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With those very wise thoughts in mind, she slipped her feet into low black court shoes and made herself go in search of him. She found him lounging at the kitchen table with the Financial Times spread open in front of him and a pot of coffee at his elbow.
He looked different this morning, she noted as she paused in the doorway. His clothes were different. Casual chinos and a long-sleeved polo shirt in a dark red colour that for some crazy reason reminded her of the red underwear he had provided yesterday and almost had her blushing.
Luckily the blush didn’t arrive when, sensing her standing there, he looked up, and it only took him a few moments to run his eyes over her prim hairstyle and her equally prim slate-grey suit to know exactly what mood she was in this morning.
‘Standing in guarded territory, I see,’ he drawled, sitting back in his chair to view her more thoroughly. ‘Tell me,’ he appealed, ‘that this does not declare an end
to a beautiful friendship.’
‘Don’t be so trite,’ she snapped, walking forwards and going to the fridge to get herself a carton of juice she had stashed in there yesterday, then opening cupboards until she found the glasses.
‘Then don’t try pulling any neat tricks on me, cara,’ he replied with a sudden grimness. ‘You belong to me now. We reached that agreement at some point in the early hours of this morning when we both knew what fools we had been.’
So, he was angry. She’d suspected as much by now—though she had expected the opposite response to it. ‘Do you have any appointments today, or are you working from here?’
As a change of subject, she was rather pleased with the smooth way she did it—considering the butterflies going mad in her stomach. She even managed to pour the juice into the glass without spilling any of it onto the worktop.
‘We are taking a day off,’ he announced. ‘So we can move your things in here.’
She put the juice carton down, and picked up the glass, aware that his angry eyes were still following every single thing she did as if he expected her to make a sudden run for it, and was not going to be caught napping when she did. ‘I am not moving in here with you,’ she told him quietly.
‘After that we will do something really domestic, like supermarket shopping for provisions,’ he went on as if she hadn’t spoken.
‘You can do that just as easily over the Internet these days,’ she told him.
‘Then there are a few things this place needs to make it more—homely,’ he persisted unrelentingly. ‘Like a television set and a decent music centre, and some cushions or something to make that soulless sitting room more inviting to relax in. And if you tell me that those can be ordered over the Internet,’ he added with a silken snap, ‘then I will probably have to stand up and come over there, and show you a few things that most certainly cannot!’
‘Why are you so angry, for goodness’ sake?’ she turned to throw at him bewilderedly. ‘You should be pleased I’m not keeping you to what you said last night…’
Giancarlo just glowered at her and said nothing, because how could he tell her that dear Edward had already been on his mobile asking where the hell his Natalia was? He was supposed to be patching up his marriage—the love-struck adulterer! Not worrying about his mistress because she wasn’t exactly where he expected her to be!
So he’d lied to Edward and enjoyed doing it. He told him he’d sent her off on a fact-finding mission to some bloody place he couldn’t even recall now. But it had served a dual purpose of reassuring Edward that not only was his Natalia safe, but she was also safely out of Giancarlo’s influence!
The two-timing swine had actually said as much. And it stuck in his own throat that he couldn’t just say— ‘Go to hell, Edward. She is with me and staying with me! So keep your lecherous emotions in check from now on!’
But he couldn’t say it, because he knew Edward. Let Edward know that he was aware of his little bit on the side and the stupid man would have a fit of panic and feel the need to confess all to Alegra just in case Giancarlo decided to do it before him! Edward knew how close brother and sister were and that any Sicilian male worth his salt would not remain silent in the face of such dishonour to one of his family!
But Giancarlo also knew that Alegra could not cope with the truth about her beloved Edward. She adored him—had adored him from the day he’d walked into her life at the tender age of eighteen, and no other man had ever come close to reaching her since! Unless you included Marco, he added with an ache that set his anger blazing. For it was bad enough that she’d had to lose her son. To place in front of her the truth that she could be in danger of losing her husband would finish her. No doubt about it.
And to really top it all off nicely, he raged on within his own throbbing silence, he now knew, without a single doubt in his head, that if Edward had kept his lecherous hands to himself then he, Giancarlo, could have met Natalia Deyton and been free to explore the possibilities of their attraction with openness and honesty instead of having deceit and lies poisoning everything!
And the bottom line to that? he asked himself as his brain threatened to stall completely in response to his heated fury. He would not have rushed her into bed. And he would not have done it without even the most basic of sexual precautions!
So now he had a woman standing here who belonged to him in more ways than any woman had ever belonged to him, while she—
Hell! He stood up violently. She believed half of her still belonged to Edward! She even lived in Edward’s house, damn it! Wore clothes bought with Edward’s money!
Well, not for much longer, he vowed, his eyes hardening with a determination he could see was alarming her. But he had her. He had Natalia Deyton just where he wanted her. All he needed to do now was convince her of that!
‘You could be carrying my child,’ he reminded her thinly.
‘There is just as much of a chance that I’m not!’ she instantly replied.
‘One chance in a thousand is good enough for me,’ he returned. ‘I am Sicilian,’ he reiterated, knowing he was using his nationality like a damned hammer to beat her into submission. ‘To a Sicilian, family is everything. While the small chance exists that you could be carrying my child, it makes you the mother of my Sicilian child! So stop arguing,’ he said with the flick of a hand gauged to draw her anger. ‘Accept your fate—for the near future anyway.’
‘Why, you arrogant bully!’ She gasped in wide-eyed disbelief that she was actually hearing any of this.
She was right and he was.
