The Italian's Secret Baby

It wasn’t until she encountered his broodingly black and icy cold mesmeric eyes that Scarlet recalled with a rush of scalding embarrassment that she wasn’t dealing with someone into spontaneous hugs. Feeling a total idiot, she unpeeled herself from him and stepped away with a self-conscious grimace and a murmur of, ‘Sorry.’

She tucked her hands behind her back and resisted the self-indulgent impulse to smooth down the non-existent creases in his jacket, recognizing that the impulse to touch his lithe body no longer had anything to do with spontaneity and a hell of a lot to do with sexual curiosity. It was deeply mortifying to have to acknowledge she had enjoyed the contact with a very well-developed male physique.

She felt she had to offer some sort of explanation for her strange behaviour.

‘I know he’s perfectly safe with the Bradleys, but when I saw you I thought the worst…’ She released a small self-derisive chuckle. ‘But I expect you’ve already gathered that much.’

Her brow wrinkled as an inconsistency she had been too panic stricken to notice earlier struck her.

‘Why didn’t you say straight off that you didn’t know the Bradleys?’

It wasn’t as if he could have missed the fact she had been two steps away from hysteria.

‘I wanted to talk to you and I wasn’t sure you’d let me in.’

Scarlet stared at him. Staggeringly there was no hint of apology in his manner. His behaviour was so extraordinary that it took her a while to get her head around what he had done. ‘You wanted to come in,’ she repeated in a dangerously flat tone as her temper fizzed dramatically into life. ‘You wanted to come in.’

Only someone totally callous could act with such calculated cruelty.

‘I need to talk to you.’

‘Oh, that makes it all right, then!’ she said contemptuously.

His classically pure jawline tautened as a dark line appeared across his cheekbones. ‘Will you calm yourself, woman?’

‘I’m not a woman…well, not your woman, anyhow, and for that,’ she added with incoherent fervour, ‘I shall be eternally grateful. Nothing makes it all right for you to scare me half to death that way. It was a totally despicable thing to do!’

And it also proved her first impressions had been right; he was a man who didn’t care about anything but getting what he wanted! If other people got hurt in the process, so what? It didn’t matter to Roman.

‘You disgust me!’ Her voice rose a quivering octave. ‘Get out, get out of my home right now!’

‘I think you’re overreacting just a little here.’

Her eyes flashed pure green fire as she glared up at him. ‘Overreacting? I thought that Sam was—’ She broke off, her voice suspended by tears as the nightmare images crowded into her head. ‘Maybe I am overreacting,’ she conceded huskily. ‘But this is only the second time Sam has spent a night away from home and…’ She shook her head. ‘If you had a child maybe you’d understand.’

His nostrils flared and something she couldn’t identify flashed in his eyes. ‘I wanted to talk to you.’

From his expression she couldn’t imagine he wanted to say anything nice.

‘I realise that I should be thanking my lucky stars, but strangely I’m not.’ She strode to the door and pulled it open. ‘I don’t want to talk to you, Mr O’Hagan, and you were right, I wouldn’t have let you in.’

Why would she? To allow someone who was broadcasting dangerous and volatile into your home was asking for trouble. Every inch of his powerful frame suggested he was struggling to contain his anger and with limited success.#p#????#e#

‘If this has something to do with the university you should be speaking to David.’

His dark brows arched. ‘University?’ he repeated, his lip curling. ‘You’re a nursery nurse. Why would I come here if I wanted to discuss anything involving the university.’

‘Frankly, I don’t know,’ she admitted. ‘But it makes about as much sense as anything else I could come up with to explain you being here.’

And it was a lot more feasible than the inspired, but seriously misguided notion that Scarlet was embarrassed to admit she had entertained for a brief mad moment when she had seen him standing there. The one that relied on him having spent the last ten days wrestling with an overpowering attraction for her he could no longer resist.

So it wasn’t exactly plausible, but it was a well-known fact that some men liked glasses and flat chests, and if you were going to fantasise you might as well do it properly.