CHAPTER SIX
WHEN CARA AWOKE it was dusky. Unlike when she’d awoken that morning, she didn’t have the faintest idea where she was. The last thing she remembered was pulling up alongside a pretty farmhouse. Oh, and she remembered Pepe practically yanking her door open so she could vomit. How he knew she was waiting until the car stopped moving before giving in to it, she didn’t have a clue. But he did know. And as she’d vomited out of the car and into the paper bag, he was by her side, rubbing her back and drawing her hair away from the danger zone.
It was support of a kind she’d never expected from him, and remembering it made her belly do a funny skip.
She patted her body, relieved to find herself fully dressed. She felt better. A little woozy, but on the whole much better.
When she sat up, she found her shoes, a gorgeous pair of flats from a designer brand she had coveted for years, laid neatly by the double bed she had been placed in.
She guessed she should get up and find Pepe. He was around somewhere, in this picture-book home.
It didn’t take long to find him.
She shuffled out of the room and into an open landing. Below, she could hear voices. Walking carefully, she made her way down the stairs and followed the murmurs into a large kitchen.
Sitting around a sturdy oak table was Pepe, the man she remembered as Christophe and a tiny, birdlike woman. So small, the woman was inches shorter than Cara. It was like looking at Mrs Pepperpot come to life.
Mrs Pepperpot spotted her first and bustled over, taking Cara’s arm and leading her over to join them, all the while gabbling away in French.
Pepe rose from his chair. ‘Cara,’ he said, pulling her into an embrace and kissing her on each cheek. ‘How are you feeling?’
‘Much better,’ she mumbled.
‘Good.’ He stepped back and appraised her thoughtfully. A half-filled glass of wine lay before him. ‘You are still a little too pale but you no longer look like the Incredible Hulk.’
‘That’s a bonus.’ She sat on the chair he’d pulled out for her and budged it close to his. No sooner had she sat down when Mrs Pepperpot put a steaming bowl of what looked like a clear broth in front of her and a basket of baguettes.
‘Mangez,’ she ordered, putting her hands to her mouth in what looked like an imitation of eating.
‘Cara, this is Christophe’s wife, Simone,’ Pepe said by way of introduction. ‘She doesn’t speak any English but she makes an excellent consommé.’
Cara gave Simone a quick smile. ‘Thank you—merci.’
The consommé smelt delicious. Her starved belly rumbled. Loudly.
‘Mangez,’ Simone repeated.
‘She’s been waiting for you to wake up,’ Pepe said. ‘It’s also thanks to her that the doctor made an impromptu home visit.’
Vaguely she remembered a heavily scented woman sitting on her bedside and prodding her with things. ‘I thought I’d dreamt that.’
He laughed softly. ‘You’re four months pregnant. It seemed prudent to get you checked over in case you were suffering from something more serious than motion sickness.’
For all his jovial nonchalance, she knew she hadn’t dreamt his concern. A strange warmth swept into her chest, suffusing her blood and skin with heat.
She turned her face away. ‘I’ve suffered from motion sickness since I was a little girl. Pregnancy has just made it worse.’
‘Even so, I’ve made arrangements for my family doctor to fly to Paris tomorrow to check you over. The doctor you saw here had concerns about your blood pressure being too low.’
‘It’s always been low,’ she dismissed with a shrug.
‘It is better to be safe. You have a child inside you that is dependent on your good health for its survival. I was going to get my doctor to check you over anyway, so I’ve just brought it forward by a few days.’
‘Steady on, Pepe. You almost sound like a concerned father.’
His eyes flickered but the easy smile didn’t leave his face.
Luckily any awkwardness was interrupted by Simone placing a jug of iced water in front of her and pouring Cara a glass.
‘Why does she keep staring at me?’ Cara muttered under her breath a few minutes later so only Pepe could hear. Simone kept nodding and beaming at her, unlike her surly husband, who did nothing but cradle his glass of wine. The Frenchwoman might not speak English but Cara would bet Christophe knew more than enough to get by.
‘Because you’re pregnant and she wants to make sure you’re getting the nutrition you need. You need to eat.’
‘How can I eat when everyone’s staring at me?’
For a moment she thought Pepe was going to make a wisecrack. Instead, he drew Christophe and Simone into conversation and, while the talk between them was of a serious tone, it worked, diverting their attention away from her.
Pepe was right about the consommé. It was delicious. Along with a still-warm bread roll, it filled her belly just enough.
It was at the moment she put her spoon in her empty dish that Christophe laughed at something Pepe said, downed his wine and held out a beefy hand. Pepe rose from his seat to take it and, leaning over the table, the two men shook hands vigorously, Christophe gripping Pepe’s biceps.
‘Is this a new form of male bonding?’ Cara said in an aside to Pepe.
To her surprise, it was Christophe who answered. ‘It is always good to formalise a deal with a shake of the hand.’
‘You’re buying the vineyard?’ she asked Pepe.
‘I would say it’s more that Christophe has agreed to sell me the vineyard.’ Pepe raised his glass in the Frenchman’s direction. ‘You drive a hard bargain, my friend.’
‘Some bargains deserve to be hard fought.’ Christophe lifted the wine bottle and made to refill Pepe’s glass.
Pepe held out a hand to stop him. ‘Not for me. I will be driving back to Paris shortly.’
‘Driving?’ Cara asked hopefully.
‘Sì. I got some staff to bring a car over for us.’
‘Where are they?’
‘They’ve taken the helicopter back. Don’t worry—I got the flight crew to come. They left about half an hour ago.’
For a moment she just stared at him, incredulous. ‘Seriously? You got your pilots to drive all this way to drop off a car and then fly back?’ How long had she been asleep? Five hours? He must have got the wheels in motion the second her head had hit the pillow.
He shrugged as if it were no big deal. ‘They weren’t doing anything else. It gave them a day out.’
‘Did you do this...for me?’
‘The helicopter’s not long been reupholstered. I didn’t want to risk you ruining it by upchucking everywhere.’
Somehow, she just knew Pepe could not give a flying monkey about upholstery.
‘I thought we were going to a business dinner tonight?’
‘I’m sure they can survive without our company for one night,’ he said drily. ‘I am not so cruel that I would force you to spend another hour in a craft that makes you violently ill for the sake of a dinner party with a handful of the most boring people in all of Paris.’
A compulsion, a strange, strange desire, tingled through her fingers to lace themselves through his.
Quickly she fisted her hands into balls.
So what if he’d displayed a hint at humanity?
It didn’t mean she had to hold his hand.
It didn’t change a thing.
* * *
By the time they left the vineyard, the sun had set and the Loire Valley was in darkness. The roads were clear, the drive smooth, but still Pepe was aware that Cara’s breathing had deepened.
‘Are you feeling all right?’ he asked, turning the air conditioning up a notch.
‘I think so.’ Her head was back against the rest, her eyes shut.
‘Open a window if it helps.’ It was too dark to see the colour of her complexion, but he’d bet it had regained the green hue.
Cold air filtered through the small opening she made in the window, and she turned her face towards it, breathing the fresh air in.
‘You say you’ve always suffered from motion sickness?’ he said a few minutes later when he was reasonably certain she wasn’t going to upchuck everywhere.
‘As long as I can remember. Boats are the worst.’
‘Have you been on many boats?’
‘A couple of ferry crossings from England to Ireland when I was a teenager. I spent most of those hugging the toilet.’
‘Sounds like fun.’
‘It was—tremendous fun was had by all.’
He laughed softly. If there was one thing he liked about Cara it was her dry sense of humour.
He slowed the car a touch, keeping a keen eye out for any potholes or other potential hazards. The last thing he wanted was to do anything to increase her nausea.
‘How long have you flown helicopters?’ she asked.
‘I got my licence about ten years ago.’
‘I had no idea.’
‘It’s no big deal,’ he dismissed.
‘Sure it is. I assume it’s more involved than passing a driving test?’
‘Slightly,’ he admitted, recalling the hundreds of flying hours he’d put in and the unrelenting exams. He’d loved every minute of it. And, he had to admit, his mother’s pride when he’d received his pilot’s licence had been something to cherish. Her pride was generally reserved for Luca.
‘Are you going to make me fly in one again?’
‘No.’ He knew if he insisted, she would—ungraciously—comply. As he was fast learning, keeping Cara Delaney attached to him was proving trickier than first thought.
‘So you’re going to buy the vineyard, then?’ she said, changing the subject.
‘I am. It’s a good, established business and the soil is of excellent quality.’
‘How did you get Christophe to agree to sell it to you? He looked like he’d rather be wrestling bears than dealing with you when we arrived.’
‘I think surliness is his default setting,’ Pepe mused. ‘He’s one of those men who feel they have to prove their masculinity by puffing out their chest and pounding on it.’
He heard what sounded like a snigger. For a moment it was on the tip of his tongue to share how he’d been on the verge of telling the Frenchman that he could forget the sale, so incensed had he been by Christophe’s attitude to Cara’s nausea. If his wife, Simone, hadn’t been such a welcome contrast, soothing Pepe’s ruffled feathers and chiding her husband’s surliness away, he would have refused to even take a tour.
Dealing with ultra-macho men was nothing new—he was Sicilian after all. Most men there drank testosterone for breakfast. Today, for the first time, he hadn’t wanted to play the macho games such men demanded. He never gained any gratification from them. His own power was assured. There was no need to beat his chest or play a game of ‘mine is bigger than yours’. Without being arrogant, he knew that went without saying—in all circumstances. But men like Christophe expected those games to be played. Today, for the first time, Pepe had refused.
He’d wanted to look after Cara.
His fingers tightened on the steering wheel as he recalled the way his stomach had clenched to see her so obviously unwell. Yes. A most peculiar feeling. Maladies did not normally bother him. People became ill, then, as a rule, people recovered. A fact of life.
Pregnancy was also a fact of life. As was motion sickness. Cara’s suffering really shouldn’t bother him beyond the usual realms of human decency.
Yet it did. It was taking all his self-restraint not to lay a comforting hand on her thigh. Saying that, if he were to lay a hand there, comforting or otherwise, she’d likely slap it.
‘Are you going to run the deal by Luca first?’ Her soft Irish lilt broke through his musings.
‘No.’ He spoke more sharply than he would have liked. ‘No,’ he repeated, moderating his tone. ‘This is my domain. I run our dealings outside Sicily.’
‘I thought Luca was in charge.’
‘What made you think that? Is it because he’s the older brother?’
‘No. It’s because he’s the more steady and reliable brother.’
Even in the dark he knew his knuckles had whitened.
‘Your brother might be as scary as the bogeyman but at least he conducts himself with something relatively close to decorum and thinks with more than his penis.’
Any minute and his knuckles would poke through his skin. ‘Are you deliberately trying to pick an argument with me?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I don’t like it when you’re nice to me.’
‘Does driving you home constitute me being nice?’
‘As opposed to you flying me back in that tin shack, then yes; yes, it does. And incidentally, you’re not driving me home. You’re driving me back to your house.’
‘My home is your home until your baby is born.’ Although, at that particular moment, he would take great pleasure in stopping the car, kicking her out and telling her to walk herself back to Paris.
Impossible, ungrateful woman.
Impossible sexy woman.
There was no denying it. Cara Delaney was as sexy as sin, and as much as he tried to keep his errant mind on the present, it insisted on going back sixteen weeks to what had been, in hindsight, the best weekend of his life.
‘Would you prefer if I spent the next five or so months being horrible to you and having no consideration of your needs?’
‘Yes.’
He cocked an eyebrow. ‘Really?’
‘The only niceness I want from you is my freedom.’
‘You have your freedom. You are here under your own free will. You are welcome to leave at any time.’
‘But for me to leave would mean a life of poverty for our child. Or at least, the start of its life would be full of poverty unless you do the decent thing and give me money to support him or her.’
‘I will give you money to support our child when I have definitive proof that it is our child. I will not be played for a fool.’
He heard a sharp inhalation followed by a slow, steady exhalation.
‘I really don’t get it.’
‘Get what?’
‘Your cynicism.’
‘I am not cynical.’
‘You impregnated a virgin yet you refuse to believe your paternity without written proof. If that’s not cynical, then I don’t know what is. And I don’t get why you are that way.’
‘There is nothing to get. I do not take anything at face value. That’s good business sense, not cynicism.’ Much as he tried to hide it, a real edge had crept into his voice. He’d thought she would be grateful he was rearranging his schedule to drive her back to Paris, had assumed a little gratitude would soften her attitude towards him. But no. For all the softness of her curves and her bottom lip, Cara Delaney was as hard as nails.
From the periphery of his vision, he saw her straighten.
‘Grace and I used to talk about you,’ she said.
‘Why doesn’t that surprise me?’
‘We used to wonder why you were the way you were.’
‘I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about.’
‘You come from a loving family. You had two parents who loved and supported you and encouraged you...’
‘That is what you used to say about me?’ he interrupted with a burst of mocking laughter.
‘Your mother dotes on you,’ she said coldly. ‘By all accounts your father doted on you too. You have a closer relationship with your brother than most siblings can dream of. That’s what I mean about coming from a loving family.’
‘Sì,’ he conceded. ‘My parents loved me. Luca and I are close. It is normal.’
‘I have two stepsisters who hate me only fractionally less than they hate each other. I have a bunch of half-siblings scattered around Dublin whom I have never met. I have a mother who doesn’t care a fig that I’m pregnant. I have a father who is unaware he’s going to be a granddad, but that’s because he’s had no involvement in my life for over a decade.’
For a moment he didn’t know what to say to that unexpected outburst or how to react to the raw emotion behind it. ‘You haven’t seen your father in ten years?’
‘Thirteen years. My parents split when I was eleven. Mam and I moved to England when I was thirteen and I haven’t seen him since.’
‘My father died thirteen years ago.’ Something in his chest moved as he thought of Cara going through her own personal trauma while his own life was shattering, first by the death of his father and then by Luisa’s vile and ultimately devastating actions.
‘I’m sorry.’ Her voice softened. ‘I’ve seen pictures of your dad—you look just like him.’
‘Sì. He was a very handsome man.’
This time she did laugh. ‘Oh, you are so full of yourself.’
‘You can be full of me too if you want.’
‘Are you trying to make me sick again?’
He chuckled, glancing over at her, certain there was the trace of a smile playing on her lips.
Mind out of the gutter, he chided himself. He needed to keep his attention focused on the road before him, not on memories of burying himself inside her tight sweetness.
All the same, he took a sharp breath in the hope it would loosen the tightness in his groin.
‘Did your mother stop your father from seeing you after she left him?’
‘No. He stopped himself from seeing me. It was too much hassle for him to go across the Irish channel and see his eldest child. We exchange Christmas cards and that’s it.’
For a moment he thought she was going to say something else, but when he glanced at her, he saw her eyes were closed and she was massaging her forehead. For all her bitterness there was a definite vulnerability about her when she spoke of her parents.
‘Did you miss him?’
‘My father?’
‘Yes. It must have been a hard time for you.’
She laughed, a noise that sounded as if it were being done through a sucked lemon. ‘If anything, it was a relief. My father is a serial shagger. He cheated on my mum so many times I think even he lost count.’
‘Were you aware of this at the time?’ Surely her father would have been discreet?
‘I’ve always known, even when I was too young to understand. They never bothered keeping it a secret from me. I caught him out twice—once when I was going to the park with my friends and walked past the local pub and saw him through the window draped over some woman.’
‘He was with another woman in your local pub?’ Even Pepe, who was not easily shocked, was shocked at this.
‘You think that’s bad?’ Her tone rose in pitch. ‘The next time I caught him out, which couldn’t have been more than six months later, I found him in the marital bed with another woman—a different woman from the woman he was with in the pub.’
‘You caught him in the act?’
‘No, thank God. They were lying in bed. I remember my dad was smoking a cigarette. I don’t know what shocked me the most—I’d no idea he was a smoker.’
And Cara had no idea why she was sharing all this with Pepe of all people.
It had been the same over the weekend they’d shared together. He was such an easy person to talk to and had such an unerring ability to make the person he was with—namely her—believe that every word she uttered was worth listening to, that it was quite possible to spill your guts to him without even realising. He’d done it then, listened to her rabbit on for hours about her love of her job, her hopes for the future.
No one had ever made her feel like that before.
He’d made her believe she was special.
It would be all too easy to believe it again.
She opened the window a little further and practically stuck her nose out of it, inhaling the cold air gratefully. It compressed the anger and pain of those horrible memories back down to a manageable level.
Silence sprang between them, a silence that was on the verge of becoming uncomfortable when Pepe said, ‘What did you do? Did you tell your mother?’
She sucked in more cold air before answering. ‘Yes. Yes, I did. He didn’t even bother to deny it. She threw him out for all of two days before taking him back. She always took him back.’
Her stomach twisted a little more as she recalled hearing them ‘make up’. They hadn’t cared that their ten-year-old daughter was in the house. They’d never cared.
Her entire childhood had revolved around her father’s affairs and her mother’s reactions to them. Those reactions had never been about Cara. Their daughter had been secondary to everything in their sick marriage where sex was a weapon used to hurt each other in the most cruel and demeaning ways.
‘I always swore I’d never get involved with a man who was like my father, so more fool me.’
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘You,’ she practically spat. ‘How else do you think my dad was able to pull so many women and use them so badly? He’s a charmer, just like you are.’
‘I am nothing like your father.’ His vehemence was the most emphatic she had ever heard him.
‘You use women for your own gratification with no thoughts of them as real people.’
‘That is utter rubbish. I have never cheated on anyone. Ever.’ An ugly tone curdled his words. ‘I despise cheats.’
‘You still use women.’
‘I do not use women. I am never anything but honest with my lovers. Do not kid yourself into believing they are in my bed under false pretences.’
‘You used me. I thought you wanted me in your bed because you wanted me. I had no idea you wanted to get your hands on my stupid phone and not my body.’
It was Pepe’s turn to suck in a breath. ‘I accept that I used you, Cara. I am not proud of what I did but it had to be done. My brother was a man on the verge of a breakdown. It doesn’t change the fact that I found you as sexy as hell. I still do. I wanted to make love to you regardless of the circumstances.’
‘You still used me. You can tell me until you’re blue in the face that you’re nothing like my father but I know better. You’re two of a kind. You make love to women and then dump them, leaving them to deal with the emotional fallout. And the unwanted after-effects. Like babies,’ she couldn’t resist adding.
A screech of brakes and a swerve of the wheels as he brought the Mercedes to a shuddering halt on the verge.
Pepe turned the engine off, his breathing ragged.
Cara took little consolation that she had finally pierced his charming armour.
For long moments the only sound was their breathing.
‘I am going to start driving again in a moment,’ he said grimly. ‘Unless you want me to leave you to make your own way back to Paris, I suggest you do not speak to me, other than to say if you’re feeling ill.’
From the tone of his voice, she knew he meant every word.