by Zee Monodee
Scoops didn’t come much bigger than that. Of course, she’d also had a feeling about the football player and that Page 3 model even before anyone had had a hint of what was going on. She had, however, made the rookie mistake of telling her suspicions to a reporter friend. The bitch had stolen the rumour and reaped the rewards when she had splashed the story on the front page of Viewstand, the tabloid they worked for.
This time around, though, Connie wouldn’t make the same faux pas. She’d keep this story under wraps until she had all the details and then, she would reap the spotlight for her front-page article.
Cracking the identity of Nitro Mike’s mystery woman would surely be ‘the’ scoop of the year. He was never seen outside of charity galas and other such events with someone of the fairer sex, so this little escapade amounted to something momentous.
At first glance itself, the woman proved to be rich. Her leather tote screamed Hermès Birkin, and her green knit dress had been on display in a window at Harvey Nichols just last month. She appeared classy, aloof even, but then again, she probably had to be when dealing with a cold-hearted magnate like Michael Rinaldi.
This woman, if the world came to know about her, would be the most envied woman in England after Kate Middleton, because she was about to land herself a prized specimen.
The question was, who was she?
Chapter Three
“Good morning, sir.”
Michael glanced at his personal assistant standing in the doorway to his office.
“Morning, Rory.” He nodded at the heavy folder in the lad’s hands. “Papers to check?”
Rory walked in and placed the thick, bound file on the desk. “Brinks Corporation just sent them in. The meeting with Vista Standard Bank yesterday went well, apparently, or they wouldn’t have sent the financial contract’s draft. I accepted the parcel as I was coming up.”
“Thanks.” He reached for the documents and leaned back into his chair to peruse them.
“Coffee, sir?”
“Wouldn’t say no.”
“I’ll bring you a cup, then.”
He nodded. At eight o’clock, he could use another shot of caffeine. He usually got up at five, swam a few laps in the indoor heated pool at his house, and then downed breakfast. He was in the office by seven, long before the other soul of the place, Rory, poked his nose around. He didn’t mind, though. He wasn’t a slave driver, and as long as the lad did his job, he was fine with it.
The aroma of fresh-brewed coffee tickled his nostrils as Rory walked back in. He put the papers down to grab the mug and take a sip of the scalding brew. Just the way he liked it, black and slightly bitter, with no sugar.
Bringing his attention back to the documents, he frowned as his gaze registered upon two words on almost all the papers.
Jane Smithers.
She’d prepared the contract, no doubt about it. This wasn’t the first time his clients dealt through Vista. How come he’d never noticed her name before? He made it a point to go over every contract involving his deals.
His thoughts went back to her and their encounter the previous day.
Jane was pregnant, and for an insane moment, he had contemplated being the other half of that deal. The father of her child.
What had gotten into him?
He was a lawyer, for God’s sake. One who, on top, dealt predominantly with financial matters and corporate mergers. Strategy, logic, and goals had always been the driving forces behind his every move.
What he’d experienced with Jane had been driven by sheer madness. Impulsive and reckless. Emotional, too.
Damn his mother. Why did she have to go and tell him he was a worthless hide like Umberto? She was so wrong. How to prove it, though? She had seriously rattled his cage. As a result, he’d stepped out of the comforting realm of cold logic and given in to the turmoil-generating world of feelings.
He couldn’t deny he’d felt something with Jane. What, he had no idea, but whatever it was, it had needled its way into his mind to now eat him alive.
He wasn’t a sad arse like his father. He had to show his mother that.
The phone rang. Rory knew never to put any call through before nine unless it was personal.
He tapped the loudspeaker button on the device. “Michael here.”
“Why the hell have a mobile if you’re gonna switch it off, you sod?”
A sigh escaped him, though he made sure to keep it quiet so the person on the other end wouldn’t hear him. Just what he needed. Phillip Campbell, arse-extraordinaire and unfortunately, his best friend since preschool.
Michael pinched the bridge of his nose. “I knew you’d come make a sad case of yourself, that’s why.”
“Oh, piss off. If you were in my shoes, you’d be sorely tempted to tell the world to go take a fucking leap to Hell.”
He wasn’t so sure he’d do that. If he were in Phil’s shoes—his girlfriend being pregnant—he would try to curb the urge to be a lousy bastard. The day had barely started—things were getting worse if Phil was calling this early to whine.
“What’s wrong this time?”
“This time?” It sounded like Phil nearly choked on the phrase. “Give me a break, mate. I’m not being a sad arse here. And you’d be like this, too, if you hadn’t had a shag in weeks.”
Oh, he doubted that, never having been the type of man to be led by his dick and not his brain. Truth be told, he hadn’t had a shag in weeks, either, but he didn’t have a live-in girlfriend. Phil was calling to let off steam, so he let him continue, adding a noncommittal sound here and there in the monologue.
At times like this, he wondered how he and Phillip could even stand each other. Theirs was an unusual friendship. They had ganged up on a bully who’d been terrorizing little kids at their preschool in Salisbury. Then they’d found out they both came from fragmented families, brought up by their mothers while their fathers merely existed as a name on their birth certificate. Boys didn’t need much more to bond.
Michael heard the shrill sound of a horn blaring on the other side of the line. “You’re on your way to the office?”
His law chambers and Phillip’s estate agency were both located in the One Canada Square tower of Canary Wharf.
“Yeah.”
“Okay. I’ll meet you down at Russell’s for breakfast. Now get off the damn phone while you’re bloody driving.”
Bloody hell. An hour-long session of whining, that’s what he’d signed up for. In a way, he was sorry for his friend. He had introduced Phil to Claire Mansfield, a family friend, a few years earlier, and he’d been happy to see them get together.
None of them had counted on Claire getting pregnant by accident. Phil said she had done it on purpose, to wrangle a wedding proposal from him. Michael doubted women still resorted to that kind of trick, and a bloke also had to take his own responsibility. What were condoms for, after all?
But once your girl gets pregnant, what’s left to do?
He wasn’t sure the right thing nowadays was to simply offer marriage. Being there for her had to mean more, and he recalled the way Jane had gotten sick at the restaurant yesterday. He had felt at a real loss about how to help her. What was a guy’s presence in a pregnant girl’s life worth, then?
Support. Caring. Shelter.
He might appear old-fashioned, but he had grown up seeing his mother having to find her balance all alone. Not something any woman should have to go through.
Jane. Was she really a heartless woman, or was she simply inextricably enmeshed in Umberto’s web? However much he thought about her, he couldn’t bring himself to see her as more than the strong and wilful woman who was battling with the woes of an unplanned pregnancy with remarkable aplomb.
Maybe, just maybe, he had been a bit hard in his first assessment of her. He hadn’t known her before, and now, he craved to know all he could about her. She stayed present in his mind like no other woman before her.
Best do something about that ASAP.
; He reached for his phone and punched in a number from the speed dial.
The breezy voice of the receptionist sang in his ear. “Henley Investigators, how may I help you?”
“Martin Henley, please. Michael Rinaldi calling.”
A few seconds later, he heard the booming male voice on the line.
“Martin, mate. I need a favour. A surface inquiry on a woman. Her name is Jane Smithers, and it’s personal.”
***
Across London in The City, Jane was already having a very long day at barely eleven o’clock. She’d spent the whole morning fending off intense, inquisitive stares from her boss. He made her uneasy, like a caged animal. He didn’t speak much to her, and when he did, she wanted to blow her top off. Every question or comment centred on her pregnancy.
When would she go on maternity leave? He hoped she’d come back to work after the baby’s birth.
When would she need to attend labour-preparation classes? She could take time off anytime, and he would work the schedule around to suit her.
Was she sick? And could she cope with her morning sickness?
She really hadn’t expected a happy-go-lucky man like Umberto to even know anything about pregnancy other than it was how babies happened. Her replies had been brief, and after a while, he had taken the hint. No further questions. Just those damn stares from under his lashes.
Jane wanted to scream. Goodness, all this stress wasn’t good for her.
At least he hadn’t questioned her about the baby’s father. What would she have said, then? That she’d been careless with a one-night stand? Knowing Umberto, he would’ve given her a lecture on the need to favour safe sex.
She also dreaded to acknowledge that he might think she’d had an affair with his son. She hadn’t missed the way Umberto had looked at them the previous day when she had nearly fainted and Michael had caught her in his arms.
Speaking of the devil, she caught sight of his name on some of the papers she handled.
Not the first time she’d seen him listed as the lawyer for one of the bank’s big clients. She’d also read about him in the tabloids. The heir to an old name fortune on his mother’s side, who’d acquired his first self-made fifty millions at twenty-five when he’d taken on and won a case everyone had thought lost even before it had started.
Having now met him, she had no doubt that her first assessment of him was right. A man of power, repressed energy, and raw strength carefully concealed under the veneer of the cold, impersonal, and sophisticated magnate. No wonder he was known as a cold-blooded shark in the world of corporate law. He was feared by reputation alone, and those who ended on the wrong side of the table in deals he concluded told extraordinary tales of his ruthlessness.
And now, she had landed herself in that least-coveted spot. He was doing the same with her, treating her as the enemy on the other end of the deal. She was certain he’d have no qualms about putting his threat of moving his clients’ accounts into action. He’d wipe out a whole bank, put hundreds out of a job, to get to one man.
Could the bank withstand the blow? Still, it really wouldn’t take much on her part to ensure it never came to that situation, though.
What was she to do?
And then, there was the man he didn’t show in public. She had seen facets of him she had never expected to encounter in such a person, like when he’d stayed by her side during her sick episode. She hadn’t thought there could be a soft, human side to him, but she’d been wrong. Michael could care, when the hard-hearted bastard in him didn’t take over. What was it about him that unveiled and then hid so many conflicting facets in the blink of an eye? A complicated man, if ever she’d met any.
Another thing that had always nagged her was how the estranged father and son could share cordial business relations, though she doubted they ever socialized.
Now that she knew the man personally, she had no doubt how this could happen. Michael Rinaldi donned personalities as easily as a superhero put on and removed his costume.
Compartmentalize. Most men’s mantra, and certainly Michael’s. One minute, he was hard and commanding; the next, he was gentle and caring. Bat your eyelashes, and poof, the man from a few seconds ago was gone, and a new one had taken his place. A total complication, for sure.
How could any woman deal with that sort of bloke? As if having PMS once a month didn’t cause enough havoc in a girl’s life. Guys like him only added to the turmoil.
What on Earth had she gotten herself into with him?
On one side, he wanted her to break up his parents’ attempt at reconciliation, and on the other … no, too absurd to even contemplate.
If she hadn’t witnessed it, she wouldn’t have believed it. Why had Michael pretended to be her baby’s daddy? If he had laughed it off and simply said he’d done it to keep Tabitha’s questions at bay, she would’ve understood.
The tiny hint of trepidation in his tone when he’d asked her to really consider the possibility ...
What possibility, you idiot? This baby wasn’t his. And as much as she could dream about it, it simply wasn’t the case.
A man like him would step up under any circumstance, though. She would be daydreaming a fantasy if she allowed herself to go down that road. Michael Rinaldi was overbearing and completely bossy, but she had also seen hints of the very human man he was inside.
Truth be told, such a man was exactly the kind she would have defined as her version of Prince Charming.
Hold on one second. Prince Charming? And allow herself to dream about it?
Yeah, right. Jane Smithers and Michael Rinaldi are expecting a baby. They’re ecstatic and already choosing names and deciding on which area of London to buy a house in for their future family.
Get a grip, girl. Even in a romance novel, it didn’t get this romanticized. Not that she would know, not having read a romance since she’d been sixteen, but that was the stuff escapist fantasies were made of. Every girl, at one point or another in her life, dreamed up such a future for herself, didn’t she?
But truth be told, rose-coloured romance had never, ever been part of her life. She had a man-eating mother, and any illusions about love had been shattered after seeing her snare the third unsuspecting bloke, marry him, and then divorce him a snap of the fingers later. In her thirty-two years, Jane had already been through seven stepfathers.
The phone rang, startling her out of her musings.
“Umberto Rinaldi’s office.”
“Hello, darrrling!”
Oh, no. Could it get any worse? Not her mother!
“Marenka.”
She never used Mother or Mum—strict orders. Marenka Maurel James Smithers Carlton Mathews Neumann and whatever—she never got all the names right, and after the third stepfather, she’d stopped keeping tabs—was the bane of Jane’s existence. Not only would she make shark-infested waters seem like a tranquil summer pond, there was also her propensity for getting married every two or three years. What girl would want to have ‘The Serial Bride,’ that perpetual tabloids fodder, as her mum?
“Oh, darrrling, I’ve missed you so much!”
Jane squelched her eyes shut tight. The sickeningly sweet voice alone could make anyone’s stomach roil, and in her present condition, she had to take deep breaths to quell the overhaul. This is bad. Her mother was sweet only when she wanted to worm something out of her only child. What would it be this time?
“I thought you were in India,” she said as she popped her eyes open.
Why couldn’t you have stayed there, far, far away from my existence?
“I came back on a flight late last night. Darrrling, I have to see you. How about lunch, at Frannie’s? See you there in thirty minutes. Mwuah-mwuah!”
Lunch. Any encounter with Marenka always left scars. Lunch with her, as innocent as it sounded, would be a minefield. But had she had the time to refuse? No. Run down by a truck. That’s what it felt like to talk to Marenka Maurel. Currently, she went by her maiden name and had no pot
ential stepfather on the substitutes’ bench for Jane.
She had no way out. Her mother would rain Hell down on her for the foreseeable future if she failed to make an appearance at this lunch. She’d tried, once. Marenka had hounded her with eyes shooting venom at her for the next seven weeks, never letting her off the hook even once. She’d even had to go play nurse to a supposedly sick Marenka who’d wallowed as if on her deathbed, with an ungrateful child as the only lot in her life.
Jane had told herself never again after that episode. A few hours of suffering proved way less difficult to handle than that episode, which had scarred her for life now.
With a resigned sigh, she got up and dragged herself by Umberto’s office to let him know she was taking her lunch break.
“Are you meeting your baby’s daddy?” Umberto asked.
Another question she hadn’t ever wanted to hear. Goodness, would she ever get any respite? Her eyes nearly popped out of her head under his seemingly casual enquiry which was anything but—he would look at anything but her afterwards.
Oh, no. Not this, please. How to squelch this in the bud without inviting more indiscreet questions?
“Just lunch with my mother,” she answered in a cool tone.
Umberto would have no idea who the woman was, which was a good thing. She didn’t ever want him to put two and two together to find out who she really was. Being away from the limelight suited her just fine. People looked at her oddly when they discovered her parentage.
Jane closed the door and set out for Frannie’s. He hadn’t said anything, just biding her to leave with a wave of his hand, before pulling out his cell phone. Probably to go play a silly game or something, but for today, this had saved her arse.
She heaved a sigh as she exited the building and got into a taxi. It could have been worse. She’d had a close call up there, but he could’ve asked if she were meeting Michael. Or strung those two concepts together—where she’d hear Michael and ‘baby daddy’ in the same sentence. A shudder racked through her. Was it of fear, or of sorrow? Because if Michael had been her baby daddy— For goodness’ sake, Jane! Get a grip!
