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she was short of money, but someone in his position would have no idea of what that would mean in real terms. To him, being broke might mean having a pretty standard car—the idea that she would simply be unable to pay for road tax and petrol, let alone the cost of learning to drive would be completely outside his experience.
‘No, I still haven’t got my licence,’ she said, just wanting to get away now and as soon as possible. Away from that disdainful face and the memory of what she had just allowed to happen. All she wanted was to wash away every trace of him… She would blow the expense, put the immersion heater on and submerge herself in a hot, deep bath the minute she got home. ‘No, I came by train.’
Emma glanced at her watch, but the blur of numbers danced in front of her eyes. At least she had told him, and he hadn’t believed her. Gino would be unable to blame her and maybe this was all for the best. She need never see him again and she would manage. Somehow. ‘And, in fact, I ought to be getting back.’
‘Yes. I will order a car,’ said Vincenzo, sliding his mobile phone from his pocket.
‘That won’t be necessary, thank you. I’ll be fine.’
‘You think perhaps I am playing the gentleman, cara?’ he taunted silkily, with a shake of his dark head. ‘Alas, you are mistaken. You may be content to take public transport, but I can assure you that I am not.’
Emma stared at him, putting her confusion and interpretation of mixed messages down to the fact that she was tired and aching. ‘I don’t quite understand what you mean.’
‘Don’t you?’ questioned Vincenzo softly. ‘Haven’t you realised that I shall be coming with you?’
Emma stared at him in alarm. ‘What, you mean—to Boisdale? But I thought…’
‘What did you think?’ he put in as her strained whisper faded into an open-mouthed look of disbelief.
‘That you didn’t believe me.’
‘I don’t.’ His mouth hardened as he punched out a number on his phone, and said something swiftly in his Sicilian dialect, before meeting her gaze with cold, hard eyes. ‘But the easiest way to rule out a whole load of unnecessary paperwork and time is to see the baby for myself.’
‘You think you’ll be able to establish his paternity just by looking at him?’
‘Of course I do. The Cardini genes are unmistakable,’ he said, his voice harsh as he called her bluff. ‘You know that as well as I do.’
Emma swallowed. ‘He’ll be asleep.’
So now she had backed herself into a corner. ‘So much the better—for I have no wish to unsettle the child.’ A low beeping sound emitting from his phone alerted his attention and he shot Emma a disparaging glance. ‘Now put your shoes back on, cara—and let’s get this over with. The car’s here.’
IT WAS the journey from hell.
Despite the quietly opulent luxury of Vincenzo’s chauffeur-driven car, Emma sat bolt upright on the soft leather seat as if she were facing a firing squad. Yet that was exactly how it felt—only she happened to be facing the lethal weapons of his words rather than the cold metal of a gun.
But if she stopped to think about it—what had she really expected to happen? She knew what kind of man Vincenzo was—had she really imagined that he would just calmly accept such a momentous piece of information from her? Perhaps that he would just nod sagely and give her a divorce and then politely ask when it might be convenient for him to visit his son? As if.
What a fool she had been not to have anticipated this.
But at least this way it would soon be all over and there would be no awful delay to endure. No feeling threatened while she waited anxiously to see just what he would do next. Vincenzo would soon set eyes on Gino and would know instantly that the baby had sprung from his loins. Emma knotted her fingers together. And of course that would bring up problems all of its own—but at least she would have done the right thing, and after the initial anger had subsided, surely they were mature enough to work out some kind of effective compromise.
‘So who has been looking after him today?’
The question shot at her from out of the gloom and somehow her estranged husband had managed to turn it into an accusation. ‘My friend Joanna.’
‘I see.’ In the dim light Vincenzo’s mouth twisted, but Emma noticed, as no doubt he had intended her to do. ‘She is experienced in the care of children?’
‘She’s got a little boy about the same age,’ Emma put in hastily, hating the fact that she felt the need to defend herself and yet wanting to impress on him that she was a good mother. ‘And she’s brilliant with him. This evening she’s left her son with her husband so that she could put mine to bed in his own home.’
A long finger drummed a slightly menacing little beat on the taut surface of one tensile thigh. ‘So tell me, Emma—how often do you leave your child with someone else while you go off to London to have casual sex?’
It was a bitter and damning allegation and Emma felt her body begin to shake with the injustice of it. She shook her head and stared up into his face, unable to help the indignant tremble of her lips. ‘How dare you say something like that?’
‘You mean, that the way you behaved today with me isn’t the way you usually behave with men?’
‘You know damned well it isn’t!
Yes, deep down he knew that. It had been evident in the hungry way she had responded to him today—and in the general and conflicting air of untouchability which she had always possessed. Hadn’t it been that very quality which had first so ensnared him and which had made him lose control more times than he cared to remember?
But Vincenzo was a Sicilian man—and that carried with it a whole lot of complex issues about how women should and shouldn’t behave when it came to sex. Back there in the Vinoly suite, Emma had behaved with the wild abandon of a mistress—not a young mother who had left her baby for the day with someone who wasn’t family! And although he had revelled in the experience they had just shared, there was a part of him which also despised it.
Vincenzo turned his head to stare at the darkened English countryside which was rushing past the window, watching as the car slowed and then passed through a surprisingly impressive entrance gate, before making its way up a wide, tree-lined drive. On the far horizon, he could see an imposing-looking house which stood in an elevated position, all lit up and glowing golden.
‘You live here?’ he demanded.
For one moment, Emma was so tempted to tell him that, yes, she did. That really she was simply pretending to be hard-up as some kind of diversion in order to amuse herself!
‘Hardly,’ she said drily. ‘I rent a cottage in the grounds. It’s over there. Can you tell the chauffeur to turn to the right and then travel straight on past the lake?’
Vincenzo clicked on the intercom and spoke to the driver in rapid Italian as the limousine changed direction. It purred its way to a smooth halt in front of March Cottage and he found his eyes narrowing in surprise, for this was not what he had been expecting, either.
It was tiny; one of those cute little houses which always seemed to feature on the front of postcards—with its stone walls and some sort of leafy thing scrambling around the front door, over which hung an old-fashioned lantern.
Although a gust of cold wind whirled round them as they stepped from the car, Emma’s palms were clammy with sweat as she turned to him, wondering what was going on behind that forbidding profile as he stared up at the front of the cottage. ‘I’d better go in first and warn—’
‘No.’