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Portia’s mouth dropped open and she blinked rapidly. Disregarding the bit about the family’s possible coldness because she had more or less expected something of the sort—except from Sam’s grandfather—she grappled with the unwelcome information that Lucenzo was married, scowling slightly because she couldn’t lie to herself and pretend it wasn’t unwelcome.
And what exactly had happened with his wife? Had she, like his stepmother, done a runner? About to ask, she felt the words die in her throat as Lucenzo strode through the nursery door, his narrowed eyes lancing between the two now silent women as if he knew they’d been talking about him.
He’d changed into a cream-coloured light jacket and narrow dark trousers and looked so detachedly handsome that Portia could only stare at him, feeling oddly light-headed.
When his black eyes turned back to her and settled she could scarcely breathe, and could think of nothing at all to say when he told her with flat formality, ‘My father wants to see you. I suggest you make yourself presentable. I will return to take you to him in ten minutes. I don’t expect you to keep him waiting.’
CHAPTER FOUR
TEN minutes!
Her feet firmly glued to the cream-coloured nursery carpet, Portia widened her eyes at the spot where Lucenzo had been standing, her heart thumping beneath her breastbone.
She had been summoned.
Unnervingly, she felt as if she’d just received a royal command. Should she practise her curtsey? It certainly felt like it! And was she supposed to take Sam along with her? Lucenzo hadn’t mentioned him, though introducing Sam to his grandfather was the only reason she’d been invited here. But the little darling was sleeping; she really didn’t want to disturb him—
Assunta settled the matter with innate practicality. ‘I’ll stay with the little one until yo
u get back. I can make myself comfortable in your sitting room and send down for a tray, so don’t worry yourself about us.’ Her mouth curved wryly as she prodded gently, ‘Don’t you think you should hurry?’
Portia conceded she should, but she moved reluctantly out of the nursery, her feet dragging. She hated the way Lucenzo issued his orders and made threats—some veiled, some right out in the open. Do this—don’t do that—or else!
It was the ‘or else’ bit that made her blood run cold—the knowledge that if she put a foot wrong he would do his damnedest to make his father agree that they could do without the likes of her to sully the family name, and move heaven and earth to take her baby from her.
They could afford the best lawyers money could buy, clever men who would blow her rights and objections clear out of the water.
Apparently Assunta had seen nothing wrong in the way he’d spoken to her. Italian women pampered their menfolk from the cradle to the grave; in their eyes they could do no wrong.
But ten minutes? She needed an hour at least before she could make herself look anything like presentable! She needed a shower to sluice away the stickiness of the long hours of travelling and she hadn’t even begun to unpack.
Portia shrugged fatalistically and pulled a mutinous face at her less than pristine person in one of the ornately framed mirrors that reflected the gauzily hung four-poster back at her.
A quick wash and brush-up would have to suffice; she hadn’t been given time to find something more suitable than these old jeans and her baby-dribbled T-shirt to wear, had she?
The en suite bathroom made her eyes pop. Good grief, the sunken marble bath was big enough to swim in, the walls were floor-to-ceiling mirrors and there were enough classy bottles and jars displayed on the floating glass shelves to stock Harrods’ perfumery department!
Feeling disturbingly out of her depth again, Portia hurriedly washed her face and grabbed the nearest towel. Still rubbing the moisture off her skin, she padded back to her bedroom to root in the depths of her handbag for a comb. She was dragging it through her hair when, after a decidedly perfunctory tap, Lucenzo walked through the door.
Did he have to look so sternly forbidding? Portia thought as her stomach flew up to her throat and zoomed back down again. Coupled with all that raw sexuality it was almost too much to take! It was like looking at a mouthwatering cream cake and knowing that the tempting confection hid a lethal poison!
Dropping the comb back into the cluttered depths of her bag, she gulped in air and strove for a bright, friendly tone. ‘I’m ready.’ But it came out all wrong, husky and breathy, and made her feel completely silly.
‘You intend to meet my father looking like that?’ His beautiful mouth essayed something that to Portia markedly resembled a sneer—although, to be fair, it could be impatience, she decided charitably. She smartly changed her mind when he added, ‘You mean to grace the dinner table looking like a pauper so that Father will feel sorry for you and double your dress allowance?’
Grace the dinner table? Oh, help! And what dress allowance? She hadn’t asked for any such thing! How dared he suggest she expected one?
Angry colour began to flood her face. ‘Do you know something?’ she ground out through tightly clenched teeth. ‘I hate you. I really do!’ And she absolutely meant it. She who had never before hated a single living soul loathed Lucenzo Verdi with a passion that amazed her into momentary silence.
But, seeing the way his upper lip curled, dark brows shifting slightly upwards, she blustered on indignantly, ‘You gave me—no, you ordered me to be ready in ten minutes! I haven’t unpacked yet, so how can I possibly have had time to change?’
‘Paolina has unpacked for you,’ he delivered coolly, unfazed by her blistering outburst, and strode over to an enormous hanging cupboard which boasted heavy oak doors carved with impossibly stout cherubs, swags of vines, peacocks and fantastic flowers.
Portia swallowed jerkily, her hand going up to her throat. She’d been too flustered to notice that the muddle she’d created on the floor had been tidied away and that her suitcase was missing. Her meagre belongings were now lost in the cavernous depths he exposed, and as his fingers sorted through the very few occupied hangers she had an awful sinking feeling inside her, knowing what must be coming next.
That truly awful dress.
She’d made it herself, when seized by a misguided and short-lived enthusiasm for home dressmaking, and was convinced there’d been something wrong with the pattern or the instructions—or both. There had to have been for the end result to look so dreadful.
