by Rachel Lyndhurst; Carmen Falcone; Ros Clarke; Annie Seaton; Christine Bell
“I have pizza and I have an agenda.”
“I love it when you talk dirty.” Emile strolled towards her, and for a moment, she thought he was going to kiss her. But he merely took the pizza box and set it down on the coffee table while she kicked her shoes off and settled into the sofa.
“You were the one who wanted to play lawyer and client.”
“I’ve had fantasies about it for a year. Wine?”
She nodded. He poured a glass and handed it to her.
“Tonight is your lucky night, then.”
“Excellent.” He gave a lascivious grin, then winked at her.
“The rules are very clear. No sex with a client.”
“Ah, but breaking the rules is what makes the game fun.”
He picked up the biggest slice of pizza and took a huge bite, brushing the string of cheese from his chin. Theresa helped herself to her own slice of pizza and extracted the agenda from her shoulder bag.
“First.”
His eyes nearly popped. “You’re serious about the agenda?”
“Yes. Do you have a problem with that?”
“No problem, Madame.”
He waggled his eyebrows at her, and she pursed her lips to stop herself from laughing. “You may address the Chair as Ms. Chartley.”
“What if I’m kissing the Chair?” He had an arm around her shoulders and as he spoke, he pulled her nearer. Well within kissing range.
“I believe that kissing is not on this part of the agenda.”
He took the paper from her and scanned it. “It isn’t anywhere on the agenda,” he said with disappointment.
“Kissing comes under Any Other Business.” She tapped the paper to show him. “Much later in the agenda. We may not get to it tonight.”
He sighed loudly and shifted to the other end of the sofa. “Get on with it then. Item one.”
“First, because all the other items are rendered irrelevant if we can’t come to agreement on this one: love.” Her heart was thudding alarmingly and her mouth was dry. She’d never, ever talked about this with anyone, but she was ready to do it. It might be jumping out of a plane at ten thousand feet, but she was strapped to an instructor, and he’d make sure that both their parachutes opened.
“That’s an excellent point. I love you, chérie. Where do you stand on the matter?” His voice was teasing, but he didn’t fool her. This answer mattered. A lot.
“Since we last met, I have had the opportunity to consider the matter thoroughly and examine all the available evidence.” The formal language was soothing. She could control the feelings if she could find the right words for them.
“I like thorough examinations. Would you do one on me?”
Emile was enjoying this far too much. She gave him a hard stare. “I have, therefore, been able to come to a conclusion.” She put her pizza slice down. “Which is that I love you beyond all reasonable doubt.”
He didn’t wait for the rest of the agenda. He swooped down and kissed her. She could feel him trembling as his lips pressed hot, urgent kisses all over her face. His hands traced her head, her neck, her breasts, as though he needed to persuade himself that she was real. She looped her arms around his neck and kissed him back, murmuring words of love and reassurance.
Some time later, she retrieved her crumpled agenda. She was now sitting on Emile’s lap, and the pizza had been abandoned.
“Item two.”
“Have I told you how sexy you are when you’re doing your lawyer thing?”
“I believe you’ve mentioned it once or twice. Stop interrupting.” She laid her hand on his cheek and kissed him softly.
“I beg your pardon, Ms. Chartley.”
“Forgiven. Now, item two. Money.”
“I have plenty of money.”
“No, I have plenty of money. You have an obscene excess of money.”
“You’re right. I’ve had some thoughts about that. I want you to help me set up a charity.” His eyes had narrowed, the way they always did when he was being serious. She snuggled a little bit closer.
“Doing what?”
“Supporting single parents, like my mother.” His arms tightened around her. She kissed his jaw, offering the only comfort she had. Emile continued, “There are children who don’t get the opportunities I did, and I want to help give them those chances. Not just sports, but music or art, or just going to university. Some of them might even want to become lawyers.”
She lifted up her face to look at him. “That’s a lovely thing to do, Emile. Your mother would be proud of you.”
“She would have loved you, chérie. She always said I needed a strong woman who would keep me in order.”
Theresa laughed. “I think I would have liked her, too.”
“So, item three?”
“Item three.” They both looked at her list. Neither of them knew how to find a way to a compromise.
“We don’t have to decide this now, do we?” Emile said, eventually.
“It’s important, Emile. We should at least talk about it. You want children, don’t you?”
“And you don’t, do you?”
She squirmed away from him, but he set his hand on her cheek and gently forced her to meet his gaze.
“Do you?”
“It’s not that I don’t want children, per se.”
“Heaven forbid you should want them per se. Could you possibly do this bit like a normal, non-lawyer person, Thérèse?”
“Sorry.” Some things were easier to talk about when you depersonalized them. The legal speak was a defense mechanism, but apparently, he wasn’t going to let her get away with it.
“Go on.”
“I don’t have anything against children. It’s just that I’ve seen what happens to women at work when they go on maternity leave.”
“Tell me,” he asked patiently.
She frowned, trying to think how to explain it. “They always plan to come back.”
“And don’t they?”
“Sometimes. More often than not, they come back in a part-time job.”
“That’s a problem?” He wasn’t disagreeing, just trying to understand, and she appreciated that.
“You don’t get promoted if you’re a part-timer. You certainly don’t make partner.”
“That is your ambition?”
“Yes. I’m not going to pretend it doesn’t matter to me, because it does.”
“You’ve made that very clear, chérie. And if it matters to you, then it matters to me. I will not ask you to make that sacrifice. I don’t want to ask you. I want you to have the things which are important to you, Thérèse.”
He kissed her softly, reinforcing his promise. He wouldn’t ask her and he wouldn’t try to change her mind. She relaxed in his embrace.
Only it wasn’t that simple. “I want you to have the things which are important to you, Emile. You shouldn’t be making sacrifices, either.”
There was the rub. What he wanted and what she wanted weren’t compatible. She sat up and moved off his lap. Emile laid his hand on her thigh, preventing her from going too far.
“It is no sacrifice to be with you.”
“That’s sweet, but it isn’t true. You want a family and you would have to sacrifice that to be with me.”
“There is really no way you could have your career and a child?”
“We could have nannies, I suppose, but I hate the idea of that, especially when they’re small. I’d want to be back at work within a couple of months at the most.”
“The children would have two parents, chérie.”
“Yes, but you work as well.”
“I do now. But I will be retiring in two, three years. I will need something to do with my time.”
She stared at him. “You’d stay at home and raise our children?”
“Can you think of a better thing for me to do?”
“No but…” She covered her face with her hands and started to shake with laughter. “My mother is going to have a fit wh
en she finds out.”
“Your mother adores me.”
Theresa shook her head and started laughing again. “She’ll have to explain it at the golf club. Her unnatural daughter who won’t give up her career to look after her own children, while her hen-pecked son-in-law has to spend his days changing nappies. She’ll never speak to me again.”
“Thérèse.” Emile took hold of her hips and shifted her so that she was lying on her back, looking up at him. “Are there any more items on that agenda of yours?”
“Only one. Any Other Business.”
He touched his fingers to her lips, tracing delicately.
“Any Other Business means kissing.”
“And anything else you can think of.”
He nodded, and a teasing grin crossed his face. “I expect I can think of quite a few things. But we’ll start with kissing.”
“Emile?”
“Hmm?” He was busily exploring her neckline with his lips.
“I do love you.”
“And I love you.” His hand was sliding deliciously up her thigh. “Madame Renaud.”
“Ms. Chartley,” she corrected him. Then laughed. “Are we always going to bicker?”
“As long as it turns you on, ma femme.”
“Emile!” She pulled away in shocked delight. “You do that deliberately?”
He winked. “Only because you love it.”
One Year Later
“Cynthia Williams is going to have a baby, you know.”
Melanie handed a cup of weak tea to Theresa and poured coffee for Emile.
“Who is Cynthia Williams?” he asked politely.
“No one,” Theresa told him. “The daughter of one of Mum’s golfing friends.”
“Cynthia Bentley, I should say. She married a surgeon.”
“Ah, but your daughter married me.” Emile said smugly.
“Yes, well. She seems to be very happy.”
She had to hand it to her mother. Confronted with the least suitable son-in-law that Theresa had been able to find, Melanie had worked hard at getting to know him. She’d even been trying to take an interest in football for his sake.
“I am.” She kicked Emile under the table. “Though you can stop smirking about it.”
“The baby’s due in May, apparently. They’ll have the christening in St. Bertolin’s, I expect.”
“That’ll be nice for them.”
Her dad gave her a stern look. “Don’t tease your mother, Theresa.”
“No. Sorry, Mum.” She’d half thought about keeping it a secret, just for the fun of it, but there wasn’t really any reason this time round.
“You’re not getting any younger, that’s all. I wouldn’t want you to leave it too late.”
“My biological countdown, you mean? I don’t think you need to worry about that just yet, Mum. I’m only thirty-two. And besides, I’m pregnant.”
The china teapot smashed to the ground.
“Theresa Mary Chartley! How dare you?”
Theresa laughed and reached for Emile’s hand. “We thought you’d be pleased.”
“Well, of course I’m pleased. But I’ll never understand why you can’t just tell me these things like a normal daughter.”
“I told you just now. Anyway, it’s due in April.”
“After the end of the season,” Emile put in.
“And before Cynthia Williams,” Theresa added.
A slow smile crept across Melanie’s face. “I couldn’t be happier.”
When Emile squeezed her hand and gave her a look full of love and laughter, Theresa had to admit, neither could she.
Acknowledgments
Many thanks to Josh Winfield for making it possible for me to go to an Arsenal match, and to Zack Winfield for taking me and patiently answering all my inane questions. Any accuracies concerning the football in the book are entirely due to them. The inaccuracies are, of course, all mine. Thanks also to Erin Satie for checking Emile’s French and making some excellent suggestions for things he might say that my French teachers never taught me at school. And finally, thanks to the editorial team at Entangled who helped me wrangle this manuscript into something resembling a book.
About the Author
Ros Clarke is a writer, a church worker, a crafter, a blogger, a twitterer, a lazy gardener, and an appalling housekeeper. She lives in a sixteenth century shed in England and is very glad that it has twenty-first century plumbing. She is interested in almost everything except cricket and football (US and UK) and mostly she likes happy endings in fiction and in real life. Ros has been writing stories for as long as she can remember, never dreaming that other people would be interested in reading them. A few years ago, she discovered a writing forum on the internet and has never looked back. Her head–and her hard drive–are full of ideas for fresh, fun, contemporary romances that she hopes you’ll love as much as she does.
Also by Ros Clarke…
The Oil Tycoon and Her Sexy Sheikh
Table for One
All I Want for Christmas
Italian Affair
Annie Seaton
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2013 by Annie Seaton. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact the Publisher.
Entangled Publishing, LLC
2614 South Timberline Road
Suite 109
Fort Collins, CO 80525
Visit our website at www.entangledpublishing.com.
Indulgence is an imprint of Entangled Publishing, LLC.
Edited by Alethea Spiridon Hopson & Marie Loggia-Kee
ISBN 978-1-62266-137-4
Manufactured in the United States of America
First Edition June 2013
This book is dedicated to my dear friend Melissa Lulham, who discovered her own birth grandfather on Lipari Island and inspired Tom and Brianna’s story.
Chapter One
The waiting taxi driver tooted his horn and she waved at him to stay. “Five minutes,” she called out, her voice shaking. He stepped out of the car and yelled out to her across the rows of headstones.
“Look, love, I don’t want to be rude, but if you want to get to the airport in time, we’ll have to go now. We’re still in morning peak hour and the traffic will be heavy.”
Brianna Ballantyne’s whole life had turned upside down when she’d received the two-page letter from the Italian lawyer three days ago, and her plan to spend twelve months in Australia writing her psychology book flew out the window when she read the typed words she had waited so long to hear.
The letter had led her to her mother’s graveside in a small cemetery in Sydney. The grave was unkempt and the long grass brushed against her bare knees. She’d run her fingers over the cold marble and traced the words. Her throat clogged and the backs of her eyes pricked with unshed tears.
“Rosa Caranto. b. September 15 1949, Lipari Island – d. March 11 2009, Sydney. A loving daughter.”
Her birth mother had died before her sixtieth birthday. Brianna had never met her, despite working through an intermediary agency to locate her for more than two years. When they’d notified her that they had located her mother, all they would disclose was that she lived in Sydney, Australia. She knew when a person was located they had to give their consent for the applicant to be told their name and to make contact. Her mother had declined, so she had followed the paper trail from Scotland to Australia herself, determined not to give up.
But she had arrived too late. The letter had reached her three days after she’d arrived. It had been forwarded to her Sydney hotel from Scotland, and now she finally knew her mother’s name. Instead of giving her the details to contact her mother, the lawyer informed her of
her mother’s death and the place she was buried. Closing her eyes, she tried to remember where she’d been in March when her mother had passed, but emotion overwhelmed her and she couldn’t think straight.
Damn it all. If only she’d started looking earlier, she might have made it in time and met her. Why didn’t she want me? When I was born and when I found her?
She brushed away the tears as they wet her cheeks and gripped the piece of paper that had led her to this small beachside cemetery thousands of miles away from her Scottish home. And not only did it tell her about Rosa’s death, but about the inheritance of her mother’s cottage in Italy and the bizarre conditions attached to it.
She had to be married to get the cottage.
Well, dammit, if that was what it took to find her birth family, she’d bloody well find someone to marry.
“Rosa.” She whispered her mother’s name as she traced the letters on the small headstone. “What happened to you? Why didn’t you didn’t want me? Why do you want me married?”
The horn of the taxi blared again and the driver revved the engine. Brianna pulled herself to her feet. Looking around, she spotted a clump of white daisies growing wild at the base of a nearby gum tree. She reached down, picked one, walked back to the grave, and placed it gently beneath the headstone.
“Good-bye, Rosa…Mother,” she whispered. “I’ll be back, one day.”
Climbing into the backseat of the taxi, she composed herself before leaning forward. “An extra twenty dollars if you get me there on time.” She slipped the letter into the side of her rucksack and fell back in the seat when the driver hit the gas and they sped off toward Sydney Airport.
Thanks to the strategic, but wild, driving of her taxi driver, she made the airport in time. She unzipped her money belt and handed him a fifty-dollar note when he pulled her suitcase and laptop bag from the trunk and placed them on the curb.
“Thanks, love. Have a good trip.” He nodded at her as a waiting passenger opened the front door of the taxi and climbed in. Brianna hitched the computer bag onto her shoulder and turned to pick up her suitcase.
