The Italian Billionaire's Secret Love-Child

‘What I am trying to say is that the best thing that ever happened in my life was the day you walked back into it.’ His dark eyes met hers, and Charlotte held her breath, not wanting to shatter the moment. ‘Yes, I was furious that you had had a child, my child, and not seen fit to tell me. But when I saw you again…’ He relived the moment and briefly closed his eyes before looking at her. ‘Everything that had once been there flooded back. It was as though those eight years of absence had never been.’

‘What do you mean?’ Charlotte was almost too afraid to ask just in case she had missed some very obvious agenda that would put paid to the soaring hope blossoming inside her.

‘For eight years I did what I was programmed to do,’ Riccardo said heavily. ‘And I enjoyed it, or I thought I did. Women came and went, and I figured that was perfectly normal.’ He glanced down at his fingers and thought how odd it felt to be at the mercy of something he couldn’t rationalise. ‘You came along, Charlie, and it was as though I had been living half a life. I don’t want to marry you just for the sake of Gina. I want to marry you for me, because I can’t go back to that half life. And, before you say a word, I can make you happy.’

He went over to her and sat on the arm of her chair because somehow, by being physically close, she might absorb the urgency of what he was saying. ‘You think you need the safety of that other man, but you don’t. All I am asking is a chance…I love you, my darling. You complete me.’

‘Perhaps you could say that again?’ Charlotte at last found her voice and she smiled at him, a wide, blissful smile that lit up her face.

‘Come on, Charlie,’ Riccardo, watching the transformation of her expression, felt deliriously happy. ‘I’ve bared my soul. Now it’s your turn.’

Neither was allowed to let the grass grow under their feet. Gina made sure of that. She wanted to be a part of everything, and no decision was to be made without her consultation. The dreaded meeting with Riccardo’s mother turned out to be not quite the terrible event Charlotte had envisaged.

‘She’ll hate me,’ she’d told Riccardo, the day before his mother was due to land for a long weekend with them. ‘She’ll complain about the size of my house. She’ll complain about everything.’ She could remember all too well the austere, aristocratic bearing and the disparaging, soul-destroying personality. But Riccardo had been right to reassure her that his mother had mellowed over time, and Gina had broken the ice. The two together had formed an amusing and conspirational relationship which oversaw the details of the wedding, and six months later, Charlotte and Riccardo had been married. It was a fairly small service, followed by a much bigger reception, and afterwards a fortnight in Italy, during which they’d barely seen their daughter who’d done the rounds of relatives and had been overjoyed to be the centre of attention.

Riccardo, who increasingly found it hard to understand how he could have lived his life without Charlotte, returned to their new, spacious house in Richmond every evening to the warmth of his family. And when, on their first anniversary, he was informed that he was going to be a father for the second time, he felt pride and joy swell inside his heart for the woman sitting opposite him in the restaurant, demurely sipping from her glass of mineral water.

‘You’ll give up work, won’t you?’ She had stayed on to oversee the running of the office on a part-time basis, and now she nodded, with a slow smile.

‘Can’t wait. Gina’s settled in her new school, life is settled…’ She could feel tears of happiness well up. ‘And it’s about time you did it the Italian way and started supporting me!’ Then she grinned, because it was only what he had wanted from the minute she had looked at him and said, ‘I do…’