Page 23 of A Baby Scandal in Italy

When they walked across the car park, the breeze lifted the hem of Ivy’s silk dress and briefly revealed her thighs and the lace bands of her hold-up stockings.

‘You look beautiful,’ Rafa said tautly. ‘That colour suits you.’

The cinnamon-coloured dress teamed with nude heels and a matching handbag was one of several outfits the personal stylist had picked out for Ivy’s new wardrobe and had deemed suitable for the fiancée of one of Italy’s richest men. The dress was the most elegant item of clothing Ivy had ever worn. When she’d glanced in the mirror before they’d had left the penthouse, she had been surprised at how nice she looked. Now the gleam in Rafa’s eyes made her blush. It was just sexual chemistry, she reminded herself.

He put Bertie into the car and opened Ivy’s door before he walked round to the driver’s side and folded his tall frame behind the steering wheel. The hospital was in a suburb of Rome, and soon they had left the city and joined theautostrada,where the car picked up speed. Rafa had said the drive to L’Aquila, the town close to his castle, would take a little over an hour. Ivy stared out of the window at the lush green scenery. In the distance she could see the jagged peaks of the mountains.

‘Are you going to give me the silent treatment for the whole journey?’ he drawled. ‘Or are you going to tell me what is bothering you?’

She sighed. ‘Your mother said that you won’t tolerate dishonesty, but you...we...are deceiving her by pretending that Bertie is our child. It feels wrong.’

‘The irony isn’t lost on me,’ he bit out. ‘It tears me apart to think that my father was not as perfect as I’d believed. He made a mistake, and the ramifications of his infidelity would be devastating to my mother. You saw how weak she is, and you heard her say how much she loved my father and how happy they were in their long marriage. HowcanI tell her the truth?’

‘It’s all a mess,’ Ivy said dismally. ‘I wish I hadn’t brought Bertie to Italy. I imagine you wish that too.’

Rafa glanced at her. ‘I have a gut feeling that the test will prove he is my half-brother. Bertie is an innocent baby and none of this mess, as you call it, is his fault. You and I are all he has. For his sake we need to be a team and do our best for him.’

A team with Rafa! Ivy was startled by how much she liked the idea. Her heart warmed to know that he was prepared to help her take care of Bertie and be involved in his upbringing. She had felt so alone since Gemma had died, and sometimes she’d felt overwhelmed by the responsibility of looking after her baby nephew.

She wondered about the logistics of how she and Rafa would be parents to Bertie. Perhaps he would suggest she move to Italy so that they could share custody more easily than if she and the baby lived in England. She would be willing to relocate, but she’d have to learn to speak Italian. Maybe Rafa would teach her. Heat coiled inside Ivy as she thought of other, more intimate things that she would like him to teach her. No doubt he would be an expert tutor in the bedroom.

She turned her head towards him and her heart missed a beat when her gaze collided with his before he looked at the road again. ‘What are you thinking?’ he murmured.

Too much, she thought ruefully. They did not even know yet if Bertie was Rafa’s half-brother. They also hadn’t discussed at what point they would end their fake engagement. She looked down at the yellow diamond on her finger and gave a faint sigh. When she had been a little girl, she’d believed in fairy tales, and had hoped she would meet a handsome prince some day. But she had grown up and realised that happy ever after only happened in books and films.

Her mum had spent years chasing a romantic dream, only to have her heart broken countless times. Ivy had decided that instead of unrealistic daydreams she would settle for achievable goals. A billionaire playboy who had the looks and charisma of a sex god was definitely not achievable, she reminded herself.

Her mind turned to her conversation with Rafa’s mother.

‘Your mother told me about Lola,’ she murmured. ‘She seemed to think that you still love her.’

Rafa tightened his fingers on the steering wheel. ‘It’s not easy to simply switch love off,’ he said gruffly.

The sharp sensation like a knife thrust between her ribs wasnotjealousy. Ivy was simply surprised to hear Rafa, the master of self-control, talk openly about love.

‘You loved your wife even though Lola deceived you?’

He frowned. ‘Lola wasn’t my wife. I was married to her mother, Tiffany. For two years I believed that Lola was my daughter.’

Daughter! Shock ran through Ivy. ‘When I asked, you told me that you didn’t have a child. She stared at his chiselled profile. ‘What do you mean, you believed? Are you saying that Lolawasn’tyour child?’

‘I suppose you had better know the whole story,’ he muttered. ‘I had been dating Tiffany for a few months before we got married. When she told me she was pregnant, I had no reason to think the baby wasn’t mine, and I immediately proposed.’

He frowned. ‘I was under a fair amount of pressure from my father to marry and settle down. With hindsight, I can see that one reason why I married Tiffany was to please my father. I knew he had been disappointed by my decision to move to America. He made no secret that he hoped that I would bring my family to Italy and prepare to take over running Vieri Azioni, but I wasn’t ready to give up my basketball career.’

A nerve flickered in Rafa’s cheek. ‘Cracks started to appear in the marriage early on, partly due to the amount of time I spent away from home during the professional basketball season. Lola was born six weeks early. At least, that’s the excuse Tiffany gave. I missed the next match and rushed home to meet my baby girl, and I fell in love with Lola Rose.’

He fell silent and Ivy sensed it pained him to revisit his past. ‘I tried to make my marriage work,’ he said finally, ‘But maybe I didn’t try hard enough. I was unwilling to give up my basketball career,’ he admitted with raw honesty. ‘A month or so after Lola’s second birthday, Tiffany told me she wanted a divorce. Even then I hoped the break-up could be amicable and we would share custody of our daughter.

‘That was when Tiffany dropped her bombshell and told me that Lola was not my child. Her real father was a well-known film director, Brad Curran, who Tiffany had been sleeping with at the same time as with me. She had known that she was pregnant with Curran’s child, but he hadn’t been interested, so she’d let me think I was the baby’s father. The dates didn’t tie up, which was why she made out that Lola was born earlier than the due date.’

Rafa did not try to hide his bitterness at his ex-wife’s betrayal and Ivy didn’t know what to say that would not sound trite. She sensed he did not want her sympathy and that his pride had been hurt as well as his feelings.

‘While I’d been away on tour with the basketball team, Tiffany had met up with her old flame. Following a positive paternity test, Curran accepted that he was Lola’s father and offered to marry Tiffany as soon as she’d divorced me. I had no legal right to see Lola and Tiffany decided that a clean break would be best.

‘I was gutted,’ Rafa said rawly. ‘I stood in the empty nursery. It felt as though Lola had died, but I did not have any right to grieve for her, because she was not my child. If that wasn’t bad enough, Tiffany tried to sell the story of our so-called love triangle to the tabloids. I didn’t want details of my private life in the media, and more importantly I was anxious to protect Lola’s privacy. I had to pay my ex-wife a fortune on top of the divorce settlement I’d given her so that she wouldn’t speak to the press.’

It was little wonder Rafa was convinced thatshehad told the journalist he was Bertie’s father, Ivy thought. But it hurt that he did not trust her and believed she was as deceitful as his ex-wife.

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