Page 2 of A Baby Scandal in Italy

‘Rafa, what is the meaning of this interruption? The boardroom is hardly the place to conduct your private affairs. I may have to reconsider our deal.’

‘Once again, please accept my apologies for the disturbance, Carlo,’ Rafa said smoothly. ‘We will take a short break for refreshments.’

He put his hand on Ivy’s arm and she felt a zing of electricity shoot through her. ‘Come with me,’ he ordered curtly, steering her towards the door. He paused next to his PA and said in a low voice, ‘Giulia, tell the caterers to serve the champagne and canapés while I deal with this situation.’

Ivy’s nerves jangled as she walked beside Rafa along the corridor. His initial reaction to his baby son had not been promising, but she needed his help. The eviction notice she’d received from her landlord, giving her two weeks to move out of her flat, had prompted her to set aside her shock and grief over Gemma and take Bertie to his father. She had used the last of her savings to pay for a budget flight to Rome and had booked to stay for two nights at the cheapest hotel she could find.

‘In here,’ Rafa growled as he ushered her into his office. It was a masculine room, all marble and chrome with a black, glass-topped desk set at an angle in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows that gave a panoramic view across Rome. Despite the air-conditioning in the building, sweat trickled down Ivy’s spine and her tee shirt was sticking to her. It had been a twenty-minute walk from her hotel to Vieri Azioni’s headquarters and Bertie was heavy. The straps of the baby carrier were digging into her shoulders. Bertie was stirring and soon he would want another feed. Ivy had packed formula milk, nappies, wipes and all the other paraphernalia necessary for a four-month-old infant in her backpack.

Tenderness swamped her when she looked down at Bertie. She loved her half-sister’s baby with all her heart and was determined to do her best for him, but she had struggled without any family to help her. Gemma’s mother had died many years ago. Their father was divorced from Ivy’s mum and had a new family. He had only seen Bertie once and wasn’t interested in his grandson. The same was true of Ivy’s mother, who had not been close to her stepdaughter and was not involved with Gemma’s baby.

Rafa Vieri followed Ivy into his office and slammed the door shut. He looked grimly forbidding, and her heart sank, knowing that she must try to persuade him to acknowledge Bertie as his son. She lifted her hand to push her hair off her face and caught sight of the tiny butterfly tattoo on the inside of her wrist.

Gemma had been fascinated by butterflies and their symbolism of hope when they emerged from a cocoon and were free to fly away. When Ivy had been diagnosed with cancer as a teenager, Gemma had hung a butterfly mobile above her bed in the hospital and had told her to imagine the future when she was free from the illness that ravaged her body. The butterfly tattoo was in memory of her sister. Ivy took a deep breath, and a sense of calm came over her.

Rafa scowled at the woman with crazy hair whose untimely interruption threatened one of the most important deals of his life. She was making crooning noises to the baby as she lifted him out of the carrier. If it hadn’t been for the child, Rafa would have instructed a member of his staff to escort Miss Bennett out of the building.

The baby let out a wail and the sound evoked more poignant memories for Rafa. He remembered the nights he’d spent walking up and down the nursery, rocking Lola in his arms to try to soothe her to sleep. Once he’d believed he had everything he could wish for, but his happiness had been an illusion built on Tiffany’s deception. After the divorce, he had vowed never to trust any woman. And he was adamant that he did not want a child. When he’d discovered that Lola was not his daughter, he’d felt as though his heart had been ripped out, and he could not bear to experience that intensity of pain again.

Rafa strode round his desk and threw himself down onto the chair. He was desperate to find a semblance of normality in a situation that felt increasingly like the implausible plot line of one of the very bad films his ex-wife had starred in.

‘Are you an actress? Is this a stunt?’ Maybe it was someone’s idea of a joke. Or could a business rival have paid Miss Bennett to sabotage the deal-signing meeting with Carlo Landini?

Her eyes widened. Despite himself, Rafa noticed that her eyes were startlingly beautiful, huge and dark brown, fringed by impossibly long lashes.

‘I’m not an actress. I used to be a show dancer on a cruise ship, but I can’t do that job now I have Bertie.’

She shrugged off her backpack and dumped it on Rafa’s desk. ‘I need to prepare his milk,’ she explained as she rummaged in the bag and took out a feeding bottle and a carton of ready-mixed infant formula. Holding the grizzling baby against her shoulder, she deftly unscrewed the lid on the carton with her free hand and tipped the formula milk into the bottle.

‘I’m Ivy Bennett. Gemma’s sister.’ She looked expectantly at Rafa. ‘You must remember her. She wrote to you four months ago.’

‘I don’t know anyone called Gemma. More to the point, I have never met you before,’ he drawled as he moved his gaze over her. He had intended to sound dismissive, but his voice was annoyingly husky. Ivy had taken off the baby carrier, and he could not help noticing how her tee shirt clung to her high, firm breasts.

He leaned back in his chair and studied her. She was petite and slim, and her tight-fitting jeans moulded her narrow hips. Her hair had been cut into short, wispy layers framing a heart-shaped face. She was nothing like the glamorous supermodel types Rafa went for, but there was something about her elfin beauty that captured his attention. He wondered what her natural hair colour was. Probably mid-brown, the same as her eyelashes, he mused. His gaze lingered on the sensual fullness of her lips, and he felt an unexpected tug of desire.

Celibacy did not suit him, Rafa decided self-derisively. He assumed that going without sex the past couple of months was the reason for his unwarranted reaction to a fragile-looking girl with atrocious dress sense. He had ended an affair that had been going nowhere shortly before his father had suffered a fatal heart attack. Shock, grief and the responsibilities that went with his new role as the head of Vieri Azioni meant that he hadn’t had the time or inclination to dive back into the dating pool, and one-night stands no longer held the appeal they once had.

Ivy Bennett had said that she’d worked as a dancer and her toned figure was an indication that that, at least, was true. An image flashed into Rafa’s mind of her slender body beneath him, her small breasts pressed against his chest. He watched the rosy flush that appeared on her cheeks spread lower over her throat and décolletage, and silently cursed his libido which had inconveniently sprung to life.

His gaze meshed with Ivy’s, and he recognised her awareness of him in her big brown eyes before her lashes swept down. Rafa always knew. It had happened to him since he’d been a teenager, but these days he was less likely to be tempted by an invitation in a woman’s eyes. Especially this woman, who had disrupted a vital business meeting and falsely accused him. He was impatient to return to the boardroom and try to salvage the deal with Carlo Landini. His jaw tightened when Ivy walked over to the sofa and sat down with the baby on her lap.

‘Do you mind if I feed Bertie while we talk?’

As he watched the baby greedily suck on the teat of the bottle, Rafa’s mind flew back to the past. When Lola had been born, he’d tried to spend as much time as possible with her, and during pre-season he had rushed home from training sessions to give her a bath and her evening feed. The professional basketball season ran for six months of the year and teams travelled to every state in North America. The punishing schedule of playing home and away games had been detrimental to his family life. Tiffany had complained that she was bored and lonely while he was away, but she had not stayed lonely for long, Rafa thought grimly. It had been Tiffany’s decision to end their marriage and the divorce had exposed her devastating lies.

His gaze narrowed on Ivy, who was undeniably pretty, but demonstrably a liar. ‘We have nothing to talk about, Miss Bennett. You know damn well that I am not the father of your baby and I demand you retract your false allegation. You can consider yourself lucky if I decide not to sue you for slander.’

Her Bambi eyes grew as round as saucers. ‘I’m not Bertie’s mother. But you are most definitely his father. He is my sister’s baby. Gemma met you thirteen months ago while she was working on a cruise ship, and you were one of the passengers. She fell pregnant by you, but when she wrote and told you about your child she never heard from you. It’s the old story,’ she said, bitterness creeping into her voice. ‘Men have the fun and women have the babies.’

‘Enough,’ Rafa snapped. ‘I have never been on a cruise ship. Frankly, it’s my idea of hell to be trapped on a boat at sea with hundreds of other people.’

Ivy’s nose wrinkled when she frowned and for some reason it made her look even cuter. When had he ever foundcutea turn on? Rafa thought grimly. He was furious that he could not control his unbidden reaction to Ivy.

‘Gemma told me she had met Rafael Vieri aboard theOcean Staron a cruise around the Caribbean islands. Usually we worked on the same ship, but I had been promoted to lead dancer on the company’s sister ship,Ocean Princess. Gem was a social hostess.’ Ivy grimaced. ‘To be honest, I was surprised that she’d had a relationship with you, because it is a sackable offence for a crew member to become involved with a passenger. I guess she must have really liked you to have risked her career.’

He swore. ‘I repeat, I did not meet your sister on a cruise ship.’ His exasperation increased when Ivy looked unconvinced. ‘It is feasible, I suppose, that Gemma met a passenger on the ship who had the same name as me. Rafael and Vieri are fairly common names in Italy.’

Rafa had been named after his father. But the possibility that his workaholic father could have spent weeks away from the office to go on a cruise was laughable and Rafa instantly dismissed the idea from his mind.

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