The Italian's Runaway Bride

by Jacqueline Baird

  She recognised it. The house where he had taken her last Friday—the house he had told her belonged to the company he worked for. As if that was not enough to convince her, the last picture was of Gianni sitting astride his motor bike, apparently talking to a man with a gun bent over his arm—the security guard.

  Her whole body clenched in pain, nausea knotting her stomach. The same man who had found them almost naked at the lakeside last week; the same man Gianni had spoken to. While she had thought they were in trouble for trespassing Gianni must have been laughing like a drain at how easily he had fooled her.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Judy asked, suddenly noticing Kelly’s long silence.

  ‘I feel a bit sick; probably the wine. I think I’ll go to bed.’ And she ran.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  SICK at heart, Kelly stripped off her clothes and stepped into the shower. She turned the water on and stood under the soothing spray, her tears mingling with the water. God, what a disaster of a night! A disaster of a week!

  She should have known meeting the man of her dreams was too good to be true.

  She should have gone with her first impression on seeing Gianni. A man up to no good. She had got that right! He was a lying, deceitful pig.

  Kelly sighed. Knowing the truth did not make the pain go away. It hurt, it really hurt, and she had no one to blame but herself. She had allowed herself to succumb to his surface looks and charm, while he had simply been slumming it for a few days. No wonder he had been horrified when he’d discovered she was a virgin and the possibility of pregnancy was a real threat. His anger at the time, and his crack about a paternity suit, made perfect sense now. If or when Count Maldini married it would be to some suitably wealthy well-connected Italian girl, not some unknown orphan like Kelly.

  Turning off the shower, she stepped out and took a large towel off the rail, and briskly rubbed herself dry. She was bone tired, her head ached, and all she wanted to do was sleep. She dropped the towel on the floor and walked into the bedroom. She slipped, naked, into bed. But sleep was a long time in coming.

  Every time she closed her eyes she saw the image of Gianni… No, not Gianni…Count Gianfranco Maldini, she kept reminding herself, and when she had reminded herself for the hundredth time of his cruel deceit she finally cried herself to sleep.

  At seven the following morning a wide-awake, laughing Andrea jumped on Kelly’s bed. Bleary-eyed, she surveyed the little boy, and with a wry smile dragged herself out of bed. Experience told her that his parents would not be up for an hour or so yet, and after bathing and dressing Andrea and herself she made her way downstairs to the kitchen.

  Fifteen minutes later she sat at the table watching Andrea with an indulgent smile. He was a lovely little boy who, after devouring a bowl of cereal and a glass of orange juice, was intent on tearing a bread roll into the shape of some mythical beast as shown on the cereal packet. His innocent enjoyment of something so simple put her own problems into some kind of perspective.

  So she had allowed herself to be sweet-talked into bed by a devious man out for a bit of fun. She was not the first woman in the world to fall for the charms of a sophisticated male on the make, and she would certainly not be the last. Chalk it up to experience and get on with life, she told herself firmly.

  Picking up her coffee-cup, she drained it and placed it back on the table. There was about as much chance of Count Gianfranco Maldini ringing her as the Pope marrying, she thought wryly. But in that she was to be proved wrong…

  ‘Right, young man.’ She rose to her feet. ‘How about…?’ But the ringing of the telephone prevented her continuing. ‘OK, Andrea, stay there a minute.’ Crossing the room to the wall-mounted telephone, she lifted the receiver to her ear.

  ‘Pronto.’ She gave the conventional greeting.

  ‘Kelly? Kelly, is that you?’ There was no mistaking the rich, deep tone of Gianfranco Maldini.

  Shock kept her silent for a moment, and her first thought was to hang up, but then anger came to her aid. ‘Yes,’ she snapped. ‘Who is it calling, please, and to whom do you wish to speak?’ she asked facetiously.

  ‘Gianfranco, and to you, of course,’ his deep voice drawled huskily. ‘Look, Kelly, I can understand why you are angry, but please believe me, I meant to tell you—’

  ‘At least you are using your real name,’ she cut in bitterly. ‘I suppose I should be grateful, but you know, for some strange reason I am not. It might have something to do with the fact I went to bed with a stranger, or maybe just an old-fashioned idea of believing in the truth—something you obviously know nothing about.’ Her knuckles gleamed white on the hand that gripped the receiver. She was furious, and amazed he had the nerve to call her.

  ‘Listen to me, Kelly,’ Gianfranco demanded harshly; her last crack was an insult he would not accept. No one had ever questioned his honesty before. ‘I never had any intention to deceive you. The first day we met I tried to tell you my name and you, in your usual manner, leapt in with “Hello, Signor Franco.” You jump to conclusions like a bull at a gate.’

  ‘Oh, I see! So it is my fault. In a whole week you could not get around to telling me you were not a port worker but Count Gianfranco Maldini. I wonder why? Could it possibly be because you were ashamed of mixing with ordinary people, you arrogant snob?’ She was on a roll. From the minute last night when she had discovered who her so-called boyfriend really was, she had swung between hurt and humiliation, but now she was just plain angry. ‘Suddenly all the little out-of-the-way places you took me make perfect sense. And of course how could I forget your horror that I was not some vastly experienced woman? And your desperate worry I might slap a paternity suit on you.’

  ‘No,’ he snapped. ‘Now stop right there.’ The sheer force of his voice in her ear made Kelly do just that. ‘I am trying to be reasonable, but you are not making it easy for me. I apologise for misleading you about my name, but that is all I apologise for. Last night I was quite prepared to acknowledge we were friends, but you jumped in again and made it very obvious you did not want me to. I followed your lead because I thought that was what you wanted.’

  He was right, but the ‘friend’ rankled. ‘Maybe so. But it does not alter the fact you deceived me about who you really were.’ She had to battle to retain her anger as the sound of his voice alone made her go weak at the knees.

  ‘Maybe, but I am the same Gianni you dated, the same Gianni who wants to see you again on Friday.’

  He still wanted to see her; the thought floored her for a moment. ‘But you’re a count.’

  ‘So now who is being the snob?’ Gianfranco drawled mockingly. ‘If I don’t care, why should you?’

  A glimmer of hope flickered in her heart, and for a second she considered the possibility. Then common sense prevailed.

  ‘Kelly? Kelly, are you still there?’ Gianfranco asked urgently.

  ‘Yes,’ she responded, hardening her heart against him. ‘And where are you calling from?’ she demanded in a tone laced with sarcasm. ‘Genoa—isn’t that where you were supposed to be visiting? Yet I could have sworn I saw you in Verona last night.’

  ‘Sarcasm does not become you, Kelly. I know I made a mistake; when I see you again I will explain everything. But I can’t talk now. I have a flight to catch to New York, a flight I delayed for a week to be with you. Surely that must count for something?’ Gianfranco Maldini could not believe what he was saying. He was virtually pleading with the girl for a date.

  ‘Then don’t let me delay you any further.’ It was no good prolonging the agony; Judy had told her about his countless girlfriends, and, even if she could fit into his lifestyle, Kelly did not want to. Eventually she wanted marriage and a husband, not to be a rich man’s plaything for a few weeks.

  Gianfranco cleared his throat. ‘Will you still meet me on Friday as we arranged?’ And he held his breath as he waited for her answer.

  ‘No,’ Kelly said flatly. ‘The more I think about it I realise that last Friday was a disaster.
Personally, I am going to put it down to experience and forget we ever met; I suggest you do the same.’ She glanced across at Andrea; he had put down the bread and was wriggling uncomfortably in his high chair.

  ‘Dio! Kelly?’ Gianfranco’s patience snapped. His ego had taken enough bruising from this woman, and it did not help to be reminded he’d been a failure in bed. ‘You be there on Friday, or I will be around at Bertoni’s to get you. Understand?’ he shouted. He was not used to having his commands disobeyed.

  Andrea was watching her with an open mouth and worried brown eyes; he had never heard her angry before, and, though she doubted he understood the words, he could sense something was wrong, and he did not deserve to be upset.

  ‘Yes, OK.’ She hung up the telephone. When pigs fly, she thought, moving to lift the young boy from his chair and hugging him tightly to her; she nuzzled his neck while blinking a stray tear from her eye.

  Gianfranco slipped the telephone into the inside pocket of his expertly tailored jacket, and strode across the concourse to the boarding gate for his flight. It was a new experience for him to have to persuade a woman to see him, and one he was not sure he liked. His hard mouth twisted in a wry grimace. He’d give it one more try. If Kelly turned up on Friday night, fine. If she didn’t he was not pursuing her. His decision made, he handed his boarding pass to the female attendant with a broad smile, and quite unconsciously made the girl’s day.

  ‘Who was that on the telephone?’ Judy asked as she walked into the kitchen, wearing only a blue satin robe.

  ‘It was for me,’ Kelly mumbled as she held Andrea in her arms.

  ‘Ah, the boyfriend,’ Judy said, and, moving to where Kelly stood, took Andrea from her. ‘And this is my favourite boyfriend.’ She kissed her son good morning, then placed him on his feet on the floor.

  Kelly smiled; whatever Judy’s faults, she did love her son.

  ‘It’s no good hanging around with a silly smile on your face, Kelly,’ said Judy, totally misinterpreting the reason for the smile. ‘Take my advice and drop the local boy. You are a good-looking woman—you should set your sights a whole lot higher. Go after someone like Count Maldini, a real catch. Last night I could see he was interested—yours was the only hand he kissed,’ Judy opined with a sigh. ‘But then, even if you got him, keeping him would be the problem.’ Picking up a cup, she filled it with coffee from the pot and walked out with the comment, ‘For Carlo, poor dear; he is feeling very sorry for himself this morning.’

  Judy’s comment gave Kelly pause for thought. She was intelligent, educated and considered herself as good as any other person on the planet. Gianfranco was a count. So what? Perhaps she had overreacted. He had called this morning, as promised. He did still want to see her and explain—well, according to him anyway. Surely he deserved a hearing, or was she the inverted snob he had intimated?

  By the next morning Kelly had reached a decision: she would meet Gianfranco on Friday and hear what he had to say…

  On Thursday afternoon Kelly was sitting on a plane winging its way back to England, glad to be going home and back to reality. On Tuesday Carlo Bertoni had declared there was no point staying in Italy any longer, since, as he could not compete in the yacht race, he might as well get back to work in London. Generously he had suggested Kelly stay on, on holiday, until the end of her contract in ten days’ time. Marta was staying that long anyway, and Kelly had immediately accepted his offer.

  But on Wednesday morning she had been leafing through the pages of the national newspaper and seen a picture of Count Maldini taken at a reception in New York on the Monday evening, with a stunning-looking redhead on his arm. Kelly had been able to fool herself no more; the affair, fling, was over, and there was no point in deluding herself otherwise. It was time she cut loose any connection whatsoever with Count Maldini.

  On Thursday evening she said goodbye to the Bertoni family at Heathrow Airport. They were heading for their London townhouse and Kelly was heading for her family home: a small three-bedroom house in a quiet area of Bournemouth.

  ‘Pregnant,’ the doctor declared, and Kelly groaned. Her periods had always been irregular, and she had not been sick or dizzy, or had any of the complaints usually connected with pregnancy. She had felt lousy in general, but she had put that down to crying herself to sleep most nights over Gianfranco. It had only been a month ago, when she’d realised she could not fasten her jeans, that she’d been brave enough to check dates. It was only what she had feared for the last four weeks, but to hear Dr Jones confirm it was still a shock.

  ‘You really should have seen me a lot sooner, Kelly. Still, no harm done, you’re remarkably fit. I gather there is no father on the horizon?’ he prompted gently. He had known the young girl before him all her life, he watched her mother die in childbirth, and her father die of cancer, and now this. ‘By the date you gave me, you are thirteen weeks pregnant.’

  ‘Yes, that would be right. Thank you, Dr Jones.’ Kelly exited the surgery, clasping a card in her hand for her first ante-natal appointment.

  Sitting in the coffee shop of the largest department store in Bournemouth, gazing dazedly at the Christmas decorations, Kelly was sure things could not get worse. But they did.

  Judy Bertoni appeared out of nowhere. Apparently she was visiting her parents for the day. Kelly cursed the fact she had taken off her coat and hung it on the stand provided, and spent the next half-hour wondering how she could leave without revealing when she stood up that she had filled out somewhat. The jersey wool tube skirt and matching sweater did nothing to disguise it. Eventually she had no option but to get up, as one of the side-effects of her pregnancy was a constant desire to visit the bathroom.

  Eagle-eyed, figure-conscious Judy noticed immediately, and Kelly was subjected to a long speech on the inadvisability of dating a local Italian boy, and ‘I told you so’.

  Kelly was sorely tempted to blurt out who the father was, but managed to restrain herself. Judy, in her Mother Teresa act, promised she would keep in touch and send her Andrea’s cast-offs. Kelly should have been grateful, but she wasn’t; she felt sick and fat and fed-up.

  She was even fatter and more fed-up when she returned from work at six on a cold Friday night in January. After a refreshing shower, and a meal of chicken and chips, she finally settled down on the sofa, prepared to spend the evening relaxing. With a Mozart tape in her Walkman, she held the earplugs to her stomach. She had read somewhere that music was good for the unborn baby and she hoped it was true.

  The doorbell rang.

  ‘Sugar!’ she exclaimed, and, hauling herself up off the sofa, moved slowly to the door. It was probably Margaret. Since the house next door had been sold while Kelly had been in Italy, her new neighbour—a middle-aged spinster with an elderly mother who suffered from Alzheimer’s and a bachelor brother, Jim, to look after—had taken to calling on Kelly. She hadn’t the heart to turn the woman away.

  ‘Just coming,’ Kelly called as the doorbell rang again, longer and louder. ‘Where’s the fire?’ she muttered under her breath, and opened the front door.

  ‘Do you usually open the door without first enquiring who it is?’ Gianfranco queried with a frown of grim disapproval creasing his broad brow.

  In the first second of recognition her blue eyes widened, her heart leaping with joy, but instantly reality intruded. She’d tried to tell herself she was over him, had put him out of her mind and her heart. But seeing him before her, looking as rakishly handsome as ever, with a camel cashmere overcoat worn over a perfectly tailored dark business suit, his black hair rumpled by the winter wind, she knew she was not.

  ‘What’s it to you?’ she snapped, angry at her own weakness where this man was concerned. At the same time she wished she were wearing something more glamorous.

  Gianfranco’s dark eyes swept over her face, taking in the tumbled mass of fine blonde hair, the slight blue shadows beneath her magnificent sapphire eyes, the beauty of her face not withstanding her belligerent expression. S
he did not look delighted to see him, and, lowering his gaze to where her breasts pressed firm against the soft blue wool of her sweater, and lower still to where the garment stretched over the soft mound of her stomach, he knew why. So it was true… He took a deep steadying breath.

  ‘Your protection is everything to me—you are the mother of my baby,’ Gianfranco declared firmly as he stepped into the hall and closed the door behind him.

  What little colour she had drained from Kelly’s face, and her blue eyes widened to their fullest extent as she gazed up in pure shock at the man towering over her. Gianfranco here, in her home, and he knew she was having his baby… ‘But…how…?’ She swayed, suddenly feeling faint, and could not get the sentence out, a host of different emotions tangling her tongue.

  ‘Come, let’s sit down.’ Gianfranco grabbed her arm. ‘It can’t be good for you standing in a cold hall in your condition.’ He unerringly led her into the sitting room of her own home.

  ‘Now wait a minute,’ she finally managed, shakily finding her voice.

  ‘I think we have waited rather too many minutes—months, in fact,’ he teased, his dark eyes roaming pointedly down to her stomach and back to her face as he led her to the sofa and eased her down into it, lowering his long length beside her and taking her hand in one of his.

  The closeness of his large male body, the familiar male scent that was uniquely Gianfranco, all conspired to make her heart race. A dull red flush suffused her cheeks. It wasn’t fair; he only had to touch her and, even fat and pregnant, she still felt the same instant sensual response, every hair on her body standing on end.

  ‘How did you find me—and how did you know I was pregnant?’ Kelly asked the question she should have asked the minute he walked in the door, looking somewhere over his left shoulder, unwilling to meet his knowing brown eyes. The fact he had accepted the baby she was carrying was his, without her having to say a word, had totally stunned her.