“I’ve made up my mind. Everything’s settled,” she muttered to herself.
A voice, flavored with hints of sunny Italy and laced with a forbidding undercurrent of steel, announced softly, “Everything is indeed settled, Cassandra.”
Dismayed, Cassandra gaped as Benedict Constantino stepped into the room from the balcony.
“But not,” he continued, “quite the way you suppose. Far from it, in fact.”
Clearly he’d listened in on every word of her conversation with Trish and didn’t like it one little bit.
“So, there is a baby on the way,” he said conversationally. “How do you propose we deal with this unexpected turn of events?”
“We don’t. This isn’t your problem, Benedict,” she replied.
“A child is never a problem. But if I am the father, then it most assuredly becomes my concern. Is this baby mine, Cassandra?”
“It’s yours.”
“Then our next move is clear enough. We shall be married.”
Relax and enjoy our fabulous series about couples whose passion ends in pregnancies…sometimes unexpected! Of course, the birth of a baby is always a joyful event, and we can guarantee that our characters will become wonderful moms and dads—but what happened in those nine months before?
Share the surprises, emotions, drama and suspense as our parents-to-be come to terms with the prospect of bringing a new baby into the world. All will discover that the business of making babies brings with it the most special love of all….
Coming soon:
Their Secret Baby by Kate Walker #2432
His Pregnancy Ultimatum by Helen Bianchin #2433
Delivered only by Harlequin Presents®
Catherine Spencer
CONSTANTINO’S PREGNANT BRIDE
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER ONE
CASSANDRA WILDE stepped out of the elevator of the office complex where her company was located, and pushed open the heavy plate-glass doors of Ariel Enterprises. Immediately, the discreet hum of success surrounded her, from the restrained and melodic chime of the phone, to the quiet conversation of clients in the open lounge to the left of the reception area.
Normally, she’d have stopped to acknowledge familiar faces, and make sure people visiting for the first time were being well looked after. But not today. There was nothing “normal” about today.
“Oh, Cassie!” Meghan called out as she passed her personal assistant’s desk. “There’s a visitor—”
But Cassie merely shook her head and kept on going until she was safely inside the sanctuary of her own office. Then, and only then, did her tight, professional smile slip into obscurity, washed away by yet another fit of soundless, hopeless weeping.
Leaning against the closed door, she stared through her tears at the blurred image before her. Sunlight bounced in rainbow prisms through the floor-to-ceiling windows and fell across the pale gray carpet in a swath of gold. It turned her rich mahogany desk into a cube of iridescent ruby, and studded the silver frame holding a photograph of her late mother with shimmering ersatz diamonds.
One end of the sliding windows stood open a foot or two. Outside, on the small balcony, a planter of freesias dispersed their delicate scent on the warm March breeze wafting into the room. From fourteen floors below, the muted din of street traffic merged with the raucous shriek of seagulls soaring under the blue bowl of the sky.
It was a perfect spring day in San Francisco. And one of the bleakest Cassie had known in all her twenty-seven years. But crying about it would do no one any good, nor would it change her situation, so making a real effort to control herself, she stepped away from the door.
She needed to calm down. Confront matters head-on. Adjust her plans for the future which, all at once, had changed shape dramatically. She needed to focus!
But her thoughts kept harking back to a chance meeting with a man who lingered in her thoughts, as sharply defined as if she’d last seen him just yesterday; as if it had been only last night that he’d taken her in his arms and taught her how pale and insignificant her previous sexual encounters with men had been.
How slender the coincidence which had brought them together. And yet, how fatally life-altering!
It had begun innocently enough, early the previous summer. She and Patricia Farrell, her best friend since Grade Two and, for the last four years, her business partner, had driven up to the Napa Valley to confer with Nuncio Zanetti, a valued client and owner of one of California’s most acclaimed wineries. Twice a year, he rewarded his employees with a dinner cruise on The Ariel, the ninety-six-foot motor yacht which she and Trish had bought at the beginning of their working relationship.
Nuncio was a generous man who enjoyed spending money and whose tastes ran to the extravagant. But he was also demanding, and expected of others the same attention to detail he brought to his own endeavors. Choreographing one of his social events entailed months of meticulous organization, an iron-clad guarantee that every clause in his contract would be honored, and a willingness, particularly on Cassie’s part, to take the time to consult with him in person, whenever he requested, even if it was only to confirm that plans were moving ahead smoothly and according to the blueprint they’d drawn up together.
That particular sun-filled day, when she and Trish had arrived to finalize arrangements for his Midsummer Night’s cruise, he introduced them to Benedict Constantino. A childhood friend of Nuncio’s, Benedict told them he now lived mostly in New York from where he oversaw international distribution of his family’s citrus products.
“Most especially the bergamot,” he told them, when they asked. “It grows only in a very small area of southern Italy, which makes it a rare commodity worldwide. You’re probably familiar with its use in fine perfumes, but what you might not be aware of is that, among its other applications, it’s of great value to the pharmaceutical industry.”
Later, when the discussion turned to living in New York, he’d smiled at Cassie with particular warmth, and said, “I find the energy of the city exciting, but I can see many advantages to dividing my time between there and the west coast. California, I suddenly discover, holds unsuspected attractions, also.”
Thoroughly captivated by his European charm and sophistication, Cassie and Trish had been easily persuaded to join both men for lunch in the winery’s beautiful private garden, once the business of the day was concluded.
They’d spent a delightful three hours, lingering over scallop ceviche and the sparkling red wine for which the Zanetti vineyard was famous, and if Cassie had thought her imagination was working overtime in believing the handsome stranger had shown more than a passing interest in her, she certainly learned differently, the next time they happened to meet.
An imperious rap at her office door brought a swift end to her reminiscing. A second later, Trish stepped into the room, her brow furrowed with concern. “Cassie? I saw you come in just now and you didn’t look…quite right. Is everything okay?”
For a few brief moments, Cassie had managed if not to forget the predicament facing her, then at least to relegate it to the sidelines. But at her friend’s question, it came roaring back to the forefront of her mind, and the waterworks started up all over again, gushing forth with renewed vigor.
Trish let out a horrified gasp, promptly shut the door before the ragged sobs reached the ears of the p
eople in the outer office, and whispered, “Cass, you’re scaring me! The last time I saw you this upset was at your mom’s funeral, and the time before that was when we were six and went to see the movie Bambi.”
“Well, crying’s the last thing in the world I planned to do right now,” Cassie wailed, lurching behind the desk and flopping down in her chair. But the irony implicit in the word “planned” sent her already raging hormones into overdrive and produced another round of humiliating tears.
Trish perched on the arm of the chair, stroked Cassie’s hair away from her forehead, and begged, “Talk to me! Whatever the problem is, we’ll handle it together, the way we always do.”
“Not this time,” Cassie sniffed, so awash in self-pity, regret and morning sickness that she didn’t care if she lived or died. “This is a mess entirely of my own making.”
“It can’t be that bad.”
“It’s worse than bad. It’s…inexcusable. Shameful.”
“Shameful?” Trish rolled the word around her palate as if it were a morsel of unfamiliar food, and when she spoke again, there was a note of amusement in her voice. “Hey, I know you had an outside appointment this morning and that you were perfectly fine before that, so what happened between the time you left here and the time you came back again, that you now have reason to feel ashamed? Did you lose one our biggest accounts? Make such a colossal miscalculation on a quote that we’re headed for bankruptcy?”
“No. The company’s never been more solidly in the black. It’s my personal life that’s falling apart.” Aware of the thread of anxiety underlying Trish’s attempt to treat the situation lightly, Cassie plucked a tissue from the box at her elbow and made a heroic effort to pull herself together.
She blew her nose and deciding she might just as well come straight to the point since dancing around the subject would do nothing to lessen its impact, said bluntly, “My appointment this morning had nothing to do with business. I went to see a doctor. An obstetrician.” She waited a second to let the significance of that sink in, then finished off with the obvious. “I’m pregnant.”
“Pregnant? No, you’re not!” Trish scoffed. “You never find time for a steady relationship with anyone, and you’re definitely not the one-night stand type.”
Cassie didn’t answer. Couldn’t, if truth be told, because she was too embarrassed even to look her friend in the eye. But her silence spoke revealing volumes and Trish was too astute to miss their meaning.
Her mouth fell open. “Good grief, you did! Cassandra! You had a one-night stand!”
“Uh-huh.” Cassie swallowed. “And that’s not the worst of it. There’s more.”
But the rest—the part which hadn’t struck Cassie as too terrible while she was in the doctor’s office, but which had grown more foreboding with every passing minute since—went ignored. Trish was still reeling, too shell-shocked from what she’d already learned, to cope with “more.” “Are you absolutely sure—that you’re pregnant, I mean?”
“I’m sure.”
You’re a good ten weeks along, the obstetrician had confirmed. With proper care and if you’re very lucky, you’ll be hanging an extra stocking from the mantel next Christmas.
If you’re very lucky…
“But—” Trish paused, clearly trying to step as delicately as possible through the minefield suddenly confronting her “—who’s the father?”
Cassie opened her mouth to reply, but fear closed her throat. What if the pregnancy didn’t go well? If the complication the doctor suspected did, in fact, occur?
“Cass?” As the silence lengthened, Trish draped her arm around Cassie’s shoulders. “You do know who he is, don’t you?”
Outraged, Cassie spluttered, “Well, of course I do! I might be all kinds of a fool, but I’m not a slut!”
“Honey, I never meant to suggest you were! But if you were coerced…” Trish’s voice sank to a near whisper, as if loath to put into words the ugly suspicion suddenly tainting her thoughts. “If you didn’t know the man…if he forced you….
“I wasn’t raped, if that’s what you’re afraid of,” Cassie said hurriedly. “I knew the man, and I was…more than willing.”
Embarrassingly enthusiastic, in fact! Depressingly eager!
“So he has a name.” Less a statement than a question, the remark hung in the air, stubbornly waiting to be acknowledged.
On a sigh of defeat, Cassie wiped a hand over her face. “Yes, he has a name. It’s…Benedict Constantino.”
She muttered the name furtively, as if she were afraid the walls had ears. Trish, though, exercised no such discretion. “Benedict Constantino?” she squealed, loudly enough to send the seagull perched on the balcony railing fluttering away in alarm. “Benedict Constantino?”
“Broadcast it to the whole world while you’re at it, why don’t you?” Cassie said peevishly, too nauseated to care that she was making a rare exhibition of herself.
Immediately contrite, Trish said, “I’m sorry, I really am. But if you’d asked me to guess who in the world might have lured you into his bed, for a one-night stand of all things, Benedict Constantino’s is the last name I’d have chosen. He’s so aloofly correct. So…gorgeously unattainable.”
Hardly words to describe him the last time she’d seen him, Cassie thought, turning hot inside even all these months later, at the fresh onslaught of memory. That night, the man she’d previously known only as the charming friend of a business acquaintance had shown himself capable of blistering passion, and all without benefit of anything as mundane as a bed!
Trish was regarding her as if she’d suddenly sprouted two heads. “How did it…happen?”
“Well, how do you think?” Cassie snapped. “He might be rich, powerful and beautiful, but he still puts his pants on one leg at a time, just like any other man.”
“And takes them off the same way, it would seem, but I wasn’t asking about that,” Trish said. “We might have been friends for a lifetime, but that hardly entitles me to poke my nose into every last intimate detail affecting your life. What I meant was, how did you happen to run into him again? It’s not as if he lives down the street, after all. New York’s not exactly next door to San Francisco.”
“He flew out for Nuncio Zanetti’s New Year’s Eve party.”
“New Year’s…?” Trish’s eyes grew big as saucers, as awareness dawned. “Oh! Oh! That night!”
“Yes, that night,” Cassie echoed glumly.
“So it really was a spur of the moment fling. If it hadn’t been that one of our staff got sick and couldn’t work the New Year’s Eve cruise, you’d probably have spent the night watching TV at home. Instead, you stepped in to cover her absence, ran into Benedict again, and—”
“And while the rest of the guests on board welcomed the New Year in traditional style, Benedict and I celebrated less conventionally, and I was left with a gift that’ll keep on giving for the rest of my life!” The tears began again, swamping her voice. “I feel like such an idiot!”
Trish pushed the box of tissues closer. “Come on, Cassie, this isn’t like you!” she said bracingly. “You’ve never been the type to fold under pressure. You don’t weep and wail, you cope.”
“Not this time, I don’t!”
“Of course you do! You’re not the first woman to find herself facing an unplanned pregnancy, and you won’t be the last. If you absolutely feel a baby’s more than you can handle, you do have other options. There’s adoption and…abortion.”
“As if I’d even consider either one!” Cassie wailed, pressing protective hands over her womb and wondering if she was destined to weep her way through the next six and a half months.
“Then why the emotional meltdown? Is it Benedict? Has he refused to acknowledge that the baby’s his?”
Hearing the mixture of confusion and exasperation in her friend’s voice, Cassie made a monumental effort to bring her runaway emotions to heel. “No, it’s not about Benedict!” she said, which wasn’t true, because of co
urse it was partly about him. But she’d had ten weeks to adjust to the fact that while she hadn’t been able to forget him or the circumstances which had led to their making love, he’d clearly had no trouble wiping all memory of the event, and her, clean out of his mind. “It’s…my mother.”
“Oh, honey!” Trish’s voice softened. “I know how much you miss her, and you must find it especially painful at a time like this, but you’re not alone. You have me and Ian, and while I know we’ll never fill Nancy’s shoes, you really can count on us to be there for you.”
“It’s not that, either. It’s…” Another flood of tears welled up, threatening to drown her. Swallowing, she forced them down again. “It’s that the baby’s due on…October the eighth.”
Trish sucked in a sympathetic breath. “Your mom’s birthday?”
“Mmm-hmm. I don’t know why it should upset me so much. If anything, it ought to make me feel better—as if Mom’s somehow watching over me. As if she’s giving me the gift of another life, to make up for losing her.” Cassie mopped her eyes one last time, and managed a smile at the expression on her friend’s face. “Stop looking at me as if I’ve lost my mind! Pregnant women are allowed to be fanciful. It goes with the territory.”
“Maybe. But you’ve been under a lot of stress lately, what with business heating up as the summer approaches, and now this.” Trish regarded her doubtfully. “Maybe you should forget work, and take a few days off. Maybe arrange to meet Benedict somewhere, and both of you come to terms with this new development. How do you think he’ll take the news?”
“He won’t. I don’t plan to tell him.”
“Not tell him? But he has a right to know, Cassie! It’s his child, as well, and two parents are almost always better than just one.”
“It didn’t hurt me, growing up without a father.”
“Oh, yes, it did. You just learned at an early age not to let it show. But there’s no reason to saddle this baby with more of the same. Although I don’t pretend to know him well, Benedict Constantino strikes me as the honorable type—the kind of man who’d face up to his mistakes and do the right thing.”
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