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‘No, it’s too personal for that,’ Milly retorted in a tight tone of annoyance, her colour higher than ever at being required to make that distinction.
‘We’ll talk over dinner. I’ll pick you up at eight.’
Lorenzo strode towards his limousine, enraged at the shot of adrenalin now coursing through his veins and the undeniable sense of anticipation that powered it. He had been trying to stay away from her for weeks and she had just made that impossible, looking up at him with those haunting violet eyes. Of course, he could get through one dinner with her and behave! And go homealone? What was too personal? What the hell could she be referring to? Lorenzo did not like to meet anyone without knowing beforehand exactly what he would be dealing with. His strong jawline clenched hard.
He couldn’t fault her behaviour, though, since she had moved out. She had asked for nothing from him and she hadn’t gone to the press. She hadn’t contacted him, hadn’t clung, had, in short, done exactly as he had supposedly wanted. To all intents and purposes, they were finished. Only, it hadn’t taken more than a day for Lorenzo to register that while he had acted in the shocked conviction that he didn’t have a choice, absence wasn’t what he wanted or needed from Milly.
He had told himself that he was free again, had wondered why he was so angry and why the knowledge that he was free wasn’t the relief that he had expected it to be. And now he knew. Milly was looking skinny and that tore him up. Her fine-boned face was downright thin now and her ankles seemed too delicate to support her. In terms of weight there hadn’t been much of her to begin with, he reasoned...butwasshe looking after herself properly? The idea that she might not be now that he was no longer around to watch over her welfare nagged at him and made him decide that a dinner was a very good idea because he could check her out without making a production out of it. And to hell with the paparazzi!
CHAPTER TEN
THENEXTDAYMilly rushed round the apartment, feeding Topsy and tidying up. She hadn’t slept well the night before, haunted as she had been by memories of her sister and the guilty strain of finally laying those memories to rest. Perhaps had she had more time with Brooke or more in common with her, they would have become closer.
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 wantedherto 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,Millyhad 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 herwearingit 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 pressorembarrass 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 itwasexciting for me to wear her expensive outfits and to be greeted by people as if I wassomebodyfor 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...’
