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  ‘Well, now that you’ve got me here, what do you want to talk to me about?’ She dared not go any closer to him, so she remained where she was in the middle of the vast, open-plan room, clutching her little black handbag in both hands.

  He poured himself another whisky, offering her a drink, which she refused with a shake of her head, and then moved to the leather sofa, where he sat down, leaning forward with his arms resting on his thighs and his head lowered.

  He couldn’t remember a time when he had been nervous. Not even when he had sat his exams in his youth, or taken his driving test. Certainly never in the company of a woman. He was nervous now. He could feel it racing through his veins like deadly adrenaline and his breathing was shallow and laboured.

  He was only aware that she had approached him when he saw the black high-heeled shoes out of the corner of his eye. He waited until she had hesitantly sat on the sofa next to him, and even then he didn’t dare look her in the face.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ she asked in a hushed voice. She was so accustomed to his towering self-control, his confident assumption that other people were born to fall in line with his wishes, that to see him like this now was throwing her into a state of inner turmoil.

  ‘Why did you come to the restaurant, Riccardo? What…what have you got to talk to me about?’

  He finally looked at her, his black eyes shorn of their self-assurance. Julia felt her heart flip over and shakily told herself that this was all just another ploy to get her into his bed. He wasn’t ready to forgo his challenge, he had simply decided to switch tactics, to get her to somehow feel sorry for him so that he could move in on her vulnerability. It didn’t quite ring true, but she braked at the possibility of speculating further.

  ‘I came to the restaurant because I had to. I had no option. I told myself that you could see whoever you wanted to see, that you were free to do whatever you wanted, but I realised that I do not want you to be free. I do not want you to see other men, to talk to other men or even to think about other men. I sat down in front of my work papers and all I could see was you and that man, laughing, talking, going back to his place, making love. I came because I was torn apart with jealousy.’ He raked his fingers through his hair and then pressed the palms of his hands tightly against his eyelids.

  Julia felt herself begin to melt. If this was a ploy then it was working. She could never be without this man and to have him for only a short while would be worth the lifetime of heartache that would follow. She tentatively reached out and placed her hand on his thigh and he covered it with his hand, squeezing it gently.

  ‘Riccardo.’ She sighed and edged closer to him. ‘I give up. I know you want me and I want you and I just…give up. I’ll be your little fling.’

  ‘It’s not good enough.’ He turned to face her fully and for a few dazzling seconds Julia was caught between bewilderment that her offer had just been refused and hope that the tender expression in his eyes would give her the answers she desperately yearned to hear. ‘I don’t just want your body. Oh, I fooled myself that that was all there was, but I want your soul as well.’

  ‘What are you saying?’ Julia whispered as the little seed of hope began to shoot up, swarming through her entire body until she was engulfed with it.

  ‘I’m saying that I love you.’

  ‘You love me?’ Her eyelashes glimmered with the sheen of tears and he pulled her roughly towards him, burying his head in her hair so that his words were muffled.

  ‘I love you,’ he confirmed in a shaking voice. ‘I don’t know how and when it happened but you went from being the source of my rage to the object of more emotions I ever thought it was possible to have. I told myself that it was all about lust because I knew that I could control lust, that lust was transitory and did not involve the heart. I believed that one failed marriage had made me jaded towards the whole concept of love except…except when I thought about that I realised that what I felt for Caroline had never been love. I had fallen for the concept of the ideal woman. The truth was that Caroline left me cold, even before I finally admitted to myself that my marriage was dead and due a decent burial service. I clung on because of pride but now I realise that the best thing she ever did was to find someone else, someone who could restore her faith in human nature. But still, I stupidly tried to convince myself that there was no such thing as love. Then I told myself that I would seduce you as some warped form of punishment for dropping a bombshell in my life, and when that didn’t work I said that I was just doing it because you were a challenge. But I wasn’t. I wanted you because somewhere along the line I fell in love with you.’

  ‘Oh, Riccardo.’ Her voice broke then and she tilted her face to his and gently kissed his lips. ‘Do you mean it? Mean it all?’

  ‘Every word,’ he said in a choked voice.

  ‘I could never understand how you could possibly be attracted to me when all your ex-girlfriends had looked like Helen Scott…’

  ‘Because love runs deeper than looks. You are not just beautiful on the outside, my dearest darling, you are beautiful on the inside as well. Why do you think that when I was in your company I could never tear my eyes away from you, and when you were not around my mind was filled with you? You made every emotion I ever felt pale into insignificance…

  ‘I know you have doubts about me,’ he continued gruffly, ‘but—’

  ‘No doubts.’ Julia smiled, filled with bliss and wonder that this big, dark, powerful man cradling her against his chest could actually love her. ‘You have no idea how much I’ve wanted you to tell me what you just did. I fell in love with you and it hit me like a bolt from the blue. When you kept talking about want I felt that I had to run away because I wanted so much more from you.’

  ‘And that’s why you accepted a date with that wimp…’

  ‘Roger is not a wimp!’ Julia smiled with unconcealed pleasure into his chest. ‘Although I did find my attention straying quite a bit when I was sitting at that table with him.’

  ‘Straying to me, I take it?’

  Julia moved sinuously against him, curling into his body, and he groaned. ‘Carry on like that and my little talk for the night is finished,’ he growled, bending to kiss her with a fierceness that was returned.

  ‘Oh, good.’ She began unbuttoning his shirt, running her hands over his broad chest and teasing the flat brown nipple with her finger. ‘Just so long as you take it up again later.’

  ‘Later,’ he promised solemnly, ‘and tomorrow and the day after, right into forever…’

  EPILOGUE

  ‘APPARENTLY you’re the woman for me,’ Riccardo said, his arm around Julia’s shoulders as they both sat on a swinging chair on the wooden deck, staring out into the velvet moonlit darkness. She could hear the sound of the surf, gently lapping against the beach ahead of them, although the sea was just a black lake, fringed with sand and the swaying trees.

  ‘It would seem that I need a woman who can keep me on my toes.’ He tilted his bottle of beer, swallowed a mouthful and leant to nuzzle the neck of the woman he adored.

  ‘And I thought your daughter was the one who could do that,’ Julia murmured with a smile on her face. Nicola was absorbed with her father, but she would never forget her mother. Neither she, Julia, nor Riccardo would allow that to happen.

  ‘Oh, that child of mine can keep anyone on their toes. I needn’t tell you that my family think the world of her. The first granddaughter among four grandsons. She will be spoilt rotten.’

  They had been in Italy for two weeks now and Julia had met most of his family and it was as vibrant and closely knit as he had promised. She had been afraid that her mother might have been put off by the sheer volume and effervescence of them all, but she had taken to them like a duck to water.

  ‘And what about the next child?’ She patted her stomach which was only now beginning to show the signs of the baby she was carrying, the baby that had been conceived when love had still been an unmentionable word and passion had drive
n caution to the winds.

  ‘A son,’ Riccardo said firmly and he laughed that sexy, low laugh of his that never failed to make the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. ‘I shall need all the help I can get to support me with my women…’

  He placed his hand over hers on her stomach and then began stroking her belly in slow, circular movements until her body went limp and she moaned softly under her breath.

  ‘I absolutely refuse to make love out here,’ she said, hooking her finger around his thumb. ‘Nicola might be sound asleep, but mothers have a tendency to hear the smallest of sounds. My mum would have a heart attack if she came out here and found us…’

  ‘In flagrante delecto…?’ He chuckled. ‘Your mum would discreetly disappear with a smile on her face. You know I can do nothing wrong in her eyes.’

  ‘Poor, deluded woman…’ Julia turned to kiss him, holding his beautiful face between her hands. ‘However, there is the beach, and it is rather warm tonight…’

  ‘You’re a wicked woman.’

  ‘My darling, you taught me everything I know…’

  ISBN: 978-1-4268-7097-2

  RICCARDO’S SECRET CHILD

  First North American Publication 2004.

  Copyright © 2002 by Cathy Williams.

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.

  All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.

  This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

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