Bedded for Passion, Purchased for Pregnancy

Sweet dreams were her visitors that night.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

COULD they make it?

Walking in the surf, wearing one of his shirts and a rolled-up pair of his shorts, feeling the whip of water on her ankles, the salty spray on her face, her body deliciously tender from his attention, Emma relished the time alone as she tried to sensibly ask the question.

Yes!

Despite the damning evidence to the contrary, despite the appalling reputation that preceded him, somehow she knew he was better than that. That it wasn’t a baby that would be holding them together when she summoned the strength to tell him—instead it was the love they’d shared last night that would bind them.

Climbing onto soft sandstone rocks, she hugged her knees as she gazed out, watched the early-morning swimmers race in the ocean pool, and shivered at the very thought. Yet there was no sight more beautiful than Coogee in the morning. Surfers waiting patiently in the distance for the wave that would carry them to the shore, lone joggers getting their fix of nature before they headed to their offices and computers.

All this she could have.

All this their child could have.

She could almost picture it—a child as blonde as herself or as dark as Zarios, laughing, running…

And Emma stilled.

Only her eyes moved—scanning, processing the colourful scene before her and trying to condense it into a grainy snapshot.

The same snapshot she had seen at Rocco’s.

Of the slice of time when Zarios had been happy.

Craning her neck, she stared up at his windows, pondered the demons that haunted him, this most difficult and complicated man.

And vowed that together they’d face them.

The raised voices that greeted her as she pushed open the front door had her hesitating. The thick throaty sobs of a woman crying had every one of her hackles up. Miranda, perhaps—or another ex-lover come to plead for a second chance? All these thoughts whirred through her mind as she walked through the hallway.

All were laid to rest before she even got to the lounge.

Rapid words were being fired in Italian by Zarios.

The throaty sobs of their recipient told Emma they were brutal.

‘Per favore…’

She was as beautiful as her son, her black eyes desperate, pleading with him to just listen, but Zarios was having none of it.

‘Fuori!’ He shooed her away as if she were a gypsy come begging, and when that didn’t work, when she grabbed at his arm, he dusted her off as if she were some filthy fly. ‘Out!’ He bundled her bag in her arms, dismissing her so absolutely that Emma felt her blood run cold.

‘Zarios…’She was torn, wanting to go after his mother but desperate to talk sense to him. ‘She’s your mother!’

‘Mother?’ He spat the word out. ‘Puttana, more like. Now she is back—now, when my father is near his grave, she decides she loves him, decides she made a mistake. It is thirty years too late…’

‘For who?’ Emma pleaded. ‘It’s not too late for your father—he never stopped loving her.’

‘Then he’s a fool!’ Zarios snarled. ‘All she wants is his money. It’s all any of you want—’ He stopped talking then, halted himself mid-sentence. But it was too late, the words were already out, his poison free. And she tasted it, glimpsed a future that was only as good as his most recent apology.

‘I’ll pay you back.’ Oh, she would—she’d rather lose everything to Jake than be indebted to Zarios. ‘On Monday you’ll get every cent back.’

‘Don’t bother.’ He stared right at her as he flung the final knife. ‘We agreed that if I was unfaithful then you didn’t owe me anything.’ It hit her right between the eyes—the pain, the humiliation, all repeated—and she hated, loathed herself that she had let him do it to her again.

‘You bastard.’

‘Nothing’s changed, then.’ Zarios gave her a black smile. ‘Go on—off you go…’

‘Just like that.’ She couldn’t believe the callousness of him—that after all they’d shared last night he could so easily eradicate her, could loathe her so readily when so recently he’d adored her. ‘Zarios, what about your father? The board?’

‘I don’t care!’ Zarios roared. ‘I don’t care what they think any more. I am the one who made them rich—I am the one who lined their greedy palms. If they think they are better off without me then let them try.’

‘You don’t care about anyone.’ She was scooping her stuff into a handbag, desperate to just get the hell out. ‘You’re so busy looking for the worst in people—’

‘Where’s the good?’ Zarios interrupted. ‘Tell me, where is the good?’

‘I loved you!’ Words that should had been said gently were instead hurled. ‘I loved you right from that first night—but finally you’ve succeeded in convincing me that I was a fool.’

But fools still had feelings, fools still glimpsed paradise—and last night she had.

And she’d have given anything to reclaim it.

‘I’m pregnant, Zarios.’ She was trembling, shaking as she said it—hoping, praying, the words would slam some sense into him, would halt the row long enough so that they could at least talk. But he was unreachable.

For Zarios it was as if he were staring at Miranda, as if he were having his skull split with an axe. He had braced himself to be felled two weeks ago—he had never expected it today. Her last frantic attempts to salvage the situation made him sick to the stomach. So sick, he couldn’t even look at her, struggling to even utter a single word.

‘So?’

It was the cruellest of responses, and on behalf of their child she hated him for it. Yet there was a quiet dignity to her as she countered his poison.

‘I’m letting you know just so you can’t say I didn’t tell you.’

‘Put it in a letter from your lawyer.’ Zarios shrugged.

‘That’s it?’

‘Send me the bill…’ Zarios jeered. ‘But for now—get the hell out. You make me sick, just looking at you.’

He even had the gall to offer her his driver, but pale, nauseous, she declined, unable to even look at him, too numb even to be stunned at his sheer callousness.

‘It’s okay…’

She must have looked like a madwoman—dressed in his clothes, with bare feet and a sparkly handbag, and talking to herself.

Except she wasn’t talking to herself. She was talking to their child.

Her child.

‘We’re going to be just fine, little one.’

Waving down a taxi, Emma asked to be taken to the hotel, then told the driver to wait as she grabbed her things, then headed to the airport.

It was her baby now, and Zarios could take her to court to prove otherwise.

He’d have to fight for the right to call it his now—he’d lost that privilege an hour ago.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

‘DOVE?’ Incensed, furious, Rocco pounced on his son, demanding to know where he’d been. Thoroughly un-together, and reeking of brandy fumes, Zarios was present if not correct for the board meeting on Monday morning. ‘Dove siete stato?’

‘Enjoying the fruits of my labour.’ Zarios stared at his father. ‘I work hard, so I play hard.’

‘The paper says your engagement is over—’

‘You believe the papers?’ Zarios shrugged.

‘You were to behave!’ Rocco roared. ‘All I asked was that for a couple of months you pulled your head in—instead you shame me. Engaged one minute, broken off the next—and what about Emma?’

‘You were the one who warned me off her!’ Zarios pointed out.

But Rocco refused to back down. He was so incensed he could hardly get the words out. ‘Because I knew what you’d do! And now—now when my life’s work is to be decided—you arrive ubriaco—’

‘I am not drunk,’ Zarios interrupted. ‘I wish I were drunk—it would be easier to face those buffoons. Instead I will do it with a hangover! You should be the one doing this—you should be reminding them that you built this company, that this has been your life, this is what you chose over raising your child. And yet you let them walk all over you.’

‘I will not be here soon. I am trying to make sure they accept you as their leader—that things—’

‘Lead, then!’ Zarios said. ‘Lead me into the boardroom now and they can make their choice. But I will tell them what I am now telling you—I will never serve to appease!’

The blinds hadn’t even been opened in the boardroom. Unshaven, dishevelled, and with bags under his eyes so heavy they looked like bruises, Zarios faced those who considered themselves his peers and smiled darkly at them.

‘My father founded this company forty years ago—here in Melbourne. Now it is multinational, now it is a world leader—and now, when my father is due to retire, you question whether its name should remain D’Amilo. Now you question the leadership of the family that has enriched your lifestyle. There is no question.’

Zarios snapped open the blinds, drenching the boardroom in sunlight, and, despite his dishevelled state, somehow he was the most dignified of all of them.

‘With the massive returns last year, while you were adding to your retirement fund or purchasing your beachside home, I, too, was securing my future.’ He jabbed a finger at the office block beyond. ‘In every D’Amilo boardroom around the world, if you look out of the window the view will be the same: I have secured prime office space in every city where this company trades, and I am telling you now that I can and I will take my family name and start again. And I will succeed—because that is what the D’Amilo name means.’ He eyeballed every one of his colleagues. ‘You are either behind me one hundred percent, or you can sit at your desks and wave to me from this window.’