Bound to the Tuscan Billionaire (14 page)

With a sound of self-disgust, he sprang up and headed off to bed. Much good that did him. Everything reminded him of Cassandra—his bedroom, the bed, the shower. Was there anywhere in the penthouse they hadn't made love?

Would he ever be rid of her ghost?

Did he want to be?

He didn't sleep. He paced for half the night and dozed fitfully for the rest of the time, and all of it with his mind full of Cassandra. At first light he rang his people to make sure she had arrived safely. They reassured him that she had. He cut the call and looked around, knowing that this was his life now. This was his lonely, bitter life.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

O
NE
THING
FOLLOWED
ANOTHER
. It was as if fate was conspiring against him. His workload had never been heavier, and when it became necessary for him to visit the UK to get an overview of some properties he was considering buying, he was conflicted. He had been trying to keep his distance from Cassandra. They didn't have a future together, and it was kinder to them both if he avoided relighting old flames. That she took second billing to his work seemed cold and contrived, even to him, but as things stood, it was the best he could manage.

Cassandra, meanwhile, seemed to be doing very well without him. She was as doggedly independent as always, and to his frustration she made no call on him at all. She was designing gardens, rather than digging them, his people had told him, adding that, in their opinion, there was no reason for concern, as she was taking good care of herself and doing very well.
Without him.

Each time he sat down at the computer he read these emails again, as if they could somehow bring her closer. Perhaps a relationship at a distance was the best his stony heart could manage, he reflected grimly as he returned to the mountain of work on his desk. While the past had its hold on him, distance from him was the best thing for Cassandra, and though he had no difficulty accepting responsibility if the test proved he was the baby's father, it would almost certainly mean discharging his duty from a distance—which was probably just as well. What did he have to offer a child, apart from his money?

Sitting back, he pushed all thoughts of work away. He received daily reports on Cassandra's progress, and that should be enough for him.

It wasn't nearly enough. He felt as if something precious was in danger of slipping away from him. Was there a chance for change? Or would he relive his father's mistakes, and all because of his pride?

* * *

She missed Marco more than words could say. It was as if she had been complete and now she had a vital part of her missing. Marco was damaged and she couldn't help him until he was ready to help himself. She hated to admit it but she was about ready to admit defeat.

Never. Defeat wasn't in her nature. She smiled ruefully and chomped on her lip as she pictured him lounging back in his warm, state-of-the-art office, while she was here, freezing her butt off in a neighbour's overgrown orchard that she was trying to rescue.

Marco could make her life so much easier than this.

Maybe he could—if she was prepared to sell out, which she wasn't. And that was even supposing Marco would want to stick around after their baby was born. She had no idea what he wanted to do. There might be a custody battle once it had been had proved to his satisfaction that he was the father of her child. He should know that there was no one else. He had enough investigators on the case. She'd ‘made' his man on her first day back in England. There couldn't be many burly men who would reach for packets of hair dye and scrunchies when caught staring at her in the supermarket.

Leaning back against the tree trunk, she stared up through its contorted branches. Birds wheeled overhead in a hostile, grey sky, which made her think back to the warmth and sunshine in Tuscany. She was as wary of commitment as Marco, and it was going to be a long, lonely Christmas with just the bump—the very active bump—for company. She hoped that she would see Marco again, but it wouldn't be until some time in the New Year when she gave birth.

* * *

He scanned the latest report from his people in the UK again. There were no new developments, and nothing for him to worry about, they said. That wasn't good enough for him. Today he felt the need to hear that reassurance from Cassandra's lips. As an ex-member of staff she was still his responsibility.

He called her up, but there was no reply. Was she was ignoring his calls?

Was he going to hang around to find out?

With his pilot on leave for the holidays he flew the jet to London himself. He felt better just being in charge—until he landed and tried to cross the airport concourse, when all hell broke loose. The paparazzi were waiting for him and the one question they all wanted an answer to was whether he would be going straight to the hospital. He scanned his phone. He'd missed
how
many calls? There were seven from Cassandra and three from his staff. He knew what this meant. The one thing he could not control was the birth of this child. Nature would determine the time, not him, and that was a humbling realisation for a man who controlled every aspect of his life without exception.

This wasn't the end of his journey of discovery when it came to the birth of a child but just the start. He was about to learn that giving birth didn't come neatly packaged or with a reliable timetable to suit him. Neither did it come with the automatic ‘all areas' pass he was accustomed to being granted. Not one of the nurses in the Christmassy, glitzed-up hospital where, he was reliably informed, Cassandra was about to give birth would tell him when or where this would take place. His best guess was to take the elevator up to the maternity suite and take it from there.

All these practical things he could look at logically, but the feelings inside him could not be neatly organised or even accounted for. He was in turmoil. He was frightened for her. He was so far out of his comfort zone he had no answers, only questions, and producing his passport as proof of identity meant nothing here. He was made to stand back, stand aside, and he began to feel increasingly unsettled as his power was stripped away. He wanted to see Cassandra. He
had
to see her. She was expecting him. How was he supposed to help her if they wouldn't let him see her?

‘From what I've seen, Ms Rich is quite capable of helping herself,' a fierce-looking midwife wearing flashing antlers in honour of the holiday season told him when he was his usual assertive self. ‘She doesn't need any additional stress now,' she added, planting herself staunchly between him and the labour room door.

‘I'm not here to give Cassandra stress,' he insisted, nearly going crazy with the delay as his mind tried to penetrate beyond the firmly closed door to find out what was happening.

The hospital had numerous ways to hold him in check, he now discovered. His passport had to be taken away and verified, and even then he was made to wait until his relationship to Ms Rich could be established with certainty. From the donning of a mask, gown and over-shoes to his entry into a temperature-controlled room where Cassandra was working towards the moment of birth with a stoicism that everyone but him found remarkable, he was out of his comfort zone, tossed headlong into a situation that was completely new—and, he admitted silently, alarming to him. He pushed that aside now he was with Cassandra. His heart gripped tight with all sorts of emotion, concern for her being uppermost amongst them. She looked so young—too young to be going through this—but when she saw him
she
reached out to him.

‘Marco...you came.' Her eyes lit up as she held out her hand.

It was that look that stopped him. It held love, trust and gratitude, none of which he deserved, and he couldn't—mustn't—encourage it. Love deeply, and it was always stripped away and denied. Hadn't he learned that by now?

‘Marco?'

She sounded concerned, but then a nurse hustled him out of the way. ‘You can sit over here,' the nurse told him. ‘Or stand, unless you think you might faint.'

He glared at the nurse. Cassandra defused the situation.

‘Could he hold my hand?' she asked in that way she had that made everyone warm to her and want to do things for her.

‘Would you like to?' one of the nurses asked him dubiously, as if this could be in doubt.

He noticed the glances exchanged by the staff. They knew his press. They didn't think much of him. Why would they when they only had his lurid backstory as depicted by the world's paparazzi to go on? They thought even less of him now a woman of his acquaintance was in labour.

‘Of course I'd like to—I must,' he insisted.

He was at Cassandra's side in a stride. Pain he understood. The need for reassurance he understood. He could also comprehend that a new and frightening experience was better shared. It was the look in Cassandra's eyes that baffled him. How could she still feel this way about him when he could give her nothing back?

‘What can I do of a practical nature?' he asked the same fierce-looking midwife, now masked and gowned like him. He felt useless, just standing by the bed.

‘Be there for her. That's all you have to do. If she asks you to leave, you go. If we ask you to leave, you go faster. Understood?'

He ground his jaw and agreed.

The quiet efficiency of the staff impressed him. An aura of purposeful calm prevailed, and it was not allowed to be disturbed. Cassandra was the centre of everyone's attention, as she should be, and she was everything he might have expected of her. She made barely a sound as she clung to his hand, then his wrist, and finally his arm with a ferocity of which he would not have believed her capable. He was drawn in. She drew him in so that he was part of her experience—a very small part, admittedly, but a necessary one, her unflinching stare told him.

And then a baby cried.

Lustily, he noted with relief.

‘Your son,' the midwife said, bypassing him to put the child in Cassandra's arms.

Cassandra had a son.

Her face was spellbound as she stared down at the tiny, wrinkled bundle in her arms.

‘Oh, Marco...'

She couldn't bear to rip her enraptured gaze away from her baby's face. She was mapping every feature in the way that only a mother could, he guessed from his scant knowledge of what a mother might do. His brain was still frantically trying to patch together all the new information. The expression on Cassandra's face was new to him. This situation was new to him. Love, raw and new, confronted him. There was no escaping it. He was consumed by it. He had no response ready, and he doubted that one could be prepared in advance.

‘What do you think of him?' Cassandra asked him, her gaze still fixed on her baby.

‘He seems healthy,' he observed, trying not to look too closely. ‘Sturdy,' he amended as one tiny arm flailed as if the child would like to catch him with a blow.

‘Isn't he beautiful?' Cass exclaimed softly. ‘I bet you looked exactly like this when you were born, Marco.' Glancing up at him, Cass smiled and her expression warmed him. ‘Don't you want to hold him?'

‘I'm not sure I should,' he said, suddenly nervous when confronted by such a tiny life.

‘Of course you should,' the midwife told him. Taking the infant from Cassandra's arms, she placed him in his.

As his brutish arms closed around the small warm bundle, he sucked in a shocked breath. The tiny child was somehow familiar, as if he were seeing someone he knew well after a really long absence. It was a defining moment, a shock, a wake-up call, and also a dilemma he had never expected to confront. He hadn't expected to feel anything, let alone this detonation of emotion inside his heart. His heart didn't just beat faster, it took off—it swelled, it exploded.

He cried.

‘Marco?'

Cassandra's voice was concerned—for him.

Rigid control allowed him to pull himself together and hand the child back.

‘Thank you,' he bit out awkwardly. No words could explain.

‘He's your son, Marco,' she said, staring again into the tiny face. ‘There's no mistaking it, is there?'

‘No mistaking it,' the same midwife agreed in his place, beaming fondly as she stared down at the baby.

‘We don't know that yet.' He was reeling from reality, from his son—gut instinct told him this tiny, vulnerable child was his son, and that made him fearful. Could he protect the child as he had failed to protect his mother? Could he love his son, as the man he had called father had failed to love him? Overwhelmed by love, he was in danger of being destroyed by the fear of losing it again.

It was as if the air had frozen solid when he spoke. Everyone in the room remained motionless, as if they couldn't compute what he'd said, let alone his reason for saying it now, at what had to be the most inappropriate moment possible. He felt as if time and space had slowed to take full account of his crass remark as everyone turned around to stare at him.

‘We can't be sure that he's mine,' he said, reverting to the emotion-free tone he always used in business. He added a shrug for good measure. ‘Only science can do that.'

It was as if, having dug the hole, he had to go on digging. The midwife looked as if she'd like to push him into it and then fill it in with cement.

‘Oh, Marco,' Cassandra murmured. Handing the baby over to the midwife to put in the cot that had been made ready nearby, she reached out to him as she had done when he'd first entered the room. ‘Don't be afraid,' she whispered, so that only he could hear.

He stiffened and stared down at her as if she were a stranger. ‘I should go now.'

‘Must you?' Her eyes implored him to stay.

‘Yes. Yes, I must. I didn't realise how long this would take. I have appointments—'

‘Yes, I see,' she said. ‘I'm sorry I took so long.'

She was apologising to him? He was deeply ashamed. He had to get out of there or he would ruin her life. He needed time—space—the opportunity to counsel himself, so he could accept the truth—that he was afraid of love, terrified of it—terrified of losing it, terrified of losing Cassandra. He had kept his feelings bottled up since he was a child, and now they were threatening to drown him, just when Cassandra was at her most vulnerable—when she needed him most.

‘I'll arrange the DNA test as soon as I can.'

‘You'll...' Cassandra's mouth dropped open.

‘Haven't you said enough?' the midwife hissed, glancing pointedly at the door.