Pregnancy of Revenge (14 page)

Only then was Charlie aware there were a few guests strolling around the garden. She went from outraged anger to mortification in one second flat.

'Unless of course you would like everyone in the hotel to know you are pregnant. After all, you had no hesitation in telling my housekeeper before me. That is why you called me, isn't it?' he demanded curtly.

Fiery
colour
burned her cheeks. Her Italian must have been better than she thought. Jake knew she was pregnant. As if that were not bad enough, so did almost everyone in the hotel, and she had a horrible suspicion that if Jake ever discovered he was the last to find out, he was not going to be delighted.

'I—I—
uh,
yes.
And it seems like a good idea to talk in private,' she said, her huge eyes studiously avoiding his. 'If you'll follow me, my home is around the back. Over there, the west wing, actually.'

CHAPTER
 
SEVEN

CHARLIE
heaved a sigh of relief when they finally reached the safety of her sitting room without encountering anyone. 'Would you like a drink?
Tea or coffee?'
She headed for the kitchen, and turned. 'Or something stronger,' she suggested politely. Jake was standing in the middle of the room, big, dark and threatening.

'No, thank you. I've had a stomach full of your English tea.' By the grim glance he gave her, he'd had enough of her as well.

Charlie ran clammy hands down her shorts, hovering in the kitchen doorway, uncertain what to do next. Her shock and delight at his arrival had quickly changed to fury and finally embarrassment. She should never have made that phone call. "I—I take it you got my message,' she said, swallowing nervously, her heart beating like a drum in her chest.

'Yes.' His dark eyes didn't leave her face as he moved to stop a few inches in front of her. 'Interesting, Charlotte: your knowledge of Italian has improved enough to tell my housekeeper you are pregnant, and I am going to be a papa. Not something I appreciated,' he said through gritted teeth. 'Nor having to disturb my pilot on a Sunday and fly halfway across Europe to discover the truth.'

She had never seen him so angry. It was in every line of his big taut body, intimidating in its intensity. 'You could have just phoned,' Charlie murmured when he continued to stand and stare grimly at her, and she lowered her eyes, unable to meet the hard censure in his.

The call had been foolish, she knew, but then she had been hurting badly. She had told him she loved him, laid her heart on the line in the hope he cared, and yet he had not called her for a month—and to see a picture of him in a magazine with another woman... She had flipped. Her hunger for him was an ever-present ache; the longing to see his rare brilliant smile, to hear his voice, to touch him, haunted her dreams.

'No, I could not,' he said. 'A phone call wouldn't do for me. I want to be looking into your eyes when you tell me I am going to be a father.' His dark eyes narrowed to angry slits, and he caught her chin with a thumb and finger and forced her to look at him. 'Are you pregnant, Charlotte?'

'Yes, I am,' she said bluntly. She was thrilled and excited at the prospect, but also frightened, and she wanted nothing more than for Jake to take her in his arms and tell her it would be all right. But by the look on his face she doubted he would.

'And just when did you fall pregnant?' he demanded roughly.

'Seven weeks ago.' She still had not got over the shock that she had got pregnant the first or second time she had made love. 'How unlucky is that?' Charlie didn't realize she had spoken her thought out loud until his hand fell abruptly from her chin and he stepped back and looked at her as if she were contaminated. She saw the
humourless
smile that twisted his firm lips and flinched at the venom in it.

'Unlucky?' His dark eyes held tightly leashed rage.
'For me, maybe, but damned convenient for you.
Amazingly, it is exactly how long we have known each other.'

Jake was madder than hell. It was so obvious: she had put him squarely in the frame as the father...but was he? No woman had enraged and inflamed him as comprehensively as Charlotte. He had tried to put her out of his mind,
but his body would not let him, a galling admission to make, but not one he intended to act on. His dark eyes raked
assessingly
over her. The tiny white shorts hugged her hips like a second skin, and her stomach still appeared flat, but perhaps her breasts were a little fuller... No! He didn't want to go there. Yes, he did. But he had no intention of being conned by a blue-eyed little gold digger, however desirable, his hard eyes sweeping back up to her lovely face.

Isn’t it rather early to have a pregnancy confirmed?' he queried with biting cynicism.
'Unless the woman in question is eager to get pregnant.'

'Not if you are as sick as a chip every day for three weeks,' she flashed, looking up at him, and stopped. 'You don't believe me,' she said slowly. She could see it in his eyes, in the cynical curl of his lips. She shook her head, and, turning away from him, she crossed to the sofa and collapsed onto it, folding her arms around her waist, suddenly cold. It had never occurred to her Jake wouldn't believe her.

'I never said that,' he pointed out, following her.

'You didn't need to,' she flared back at him. She could see the anger in every tense line of his
body,
hear it in every word he spoke. The Jake she loved, the Jake she thought she knew, was not this furious stranger towering over her.

'Can you blame me? You would not be the first woman to try and trap a wealthy husband with a mythical pregnancy. I want proof.'

A wealthy ...proof...
Charlie heaved in a shuddering breath. She was slow to anger, but this arrogant man standing before her had succeeded in doing just that. Jake had arrived at her home unannounced, insulted her and her friend, and then had the colossal nerve to suggest she was lying and was only after his money.

Fury made her leap up from the sofa and stand glaring at
him. 'Call
yourself
a man?' she derided, her eyes flashing blue flame. 'You sleep with me for a fortnight and then string me along with a couple of calls, ignore me for a month, and then you come charging over here in your private jet, full of self-righteous rage. Terrified I might cost you
money,''
she said with enough scorn to make him clench his fists at his sides to control his anger. 'Demanding proof I'm pregnant.' Shaking with rage, she shoved him in the chest with the flat of her hand, and his mouth tightened to a thin line, but he let her. 'What do you suggest?' she demanded hysterically. 'I slash my belly open to show you? Is that it, is that what you really want—a convenient termination? Is that cheap enough for you?'

Jake's cool
façade
cracked wide open and he paled like a man in shock. 'No.
Dio,
no.' His strong hands reached out to grasp her shaking shoulders and he pulled her to him, his face only inches from her own. 'Don't say that, Charlotte, don't even think it.' His black eyes, wide with horror, were fixed on hers, his fingers biting into her flesh.

Shocked out of her near hysterics by the force of his reaction, she snapped, 'Don't
worry,
I have every intention of keeping my child. And let go of me, you're hurting me.'

Jake drew in a deep, audible breath. 'I didn't realize.' His hands gentled on her shoulders, but he did not let her go.

Which was just as well because Charlie suddenly felt weak.
'What a disaster,' she murmured. Her hormones were all over the place, and the emotional turmoil of the past few weeks was finally getting to her. And discovering the father of her child thought she was after his money didn't help. The only positive was Jake had made it very clear he didn't want her to terminate the pregnancy.

It does not have to be a disaster,' Jake said. 'I will marry you.'

Her head jerked up. 'Marry—? If that was a proposal it
lacked something in the offering,' she said bluntly. 'I am having this baby, and, I can assure you, living as I do, I am in an ideal position to bring up my own child.' She was being perverse, she knew. Jake was offering her everything she had ever dreamed of, and half an hour ago she would have jumped at the chance, but now she was no longer so sure. She had never heard him so angry or so insulting.

Jake stiffened, his hands dropping from her shoulders, and suddenly he was back to his cool, arrogant best, all trace of emotion gone, more like the Jake she knew so well. 'Don't be ridiculous. There is nothing ideal about bringing up a child without a father. Believe me, I know. So we will get married as soon as it can be arranged.'

He was right, she knew. So why was she so reluctant? Because she wanted it all: she wanted Jake to love her, as she loved him. Was she being unreasonable?

'You know it makes sense,' he prompted. His dark eyes meshed with hers, and something in the glittering depths made her heart twist. 'What I said before about being trapped into marriage, I didn't mean it—not with you, never with you. But I was shocked and mad at the way I heard the news, and reacted badly.'

'Very,' she said dryly, but she could understand. Telling his housekeeper had been a bit over the top.

'The two weeks we were together were the happiest I have spent in my life,' he said, and Charlie felt a glimmer of hope ignite in her heart. 'We are good together.' He lifted a finger and trailed it gently down her cheek. 'You know we are, better than good. Marry me. You know you want to.' His hand slipped down to curve her waist and his hand on her naked flesh sent a shiver down her spine.

Jake was the only man in the world for her and, with his eyes still locked to hers, the warmth in them unmistakable, she wondered why she was arguing with him. He was of
fering
her everything she ever wanted.
If
only he could say the word
love.

Then he broke the eye contact and his hand moved to rest on her flat stomach, a slow smile curving his wide mouth.
'I
take it the child is mine. Not that it matters.'

Fury swept through her again and she batted his hand away. 'Yes, it damn well is!' She glared at him, her eyes wild with outrage. 'You are the only man
I
was ever dumb enough to sleep with in my life, and look where that got me!' she snarled, mortally offended he even needed to ask.

She felt him tense and saw a gleam of incredible emotion in his dark eyes before long lashes lowered, masking his expression. 'All the more reason why you should marry me,' he argued. 'You find me irresistible among men.' A sudden rare brilliant smile illuminated his extraordinarily handsome features. 'You love me.'

'Sex, that's all it was,' Charlie shot back. 'You conceited jerk, that's all I was...' She stopped, as the last of his insulting question registered.
Not that it matters.
He had said—Jake was prepared to marry her unconditionally. He must love her even if he could not say the words.

'No,' Jake denied, it was never just sex with you and me.'

An image flashed before him of Charlotte naked in the shower their first night together, her legs wrapped around his waist, her eyes wide and incredulous as he had surged into her sleek, silken body without a thought of protection. And earlier, when he'd registered the tightness of her incredible body, her startled gasp, and concluded it must have been a while since she had been with a man. Now he knew the truth: she had been a virgin, and his mouth twisted in a grimace of self-recrimination. He had treated her abominably. It wasn't surprising she was reluctant to marry him.

His heavy-lidded eyes swept over her lovely face and her
scantily clad body. He was only a hand's reach away; he could feel her body heat, scent her unique fragrance, and the rigid control he had managed to maintain over his rampant libido finally snapped.

Charlie flinched as he closed the distance between them and rested a strong, lean hand on her shoulder. '
Charlotta
,' he said. 'Please marry me.'

Her head told her to wait, step away. But her heart kept her still, the soft
please
echoing in her head. She felt the tremor in the hand that rested on her shoulder. He was so close that she could see the tell-tale darkening of his gorgeous eyes. And ultimately she said, 'Yes,' because she loved him and could not say no.