Page 121 of Modern Romance Collection February 2025, 1-4

Her chest as tight as a drum.

Vincenzo let his eyes rest on her. They were completely inexpressive, but behind them he was reacting. Reacting in multiple ways. First and foremost was the thought that if the name had not been so unusual he would not have known who she was. Second, and far stronger, was the reaction that had hit him when his PA had given her name. That was uppermost now.

He got to his feet as she walked towards him.

‘This is unexpected,’ he said.

It was a statement, nothing more.

She stopped in front of his desk and he resumed his seat. He did not invite her to sit down. He did not intend this...visitation to be of any duration.

Did she not get the message when I left her that morning? That I am not interested in continuing any liaison with her?

Because that was why she was here—that much was obvious. It always was. Ever since he’d started making money—serious money—he’d been a target for women keen to have him spend it on them.

The way they’d targeted his father. Battening on him.

The old, familiar, bitter stab of anger came at how his hapless father, wanting only to find a woman to love after the tragedy of losing his wife when Vincenzo was a young child, had been easy prey. Right to the very end. The end that had been fifteen years ago now, when Vincenzo had just started at university, having spent his boyhood watching one woman after another exploiting his father, leeching off him, until one of them had managed to get a ring on her finger—and a lot more than that.

Get all that was left of my father’s money by then.

As for himself—he’d got nothing. He’d had to start from scratch, building up his own business, making his own money. Money that no avaricious female would get her greedy claws into.

By any means.

His eyes rested now on the woman in front of him. She could not have looked more different from that evening at the Falcone. Then she had been dressed to kill—advertising her allure on all frequencies. Now, instead of that low-cut, clinging cocktail dress, she wore a knee-length denim skirt, flat shoes, a cotton sweater. Gone was the loose, lush hair and full make-up. Her hair was knotted plainly at the back of her head and her face bare.

Yet even without any adornments, he was conscious of her beauty...

He dismissed it ruthlessly. It was irrelevant now.

‘Yes, I know,’ she answered. Her voice was staccato. ‘I apologise for turning up like this,’ she said, her voice still staccato.

‘Do you?’ Vincenzo murmured. His face was still inexpressive.

Something flashed in her eyes, then was gone. Her hand tightened over her canvas shoulder bag, which looked as cheap as the rest of her appearance. In one part of his brain he speculated on why she had turned up looking as she did. If she thought to entice him again, she should have come better packaged.

Then, with her next words, he realised that she had quite a different strategy in mind.

‘Yes,’ she said tightly.

For a moment she was completely silent. And then Siena Westbrook, who had once provided him with a memorable but unrepeatable one-night-only of exquisite sensual pleasure, took a visible breath and continued in the same tight voice.

‘I’m here to tell you that I’m pregnant.’

Oh, God, she had said it!

Siena’s hand tightened on her bag even more tightly.

‘I’m sorry just to announce it like that, but there isn’t any other way of doing it,’ she made herself say.

She looked directly across at him—made herself do so. It was hard to do it—memory was burning through her now she was seeing him again. His impact on her was as overwhelming now, all these weeks later, as it had been that night at the Falcone. But she had to ignore it. It was as irrelevant to the moment now as was his wealth, that Megan was so focussed on.

‘No, I imagine not,’ he replied.

His voice was that murmur again—the one that she instinctively took exception to.

‘Permit me to offer you my congratulations.’

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