Kitabı oku: «Reunited By A Shock Pregnancy»

CHAPTER ONE

SHE SHOULDN’T BE HERE! Not at her ex-husband’s wedding.

Sienna Fisher glanced frantically around the packed church, wondering if she could escape without anyone noticing.

There was not a chance, she decided, her heart sinking. She was wedged into a pew filled with guests, and sitting next to her was the little girl she had found crying outside in the graveyard. Sienna’s maternal instincts had been aroused by the child’s distress and she’d taken hold of her hand and led her into the church via the vestry to find her grateful mother, who was sitting on the other side of her daughter.

The organist started playing and as the rousing notes of Handel’s Arrival of the Queen of Sheba soared to the rafters, a ripple of interest ran through the congregation. Every head turned towards the main door to catch a first glimpse of the bride. Only Sienna stared straight ahead at the broad shoulders of Domenico De Conti, the man she had married in this very church ten years ago.

Standing with Nico was his younger brother, Daniele. Both men were tall but Nico had the advantage of a good three inches over Danny. Despite a five-year age-gap the brothers had always been close, and it was no surprise to Sienna that Nico had chosen Danny to be his best man again—just as he had done for their wedding.

Her breath caught in her throat when Nico turned his head. She assumed he would look towards his bride but instead his gaze was focused directly on her, as if some sixth sense had alerted him to her presence. From across the nave, she sensed his shock. Evidently her wide-brimmed hat did not conceal her face as well as she had hoped it would, but she hadn’t planned to hang around long enough for Nico to notice her. She’d just wanted a glimpse of the man she had once been madly in love with before he had betrayed her and broken her heart.

Sienna hadn’t intended to enter the church, and, earlier, she had hidden behind a tombstone when she’d seen Nico and Danny arrive. Nico must still have a passion for fast cars and had driven himself to his wedding in a sleek silver sports car. She’d watched the two men chat to the vicar for a few minutes before they had walked into the church, and she’d been about to leave when she was alerted to the sound of a child sobbing.

It was purely by accident that she was part of the congregation. Her heart fluttered in panic. She was too far away from Nico to make out the colour of his eyes that burned into her like laser beams, but she knew they were the bright blue of the sky above the moors on a cloudless summer’s day. His eyes and incredible bone structure were the only features he had inherited from his English mother, but for the rest: his almost black hair that was swept back from his brow, the dark stubble shading his jaw and his olive-gold skin denoted his Italian heritage.

Ten years ago Nico had been a boyishly handsome bridegroom. Now he was in his mid-thirties, his features had honed and hardened to chiselled perfection. He was sinfully gorgeous, with a latent strength and power in his whipcord body that his elegant grey morning suit could not disguise.

Sienna snatched her gaze from Nico’s, shaken by the effect he had on her after all this time. They had been divorced for eight years and she had come to the church today to prove to herself that she was over him. Her heart thudded as she waited for him to denounce her. Surely he would stop the wedding and instruct an usher to escort her from the building.

She felt her cheeks grow warm at the prospect of being humiliated in front of the population of the Yorkshire village where she had grown up. Although she hadn’t recognised many locals in Much Matcham’s pretty church of St Augustine’s. She supposed that most of the guests at the high-society wedding were from London, or Verona where Nico’s hotel business, De Conti Leisure, was based.

Her eyes were drawn involuntarily back to his dangerously attractive face and a sizzle of heat seared her body, a hunger that only Nico had ever stirred in her. Even more confusing was the fierce possessiveness that swept through her. He was hers, cried a voice inside her. But in a few minutes he would promise himself to another woman. Tears, hot and unexpected, stung her eyes when he finally turned his head away and looked to the front of the church while he waited for his bride.

Sienna’s hands shook as she pretended to study the order of service sheet that an usher had given her. ‘We’re running a little late,’ the usher had told her, interrupting her attempt to explain that she wasn’t actually a wedding guest. ‘Are you a friend of the bride or groom?’

‘Groom, I suppose, but...’

‘Sit here, please.’ The usher had practically pushed her into a pew and now she was trapped and about to witness the marriage of her ex-husband to the vision of ethereal loveliness, wearing an exquisite wedding gown, who had joined Nico in front of the altar.

Except that it wasn’t Nico. It was his brother standing next to the bride.

‘In the presence of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, we have come together to witness the marriage of Daniele to Victoria,’ the vicar intoned.

It was Danny’s wedding! A riot of emotions stormed through Sienna. Her thoughts flew back to the previous weekend when she had visited her grandmother at the nursing home in York where ninety-year-old Rose Fisher had moved to eighteen months ago.

‘Much Matcham’s local newspaper is delivered to me every week and I was surprised to read that your husband is getting married again,’ Grandma Rose had commented over tea and scones.

Sienna’s stomach had swooped and she’d set her cup back on its saucer clumsily so that the delicate china rattled. ‘There’s no reason why my ex-husband shouldn’t remarry,’ she’d said coolly. But nothing fooled her grandmother and Rose had given her a sharp look. ‘I imagine he needs a wife to help him run Sethbury Hall, and...give him an heir.’ Pain had lanced through Sienna. Her inability to have a child was something she tried not to think about, just as she deliberately blocked out thoughts of the baby she had lost years ago.

‘Who is Nico marrying?’ She’d striven to sound uninterested as she’d taken the newspaper from Grandma Rose and skimmed down the births, deaths and marriages column to read the announcement of the wedding of Miss Victoria Harington and Mr Domenico De Conti, which would take place on the tenth of June at St Augustine’s church in Much Matcham. There had not been a picture of the couple, and now, as Sienna watched Danny turn his head and smile at his bride, she could only suppose that the paper had muddled the De Conti brothers’ names.

The rest of the wedding ceremony passed in a blur until the vicar finally pronounced that Daniele and Victoria were husband and wife. As the couple walked back down the aisle and the guests spilled from the pews to follow them out of the church, Sienna edged towards the vestry, hoping to slip away unnoticed.

‘Sienna? What are you doing here?’

She had almost made it to the vestry door when an achingly familiar voice made her freeze and simultaneously sent molten heat flooding through her veins. Nico’s husky accent had always made her weak at the knees. There was nothing she could do but try to brazen it out, and she squared her shoulders before she swung round to face him.

‘Hello, Nico.’ Was that breathless, sexy voice hers? Sienna cursed silently, flushing when she saw mockery in his piercing blue eyes. He skimmed his gaze over her in a proprietorial manner that was totally inappropriate considering their history. She felt a sharp, almost painful tingle in her nipples, and did not need to glance down to know that the betraying hard peaks were visible beneath her yellow silk dress.

She had deliberately worn a summery outfit: a white hat decorated with yellow flowers, champagne-coloured stilettos and matching handbag so that people would assume she was one of the wedding guests milling around outside the church before the ceremony. The predatory gleam in Nico’s eyes made her acutely conscious of how the close-fitting dress clung to her breasts and hips and the silky material felt sensuous against her skin.

Up close he was even more devastating. A shaft of sunlight filtering in through one of the high windows danced in his night-dark hair and emphasised the hard angles and planes of his face. He smelled divine. Sienna breathed in the spicy notes of his aftershave mixed with something else that was evocatively male and uniquely Nico. An unbidden memory filled her mind, of him sprawled on the tangled sheets after they had made love, sweat beading the dark hairs on his chest, his shaft already hardening again as he pulled her down on top of him.

In the early days of their marriage they hadn’t been able to keep their hands off each other and their passion had been explosive. But that was before she had lost the baby, and then sex had been dictated by fertility charts as her desire to fall pregnant again had become an obsession that had driven a wedge between her and Nico.

She was an idiot to have come here today, Sienna thought bleakly. It would have been better if she had never seen him again. Kinder to her foolish heart that still yearned for the relationship they had once had, even though her sensible head knew it had been a romantic fantasy she had built up in her imagination. But she wasn’t imagining the frank awareness in Nico’s eyes. She was overwhelmed by his raw sexual magnetism and dismayed by her reaction to him.

‘Sienna.’ The impatience in his voice pulled her mind back to the present and her embarrassing situation. ‘I didn’t see your name on the guest list.’ He frowned. ‘I’m certain Danny would have told me that he had invited you to his wedding.’

‘I...um...’ She could feel her face burning. ‘I saw in the local paper that Danny was getting married at St Augustine’s. Churches are open to the public and anyone has the right to attend a wedding taking place in a church. I wanted to give Danny and his new bride my best wishes.’

Nico’s eyes narrowed. ‘It’s odd that you knew it was my brother’s wedding. The local paper mixed up our names when they printed the forthcoming marriage announcement.’

‘My grandmother told me.’ Sienna crossed her fingers behind her back as she made the white lie. ‘Rose keeps in touch with your grandmother and when they spoke recently, Iris told her about Danny’s wedding.’

She lifted her chin and forced herself to meet Nico’s speculative gaze, hoping to project an image of cool composure she did not feel. Her insides were churning, her heart was racing and there was a dull ache low in her pelvis that made her press her thighs tightly together.

‘So you didn’t come because you hoped to see me?’ he drawled.

‘Of course not. What reason could I possibly have for wanting to see you again?’ She was defensive, mortified that he might guess the truth. ‘Our disaster of a marriage was over a long time ago.’

‘I wouldn’t call it a disaster,’ he murmured, taking her breath away with that mind-boggling statement. ‘There were good times.’ His voice lowered in a way that sent a shiver across Sienna’s skin. ‘Some very good times.’

‘When we were in bed, you mean?’ She had intended to sound sarcastic but the words emerged as a whisper. She licked her dry lips with the tip of her tongue. When had Nico moved closer so that his thigh was almost touching hers? ‘A marriage needs more to sustain it than dynamite sex.’

His lips twitched and she hated that he found her amusing, but when he spoke there was no mockery in his voice, nor in the fierce gleam in his eyes. ‘We were dynamite together, weren’t we, cara?’

‘Don’t,’ she said sharply, trying to ignore the leap her heart gave at his careless endearment. She stiffened when he lifted his hand and brushed his finger lightly down her cheek. The action was a blatant invasion of her personal space but she didn’t pull away, couldn’t. Her feet were glued to the floor and her gaze was trapped by his as she drowned in the cobalt-blue depths of his eyes. Everything faded and there were only the two of them standing in the church where they had once promised to love and honour each other, forsaking all others, for the rest of their lives.

Nico lowered his head so that his impossibly wicked mouth was inches from hers. ‘You are even more beautiful than my memory serves me, Si-enna.’ He rolled the syllables around his tongue, making her name sound like a caress. ‘It makes me wonder why I let you go.’

The spell shattered and she jerked away from him so forcefully that her hip bone collided with the end of a pew. ‘You were sleeping with your secretary.’ Hurt and humiliation, those two poisonous serpents that had haunted her for years, coiled inside her. ‘You didn’t let me go, I chose to leave,’ she snapped, her voice too loud, bouncing off the walls of the church.

‘Oh, Nico, there you are,’ came a softer voice. Looking past him, Sienna wished the floor would open up and swallow her when she saw Nico’s grandmother manoeuvring her wheelchair along the aisle towards them. But if Iris Mandeville had heard her angry outburst she made no comment. ‘Sienna, how delightful to see you.’ The elderly woman greeted her warmly. ‘How is your grandmother? I haven’t spoken to Rose for months.’

Sienna flushed when Nico gave her a hard stare. Clearly he was wondering how she could have known it was Danny’s wedding if Iris had not told Grandma Rose.

‘I am unable to visit Rose so often now that she lives in York and I have to use this wretched contraption.’ Iris tapped the arm of her wheelchair. ‘Rheumatoid arthritis has left me rather immobile,’ she answered Sienna’s unspoken question before turning her attention to her grandson.

‘Domenico, you are wanted for the photographs. I can’t get my wheelchair down the church steps but there is disabled access through the vestry. Sienna, my dear, would you be so kind to help me out to the car? Hobbs is bringing it round to the side of the church. Jacqueline was supposed to help me, but of course she wants to be included in the photographs.’

Sienna had noticed Nico and Danny’s mother during the ceremony. Jacqueline Mandeville loved being the centre of attention and her extravagant hat festooned with ostrich feathers had made her impossible to miss. When Sienna had married Nico, her mother-in-law had worn a dramatic ivory-coloured outfit, which had outshone her store-bought wedding dress. She had been so young and unsure of herself, she remembered ruefully. Her voluminous dress had hidden her baby bump, but everyone in the church, everyone in the village, had known that she was pregnant.

She jerked her mind from the past and forced a smile for Nico’s grandmother. ‘Yes, of course I’ll push your wheelchair out to the car.’

Footsteps sounded on the stone floor behind her. ‘Nico, I’ve been looking everywhere for you,’ a voice said tersely. ‘The photographer wants to take group pictures and Victoria is going into meltdown because you’d disappeared and one of the bridesmaids says she feels sick.’ Daniele De Conti stopped dead and stared. ‘Sienna? Wow! You look amazing.’

‘Hello, Danny,’ she murmured, taken aback by the undisguised male interest in Nico’s brother’s eyes. He had only been married for five minutes! But she remembered that he had always been an incorrigible flirt. Danny was a year older than her and when they were teenagers he’d asked her out a couple of times. But it had been nothing serious, and the minute she’d met Nico she’d only had eyes for him.

Against her will, her gaze was drawn to Nico, and her heart collided with her ribs when she recognised a glint of possessiveness in his eyes as well as something hotter, hungrier that sent a tremor through her. She was barely aware that Danny was speaking again.

‘I must say you are the last person I expected to be here today, Sienna.’

‘I just came to the church...’ she began awkwardly, feeling herself blush. She tensed when Nico slid his arm around her waist.

‘Sienna is here because I invited her,’ he told his brother smoothly. ‘I didn’t reveal the name of my plus-one guest as there was a chance that Sienna wouldn’t be free to travel to Yorkshire this weekend. But luckily for me she was able to come to the wedding.’

What the devil was he playing at? She was conscious that Danny and Iris were both looking at her curiously but her gaze was riveted on Nico, on his mouth as he lowered his head towards her.

He was going to kiss her! She read the message in his brilliant blue eyes and her heart did a somersault. Her common sense told her to step away from him, run, scream—maybe all three, but she had never been sensible around this man. She opened her mouth to tell Danny that she wasn’t Nico’s plus-one guest, no way.

‘Actually that’s not...’ The rest of her words were smothered by Nico’s mouth as he crushed her lips beneath his in a fierce kiss that made her head spin. His arm felt like a band of steel around her waist and there was blatant possession in the way he clamped his hand on her hip.

Her brain told her to pull away from him and demand to know what he was doing. But her body reacted instinctively to the heat emanating from him and the bold demands of his mouth on hers. The years fell away and she was eighteen again, a girl on the cusp of womanhood, standing on a windswept moor and overwhelmed by the wild passion that Nico stirred in her. A tremor ran through her as she opened her mouth beneath his and kissed him back. Her body recognised his touch and desire swept fierce and hot through her veins as he deepened the kiss and her lips clung to his.

And then, as suddenly and unexpectedly as it had begun, it was over. He lifted his head and she saw a hard glitter in his eyes that sent a ripple of unease through her when she reflected on how easily, how shamelessly she had capitulated to him. Would she never learn that he was dangerous to her peace of mind? Their break-up had almost destroyed her but eventually she had grown up, moved on and established a good life for herself. She could not let a kiss from a skilled seducer who knew how to press all her buttons turn her into the doormat she had been when she was Nico De Conti’s teenage bride.

He withdrew his arm from her waist and she felt as if part of her had been severed. Get a grip, she ordered herself angrily. Nico had taken an outrageous liberty when he’d kissed her and she should slap his face. At the very least, she should ask him why he had lied to his brother and grandmother about inviting her to the wedding. She was about to challenge him but he swung round and started walking towards the main door of the church.

‘Photographs,’ he reminded a startled-looking Danny. ‘Sienna, if you wouldn’t mind helping Nonna to the car? I’ll see you back at the hall for the reception.’

Like hell you will. She clenched her hands by her sides as she watched him stride away. His arrogance made her seethe, but out of respect for his grandmother she swallowed her furious retort.

‘Domenico is so commanding, just like his grandfather was,’ Iris murmured when Sienna pushed her wheelchair into the vestry and down the ramp that led out of the church. Fortunately the chauffeur was on hand to assist the elderly lady into the car, and Sienna’s muttered uncomplimentary remark about her ex-husband’s bossiness went unheard.

‘I’m not coming to the reception,’ she told Iris. ‘I don’t know why Nico said he had invited me to Danny’s wedding. Perhaps his plus-one guest couldn’t make it.’ She disliked the idea that he had decided she could stand in for his current girlfriend, whoever that might be. Nico had a high sex drive and it was inconceivable that he did not have a woman in his life.

Thankfully Iris did not refer to that kiss, but Sienna unconsciously ran her tongue over her stinging lips. The taste of Nico was still in her mouth. ‘I have to drive back to London this afternoon and spend the rest of the weekend preparing for an important business meeting on Monday,’ she made the excuse as she stepped back from the car.

Iris nodded. ‘Rose told me that your organic skincare company is hugely successful and you have won awards for your products. She is very proud of you.’

Sienna felt a pang of guilt thinking that she should visit her grandmother more often. She tried to get up to Yorkshire once a month, but running her own business left her little leisure time. She frowned, trying to remember when she had last met up with her friends for a drink. And as for dating, it was over a year since she had accepted a dinner invitation from a man.

Why had she allowed her social life to dwindle to practically nothing? she asked herself. She was only just twenty-nine and she had a sudden sense that life was passing her by. She loved her career and the independence it gave her but she was aware that something was missing. Love, companionship, sex. Where had that thought come from? Her lack of a sex life had never bothered her before today, but when Nico had kissed her it had felt as if a floodgate had opened and need had throbbed between her legs.

She was jolted from her thoughts when she realised that Iris seemed to be struggling to breathe. The elderly lady clutched her chest.

‘What’s wrong? Are you feeling unwell?’ Sienna asked urgently.

‘I’m having an angina attack,’ Iris gasped. ‘I thought I had put my medication in my handbag. It’s a pump spray that I use under my tongue. But it’s not here.’ She closed her handbag that she had been rifling through. ‘I must have left it in my bedroom.’

‘Should I call an ambulance?’

‘There’s no need. I’ll be fine once I have my medication. Will you come in the car with me back to the house? You can run inside and find the pump spray.’

‘I’ll go and fetch Nico.’

‘No,’ Iris said sharply. ‘I don’t want to cause a fuss and spoil the wedding.’

There was no time to waste arguing and Sienna ran round to the other side of the car and jumped in. The journey through the village only took a few minutes. When the chauffeur turned onto the driveway of Sethbury Hall she felt a familiar sense of awe as she stared at the imposing manor house where she had once lived with Nico. She had always felt like an imposter. The daughter of the village publican who had married above her station, some of the villagers had whispered. Cinderella had found her prince, but the fairy tale had ended in a bitter divorce.

The car came to a halt and Iris said faintly, ‘You remember where my room is, Sienna? The pump spray should be on my bedside table. Please hurry.’