Page 6 of A Baby Scandal in Italy

Rafa muttered something in Italian that, from his tone, Ivy guessed was not complimentary. ‘I might have guessed you would cry when your lies were exposed. It’s a clever act, but I am not affected by tears.’

‘I’m not acting. I can’t help crying when you say such vile things,’ she said in a choked voice. As a child, she had rarely showed her feelings. There had always been a drama at home, and she’d learned to be stoical about her parents’ volatile relationship and her father’s absences when he’d become bored of family life. Even when he had left for good, she’d kept her feelings of disappointment and abandonment to herself.

Cancer had changed Ivy. She had recovered from a life-threatening illness, but she felt like an onion that had had its layers peeled away one by one, leaving her raw and exposing her deepest emotions. She found joy in simple things, but tears came easily when she was upset.

‘You treated my sister badly,’ she accused Rafa thickly. ‘You ignored her when she wrote to tell you that she’d given birth to your baby.’

He threw his hands up in the air. ‘I did not sleep with your sister. And why did you tell the newspapers that I am the father ofyourchild?’

‘I didn’t.’ Ivy swallowed and tried to regain her composure. It was difficult when Rafa loomed over her like a beautiful, dark angel. ‘I told him I wouldn’t talk to the press.’

She bit her lip when Rafa glowered at her. ‘There was a man,’ she muttered. ‘He came up to me in the street after I’d left Vieri Azioni’s office building and said he’d heard that I had introduced you to your son.’

Rafa looked disbelieving. ‘What was his name?’

‘I don’t know.’ She couldn’t admit that she’d been unable to think straight after the shock of finding herself attracted to Rafa. ‘He...the man...was concerned that I’d had to walk back to my hotel carrying Bertie. There wasn’t a baby seat fitted in your car,’ she said in response to Rafa’s frown. ‘He took me to a café...and bought megelato.’

Rafa’s brows lifted, and Ivy flushed at the sardonic look he gave her. ‘He suggested that I could sell my story to the press for a lot of money,’ she continued. ‘I told him I wouldn’t do that because I didn’t want Gemma’s and Bertie’s private lives published in the newspapers.’ She frowned. ‘Although, come to think of it, I don’t remember that I mentioned Gemma.’

‘So you allowed a random stranger to believe that I’d got you pregnant and refused to accept responsibility for my illegitimate child,’ Rafa said in a dangerous voice. ‘Did it occur to you that Gelato Man could have been a journalist?’

She flushed again at his mocking tone. ‘I’m sure he wasn’t. I have no idea how the story is in the newspapers or why some of the facts are wrong.’

‘The entire story is a complete fabrication that has cost me an important business deal and led the board members of my company to question my suitability to be the CEO.’ Rafa’s teeth were gritted. His withering tone stirred Ivy’s temper.

‘My sister was not a liar, and neither am I.’

He snorted. ‘Frankly, I don’t give a damn whether you or your sister are the baby’s mother. I am not his father, and I will prove it by taking a paternity test. When I have the irrefutable truth from the lab report, the newspapers will have to retract the story, and I will sue you for making false allegations to the press, Miss Bennett.’

‘I have no objection to a DNA test being carried out. In fact, I was going to suggest it,’ Ivy said calmly. ‘The test will prove that you are Bertie’s father. What will you do then?’ she asked Rafa. ‘Will you be prepared to make room in your life for your son? And will you love him as he needs and deserves to be loved?’

Ivy was calling his bluff, Rafa assured himself. The baby was not his. Everything inside him rejected the possibility. He had made room in his life and indeed welcomed the birth of a child once before. He’d loved Lola unreservedly, but the revelation that she was not his daughter had almost broken him and made him bitter and untrusting.

He had no recollection of meeting Ivy’s sister. It was true he’d enjoyed numerous sexual liaisons with women who understood that he did not want a long-term relationship, but he had always been sober when he’d taken his lovers to bed. He would swear he’d never slept with the woman in the photo who Ivy had told him was the baby’s mother. Why then was it reported in the media that Bertie was Ivy’s baby? The whole thing smacked of a scam that Ivy was trying to pull. Yet it was odd that she had agreed to his demand for a paternity test without argument.

The bathroom was hot and airless, and sweat beaded on Rafa’s brow. He had every reason to mistrust Ivy, but his libido did not seem to care that she was a liar. He roamed his eyes over her grey vest top and matching tiny shorts that clung to her narrow hips and stopped high up on her thighs. Moving his gaze lower, he noted that her legs were shapely, with the defined calf muscles of a dancer. When he’d followed her into the bathroom, his eyes had been drawn to the rounded curves of her pert bottom.

Now she stood facing him and he could see the enticing outline of her nipples pressing against her thin top. If he’d had sex with Ivy, he would not have forgotten her, he brooded. His wayward imagination indulged in an erotic fantasy in which he undressed her and kissed his way down her body. He was intrigued to discover if the body hair covering her femininity was dyed bright pink too.

Dio!Rafa jerked his mind back from going down a path he was definitely not going to follow. At best Ivy had made a genuine mistake in believing he was the father of her sister’s baby. At worst—and, to Rafa’s mind, more likely—Ivy was a deceitful gold-digger from the same mould as his ex-wife. Why then was his body reacting as if he were a hormone-fuelled teenager on a first date?

Lust for Tiffany had resulted in their marriage, which in truth had been rocky almost from the start. Rafa had been willing to work at the relationship for the sake of their daughter until Tiffany had admitted that another man was Lola’s father and that she’d married Rafa for his money. Since the divorce, he had made decisions based on cold logic rather than unreliable emotions.

Proof that Ivy was a liar would be revealed in the result of the paternity test and he would have no qualms about throwing her to the wolves, or in this case the paparazzi, Rafa thought grimly. He’d see how she liked being fodder for the gutter press. He had been woken early in the morning by the constant pinging of his phone as new messages arrived from friends congratulating him on becoming a father. Immediately, he’d flicked to a news stream and blistering hot rage had surged through him when he’d discovered that Ivy had gone to the press with her scandalous story.

It had to have been her. Rafa remembered Ivy’s startled reaction when he’d showed her the front page of the newspaper. She’d admitted that she had been approached by a stranger. Surely she could not be so naïve that she hadn’t realised the guy was a journalist? She must have arranged to talk to the press after he had refused to believe her story or give her money. Ivy looked as though butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth, but he wasn’t fooled by a pretty little liar.

When she stepped closer to him, Rafa’s muscles tensed, as if he was preparing to defend himself from an attack by an enemy—which she was, he reminded himself. It was entirely Ivy’s fault that Carlo Landini had called him an hour ago and cancelled the deal for Vieri Azioni to buy into Banca Landini. Now he was facing the threat of a vote of no confidence by the board, and some of the directors had suggested that the deputy, Sandro Florenzi, should replace Rafa as chairman and CEO.

‘I understand that finding out about Bertie has been a shock for you,’ Ivy said softly. ‘Especially if you did not receive Gemma’s letter. I really don’t know how the media got hold of the story.’

It was crazy that he wanted to believe her. His failed marriage and Tiffany’s betrayal had made Rafa deeply cynical, but he could not look away from Ivy’s melting, chocolate-brown eyes. His body tightened as he watched her pupils dilate. The strap of her top had slipped off one shoulder and his fingers itched to slide it back into place, or better still tug the other strap down until he’d bared her breasts with their pebble-hard nipples. His mouth watered at the prospect of curling his tongue around each taut peak.

The atmosphere in the tiny bathroom simmered with sexual tension that made the hairs on Rafa’s neck stand on end and his pulse thud hard and fast. His gaze dropped to Ivy’s mouth as her tongue darted across her lips to moisten them. He did not know if it was an unconscious action or a deliberate invitation, and frankly he did not care. He wanted to kiss her. It infuriated him to admit that he desired her, but he was confident that he was in control, and kissing her would simply satisfy his curiosity.

A high-pitched cry from the bedroom shattered whatever had or hadn’t been about to happen between them. Rafa told himself he should feel relieved when Ivy gasped as if she had been jolted back to reality and spun away from him.

‘I can’t believe Bertie is awake already. I hoped he would sleep while I had a shower. I have to check out of the hotel by ten o’clock and my flight back to England is at two this afternoon.’

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