Esther Abbott was backpacking across Europe when she was approached about being a surrogate. Desperately in need of the money, Esther agreed. But when the deal falls apart, she’s left pregnant and alone, with no one to turn to...except the baby’s father!

Learning he is to have a child with a woman he’s never met is a scandal Italian billionaire Renzo Valenti can’t afford. Following his recent bitter divorce and with an impeccable reputation to maintain, Renzo has no choice but to claim the child...and Esther as his wife!

To my parents, who actually are great and have

always supported me. In spite of what 90%

of my characters’ parents might suggest.

CHAPTER ONE

“THE THING IS, Mr. Valenti, I’m pregnant.”

Renzo Valenti, heir to the Valenti family real estate fortune, known womanizer and chronic overindulger, stared down at the stranger standing in his entryway.

He had never seen the woman before in his life. Of that he was nearly one hundred percent certain.

He did not associate with women like this. Women who looked like they had spent a hot, sweaty afternoon traipsing through the streets of Rome, rather than a hot, sweaty afternoon tangled in silk sheets.

She was red-cheeked and disheveled, her face void of makeup, long dark hair half falling out of a bun that looked like an afterthought.

She was dressed the same as many American college students who flooded the city in the summer. She was wearing a form-fitting black tank top and a long, ankle-length skirt that nearly covered her dusty feet and flat, unremarkable sandals that appeared to be falling apart.

Had she been walking by him outside, he would never have paid her any notice. Except she was in his home. And she had just said words to him no woman had said to him since he was sixteen years old.

But they meant nothing, as she meant nothing.

“Congratulations. Or condolences,” he said. “Depending.”

“You don’t understand.”

“No,” he said, his voice cutting through the relative silence of the grand antechamber. “I don’t. You practically burst into my home telling my housekeeper you had to see me, and now here you are, having pushed your way in.”

“I didn’t push my way in. Luciana was more than happy to let me in.”

He would never fire his housekeeper. And the unfortunate thing was, the older woman knew it. So when she had let a hysterical girl into his home, he had a feeling she considered it punishment for his notorious behavior with the opposite sex.

Which was not fair. This little creature—who looked as though she would be most at home sitting on a sidewalk in the vicinity of Haight-Ashbury, playing an acoustic guitar for coins—might well be some man’s unholy punishment. But she wasn’t his.

“Regardless, you’re not drawing this out and making a show, and I have no patience for either.”

“It’s your baby.”

He laughed. There was absolutely no other response for such an outrageous statement. And there was no other way to remove the strange weight, the strange tension that gripped him when she spoke the words.

He knew why it affected him. But it should not.

He could imagine no circumstance under which he would touch such a ridiculous little hippie. And even so, he had just spent the past six months devoted to the world’s most obscene farce of a marriage.

And though

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