Page 19 of Expecting His Billion-Dollar Scandal
‘Less surprised than you might think.’ Luca’s voice was cool.
‘I would have contacted you...phoned...but...’ Her voice trailed off. She noticed that she was plucking compulsively at the checked shirt and she sat on her hands to stop.
‘No phone number. I know. I didn’t leave you with one.’
Cordelia flushed. He couldn’t have made it any clearer that she was not welcome. She tilted her head at a combative angle and reminded herself that this trip had been voluntary. She was pregnant and she could very easily have not bothered to tell him. She was here for a reason and she’d be gone within the hour. Lord knew, a week seemed like a long time but maybe she would see a bit of Tuscany before she headed back home.
‘No,’ she said with equal cool. ‘You didn’t. Why would you when you spent three weeks lying to me? Of course, the last thing you would have encouraged would be any further contact from the country bumpkin you used for your own amusement and dumped. Heaven knows, my showing up here on your doorstep must seem like the worst of your nightmares.’
Luca had the grace to flush but he didn’t say anything because there was no point launching into self defence.
‘You said you weren’t surprised to see me here,’ Cordelia prompted icily. ‘What did you mean?’
He shrugged eloquently and sat back, steepling his fingers under his chin, then clasping his hands behind his head to look at her from under thick dark lashes.
‘You looked me up on the Internet,’ he said flatly. ‘Curiosity, no doubt. You discovered that I was not quite the person you thought I was.’
Cordelia could barely conceal her snort of disgust. She thought back to just how elegant, arrogant and self-confident he’d been. She’d naively put it down to hisforeignness. Instead, those had just been the telltale traits of a man who lived in a castle and owned a million acres of vineyards. Lack of experience had not been her friend when it had come to making sense of his personality.
‘Really?’ she said, tight-lipped.
‘Really. You would have struck jackpot on the first hit and I guess that got you thinking that what we’d enjoyed might have come to something of a premature end. Were you dazzled at the thought of continuing a relationship but this time with a man worth billions instead of a guy with only the clothes on his back and a seasonal job?’ He paused, watched carefully for signs of guilt and embarrassment, and saw neither.
Luca raked his fingers through his hair and vaulted upright. The chair suddenly felt confining, the room too small.
‘I’m a rich man,’ he said, striding towards the window and looking out to everything he owned for a few seconds, before turning to face her. ‘I know how the game is played.’
The sun was no longer high in the sky and its rays through the window emphasised the pale hue of her skin and the sprinkling of freckles across her short, straight nose. His lips thinned as he felt a familiar ache in his groin.
‘So you think I’ve come here to offer myself to you because you have allthis...’
‘Of course you have!’ He heard the softness of her laughter in his head, the lilt of her voice when they were in bed, talking quietly while he stroked her face. He clenched his fists because he didn’t welcome those memories. They didn’t belong here. ‘But you’ve made your trip in vain, Cordelia. Naturally, I will compensate you for your travel. But return to Cornwall you must, because you don’t, for a thousand reasons, belong here...’
CHAPTER FIVE
‘ATHOUSANDREASONS?’ Cordelia enquired icily. She didn’t think so. One reason and he had just said it in four simple words.You don’t belong here.
Was this the opening she needed to take? Should she nod mutely and leave? Let him think that he had struck jackpot with his insulting, offensive and sweeping assumption?
She thought of her father. An honourable man. She’d inherited his sense of right and wrong. To walk away now without explaining why she had come in the first place...
What would that make her? In his eyes and in her own? She would know the truth and, of course, that should be all that mattered, but the very idea of leaving him with the mistaken impression that she was a seedy gold-digger willing to sacrifice herself for cash was too much to take in.
‘Cordelia.’ Luca’s voice softened. ‘You really don’t understand...’
‘I really think I do,’ she returned, without skipping a beat. ‘You think I’ve come here with a begging bowl. You think that the only reason I might have wanted to get in touch with you would be because I’ve found out how rich you are and what a catch you would be for a poor fisherman’s daughter like myself.’
‘Maybe that’s just a part of the equation,’ Luca murmured, simultaneously knowing that he should gently but firmly usher her to the door, see her on her way, yet, stupidly, finding that he couldn’t quite bring himself to do it. Not just yet. ‘And I mean no insult.’
‘That’s wonderful of you,’ she said tightly. ‘You mean no insult and yet you just happen to have insulted me in the worst possible way.’
‘Of course I don’t consider you a poor fisherman’s daughter.As a matter of fact, I have a great deal of respect for your father. He is an honest man making an honest living. Believe me, I have spent my adult life seeing the corruption that all this can buy.’ He gestured to encompass the vastness of his house and the enormous wealth it represented. ‘Your father... I respect him...’
‘Thank you,’ Cordelia said politely, while, inside, she raged with the force of an erupting volcano at what she could only interpret as his smug contempt for everything she stood for. How on earth could she not have seen through him? ‘I’ll make sure I tell him.’
‘Perhaps,’ Luca murmured, watching the satiny softness of her skin, the tinge of colour spreading across her high cheekbones. He had to stop himself from staring. Worse, from closing his eyes and remembering the supple strength of her beautiful body, the fullness of her breasts, the smoothness of her inner thighs. ‘Perhaps...’ he dragged his thoughts away from those dangerous zones and back to the matter at hand, which was the necessity to show her to the door ‘...you really haven’t come here because you’d sussed who I was and what I’m worth. It beggars belief that you would have taken this length of time to make your move, but were I to give you the benefit of the doubt...’ he sighed and raked his fingers through his hair, annoyed because for once in his life the logical way forward with the conversation was not one he felt comfortable taking ‘...then the outcome would be the same.Cara,we had our moment in time, and believe me when I tell you that I will cherish it for ever, but it was no more than a moment in time.’
His words slithered through her like shards of glass, destroying every rose-hued memory. She felt sick. The ground seemed to be spinning under her feet and she took a few deep breaths and balled her hands into fists.
