Alex set his jaw. He hardly wanted a bunch of strangers to hear what he had to say to her. Just as he hadn’t relished having her great-aunt listening in, looking as if she was memorizing every word to repeat to a lawyer later.
“This way,” he told Rosalie grimly, leading her up the nearest flight of steps. It led
to the high stone rampart that surrounded the steeply vertical island. Up on the ramparts, all was quiet, except the wind and seagulls. Mont-Saint-Michel, which had once been a fortress, a monastery and a prison, seemed haunted beneath the moonlight, as it overlooked the shadowed beauty of the bay.
But it was when Alex turned back to look at Rosalie that he truly caught his breath.
Standing next to him, she looked up at him with big dark eyes that seemed to echo with ripples of moonlight, like the tide. A cool wind blew her hair, and she was biting her deliciously full lower lip. Beneath her white apron, her simple black dress showed off her full breasts and belly swelling with his child.
His child.
Alex still couldn’t believe it.
After she’d left his palazzo in Venice two days ago, he’d called a private investigator, the best and most expensive. Yesterday, Alex had called the fertility clinic in San Francisco and interviewed them at length. Now he knew everything.
But he hadn’t just confirmed her story. He’d learned everything about Rosalie Brown—oh, yes—from the grades she’d gotten in her rural school to the recent tragic deaths of her parents in a wildfire.
Odette Lancel was her only remaining family. It hadn’t taken a genius to track Rosalie to Mont-Saint-Michel.
Which was good, because the last thing Alex felt like at the moment was a genius.
He could hardly believe the depths of his dead wife’s betrayal. Or her determination to gain the upper hand. And she would have. If not for her sudden, shocking death, she would have gotten what she wanted. Because she’d found the one thing more important to him than his honor. More important than his fortune.
“Why did you come here?” Rosalie’s voice was low. “In Venice you called me a liar and said I couldn’t possibly be pregnant with your child.”
“I was wrong.”
She gave a bitter laugh. “Thank you.” She looked away. “What did you tell my aunt? That you wanted to share custody?”
“Not exactly.” As he looked at the beautiful girl standing on the haunted stone parapet, he thought she looked like a lost princess in a medieval fairy tale.
Obviously the shocking events of the last month were starting to take a toll on Alex. Because there was no such thing as magic. Fairy tales weren’t real, and this girl, however beautiful she might be, didn’t need a knight to save her. She was a young woman who’d agreed to bear a child for money.
But why? Knowing what he knew about her, money was the last thing Rosalie Brown needed. She had received multiple offers on valuable farmland in Sonoma County, famous for its vineyards. She could have sold it. Failing that, she could have asked him for a small fortune in Venice two days before. But she hadn’t.
He knew everything, but he understood nothing.
“What do you want, then?” Rosalie demanded.
“I’ve had you investigated,” he said slowly. “I’ve learned everything about you. But there are things I don’t understand.”
“Investigated?” She turned pale. “You had no right to invade my privacy—”
“Why did you agree to get pregnant by a stranger and give away the baby at birth? Was it really for the money?”
Her eyes flashed. “It was a mistake. I never should have agreed to be a surrogate.”
“Why did you?”
“I thought,” her voice faltered, “I could do something good in the world, something that would make up for... Well.” Her jaw set. “I made a mistake when I signed the surrogacy contract. I changed my mind almost at once, but...by then it was too late.”
“You were already pregnant.”
She gave a single nod.
“How could you believe Chiara with her ridiculous story? Did you really believe that any man would be too busy to meet the future mother of his child?”
She suddenly couldn’t meet his gaze. “That isn’t actually what she said.”