CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER TWO
Six weeks later...
S IENA TOOK A brEATH , short and sharp, and summoning up her courage stepped into the lift that would take her to the one man in the world she did not want to see again.
Vincenzo Giansante.
Megan couldn’t get why she didn’t want to see him. She’d stared uncomprehendingly at Siena...
‘Of course you have to tell him! I’ve looked him up—he’s loaded! A hotshot financier worth a tonne!’
Siena’s mouth had tightened.
‘That isn’t the point, Megs—’
She couldn’t care less whether he was rich or not—the only reason she knew she had to tell him was because, like it or not—and she did not like it...not one little bit—he had a right to know.
That and that alone had brought her here, to this swish City office suite that Vincenzo Giansante used when he was in London.
Megan had found out for her, using her PR contacts, and also found out that he’d be in London this week. She had brazenly phoned to check he would be in this afternoon. She hadn’t gone so far as to make an appointment, after warning Siena that if he knew she was turning up, he might balk at seeing her.
‘He’ll think you’re chasing him—and he’s made it clear he’s done with you.’
Siena’s mouth tightened. Vincenzo Giansante had, indeed, made it crystal-clear that he was done with her—had walked out in the briefest way possible in the bleak light of the morning after the night before.
Well, now she was walking back into his life—to tell him what she could still scarcely believe herself, ever since seeing that thin blue line form on the test stick.
He has a right to know—any man does—whether I want him to or not.
The lift jerked to a stop, the metal doors sliding open. For a moment she wanted to be a coward, and jab the ‘down’ button again. Then, steeling herself, she walked forward.
Vincenzo terminated the call he’d just finished, mentally processing the conversation he’d had about a prospective investment. Yes, it would do. He’d give it his assent.
OK, so what was next?
He glanced at the crowded diary page that was maxing out his brief visit to London, flexing his shoulders as he sat back in his capacious leather executive chair. He’d put in a workout at the end of the day—the hotel he was booked into had good gym facilities, and a pool as well.
His expression changed fractionally. This time around he was not staying at the Falcone, but at a hotel on Piccadilly. And this time around he would not be socialising—even for networking. And what he would most definitely not be doing this visit was what he’d done on the previous one. Something he’d never done before. Spending the night with a woman he had only just met, taking her to bed within hours of meeting her. Indulging himself in her.
For a second, memory flared—hot and humid—of their white-out night together. Then he shut it down.
He had walked out on her and put it behind him.
It was over and done with.
His attention went back to his diary for that afternoon. His next phone appointment was in twenty minutes—time enough to scan the relevant file and note the key points.
As he clicked to open it, his desk phone sounded.
‘Yes?’ His voice was brisk as he answered.
But when his PA told him who was asking to see him, his expression hardened like stone.
Siena wanted to turn and bolt, but again she steeled herself not to. The female sitting at the desk in an outer office, dressed in a tailored suit and with perfect hair, had displayed the greatest reluctance at her request. Signor Giansante, she’d informed Siena disdainfully, saw no one without an appointment. Let alone a female turning up in a chainstore skirt and sweater, her face bare of make-up and her hair pulled back into a tight, plain knot. That had been her implication. But Siena had stood her ground, repeating her request.
‘Please let him know I am here.’
All but rolling her eyeballs, the woman had done so, and then, with a highly displeased air, had replaced the handset and told her she could go in.
Siena was now doing just that.
Her chest as tight as a drum.
Vincenzo let his eyes rest on her. They were completely inexpressive, but behind them he was reacting. Reacting in multiple ways. First and foremost was the thought that if the name had not been so unusual he would not have known who she was. Second, and far stronger, was the reaction that had hit him when his PA had given her name. That was uppermost now.
He got to his feet as she walked towards him.
‘This is unexpected,’ he said.
It was a statement, nothing more.
She stopped in front of his desk and he resumed his seat. He did not invite her to sit down. He did not intend this...visitation to be of any duration.
Did she not get the message when I left her that morning? That I am not interested in continuing any liaison with her?
Because that was why she was here—that much was obvious. It always was. Ever since he’d started making money—serious money—he’d been a target for women keen to have him spend it on them.
The way they’d targeted his father. Battening on him.
The old, familiar, bitter stab of anger came at how his hapless father, wanting only to find a woman to love after the tragedy of losing his wife when Vincenzo was a young child, had been easy prey. Right to the very end. The end that had been fifteen years ago now, when Vincenzo had just started at university, having spent his boyhood watching one woman after another exploiting his father, leeching off him, until one of them had managed to get a ring on her finger—and a lot more than that.
Get all that was left of my father’s money by then.
As for himself—he’d got nothing. He’d had to start from scratch, building up his own business, making his own money. Money that no avaricious female would get her greedy claws into.
By any means.
His eyes rested now on the woman in front of him. She could not have looked more different from that evening at the Falcone. Then she had been dressed to kill—advertising her allure on all frequencies. Now, instead of that low-cut, clinging cocktail dress, she wore a knee-length denim skirt, flat shoes, a cotton sweater. Gone was the loose, lush hair and full make-up. Her hair was knotted plainly at the back of her head and her face bare.
Yet even without any adornments, he was conscious of her beauty...
He dismissed it ruthlessly. It was irrelevant now.
‘Yes, I know,’ she answered. Her voice was staccato. ‘I apologise for turning up like this,’ she said, her voice still staccato.
‘Do you?’ Vincenzo murmured. His face was still inexpressive.
Something flashed in her eyes, then was gone. Her hand tightened over her canvas shoulder bag, which looked as cheap as the rest of her appearance. In one part of his brain he speculated on why she had turned up looking as she did. If she thought to entice him again, she should have come better packaged.
Then, with her next words, he realised that she had quite a different strategy in mind.
‘Yes,’ she said tightly.
For a moment she was completely silent. And then Siena Westbrook, who had once provided him with a memorable but unrepeatable one-night-only of exquisite sensual pleasure, took a visible breath and continued in the same tight voice.
‘I’m here to tell you that I’m pregnant.’
Oh, God, she had said it!
Siena’s hand tightened on her bag even more tightly.
‘I’m sorry just to announce it like that, but there isn’t any other way of doing it,’ she made herself say.
She looked directly across at him—made herself do so. It was hard to do it—memory was burning through her now she was seeing him again. His impact on her was as overwhelming now, all these weeks later, as it had been that night at the Falcone. But she had to ignore it. It was as irrelevant to the moment now as was his wealth, that Megan was so focussed on.
‘No, I imagine not,’ he replied.
His voice was that murmur again—the one that she instinctively took exception to.
‘Permit me to offer you my congratulations.’
His voice wasn’t a murmur any longer. It was smooth. But smooth in the way that the water flowing over the edge of Niagara Falls was smooth. Deadly smooth...
He was still sitting back in that massive leather chair of his, one hand resting on the chrome and leather arm, one on the mahogany desk’s surface. He was quite immobile, his face completely expressionless. His eyes unreadable.
Those eyes had once, that fateful evening, flickered sensuously over her, telling her that they was liking what they saw, quickening her pulse, making heat beat up inside her...
Now, she only frowned. ‘Congratulations...?’
‘Yes.’ His voice was still smooth. ‘This must be a happy time for you—and for the father.’
She stared at him. Not understanding.
He lifted his hand off the desk, holding it up as if to silence her when she was already silenced.
‘Whoever he may be,’ he said. His expressionless eyes rested on her for a moment. ‘You cannot expect me to believe I am the only candidate for that honour?’ he said softly. ‘After all, you were in my bed within hours of meeting me.’ His voice was a murmur again. ‘How many other men have enjoyed a similar...felicity since myself?’
The breath went from Siena’s lungs—instantly sucked out by what he had just said to her.
What she could not believe he had just said to her.
He went on speaking. His hand still raised to silence her. He looked completely relaxed, but there was something in his inexpressive face, his expressionless eyes, that chilled her even more than his words.
‘Do not, I beg you, seek to verbally contest the logic of my statement. Instead, what I would recommend is the following course of action. Get your doctor to request a paternity test for all possible candidates, and when the result is known, proceed on that basis.’
He got to his feet, walked around the desk. But not towards her—to the double doors leading out of his office.
As he walked, he went on speaking. ‘You have had a wasted journey. This matter could have been dealt with remotely, in the way I have just recommended.’ He reached the door, opened it. ‘And now you must leave. I have an appointment in a few minutes.’
He held the door open for her.
Siena, frozen where she stood, jerked forward. There was emotion inside her, but what it was she did not know. Her feet carried her across the thick carpet, past him standing there, then past the PA at her desk in the outer office, and then on out on to the corridor beyond. She jabbed numbly at the elevator button, saw the doors sliding open to allow her to step even more numbly inside.
The lift dropped down.
And as it did, hollowing her out, she felt two overpowering emotions flooding into the hollow like a suffocating tide.
Mortification.
And an anger so great it made her shake with it.
Vincenzo walked back to his desk, resumed his seat in his capacious chair. His face was still without expression, and yet emotion was scything through him. Silently and lethally.
This was not the first such try-on he’d experienced. There’d been an ex in his early twenties—a decade ago—who had claimed she was pregnant. It had been when he’d first started making money, and the connection between the two had not been lost on him. He’d called her bluff and waited it out. She’d turned out not to be pregnant at all.
So, is this one pregnant?
He stared out across the room, his eyes hard. Well, time would tell. If she really was pregnant then it would not be long before he’d get a request for a paternity test. And then...
He sliced the thought away. He would deal with it as and when—and, above all, if .
Until then she would cease to exist for him—again.
Megan eyed Siena warily.
‘What did he say?’ she asked, even more warily.
Siena was walking around the room—striding around it. Megan’s sitting room was small, but handsomely appointed, leaving very little space for walking about, let alone striding.
‘Oh, he was very economical with his words! Didn’t waste a single one! He recommended sending out paternity tests to all the candidates—’
‘What?’ Megan’s voice sounded stunned.
‘You heard me! He pointed out that since I’d fallen into bed with him the same evening as meeting him for the first time, it showed there must surely be other candidates.’
‘He said that to you?’ Megan was aghast. ‘But...but what did you say?’
Siena stopped her striding and whirled round to face her friend.
‘Nothing. I got thrown out!’
‘Thrown out?’
‘Which was totally unnecessary as I’d have gone anyway—like a bat out of hell!’ Her face worked. ‘I wish to God I’d never gone there! I had to force myself to go, and that... that ...was what I got!’
She felt her fists clench. Fury lashing through her.
Megan was still eyeing her warily. ‘So...so what are you going to do?’ she asked.
Siena stared. ‘What do you mean, “do”? You mean apart from storming back there and slugging him from here to Christmas!’
‘Well, yes, apart from that,’ Megan said. Her expression changed. ‘OK, so I’m not excusing him—’ a choking sound came from Siena’s throat, and Megan hurried on ‘—but to be honest it’s only to be expected he’d want some kind of proof, as in a paternity test. Any man would in those circumstances.’
Siena’s eyes flashed dangerously. ‘You mean the circumstances of a one-night stand?’
‘Well, yes. I mean—’
‘What you mean,’ Siena supplied, and her voice was as dangerous as the flash in her eyes, ‘is that I am, in fact, the kind of female who would drop into a different man’s bed every day of the week!’
Megan looked uneasy. ‘Obviously I know you’re not, but he doesn’t—’
Another noise escaped Siena’s throat.
Megan hurried on. ‘It’s just biology, Si—it can’t be helped. Have sex with more than one man in one month and how can you tell which one—?’ She held up her hands placatingly. ‘Don’t get mad at me, Si! You had one night together, and he walked out in the morning.’
Siena’s eyes burned with a brightness that was coruscating. ‘Thank you for reminding me—yes, he walked out in the morning—because he’d got all he’d wanted. So it was Wham, bam, Thank you, ma’am —except that he was conspicuously short on either the thank-you or any other politeness! He just told me he was off, and I could stay in the room and charge my breakfast to it—’
She broke off, her voice choking. Memory burned like acid, etching into her skin. Talk about the morning after the night bef—except she didn’t want to talk about it, or think about it, or remember it.
She threw herself down beside Megan on the sofa.
‘Oh, God, Megs, how could I have done what I did?’ Her voice was a toxic mix of rage and memory.
Megan patted her arm in an attempt to be comforting. She’d already had the post mortem weeks ago, when Siena had got back that morning, and had done her best to show Siena that having a scorching fling with a gorgeously irresistible Italian—even if one-night-only—was a well-deserved celebration of her new freedom.
OK, so the gorgeously irresistible Italian in question had been graceless in his leave-taking, and certainly had not followed through—which was a shame, because a slightly longer fling, even maybe a romantic escapade in Italy, was really just what Siena needed now, after the last grim years. But now it had all gone pear-shaped. All that was possible was damage limitation.
‘I don’t really know anything about how to get a paternity test organised,’ she began now, in a voice she hoped was encouraging, ‘but I guess you go to your doctor first and explain—’
Siena reared back. ‘You’re not serious!’ she shot out.
‘It’s the only way to—’
Siena cut straight across her. Voice vehement. ‘You don’t seriously think I am going to go anywhere near that vile, disgusting man ever, ever again, do you?’
‘Si, I know it’s galling, but it’s the only way—’
‘No. No, no, no, no and no ! I forced myself to go there because I genuinely thought it was the right thing to do—that a man has the right to know if he is to be a father, even in circumstances like these! But I did have to force myself to do it. It was humiliating and mortifying and deeply, deeply embarrassing, damn it! Even before he looked at me like I was something the dog dragged in! And now, after the way he reacted, the way he treated me, I would stick pins in my eyes before I’d go anywhere near him again. He can rot in hell—go down a hole in the ground—take a running jump—go and boil his head...’
She moved on to some explicit but anatomically impossible manoeuvres for him to contrive, and then, with gritted teeth, got to her feet. Her hands, she realised, were still clenched.
‘Vincenzo Bloody Giansante can take himself back to Italy, the sooner the better. And the bigger the distance between him and me the better! I should never have fallen into bed with him, never gone to see him today, and I will never, as God is my witness, have anything to do with him for as long as I live.’
She took a shuddering breath, making her fists unclench. She pressed both hands across her still-flat abdomen.
‘As for my baby...’ Her voice changed, but only she could feel the tremor in it. ‘It is my baby—’
She turned and walked out of the sitting room, closing the door behind her. There was a storm in her breast and steel in her heart. Cold, hard steel.