Page 28 of 2 Books in One Bundle

‘The only person my mother truly loves is herself. She isn’t, and never has been, around all that much.’

‘Not even when you were young?’

‘Especially not then.’

‘What about your father?’

‘He had a fatal heart attack eighteen years ago,’ he said. ‘He was the stiff upper lip type. Aristocratic, stern and obsessed with building an empire. He didn’t have much time for us either. Or rather, none of us but Leo, who he was grooming to inherit the company.’

‘That must have hurt.’

He gave a shrug, as if it hadn’t cut him to the bone before he’d decided to deal with it by simply shutting his emotions down. ‘I didn’t know any differently.’

‘So what was growing up with but without them like?’

Pretty bloody awful, to steal her phrase, but this conversation had turned out to be deeper than he’d anticipated. It was one thing her voicing her fears, but he couldn’t afford to do the same. He wouldn’t even know how. In his desire to erase the wistfulness from her expression he’d already revealed too much and he really didn’t need the sympathy that was radiating in his direction.

‘It was fine,’ he said with a dismissive wave of his hand. ‘We had excellent nannies.’

‘That’s no substitute.’

‘We survived.’ He shot her his wickedest smile. ‘Some of them were stunning.’

‘Of course they were,’ she said dryly. ‘I hope I get a chance to meet them.’

‘Who?’ Not the nannies, surely.

‘Your brothers and sisters.’

Well,thatwas never going to happen. He hadn’t introduced anyone to his family since Valentina, who’d convinced him such a thing was normal and whom he’d been trying to please, and what a waste of time that had turned out to be.

These days, his conquests were never around long enough to even enquire into his family and none of them, before Mia, had ever meant anything anyway. Not that she meant something, of course. It was just...well, he didn’t know what it was.

But as his pulse slowed and his lungs began to function again, it occurred to him that he’d have to explain her and the pregnancy to his siblings at some point, preferably before the press got wind of it, so why not at the party this evening? He’d declined the invitation, not needing the peculiar tension and roiling stomach that meeting up with them always provoked in him, but that was easily fixable. He could handle any tricky questions that came his way. He’d simply smile lazily and bat them away as he usually did. The addition of Mia to the proceedings would certainly be novel.

‘If you’re feeling up to it,’ he said, stuffing the unacceptably stirring emotions back into the locked box where they belonged, ‘you can meet some of them tonight.’

The Stanhope family’s dinner was being held in a small private room at an exclusive central London members’ club that was housed in a building which dated back to 1774.

Climbing the sweeping marble staircase with Zander at her side, Mia was glad she’d had the opportunity earlier to pick up a suitable outfit from her flat. As unassuming as the exterior of the club was, it was not the sort of establishment that would look favourably on the comfy jeans and baggy sweatshirts she’d packed for her stay with him. Nor did she want to wear her black dress and feel like one of the staff. More importantly, however, there was no way she was going to meet members of his ultra-glamorous family in anything other than her best cocktail dress and highest heels.

She could scarcely believe she was here in the first place, if she was being honest. She’d only suggested meeting them because her curiosity over his upbringing had got the better of her. How could his childhood possibly have been fine when it sounded as if he and his siblings had largely been neglected by the two people who should have done the opposite? What effect would that have on a boy, and the man he’d become?

At leastshe’dhad eleven years of love and affection and a photo to prove it. Even though she couldn’t remember much about that period of her life, eclipsed as it had been by time and the illness that had destroyed her mother and robbed her of her adolescence, she knew she’d been adored and nurtured in the beginning, that there had been shared hopes and dreams, and there was comfort in that.

‘Are you all right? You’re very quiet.’

Zander’s murmured concern cut into her musings about how he was so much more complex than she could ever have imagined, and she switched her attention to the evening ahead.

‘Just nervous.’

‘Don’t be.’

‘That’s easy for you to say,’ she said as up and round they went, her stomach fluttering more wildly with every step she took. ‘They’re your relatives. You’ve known them all your life. Do they know about me?’

‘They’re about to.’

‘Are you planning on telling them about the baby?’

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