CHAPTER FOUR
CARA DIDN’T THINK she’d ever felt as self-conscious as she did at that moment, and she’d had plenty of experience of feeling awkward and insecure.
Pepe’s blue shirt came to her knees and she’d rolled his trousers over so many times to get them to fit lengthways that it looked as if she had two wedges around her ankles. All she needed was a pair of extra-long shoes and she’d make the perfect clown.
Following him up the metal steps and into his jet, she forced herself to return the smiles and friendly greetings given by the glamorous cabin crew. Not one of them batted an eyelid at her presence. Most likely because strange women accompanying Pepe on his travels was par for the course, she thought snidely.
The jet was a proper flying bachelor pad, all leather and dark hardwood panelling. A steward showed her to a seat for take-off. She was nonplussed when Pepe took the seat next to her.
‘You have ten seats to choose from,’ she said, glaring at him.
‘So do you,’ he pointed out in return, strapping himself in and stretching his long legs out. He looked at the cheap mobile phone in her hand. ‘Who are you contacting?’
‘Grace.’
‘What are you going to say to her?’
‘That her brother-in-law is a feckless scumbag with the morals of an amoeba.’
He cocked an eyebrow.
She sighed. ‘I wanted to write that but until we’ve got the finances sorted I’m not prepared to risk her ripping your head off.’
‘That’s decent of you,’ he said drily.
She speared him with another poisonous glare then hit send. ‘I’ve apologised for leaving the christening without saying goodbye. I’ve also told her I cadged a lift off you to the airport. Someone was bound to have seen us leave together.’
‘Are you worried people will talk?’ Pepe didn’t sound worried. If anything, he sounded bored.
‘Nope.’ Let them think what they liked. The truth would come out. It always did. And when the truth came out, people would see that, beneath the charming, affable exterior, Pepe Mastrangelo was a horrid specimen of a man. ‘I don’t want Grace worrying, that’s all.’
It crossed her mind, not for the first time, that she should have gone to Grace for help. In normal circumstances Cara would have gone to Grace, but when she’d found out she was pregnant, Grace had been in hiding, going through her own troubles. So, she’d told her mother, but her mam was going through yet another of her new husband’s infidelities and so hadn’t been particularly interested other than on a superficial level. Not that Cara had expected anything else from the woman who had given birth to her.
But then Luca had tracked Grace down and now the pair of them were madly in love and in a bubble of happiness. It would have been the perfect opportunity to ask for help.
Grace would have given her money and anything else she needed, no questions asked. But Cara wouldn’t have been able to keep it contained and the whole sordid story would have come out, and then God knew what would have happened.
In any case, her child was not her friend’s responsibility. It was Pepe’s.
And this mess was not of Grace’s making. This was all on her, Cara. And the feckless playboy, of course.
It was too late to go to Grace for help now. Pepe would undoubtedly turn to Luca, who in turn would put pressure on his wife not to give Cara any financial help. Grace was so loved up at the moment she would probably comply. At the very least it would cause friction between them.
Thanks to Pepe, she couldn’t turn to the one person she needed.
The steward, who was still making checks and pretending not to listen to their conversation, finally disappeared into a separate cabin.
‘How are your thighs?’ Pepe asked. If he was fazed about anything, he had yet to show it.
‘Not too bad.’ The salve he had given her had been bliss to apply. He’d also given her a wrap that resembled cling film to place on it too. He’d been so... Concerned was the wrong word but it was the closest for the way he’d treated her wounds. Not that he’d treated her with the same consideration.
How could someone be so gentle and at the same time be so horribly uncaring? That was part of what had tipped her over the edge and set the waterworks off.
‘You should take the trousers off. I’m sure it can’t help with the material rubbing against it.’
‘They’re fine.’ No way was she taking any of her clothes off within a ten-mile radius of him ever again.
The plane began to taxi down the runway. Cara turned to look out of the window, a lump forming in her throat.
This was utter madness.
‘Pepe, please, let me return to Dublin, just for a couple of days to get things in order.’ It was an argument they’d had three times in the past hour.
‘Impossible. I have a full day of business tomorrow and a business dinner in the evening.’
‘Yes, but I don’t. I’m supposed to be at work!’
‘You will attend my meeting with me.’
She took a deep breath. Her blood pressure really didn’t need any more aggravation.
‘As I have made you more than aware, the week ahead is filled with appointments.’
‘I have to wait until the weekend to go back home?’ she said, horror-struck.
‘I’m afraid a trip back to Dublin is not on the schedule for the foreseeable future.’
‘You’re kidding me?’
‘You can make any necessary arrangements via other means.’
‘So I have to hand in my notice by text or email?’
He shrugged. ‘It’s entirely up to you how you want to handle it.’
‘I’d like to handle it by not giving up my job,’ she stated angrily. ‘But seeing as I do have to quit, I’d prefer to tell my boss in person.’
He almost looked sympathetic. ‘I appreciate this is an inconvenience but if, as you say, the baby is mine, you will be well recompensed for any aggravation.’
‘And my housemates? Will they be recompensed too?’
His brow furrowed.
‘I’m leaving them in the lurch. If you won’t let me go to Dublin, I can’t clear my room out and they can’t find another housemate to take my place.’
‘That is not a problem. I can send someone over to clear your room for you.’
‘You will not!’ There was no way she wanted some stranger rifling through her knicker drawer. Closing her eyes, she slowly expelled a lungful of air. They had been so busy arguing she’d barely noticed the jet increase in speed. Suddenly her stomach lurched and she was leaning back.
The jet became airborne.
She took another deep breath. ‘If I contact my housemates and ask them to get all my stuff together, can you send someone to collect it?’
‘Of course.’
‘Can they get it to me for tomorrow morning?’
‘Why so soon?’
‘Because I have nothing on me apart from my handbag and a stick of mascara. I need my stuff.’
‘I’ve already made arrangements for new clothing to be delivered to the house first thing for you.’
Of course he had. For such a languid person Pepe was proving surprisingly efficient.
‘I want my stuff.’
‘And you will have it. Soon.’
‘How soon?’
‘Soon. And I will ensure your housemates get adequate compensation from your missed rent.’
‘Good.’ She would not say thank you.
Her stomach rolled again and she breathed in deeply through her nose.
‘Are you okay?’
She did not want to hear any concern from him. ‘I’m pregnant. My child’s father is refusing to acknowledge paternity without a blood test yet still thinks it’s acceptable to make me give up my job—a job I love—and leave my housemates in the doodle to follow him around the world like some sort of concubine. Plus I have no clothing or toiletries on me. So, yes. Everything is dandy.’
His gorgeous blue eyes darkened further and crinkled with amusement. ‘My concubine, eh? Do you know what a concubine is?’
She felt her cheeks go scarlet. ‘It was a statement of my unhappiness not a statement of fact.’
‘A concubine is, in essence, a man’s mistress.’
‘I’m well aware of that.’
‘A man pays for all his concubine’s bills, buys property for her—’
‘Basically a concubine is there for a man’s pleasure when he’s bored of his wife’s company,’ she interrupted. ‘But seeing as you have no wife, I can’t be your concubine.’
A gleam came into his eyes. ‘Ah, so as I have no wife, does that mean you are going to be the main source of my pleasure?’
‘I’d rather eat worms.’
‘I’m sure I can think of something better for you to e—’
‘Don’t go there. I feel sick enough as it is.’
He laughed. ‘That’s not how I remember things.’
‘Watch it or I will vomit.’ But not through the memories of their night together.
Those memories moved her in wholly different ways.
Nope, the queasiness in her belly was solely due to motion sickness. She scrunched her eyes closed and took a long deep breath.
Pepe twisted onto his side to stare at her. Cara really was incredibly sexy, even with her face contorted into a grimace.
But he would not go there again. Flirting with her was just asking for trouble. They had enough problems to get through.
She opened one eye. ‘What?’
‘Sorry?’
‘You’re staring at me.’
‘Can’t a man stare at a gorgeous woman?’ Okay, so flirting was asking for trouble, but Cara really did look beautiful when she was angry, as clichéd as he knew that was.
‘I’m pregnant,’ she spat.
‘You’re also incredibly sexy. A man would have to be dead from the waist down not to desire you. But have no fear—I’m not going to make any unwanted passes at you.’ All the same, he felt a tightening in his groin and almost groaned aloud at the incongruity of it all.
Cara despised him. No matter how much he might still desire her and, he suspected, she still desired him, he preferred his women to not loathe the very sound of his name.
And sex between them...nothing good could come of it. It had got him into enough trouble as it was, just as he’d always suspected sex with Cara would—why else had he kept such a distance from her sexually before?
In the world in which he mixed, sex was freely given with no real commitment assumed by anyone. Pepe liked it that way. It saved messy entanglements and even messier goodbyes. Everyone knew where they stood, no one got hurt, and everyone was happy.
‘Well, that’s good to know,’ Cara said sarcastically. ‘Let me guess—now that you don’t need anything from me, there’s no need to pretend any more.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You never desired me before you needed to get hold of my phone.’
‘On the contrary, cucciola mia, I’ve always found you incredibly attractive.’
‘I’m pretty sure you find any woman with a pulse attractive. I’m saying you never desired me in particular.’
‘I did, but I’m terrified of my sister-in-law. She would have tied me naked to a tree if I’d tried anything on with you.’
Despite herself, Cara snickered. Pepe was the cause of all her stress yet somehow he was able to soothe much of it away. The git. ‘I would have loved to have seen that.’
‘Don’t worry—if the baby does turn out to be mine then I’m sure you’ll get your chance when Grace finds out.’
‘There’s no if about it. This baby is yours.’
‘Time will tell.’ A black eyebrow shot up, a quizzical groove appearing in his forehead. ‘If it is my child, will I also have to worry about your angry father beating at my door?’
‘Seeing as he’s not around, that’s the last thing you’ll have to worry about.’
He straightened in his seat, consternation replacing his amusement. ‘Oh. I’m sorry. I didn’t realise you’d lost your father too.’
It occurred to her that this was the closest Pepe had come to showing genuine contrition all day.
‘My father isn’t dead,’ she quickly clarified, recalling being told his own father had died over a decade ago.
He looked confused. ‘Then surely he will want to rip my head off and play football with it?’
She couldn’t help the wry smile that formed on her lips, although she experienced the usual sickening churn in her belly she felt whenever she thought of her father. ‘I’m sure there’s a lot of fathers out there who would love nothing more than to cause you actual bodily harm, but I can assure you my dad’s not one of them.’
‘Why not? A father’s job is to look out for his child.’
‘My dad never bothered to read the job description.’ Only years of faux nonchalance on the subject kept the bitterness from her voice, yet the churning increased, a situation not helped by the roils in her belly from the motion of the jet. Talking about her father always made her feel so raw. ‘Believe me, if he were to meet you, the closest he would come to touching you is putting a hand on your shoulder and insisting on buying you a beer.’
For all of Pepe’s antics and reputation, he knew damn well that if he had a daughter and some man lied to her and impregnated her, then he would certainly want to rip that man’s head off.
Not that he was admitting to having impregnated Cara. Not yet. Not until the DNA test proved it beyond any doubt. And until that DNA test proved it, he would not allow himself to think of that child as being anything but a foetus. After what Luisa had put him through, this was an essential act of self-preservation.
He thought back to a time over a decade before when he had been looking at a scan of a foetus, trying to discern a head and tiny limbs from what was little more than a kidney bean. The emotions provoked by looking at that scan were the strongest he had ever experienced. Totally overwhelming. He had felt fit to burst. He could only imagine the strength of his feelings if that little life had been allowed to develop and allowed to be born.
But that little life had not been allowed to develop and be born, a fact that resided inside his guts like a vat of poison...
All the same, he could not imagine having a child and being so disassociated from their feelings that he didn’t care if they were used and hurt. He might only be the ‘spare’ of the family, but he had never doubted his parents’ love for him.
It was their respect he’d always failed to achieve.
He could well imagine how his brother would react if anyone were to hurt Lily. That person would likely never walk again.
Cara must have seen the way his thoughts were going because her features contorted into a grimace. ‘Do you know, now I think about it, you and my father are incredibly alike. He’s a charmer, just like you. Maybe I should introduce you to him—you can exchange shagging tips.’
It took every muscle in his face to keep his smile fixed there. ‘Why do I feel I have just been insulted?’
‘Because you’re not as stupid as you look?’ Before he could react to this latest insult, she stood up. ‘If it’s all the same to you, I’m going to curl up on that sofa and get some sleep. I assume one of the stewards will wake me before we land?’
She did look tired. So tired he bit back any further retort and any further questions about her father. Like it or not, she was pregnant and, now that he’d admitted her into his life, her health was his responsibility. Her already pale face was drained of colour.
He experienced a twinge that could be interpreted as concern. ‘Are you feeling all right? Physically, I mean,’ he added before she could bombard him with another long list of all the wrongs he had done.
‘I’m feeling a little icky. But don’t worry—it’s not bad enough that you have to worry for your upholstery.’
He watched as she made her way to the sofa, holding on to something fixed for stability with every step.
* * *
A tap on the door broke through Cara’s slumber.
There was none of that ‘where am I’ malarkey often experienced when awaking under a new roof. Before she even opened her eyes she knew exactly where she was.
Pepe’s house. Or, to be more precise, in a guest room in Pepe’s Parisian house.
She’d pretended to sleep for the rest of the flight back to Charles de Gaulle airport. It certainly beat talking to him.
She’d ignored him as they’d gone through Customs, blanked him on the drive back to his house and pretended to be deaf when they arrived at his home, a five-storey town house in an exclusive Parisian suburb. She’d also pretended to be mute. She’d had to clamp her lips so tightly together when she was shown to her room that she’d pretended they’d been superglued. It was either that or have him witness her wonder at its sheer beauty. For a house purported to have been bought to showcase Pepe’s art collection—and it was every bit as huge and glamorous as she’d expected—it had a surprisingly homely charm to it.
But she wouldn’t tell Pepe that. She didn’t want him to think she liked anything about him, not even his beautiful home.
It was talking about her father that had done it.
Her father, the arch charmer, the man who could make a woman forgive him over and over, make a woman believe his faults were in fact her faults.
Pepe’s charm had always felt different from her father’s. He had none of her father’s seediness. Or sleaze.
But one thing he did have was the ability to make her want to believe in him. She’d wanted to believe Pepe saw her as more than a one-night stand. On his jet she’d felt herself thawing towards him, his gorgeous, easy-going smile slowly melting the edge of her defences. More than that, though, had been the unexpected depths she’d seen in his eyes. For a few moments she could have sworn she’d seen pain in them, something dark, something that hinted there was more to him than what he wore on the surface.
She’d thought she’d seen more to him that weekend in Dublin when he had seduced her so thoroughly. And it had all been a lie. Just as everything that came out of her father’s mouth was a lie.
Pepe was of the same mould. Something she would do well to remember.
She sat up and rubbed her eyes.
Another knock at the door.
‘Mademoiselle Delaney?’ came a muffled female voice.
‘I’m awake,’ she called back, slipping out of the bed. Much as she hated to admit it, that had to qualify as the most comfortable bed she had ever slept on.
The handle turned and a middle-aged woman carrying a tray of coffee and croissants walked in.
Cara remembered her from their arrival, was certain Pepe had introduced her as Monique, his housekeeper.
‘Good morning,’ said Monique, heading straight for a small round table in the corner of the room and placing the tray on it. ‘Did you sleep well?’
‘Yes, thank you,’ she answered in a small voice, forcing a smile. She always felt so...noodley when with strangers, as if her tongue had loosened, then tied itself into knots.
‘Your deliveries have arrived,’ Monique told her, drawing back the heavy full-length curtains to reveal a small balcony.
Morning sunshine filled the room.
Cara cleared her throat. ‘What deliveries?’
‘From the boutiques. I will bring them to you now. Monsieur Mastrangelo has requested that you be ready to leave in an hour.’
Her heart sinking, Cara remembered a trip to the Loire Valley was on the day’s agenda.
Her spirits lifted a fraction when Monique, assisted by a young woman, brought the boxes of clothes in to her, and a hand-case of toiletries.
‘If there is anything else you require, please let me know,’ Monique said before leaving the room.
Putting her half-eaten croissant to one side, Cara began going through the boxes, her spirits sinking all over again as she fingered the beautiful fabrics and accessories.
Why couldn’t Pepe have ensured the clothing he’d ordered for her was inappropriate and gross? Here was an entire wardrobe for her and there was not a single item she wouldn’t have selected herself if money had not been an object. Simple, elegant, casual clothing with an innate vibrancy. Even the nightdresses he’d ordered were beautiful.
When she opened the hand-case she wanted to scream with both joy and despair. Enclosed was every lotion and potion a woman could want, and make-up selected especially for her colouring. Worst of all was that it was all brands she coveted. She would walk past their counters in department stores and gaze at the beautiful items, promising herself that she would buy them when she earned enough money.
Shouldn’t she be pleased she had them roughly five years ahead of schedule? Maybe she should but she couldn’t muster up the necessary sparkly feelings. She didn’t want to feel any gratitude towards Pepe. Wasn’t that how Stockholm syndrome started? Not that she’d been kidnapped, not in the traditional sense of the word. In the ‘really not been given any other option’ sense of the word then she had been.
She gathered all the toiletries together and took them into the en suite. Before stepping into the shower, she examined her thighs. Pepe’s ointment was a marvel. The only discernible sign of injury was a slight pink mark. No pain at all.
The shower itself invigorated her. The gel smelt so utterly gorgeous and the water pressure and heat were so marvellous that she washed herself twice.
Well, that certainly beat the pathetic excuse for a shower she had in her shared bathroom in Dublin.
Wrapping a large fluffy white towel securely around her, she wandered back into her bedroom. She needed to select something to wear, which in theory shouldn’t be a problem, but when one was confronted with a dozen beautiful outfits it became one.
For the first time in her life she had a problem selecting what to wear.
Just as she’d decided on a pair of designer black jeans and a cherry-red cashmere jumper, there was another knock on her door.
‘Come in,’ she called, expecting to see Monique standing there.
Her welcoming smile turned into a scowl when she found Pepe there instead.