Page 29 of Hidden Heir With His Housekeeper

He slipped off his shoes, then carried his bag to the bedroom and opened the doors to aterrazzothat looked onto the coast.

The sea air overlaid the scent of lavender polish and potpourri. The August sun peeped through the clouds, the weather fresher than usual for this time of year. He stood for a moment to take in the view. The cluster of brightly painted houses that overlooked the harbour were defiantly picturesque. Incongruous super-yachts dwarfed the tourist boats and a few fishing vessels which bobbed in the blue-green water. But while the oldcastellowhich had been converted into this hotel had an enviable position above the Ligurian Sea, he noticed the cracks in the plasterwork and the fading grandeur of the terrace below, where a smattering of tourists braved the sea breezes lounging beside an old-fashioned pool.

Definitely ripe for development, although business wasn’t at the forefront of Mason’s mind... Just like it hadn’t been for five months, because he’d been distracted and out of sorts ever since that night in March.

That needed to stop now. Perhaps that was why he’d raced all the way here, not to chase the shadows from that night which had refused to die, but to finally put an end to this unhealthy, irrational obsession once and for all. Beatrice couldn’t be pregnant, because she would have let him or her sister know, so she could hose him for support payments.

It was past time to let the fallout from that night, and her attempt to trick him into a commitment, go.

The sound of a toilet flushing dragged him out of his navel-gazing and an unseen woman’s voice began humming a pop tune. The sweet, seductive melody floated into the bedroom from the en suite bathroom, making adrenaline spike in Mason’s groin.

Seductive?What the...?

He tensed, shocked by his physical response, as the maid sang the words to the chorus in English. In an English accent.

Okay, he was officially losing his mind, because her voice sounded like...

Then the maid stepped out of the bathroom, her head bent, carrying a bucket and mop.

He couldn’t see her face, only the short cap of blonde hair cropped close to her head. But the tailored lines of the hotel’s blue uniform did nothing to disguise her slender figure, or her rounded belly as she turned to close the bathroom door.

The spike of adrenaline became a wave, slamming into Mason with devastating force. Why did the maid remind him so much of Beatrice? When her hair was too short. And the society princess he’d met that night would never be seen dead working for a living. Perhaps because this woman’s pregnant bump reminded him of the dreams which had tortured him, ever since that night, of his child growing inside her...

He thrust his fingers through his hair. Damn, was he actually losing his mind for real?

But then the vanilla scent hit him, and the wave of confusion turned into a blast of heat... Potent, provocative and devastatingly familiar.

‘Beatrice?’ he murmured, sure he had to be dreaming now or going mad.

The maid’s head lifted. She dropped the bucket, splashing dirty water onto the carpet.

‘Mason!’ she whispered, looking almost as shocked as he felt.

Recognition slammed into him, and all but knocked him off his feet, as his gaze shot from her flushed, beautiful face—only made more striking by the boyish haircut—to land back on that tell-tale bump.

Itwasher. How was that even possible?

But then all he could seem to focus on was her belly. And his astonishment was overtaken by a visceral mix of anger and disbelief... And something that felt disturbingly like desire.

‘Is that mine?’ he ground out on a rusty gasp of fury.

That?

Indignation barrelled through Bea’s body, overriding the cocktail of other emotions battering her—shock, panic, guilt, arousal—arousal, seriously?

Her hand cupped the place where her baby grew, instinctively protecting it from the emerald glare of the man not ten feet away from her—who she’d convinced herself she wouldn’t have to see again, until she was ready.

‘No,thatisn’t yours, it’s mine,’ she said, her voice surprisingly calm given she had just been dropped into a waking nightmare.

What was Mason Foxx doing in Portofino, in the Presidential Suite of her hotel? Was he the Very Important Guest her manager, Fabrizio, had told her about half an hour ago?

Or was his presence in front of her an apparition? A terrible manifestation of her guilty conscience, which she’d been studiously ignoring for months. For four months and twenty-one days, to be precise, ever since the lovely Dr Rossi had confirmed she was pregnant. Had this illusion been sent by the Do-the-Right-Thing Fairy to force her to stop avoiding the inevitable and contact the father of her child?

But the tall, broad-shouldered man in worn jeans and a T-shirt, his jaw covered in beard scruff, his dark chestnut hair finger-combed into waves, his eyes stark with shock and his tanned features flushed with outrage, looked far too real and solid and forbidding to be a figment of her guilty conscience.

The searing emerald gaze narrowed dangerously.

‘Answer the question. Am I the father?’ he said, throwing out a hand to indicate her belly but not shifting his gaze from hers—as if the evidence of her pregnancy was like Medusa, and if he looked at it directly he would turn to stone.

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