Flora's Defiance (11 page)

‘Ah, yes, this is what I suspected,’ Natalie remarked with satisfaction as she moved the transducer over the gel slicked across Flora’s stomach. ‘There to the left, is the first baby … see the heartbeat … and there is the second baby …’ for an instant the doctor paused and then drew in an audible breath before continuing ‘… and tucked in behind that one, is the
third
baby! My word, I already suspected that you might be expecting twins, but you’re carrying triplets, Flora. That’s probably why you’ve been feeling so very sick. Your hormones are in override.’

’Triplets? ‘
Flora parrotted, her voice sounding as squeezed as if someone were bouncing up and down on her lungs. ‘You mean that there’s three of them?’

A large hand closed over her nervously clenching fingers. ‘That’s amazing news,’ Angelo pronounced with admirable conviction.

Astonished, Flora tipped back her head to look up at him and noted that he was unusually pale. She reckoned that he too was shocked by Natalie’s revelation but simply better at hiding his reactions than Flora was. Flora was stunned and totally overwhelmed by the prospect of three babies rather than one. She had naturally imagined how she might cope if she won custody of Mariska but had calculated her niece would be a toddler at a different stage of development by the time she gave birth.

The news that she was carrying triplets turned all her
careful plans for the future upside down. It would be a challenge to continue her bed-and-breakfast business and even part-time childcare costs would be
huge.
For the first few months of motherhood she would definitely have to live off the money in her bank account. On the other hand, that cash bonus was her only nest egg and with the needs of at least three children to meet in the future she realised that it would probably be wiser to try and work and save the money she currently had in the bank.

‘I can’t tell you the sex of the babies yet. It’s too early,’ Natalie Ellwood informed them cheerfully. ‘Are there any multiple pregnancies in either family?’

As Flora shook her head in a negative motion Angelo opened his mouth and then closed it again, deeming what he had been about to say concerning his own early history inappropriate. He knew that a multiple pregnancy carried greater risks and it worried him that Flora was already far from well. Registering that the news about their triplets had struck her dumb, he lifted her down off the couch with care and accompanied her back into Natalie’s surgery. Flora, still in complete shock from what she had learned, was urged to avoid stress, rest more and eat little and often in an effort to regain the weight she had lost. If the sickness continued at the same rate, Natalie said she would need to go into hospital to receive treatment. Flora was shaken by that last warning because it had not once occurred to her that her health and that of her unborn baby might be at risk. Unborn
babies,
her mind adjusted, while she recognised that she would need all her health and strength to carry three babies as close to term as possible.

‘I would like to take you back to Amsterdam with me,’ Angelo pronounced before they had even left the building. ‘No, don’t argue with me … think of the advantages. You can stay in bed all day if you like. You won’t have to cook for yourself and everything will be done for you. You’ll have Mariska to fill your days instead of demanding guests.’

‘And Mariska will never ask me to cook a fried egg,’ Flora mumbled, striving not to get caught up in the lazy blissful imagery of the dream world he was describing. ‘I’m used to working and keeping busy, Angelo.’

‘But right now you need some time out to regain your health.’

It was true; there was no arguing with that reminder. Natalie had emphasised that tiredness and stress were very probably only making the sickness Flora was suffering from worse. And she knew she had lost more weight than was good for her. She would also have Mariska to keep her occupied. At that moment, the proverbial
weak
moment, an image of the picturesque streets and canals of Amsterdam and having meals cooked for her carried considerable appeal for Flora.

Angelo tucked her into the limousine. Although he had said and done nothing to reveal the fact, the prospect of becoming the father of four children had knocked him sideways. Only three months earlier he’d had no plans to have any children of his own. But now, he gazed down at Flora and, in one of those inexplicable moments of flawed concentration that currently afflicted him, he was immediately sidetracked by the view. From that angle the newly full rounded globes of her breasts and her shadowy cleavage were visible below the modest
neckline of her cotton top. There was something incredibly powerfully erotic about that illicit glimpse and he remembered the taste of her and the fresh scent of her skin. That fast lust ran through Angelo like a river of lava and the swelling hardness at his groin became a greedy ache. A muscle at the corner of his handsome mouth pulling taut, he swung in beside her.

Brilliant sapphire-blue eyes sought out hers in a sudden assault. ‘I still want you in my bed,
enamorada mia.’

In the aftermath of what they had just found out, Flora was startled by his candour. That bold husky reiteration sent tiny quivers of awareness darting through her tense body. His potent emphasis shook her as, removed from his radius, Flora had once again stopped seeing herself as a sexual being. Soft pink mouth opening, her tongue slid out to moisten her dry lower lip.

‘You are
so
hot,’ Angelo growled thickly, and he bent his proud dark head to crush her lips under his, his tongue delving into the moist and tender interior with a darting erotic finesse that sent the blood drumming madly through her veins and brought her hands up to clutch at his arms.

Responses that had bothered Flora in uneasy dreams that even she could not control leapt straight back to life. A squirming, curling heat shimmered low in her pelvis, dispatching tingling warmth to private places. Her nipples pinched into stiff straining crests and the tender flesh at the heart of her dampened while she held her body taut in defiance of that response.

‘I want you,’ Angelo husked, running his sensual mouth down her slender neck in a way that made her
shiver violently, while his hand reached below her top to toy with the engorged peak of one breast.

In one urgent motion Flora jerked free and contrived to move a good two feet from him. Wide-eyed and flushed, she muttered hurriedly, ‘No!’

His ebony lashes dipped low over his extraordinary jewel-bright eyes. ‘I’m sorry. You excite me so much that I even contrived to forget that you aren’t well.’

‘That’s okay,’ Flora framed before she could think better of it, wanting to shut the door, as it were, but not bar and lock it for ever. Even with all her hormones leaping and bounding like spring rabbits through her rebellious body, she would not have confessed why she had drawn back from him. Being ill or unwilling had nothing to do with it. As she smoothed down her top wild horses would not have forced her to admit that she had had to put some space between them before he discovered that she was wearing an industrial-strength bra with a line of hooks and thick straps.
You excite me?
Well, he would not have retained that impression for long, she reflected with a shrinking quiver of embarrassment. At the same time she was helplessly thrilled that he still appeared to find her sexually attractive.

‘Just not now,’ she added, striving to add a discreet hint of encouragement for the future while her face burned hotter than a fire. ‘In Amsterdam.’

‘So, you’ll come back with me,’ Angelo breathed with intense satisfaction.

And Flora could not meet his questioning gaze, because there was something about him that made her so ridiculously impulsive and, incredibly, unbelievably, she had just agreed to move in with him without thinking
it through in triplicate and over the space of at least a week of sleepless nights. And now, if she immediately took the declaration back, he would think she was a total airhead who didn’t know what she was doing or saying. Dismayed by a recklessness that ran contrary to her usual nature, however, she could not withstand the urge to try and backtrack. ‘My pets would have to come with me as well and I would have an enormous amount of packing to do even for a short stay.’

‘I’ll organise everything for you. I don’t want you tiring yourself out.’

‘I don’t know if I can live with you …’

Long brown fingers tilted up her chin so that she collided with his cerulean-blue gaze in which ferocious determination was writ large. ‘But it costs nothing to
try
…‘

Flora disagreed but she kept the thought to herself. She didn’t want to get used to him being around if he wasn’t going to stay with her. She didn’t want to fall for him. She didn’t want to get hurt. She had put all her eggs in one basket with Peter and at the end of the day had turned out to be anything but his ideal woman. Would she ever be any man’s ideal woman? If she had not fallen pregnant, would Angelo be inviting her to move in with him? Would she even have heard from him again? Worrying along those mortifying lines sent a cold chill through her and severely wounded her pride.

‘You do way too much agonising over things,’ Angelo informed her abruptly, one hand closing over hers, his vivid azure gaze narrowed and intense on her expressive face. ‘We have
four
children to consider now,’ he
stressed. ‘If you can’t be optimistic, at least attempt to be practical.’

His advice engulfed her like a landslide and was even less welcome. Practical was a very dirty word to Flora at that instant. She did not want Angelo van Zaal to settle for her because she was carrying his triplets and also happened to be Mariska’s aunt. She needed more; she desperately longed to be wanted for herself.

‘I don’t want to be practical … I want to be loved,’ Flora admitted gruffly before she could lose her nerve and duck making that very personal admission.

Angelo gave her a look of complete exasperation as if she had suggested something utterly outrageous. ‘I’ve never been in love in my life!’

It was Flora’s turn to raise her brows.
‘Never?
‘ she pressed in disbelief.

‘Not since I succumbed to an infatuation as a teenager,’ Angelo derided, his wide sensual mouth curling.

It was depressing news but it also gave Flora a very strong desire to slap him. ‘I suppose you don’t believe in love?’

‘I believe in lust.’

Flora flattened her lips into an unimpressed line and lifted her chin in silent challenge.

‘Go on, confess,’ Angelo murmured with silken scorn. ‘You fell madly in love with me that day on the houseboat and that’s the only reason you slept with me!’

In receipt of that sardonic crack, Flora was so desperate to slap him and working so hard to restrain that urge that she trembled. ‘I’m afraid I still can’t explain
why
I slept with you.’

‘Lust,’ Angelo told her with immense assurance.

Flora’s self-control snapped clean through as if he had jumped on it. ‘Well, if that’s all we’ve got together, I’m not coming to Amsterdam. I can find lust anywhere with a one-night stand and I don’t need to leave the country to do it!’

Angelo shot her a blistering look of dazzling blue fury and frustration. ‘You’re being totally unreasonable—I can’t give you love. I can respect you, care for you, like you and lust after you, but don’t make a demand I can’t hope to meet!’

Respect, care, like, lust, she enumerated and her chin came up even higher. ‘Why not? What’s wrong with me?’ she shot back at him baldly.

Her obstinacy in sticking to her point sent Angelo’s temper shooting up the scale. ‘Nothing is wrong with you. I just don’t
do
love and romance! ‘

Flora lifted and dropped her slim shoulders in a shrug of finality. ‘Well, I feel too young and lively to settle for respect and liking!’

Angelo ground his even white teeth together and mentally counted to ten. It didn’t help him overcome the suspicion that she kept on raising the bar he had to reach to heights he had no desire to aspire to. ‘No matter what I offer you, it’s never enough!’

‘Be warned: our differences cut both ways. I might come and live with you and then fall madly in love with some other guy,’ Flora pointed out dulcetly.

‘No, you won’t,
enamorada mia
,’ Angelo told her with ferocious cool. ‘I won’t give you that kind of freedom.’

Her eyes danced with provocation. ‘You work long
hours. Are you planning to lock me up every night in the cellar?’

‘No. I plan to keep you far too busy in bed! ‘ Angelo ground out. ‘You won’t have the energy to chase other men.’

‘How do I know you’re not all talk and no action?’ Flora tossed back before she could think better of it.

His mouth closed over hers again with passionate punitive force. He crushed her to his lean, powerful body and her every skin cell leapt with sensual energy, sensation swelling her breasts and sentencing her to a bone-deep ache between her thighs. He kissed her until she was breathless and trembling and strung high on a hunger more powerful than any she had ever known. To catch her breath she had to tear her mouth from his and she was so weak in the aftermath with the lust she had decried that she bowed her brow down on his shoulder while she fought to get a hold on herself again. He had the power to turn her inside out with a single kiss and the awareness shocked her.

‘I’m just warning you,’ she contrived to trade in a final assault. ‘Lust isn’t enough for me and if I meet someone else who—’

Angelo rested a long brown finger against her parted lips to silence her, his narrowed gaze bright and fierce. ‘I will make it enough,
enamorada mia
,’ he told her rawly.

L
ITTLE
more than a week after having that conversation, Flora received a visit from her friend, Jemima, whom she had not seen for several months. Jemima was married to Alejandro, a Spanish aristocrat, with whom she had two children, Alfie and Candida. Flora had got into the habit of visiting the family at their castle in Spain until Mariska had become an orphan, from which time Flora’s trips abroad had taken her to see her niece in the Netherlands instead.