by Lynne Graham
Late afternoon, she took Topsy out for a walk and then let her out onto the roof terrace where she liked to wander among the potted plants. That done, she hurried into the bathroom and had a shower.
Why was she fussing about her appearance simply because Lorenzo would be taking her out to dinner? For goodness’ sake, it wasn’t a date! She would put on jeans and a sweater, she told herself, so that he could see that she had no silly expectations.
After the shower, she put on her smartest jeans and a simple top, but it was a heck of a struggle to get the zip done up on her jeans. Inexorably her shape was changing and, although she had got thinner, her breasts were still larger, her waist was expanding and her stomach was developing a definite outward curve. There was nothing she could do about any of that, she scolded herself as she examined her reflection and winced at the biting tightness of her jeans. She could tell that the need for maternity wear was only just round the corner.
Five minutes later, she tore off the jeans and the top and pulled out a dress instead, the pretty red dress she had bought when she was living with Lorenzo, only, unhappily for her, the dress was now much too tight over her boobs. In a feverish surge of activity she dragged out her entire wardrobe, trying on outfit after outfit until she found a sundress with a looser cut that was reasonably presentable even if it was a little odd to be wearing a sundress when winter was on the horizon. Lorenzo probably wouldn’t even notice what she was wearing. He had hardly looked at her at the cemetery, after all, and once she told him about the baby, he would have much more important things to focus on.
At that point her nervous tension and worries threatened to overwhelm her. The discovery that she was pregnant had made a nonsense of her tentative plans for a better future in which she had planned to work while studying. There were so many things she wouldn’t be able to do with a child dependent on her. She had hoped to move out of the apartment and sever her last ties to Lorenzo but how could she do that when she needed somewhere to live while she was pregnant?
The lawyers had assured her that, as William Jackson’s younger daughter and Brooke’s sibling, she was entitled to inherit Brooke’s estate because Lorenzo had refused to accept it. But in her heart, Milly suspected that her half-sister would not have wanted her to benefit and that made her squirm. Brooke hadn’t been fond enough of her and that made it even more difficult for Milly to contemplate being enriched by her sister’s demise. She didn’t feel entitled to Brooke’s trust fund yet how could she refuse it when she had a baby on the way and desperately needed that security? As for taking any more money from Lorenzo, that was out of the question. Baby or not, she wasn’t planning to hang on his sleeve for ever!
* * *
Lorenzo worked late at the bank and then headed straight to the apartment. That enervating word, ‘personal’, had played on his mind throughout the day. Did she still believe that she loved him? She had never mentioned love again after that first time when he had failed to reciprocate. Back then he had been relieved by that silence because he had still been planning to divorce her. After all, leopards didn’t change their spots. He had never doubted that they would end up divorced and discovering that Brooke was, in fact, Milly had simply set him free sooner and more quickly than he had expected.
The dream scenario, his most senior lawyer had commented cheerfully, and Lorenzo had felt like punching him because the past month had been anything but a dream for him.
Milly opened the door with a fast-beating heart. Knowing that he was coming up in the lift had simply increased her nerves about what she was going to say. Lorenzo would be completely unprepared for her announcement and yet shouldn’t he have become aware of the risk he had run with her the minute he had realised that she wasn’t Brooke? Had that contraceptive oversight completely escaped his attention? She supposed it had, just as it had initially escaped her attention in the emotional turmoil of their break-up.
Lorenzo strolled through the door in a charcoal-grey pinstriped suit, blue-black stubble accentuating his wide mobile mouth and hard masculine jawline, imbuing his dark good looks with an even tougher edge. ‘I can’t work out what you could have to say that falls into the category of personal,’ he admitted coolly.
‘Believe me, it’s very personal to both of us,’ Milly retorted, annoyed by his continuing determination to keep her at a distance. ‘I wouldn’t have asked you here otherwise.’
Lorenzo gazed at her, dark eyes narrowed and shrewd, his attention lingering on the blue and white dress, which he remembered all too well. He remembered it best in a heap on the bedroom floor. He remembered taking it off to reveal her curvy little body. He remembered persuading her out of its concealing folds at a picnic and convincing her that they would not be seen in the shelter of the trees. Indeed, seeing her wearing it rather than seeing himself stripping it off her was a novelty, a novelty and a reminder that his libido didn’t need. He clenched his teeth as a pulsing wave of arousal assailed his groin.
‘Let’s go to dinner and talk,’ he urged thickly before he let himself down and just grabbed her and carried her back to his cave like a Neanderthal who hadn’t seen a woman in years.
The soft blue cashmere stole she had put round her shoulders kept the chill of the evening air off her skin.
Lorenzo remembered buying that for her in Florence when he saw her shiver one evening. Indeed, he seemed to have an extraordinarily photographic memory for everything she had ever worn and everything he had taken off. The limo didn’t have to travel very far before they arrived at a small bistro where they were immediately escorted to a dimly lit corner booth.
Lorenzo sank gracefully down. ‘There’s something I need to say first...’
‘Go ahead,’ she encouraged as she opened her menu.
‘When you regained your memory, we needed a complete break from each other for a while,’ he breathed tautly. ‘You needed peace to come to terms with everything that had happened. I had to accept that Brooke was gone and deal with that appropriately. I couldn’t have done that with you still living with me and I was keen to keep the press out of our relationship.’
‘Yes,’ Milly conceded uneasily. ‘But, perhaps now you can accept that I have no desire to talk to the press or embarrass you in any way?’
‘If you didn’t crave publicity exposure, why did you agree to act as Brooke’s stand-in and deceive people?’ Lorenzo asked with unnerving suddenness, his disapproval of her behaviour obvious to her for the first time.
Milly flushed because she hadn’t yet confronted the embarrassing fact that he viewed her actions as Brooke’s stand-in as a form of deception. ‘I didn’t crave the publicity but it was exciting for me to wear her expensive outfits and to be greeted by people as if I was somebody for the first time in my life,’ she admitted, mortified at having to make that lowering admission. ‘But mainly I agreed to do it because I wanted to please her and help her out. It made me feel needed and I truly believed that it would make her fonder of me.’
Disconcerted by that honesty, Lorenzo frowned. ‘Then you were very naïve. Brooke didn’t like other women. She saw them as rivals and she didn’t trust them. Did she pay you for your services?’
Milly reddened even more uneasily. ‘She promised that she would but she never actually did. I was missing work and I couldn’t afford to and still pay my rent. I once lost a job over it and had to move,’ she confessed awkwardly. ‘I didn’t like to ask her for money and bring our relationship down to that level. I didn’t want to be someone she paid like hired help. I wanted to be a sister coming to her aid and I hoped she would eventually appreciate that...’
As Milly fell silent to take note of the waiter hovering, Lorenzo frowned and voiced their selections while also ordering wine.
‘How many times did you stand in for her?’ he asked bluntly when they were alone again.
‘The day of the accident would have been the fifth time but a couple of the
times she used me it was simply a matter of me being seen entering or leaving a shop she was publicising,’ Milly revealed, worrying anxiously at her lower lip with her teeth. ‘But the last time? That was a big deal for me because I was to stay hidden in the hotel room she had booked for six days, which meant that I had to quit my job.’
‘I’ve since learned where she was planning to go,’ Lorenzo volunteered as the first course was delivered to the table. ‘Brooke was flying to Argentina.’
‘Argentina?’ Milly gaped. ‘Why Argentina?’
‘Presumably to meet up with Scott Lansdale, because he was filming on location there,’ Lorenzo supplied very drily.
‘Scott Lansdale the movie star?’ Milly whispered in a feverish hiss, both incredulous and ironically impressed by that famous name. ‘But he’s a married man!’
‘She was having an affair with him, probably in the belief that he would put her name forward for a part in his next film,’ Lorenzo explained flatly. ‘Brooke didn’t sleep with men out of love or lust. She picked men she expected to advance her career. If they didn’t deliver, she moved on.’
‘You say that as if it happened more than once during your marriage,’ Milly muttered with a frown, pushing away her glass when the wine arrived and opting instead for water.
‘It did. Sex was only another weapon in her arsenal. After the first time I caught her out and she lied about it, I never slept with her again. We were living entirely separate lives by the time I started the divorce,’ he completed.
‘So, the rumours about other men weren’t just gossipy stories like you first said they were?’ she pressed in dismay.
‘No, they weren’t,’ he confirmed steadily. ‘At the time I didn’t want to upset you by telling you the truth about our marriage...well, about my marriage with Brooke.’
Milly dropped her head, suddenly understanding so much more about Lorenzo. He had gone for a divorce as soon as he saw that his marriage was beyond saving. She could easily understand why he had initially steered clear of any further intimacy with her. ‘Why on earth did Brooke marry you in the first place?’ she pressed.
‘Her trust fund didn’t run to the designer clothes she adored and my wealth gave her unlimited spending power. Our marriage also propelled her up the social ladder, which gave her more opportunities to meet influential people in the film and television world.’
Milly swallowed hard. ‘You think that she never loved you, that she just used you for what you could provide?’
Lorenzo shrugged and thrust his big shoulders back into a more relaxed position. As he shifted lithely his jacket fell back from his chest and the edges parted to display lean muscles rippling below the fine shirt and Milly’s mouth ran dry as dust. ‘She betrayed me so early in our marriage that she couldn’t possibly have loved me. I never saw anything in her that made me think otherwise. I have to be truthful with you on that score. I didn’t hate her, I certainly didn’t wish her dead, but by the end of the first year when the marriage had died, I had few illusions about her character.’
As the main course was delivered, Milly breathed in slow and deep and thought of the way Lorenzo had looked after her after the accident, refusing to allow his own feelings to influence his attitude. That had taken an immense force of will and self-discipline that in retrospect shook her. But his strength and protectiveness had been powered purely by the mistaken conviction that she was his wife and deserving of his care.
‘I’m glad that you felt that you could finally tell me the truth,’ she confessed, wondering how the heck they had strayed so far from her intent to tell him that she was carrying his child. However, she didn’t believe a public setting was suitable for such a revelation and resolved to tell him only when he had taken her home again.
‘Hopefully that’s cleared the air. Now, perhaps you’ll tell me what was too personal to discuss with my lawyers,’ Lorenzo murmured smoothly.
Her heart started beating very fast inside her chest, depriving her of breath, but she shook her head vehemently. ‘I’ll tell you as soon as I get home.’
His ebony brows pleated. ‘Why the secrecy?’
‘I don’t want you to feel constrained by our surroundings,’ she admitted stiffly.
When they stepped out of the restaurant, immediately flashbulbs burst all around them, blinding and startling her. As shouted questions were aimed at them like bullets by the paparazzi, Lorenzo curved a protective hand to her spine and urged her unhurriedly in the direction of the car.
‘For goodness’ sake, we shouldn’t have come out together in public!’ Milly gasped, stricken, in the back of the limousine. ‘Why did you risk it? Before you know it, I’ll have been identified.’
‘And so what if you are?’ Lorenzo incised impatiently between clenched teeth. ‘Neither of us has done anything wrong and nobody knows what happened between us. It’s nobody else’s business either. But I do believe that it’s past time for this relationship to come out of the closet and be seen.’
Taken aback by that far-reaching statement that suggested that they still had a relationship, Milly climbed breathlessly out of the limo and accompanied him into the lift. He leant back against the wall, all lean, sinuous male, his beautiful dark golden eyes intent on her, and desire clenched low in her pelvis, dismaying her because she had believed that she had better control than that.
‘I’m not used to you keeping secrets from me,’ he confessed. ‘You were always very open.’
Milly recalled how she had told him that she loved him and barely restrained a wince at the recollection of how trustingly naïve she had been in those early days. ‘I haven’t changed but maybe I’ve learned a little more discretion,’ she parried.
They emerged from the lift into the shadowy foyer of the apartment. Lorenzo strode ahead of her to hit the lights. Milly forged on into the lounge, leaving him to follow.
‘So now...’ Lorenzo drawled with wry amusement. ‘I gather it’s finally time for the big reveal.’
Milly breathed in so deep that she felt dizzy as she exhaled again and she braced her hands on the back of a sofa, reckoning that hint of amusement would be short-lived. ‘I’m pregnant,’ she informed him apprehensively.
Lorenzo did a complete double take, his dark head jerking up and back, his dark eyes gleaming sharp as rapier blades. ‘Pregnant?’ he emphasised in astonishment.
Milly sighed as she sank wearily down on the sofa. ‘I’m almost three months along because I wasn’t using any birth control while we were together and you didn’t take any precautions,’ she reminded him.
Lorenzo hovered with an incredulous look stamped on his lean, strong face, his dark eyes glittering like polar stars. ‘Pregnant?’ he repeated a second time as if he could not comprehend such a development. ‘By...me?’
‘Oh...are you infertile? You never mentioned it,’ Milly shot back at him to punish him for that inexcusable second question, her colour warmer than ever.
Unexpectedly, Lorenzo dropped down fluidly into the seat opposite her, lustrous vibrant eyes fringed by black lashes pinned to her. Hurriedly she looked away, wishing he weren’t quite so spectacularly handsome that he distracted her every time she looked at him. On some level her eyes were in love with those hard, chiselled features of his. But she needed to be cool, calm and collected, not tied in emotional and physical knots by her memories of her time with him, she reminded herself doggedly.
‘I could be infertile,’ Lorenzo mused almost conversationally. ‘I don’t know. Unprotected sex is a risk I’ve never taken with a woman...you’re the single exception.’ The instant he was forced to concede that point, he was plunged back into shock and the colour slowly leached from below his bronzed skin as her first words finally sank in. He stared at her, his dense black lashes framing his bemused gaze. Pregnant? How was that possible? But he now accepted that it was perfectly possible, even if he had not foreseen that possibil
ity and that knowledge silenced him.
‘But as you said, it’s a risk you took many times with me,’ Milly reminded him shakily, her courage beginning to flag because he still looked absolutely stunned. ‘I’m not Brooke. I didn’t have the IUD you assumed I still had, and you didn’t protect me.’
‘No, I didn’t,’ Lorenzo acknowledged in a low, driven undertone. ‘I just assumed it would be safe.’
‘And I took your word for it.’ Milly sighed.
‘Madre di Dio,’ Lorenzo groaned. ‘I’ve always wanted a child but not like this.’
‘I feel the same,’ Milly admitted heavily. ‘I’ve always wanted to be a mother, but this is hardly an ideal situation. Even so, I still plan to make the best of it. I won’t be considering termination or adoption or any other way out of this situation. I want my baby.’
‘I wouldn’t have suggested those options,’ Lorenzo asserted in stark reproof.
‘Yet only minutes ago you were quite happy to suggest that this baby might not be yours,’ Milly reminded him curtly. ‘That was very offensive.’
‘How am I to know who you might have been with in recent weeks?’ Lorenzo countered in a driven undertone. ‘The idea that you could be out there seeing other men has driven me crazy over the past month!’
Milly stared back at him in wonderment. ‘I haven’t ever been with anyone but you!’ she told him with a decided edge of bitterness. ‘I was a virgin but you didn’t notice...and although it hurt like hell I just thought it was a question of it having been too long since I’d last had sex, so I didn’t say anything about it at the time.’
Lorenzo vaulted upright. ‘You were a virgin?’ he breathed rawly.
‘Yes. And I was planning to stay that way until I was in a serious relationship,’ she admitted with spirit.
