have to ring and have it out with her.

  In a trick that only fate could play on him, he discovered she had changed her number.

  Don’t you trust your own judgement? Cassandra is different from all those other women. Have you forgotten that so easily?

  The past vied uncomfortably with what he knew about Cassandra. She wasn’t weak. She wasn’t greedy. She had never asked him for anything. It was he who had pressed things on her—the dress, the makeover, the sketch, and then the cheque.

  He called the team that handled his business investigations. ‘I want protection for her around the clock,’ he told the head of the investigative team. The man he was talking to was an expert in surveillance, and Marco was confident that from day one he would know as much about Cassandra as if he were standing next to her.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  SHE HAD GIVEN up trying to contact Marco. If they did meet again, it would be on her terms. She may not have his power and money, but she was not going to take this insulting behaviour from a man who apparently refused to believe she was carrying his child.

  Being a prospective single mother with no money wasn’t easy, but it taught her a lot of things—things she had never imagined learning—things about her mother, for example. If she had one complaint, it was that she felt isolated sometimes in the tiny house she was renting. She realised now that her mother must have felt just the same in the grand mansion where Cass had been born. She only wished she had been old enough to understand her mother’s loneliness, and that she could cross time and space now to put things right. Her father would still have slept with all his groupies—she doubted anyone could have changed him—but she hoped she could have helped her mother. No wonder her mother had wandered around in a drug-fuelled stupor. She must have been desperate to work out how to compete for the attention of a man who’d no longer wanted her.

  She had learned these lessons from the past and could look after herself, Cass reassured herself, as she closed her hand tightly round the scan of her baby. She would shut her heart to Marco di Fivizzano, if it meant bringing up their child free from guilt and heartache. And if Marco was an example of how the rich and famous lived, she was glad to be poor and no one.

  Not so glad to be sick again, though...

  Leaning her hand against the wall, she retched on an empty stomach. Hyperemesis gravidarum, the doctor had called it, telling her that her morning sickness should ease soon.

  Soon couldn’t come soon enough for Cass. She was usually so healthy and full of pep, but these days she felt tired from the moment she woke up to when she fell exhausted into bed, and she was feeling particularly nauseous today. She was pale and grey, with an unattractive green tinge, she acknowledged ruefully as she stared at her reflection in the bathroom mirror. Bloodshot eyes didn’t do much for her either. She wasn’t blooming, as pregnant women were supposed to do, according to the magazines—she felt wretched and too ill to work. Thankfully, she had an understanding manager, but his compassion would only stretch so far, Cass suspected. The upside of her situation was the news from the midwife that her baby was thriving. So she’d keep on keeping on—what else could she do? And she would try to eat healthily—when she could bear to eat at all.

  It was all in a good cause, she told herself firmly as she picked up a nourishing snack on her way back to bed in the vainest of hopes that she could keep it down. She took the phone with her to call her manager to ask if she could change shifts, and then she crawled back under the duvet with relief to wait for her twitchy stomach to calm down.

  * * *

  He had called his pilot, who was having the jet made ready before his PA had a chance to ask him if there was anything more she could do for him. His investigators hadn’t disappointed him, though their latest report had thrown him. If Cassandra was sick it changed everything. As a past member of his staff, he had a certain responsibility towards her, whether or not the baby was his.

  A baby that might be his...

  And he missed her. Dio! Just admitting those words made him frown. Had he grown soft?

  No. He was merely doing what had to be done, and it was a job that couldn’t be delegated. After she’d called the office, he wouldn’t put anything past her, so he had to see for himself exactly what was going on. The fact that, according to his sources, Cassandra had been living an exemplary life didn’t really surprise him, but it was welcome news. He wanted her to look after herself. His experience of women before Cass was hardly reassuring, and it was in his nature to be suspicious and think the worst. When the baby was born there would be a DNA test. He would have to be sure before committing himself further. With a shake of his head he cursed at being the cause of history repeating itself. Because of him another child would come into this world subject to scrutiny, subject to suspicion, and then maybe that child would be discarded...and by him.

  * * *

  He stopped outside the modest door and checked the address. Lifting the serviceable knocker, he rapped sharply three times. He waited and knocked again.

  The door opened and there she stood. His whole body tensed as she stared at him in amazement. ‘Marco?’

  Her voice was faint with surprise, but it was the fact that Cassandra was so diminished in both body and spirit that shocked him. He had expected to be greeted by the robust woman who had taken him on and fought back, but this frail-looking girl seemed incapable of doing anything. She was like a wraith, a mere shadow of her healthy, sun-kissed, capable self. To say he was concerned would be an understatement. ‘May I come in?’

  Wordlessly, she stood back.

  The interior of the small terraced house was as neat as the exterior. It was compact but functional, with a tiny kitchen at the street end of the room. At the other end there was a solid fuel burner with a couple of battered sofas either side of it, and a fireguard already in place.

  The fireguard looked new, as if she was planning ahead and buying things bit by bit. A narrow staircase led up to what he suspected would be a maximum of two small bedrooms and a simple bathroom. Her front door opened directly onto the street, and he guessed there was no garden. There was certainly no display outside the front door to say that this was the home of an avid gardener, though he noticed that the pot plants on her windowsill were drooping. Seeing that almost jolted him more than anything else.

  Emotion got the better of him, and he launched straight in. ‘Why didn’t you tell me you were pregnant as soon as you knew?’

  ‘I did—I tried to get in touch with you, but you wouldn’t take my calls.’

  ‘You should have come to Rome.’

  She laughed. ‘That’s easy for you to say with a private jet at your disposal.’

  ‘You shouldn’t have left Rome in the first place,’ he argued. ‘But you could have texted me, written to me.’

  ‘How cold do you think I am, Marco? I’m not like you. I had to see you face to face and hear your voice before I could tell you about the baby. I couldn’t just type out the news that we were having a child like an invoice and submit it to you.’

  He ground his jaw, knowing she was right. ‘How are you getting on?�
�� He could see for himself, but for once he couldn’t find the right words to say.

  She shrugged.

  ‘You don’t look well. You look exhausted.’ She’d lost far too much weight.

  ‘I’m pregnant, Marco. Would you like to sit down?’ She remained standing stiffly and as far away from him as she could.

  ‘Thank you, but I’ll stand. I’ve been sitting down long enough in the jet coming over, and again in the car that brought me from the airport.’

  ‘I’m sorry if I’ve interrupted your busy schedule.’

  ‘Stop it,’ he warned softly.

  ‘Why are you here, Marco? What do you want?’

  ‘To see you. To see how you are.’

  ‘You won’t speak to me on the phone and now you’re here?’ She shook her head. ‘What you do never makes any sense to me. How did you find me?’

  ‘The village you live in isn’t exactly a big place.’

  ‘And you had me watched,’ she guessed. ‘How dare you?’

  ‘You walked out without a word. Is that acceptable behaviour?’

  ‘You paid me off. You only wanted me for sex.’

  ‘I did not,’ he said quietly. This wasn’t the time to examine his motives, but he had not wanted her just for sex. Cassandra had made him laugh. She had made him relax. She had made him feel young again when he couldn’t ever remember feeling young.

  ‘What, then?’ she demanded, rallying herself to stand up to him. ‘Take that occasion at your charity function in Rome when you barely spoke to me. And then, as soon as everyone left—’

  ‘You leapt on me,’ he remembered, finding it hard to suppress a grin as he thought back.

  ‘I did not leap on you.’

  ‘You did,’ he argued with a shrug. ‘We leapt on each other.’

  She tightened her mouth and her face went red, but she didn’t deny it.

  ‘Can I get you something to drink?’ she asked, avoiding his gaze.

  ‘Why don’t I get you a glass of water while you sit down?’