Who are you, Cristiano Verón, and why are you so interested in my family?
From the corner of her eye she saw they were about to be interrupted, not by one of the waitstaff but by a man she pegged as the manager. Their barely touched plates had probably drawn his attention. Isabelle didn’t pay complete heed to the man’s quiet, apologetic words. Sorry to interrupt, something about a phone call, yada yada. Her eyes were trapped hard on Cristo’s, awaiting the moment they were alone, while her mind whirred with questions of what to say next.
Could she risk this job, this pay packet from heaven, by confronting him? Perhaps she had imagined his reaction. Perhaps she’d misjudged the reason behind it. Perhaps it would be wise to let the conversation play out until all his cards were on the table….
Then she heard it—the one name guaranteed to snap her to instant, complete attention.
“Mr. Harrington,” the manager continued in a sombre tone, “said I should tell you this is urgent and that it concerns Gisele.”
Five
Before the manager finished speaking, Cristo had tossed his serviette aside and pushed back his chair. Isabelle’s shock registered as a brief flash, like a snapshot taken and stored for later viewing, while his focus homed in on the waiting call.
When at breakfast he’d returned the call from Chloe, his head groom, she had expressed a slight concern over Gisele’s lack of appetite. He’d asked her to keep him apprised, but he was unprepared for the grim news delivered by Hugh. The mare’s life hung in the balance as a result of acute colic. When Chloe couldn’t contact Cristo—he’d turned off his phone, not wanting interruptions to his conversation with Isabelle—in desperation she’d called on Hugh to track him down. They knew he would want to monitor the situation minute by minute. They knew him well.
He cut short their lunch. Then he spent the next five hours with a phone at his ear, talking to his stable staff and the vet, feeling distant and powerless. If getting on a plane could have achieved anything, he would have been airborne right now, taking the fastest route home. But he was a day away from England; the critical stage would have passed long before he arrived. So he returned to Pelican Point, and he paced and he sweated until the final call came through.
The tremendous courage and strength Gisele showed on the polo field had seen her through the worst. The crisis was over. For now she was safe.
A huge wave of relief washed through him, leaving Cristo spent and empty. The perfectly made bed at the centre of the room looked clean and wide and welcoming. Operating on autopilot, he shed his clothes en route to the bathroom. Perhaps it was the sight of that pristine bed or the act of getting naked or the fact that his mind was devoid of all that had occupied it during the long afternoon. Whatever the reason, the picture he’d stowed back at the restaurant suddenly reappeared in full, glossy, living detail.
Isabelle Browne, soft lips parted and eyes wide with shock at the mention of the Harrington name.
Standing with arms braced and hands splayed against the tiles while the shower streamed over the tense muscles of his shoulders and back, Cristo’s mind darkened with all the other cues she’d given off over the past days. The baggy uniform. Her refusal to drink coffee or wine. How she’d counted her family as just one sister…at the moment.
There had been no mention of Hugh or their interrupted conversation on the drive home or in the hours since. She’d made several expeditions up the stairs with sandwiches, coffee and finally a dinner tray. He hadn’t invited conversation, and she’d resumed her role as invisible housekeeper.
Yet he’d noticed. He’d noticed, and now he quietly seethed because he’d allowed himself to be taken in by that straightforward competence and by the other Isabelle with bright interest in her eyes and rhythm in her hips. Both sides attracted him, the antithesis intrigued him, and in that moment of stripped-bare honesty he acknowledged how badly he’d wanted the pregnancy allegation to be a misunderstanding.
If the phone call hadn’t interrupted their conversation, he would have asked what she meant by “at the moment”; she would have owned up to impending motherhood; he would have revealed himself as Hugh Harrington’s agent. This would be over, done and dusted.
Roughly he towelled himself dry and pulled on a pair of trousers. That was enough for now. On the balcony that surrounded the upper-floor suite of rooms, he dragged the chill air of late autumn into his lungs and welcomed its bite on his exposed chest and arms. Night fell quickly, darkening the waters of the bay and darkening his mind with self-reproach.
Dios, he’d handled this clumsily. He was an arrogant fool for thinking he could judge a woman’s character from a few days’ observation and one morning of conversation. He was a fool twice over for allowing his desire for the woman a say in that judgement.
Through the French doors came the faint tinkle of spoon against china, and all his senses flared with awareness. She had returned, possibly for the tray, probably with fresh coffee. It was the perfect opportunity to end the subterfuge.
In the doorway he paused, his gaze narrowing as he found her at his desk. Her back was to the door, her head bent forward in apparent concentration, her hands sifting busily through his papers. Suddenly they stopped. Her head came up a fraction as her backbone stiffened.
The burn of awareness in Cristo’s blood turned to ice. “Looking for anything in particular?” he asked, although he knew exactly what she had found.
Heart beating wildly with caught-out shock, Isabelle whipped around and found Cristo standing in the doorway leading to the terrace. He wasn’t wearing a shirt. For a long moment the fascinating vista of smooth olive skin over honed muscle drove everything else from her consciousness.
She shouldn’t stare. It was wrong to lick one’s lips when eyeing one’s employer. Wrong to be stung by a prickle of heat and the rampant desire to lick one’s employer’s chest.
Wrong to be caught red-handed going through his things.
She lifted one of those red hands to her thundering heart. “You have to stop doing that.”
The words came in a rush of flustered awareness and guilt as he stepped through the doorway into the full light. “Doing…what?” he asked, his voice as silky as the trail of dark hair bisecting his abdomen.
Must. Not. Stare.
She forced her eyes down—dark trousers, beautifully tailored, perfectly fitted—then up again, all the way to his sleek, wet hair. Although he gave every appearance of relaxation, he wasn’t lounging against the doorjamb. She sensed a coiled tension in every long, lean muscle. Like a pampas cat, sizing up his prey and ready to pounce.
A danger, beware tremor rippled through her flesh. She pressed her fingers harder against her chest. “Sneaking up on me. I don’t know how someone your size moves so quietly.”
He wore no shoes. She noticed that now as he silently crossed the room on those big, bare, sexy feet. Reflexively, she backed up a step, until the edge of the desk cut across the top of her thighs and halted her progress.
“Find what you were looking for?”
“I wasn’t looking for anything in particular,” she replied a little too quickly. It sounded like guilt. It sounded like a lie.
He came to a halt in front of her. So close she caught the scent of citrus and bergamot and recently showered male skin on an indrawn breath. So close she could see the scepticism in the slant of his mouth and the arch of one dark eyebrow. “Not even for me?” he asked.
“Well, yes. For you.”
“And here I am,” he said smoothly, touching fingertips to the centre of his chest. “Not on my desk.”
Warmth flooded her face, but she kept her chin high. Her eyes fixed on his, not on his chest. “I brought coffee.” She gestured vaguely toward the low table, where she’d left the pot. “And I wanted to check if you’d received any more news. About your horse.”
“The crisis has passed.”
“She will recover?”
“God willing.”
“I am glad.” A
relieved half smile softened the tension in her face, and Isabelle thought she saw that same emotion echo momentarily in his eyes. “Seeing your anxiety this afternoon…” Her smile gathered warmth. “That horse must be very special.”
“She is, but I would have felt the same for any member of my family, equine or human.”
“That, I understand.”
“Do you?” he asked softly, but there was a new hardness in his expression. A deepening of the creases that fanned from the corners of his eyes as he regarded her narrowly for several heartbeats. “I have to wonder about this sentiment, this show of concern, the coffee, the sustenance. How many times would you have hauled your pretty little backside up those stairs, waiting for an opportunity to search my desk?”
Finally he’d stopped circling and pounced. So unexpectedly that Isabelle was taken aback. She drew a quick, startled breath. And discovered that she no longer wanted to run. She wanted to defend herself and her backside. “That was never my purpose,” she stated emphatically.
“And yet…” He gestured at the desk behind her, his meaning obvious.
“You weren’t here, so I took the opportunity to—”
“Snoop?”
“To seek answers.”
Unable to bear the suspense of waiting alone downstairs for news of Gisele’s fate, she’d taken every opportunity to deliver coffee and food. If there’d been any excuse to stay, to offer comfort and support, she would have jumped all over it. Her sentiment had not been fake, and she resented the implication that she’d used the situation to her advantage.
It was only on this final occasion, when she found the room empty, that she’d taken any notice of the desk and the loose pile of papers. The temptation to look for a link to the Harrington name had been too great to resist. She had no idea what she’d thought she might find.
Certainly not a glossy publication titled Now You’re Pregnant.
“I was waiting until the crisis with your horse had passed,” she said tightly, “before seeking those answers.”
“Go right ahead,” he invited. “Ask away.”
“Why are you here?” She lifted her chin and met his gaze. “Did you really have business in Melbourne or did Hugh Harrington send you?”
His pause before answering was telling. So was the glint of acknowledgement in his eyes. When he answered with another question—“I take it you know him?”—Isabelle’s composure snapped.
Whirling around, she pushed papers left and right until she found the magazine, then turned back with it brandished in her hand. “You came here at his behest to, what? Find the woman who’d called him, whose call he didn’t bother to return? And what is this, your research material?” She shoved the glossy cover at his too-close chest. A vain act—that hard wall of muscle didn’t budge. “Were you going to compare pictures against the real thing?”
“I needed a reference point,” he said in cool, casual contrast to her heated outburst. “I had no idea what three months pregnant would look like.”
“Why should that matter to you? You’re not the father.”
“And Hugh Harrington is?”
Isabelle’s brow pulled tight. “Are you suggesting that he isn’t?”
“I am asking a straight question, Isabelle. Is Harrington the father of your baby?”
“My baby?” The syllables exploded from her mouth husked in shock. She shook her head and couldn’t hold back a short, incredulous laugh. “You think that he slept with me? That I’m pregnant?”
His incisive glare cut through her astonishment. “Are you Isabelle Browne or not?”
“Yes. I am.”
“But you’re not pregnant.”
“No, most definitely.” Isabelle expelled a harried breath and held up a hand to stop any further questions. “Let me explain. My sister Francesca—Chessie—filled in for me back in January.”
“Doing this job?”
“More or less. It was supposed to be a weekend appointment, cooking for your friend in a home at Portsea. He knew the owners through business or whatever.” She made a dismissive gesture; the details didn’t matter, only the outcome. “They loaned him the use of their holiday place. I came down with the flu, and Chessie stepped in. She’d worked for the agency before. She’s capable, but she was no longer on the books.”
“So she used your name.”
Isabelle nodded. If she’d not been miserably ill at the time, she would never have agreed. “It was last minute, and Chessie was available. She convinced me that I shouldn’t give up the job.”
“Or the money,” he added dryly, but condemnation narrowed his gaze and stiffened the set of Isabelle’s shoulders.
“I’ve already told you that money is important in my situation.”
“And I believed you were referring to the additional expense of a baby.”
“I was! But that is an additional expense on top of my mortgage and every other bill that must be paid.”
“It’s your sister’s baby,” he said after a moment’s pause. Their eyes met and held, and for the first time she saw that he was coming around to believing her. One small step in the right direction, but an immensely important one.
“My sister’s,” she echoed, “and your friend’s.”
His gaze fell away but not before she’d seen the edge of fierceness. A word that sounded like a curse fell from his tongue as he turned and strode toward the terrace. For several seconds he stared out into the darkness before he spoke. “Hugh Harrington isn’t only my friend.” Slowly he turned to face her, his expression so grim and forbidding that she felt a shiver of foreboding deep in her flesh. “He is my sister’s fiancé.”
The shiver turned to ice-cold shock in Isabelle’s belly. She remembered what he’d told her a few minutes earlier: that he would feel the same commitment, the same despair, if any member of his family was suffering. She recalled the fierce edge to his expression and knew that he’d been thinking about his sister suffering.
She knew that fierceness. She understood.
“That’s why you are here,” she said softly. “For your sister.”
“She doesn’t know. While your sister has been growing his baby, Amanda has been planning their wedding.”
Isabelle had to moisten her suddenly dry mouth before she could ask, “When?”
“The thirtieth of May.”
Three weeks. She swallowed. “What are we going to do about this?”
“I think it’s time we brought your sister into this discussion, don’t you?”
The words were so cold, his face still so uncompromisingly hard, that Isabelle’s indignation blazed anew. “Don’t you think you should reserve your anger for the one who deserves it?”
“Believe me, Isabelle, I have enough to go around.”
Francesca Browne was the woman Cristo had expected to meet when he arrived in Melbourne.
Blond with a cover-girl face and a body to match, she bore all the trademarks of Hugh’s string of girlfriends of days gone by. She arrived at Pelican Point less than ten minutes after Isabelle’s phone call, wearing a stylishly loose dress that disguised any sign of pregnancy. Murmuring an apology, she hugged her sister hard before turning a level gaze on him. “So you’re Mr. Fix It,” she said.
“I prefer Cristo,” he replied. “I doubt this is a situation I can fix.”
Her perfectly shaped brows rose slightly. “You don’t think you can pay me off?”
“I have no intention of attempting to,” he informed her. “Would you like to come through to the living room? I can assure you it is more comfortable than standing here in the foyer.”
Cristo stepped back to let the sisters go first, and they did so arm in arm, talking sotto voce as they went. He followed. He didn’t try to eavesdrop. It was enough to watch them, to see their attachment, to know that this version of what happened three months ago made unfortunate sense.
Francesca Browne may well have slept with Hugh Harrington. Isabelle had not. A selfish kernel admitted that h
e liked this version one hell of a lot better than the alternative.
“Do you often use your sister’s name?” he asked after they’d settled.
“No,” Francesca replied.
“I explained why she worked under my name,” Isabelle added. She’d taken a seat on the sofa beside her sister, so they presented a united front of dignity and indignation. Cristo approved of this warrior woman prepared to do battle on her sister’s behalf. He respected the tigerish set to her expression and the green fire in her eyes as she went on the attack once more. “She could hardly use her own name when she called Harrington. He wouldn’t have had a clue who Chessie Browne was.”
“He didn’t have a clue who Isabelle Browne was.”
“Are you saying he doesn’t remember Chessie?”
“He denies ever meeting her.”
“He met me,” the younger sister joined in with bitter equanimity. She touched a hand to her belly. “I hold the evidence right here.”
“You believe us,” Isabelle interceded.
She posed the words as a statement rather than a question, and when Cristo’s gaze meshed with hers he felt the power of that emphatic note. He wanted to reassure her, to wipe the last shadows of uncertainty from her expression, but he was not yet in a position to do so. His instincts about this woman—about the veracity of her story—were strong but he needed to be one hundred percent certain they were no longer adversaries but united in a common cause.
“I am not the one you need to convince,” he told her with an apologetic hitch of one shoulder.
“Then why are you here, if not to answer that question? You said Harrington didn’t send you. You said he didn’t remember meeting Chessie.”
Leaning forward in his chair, he strengthened the connection of their eye contact. “He came to me for advice on how to handle Francesca’s claim of paternity. I was coming to Australia on business. He did not ask me. I chose to meet you.”
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