The Italian's Inherited Mistress

But she knew that the child she was carrying was his child even if he did not and it would not be as though she would be taking advantage of his generosity. He had also organised an early scan for her with Mr Welch and she had wanted to turn down that offer too, but she was too eager to see her baby for the first time, even if it was only the size of a pea. Alissandru also knew how to tempt a woman, she conceded ruefully, but could she face a scan at which he would undoubtedly expect to be present, as well? she asked herself. She would only be baring her stomach...

In the early hours of the following morning, Isla wakened to a cramping pain that made her wince. She sat up in bed, a sensation of dampness between her thighs stirring anxiety. When she realised that she was bleeding she started to panic. Was she losing her baby? What had she done wrong? Hadn’t she looked after herself well enough?

Lindsay calmed her down and rang the emergency helpline, herding Isla into clothes and then into a taxi to take her to hospital. Her friend told her all sorts of soothing stories about false alarms and minor complications and Isla managed to hold herself together while they sat for hours waiting their turn in the hospital waiting room, surrounded by a mass of other anxious people.

In the end it took very little time for her to be dealt with. A doctor told her gently that if she was suffering a miscarriage nothing could be done to stop it happening and that such an experience was much more common than she realised in early pregnancy. Isla sat frozen to her seat as if a sudden movement might provoke a more serious crisis. Ushered into another room, she was prepared for a scan by a radiographer. Suddenly the kind of scan she had earlier been so much looking forward to receiving harboured a more menacing vibe.

The wand moved smoothly over her still-flat tummy, and Isla was barely breathing as she strained without success to see something recognisable as a baby on the screen. When the woman stopped and reached for her hand, Isla knew what was coming because the radiographer looked so sad for her.

‘I’m so sorry. There’s no heartbeat. It’s not a viable pregnancy,’ she said quietly.

A junior doctor saw her next. Isla was in shock: her baby was dead. Her wonderful beautiful baby was gone as if it had never been. Her surroundings suddenly seemed to be stretching away from her and she couldn’t concentrate on what was being said. The doctor pressed medication into Isla’s limp hand while Lindsay sat beside her not even trying to hide her tears, but Isla couldn’t cry. Her eyes stayed dry while a great gulping sob of anguish seemed to be trapped somewhere in her throat, making it a challenge to breathe or speak.

‘I’m so sorry,’ Lindsay whispered in the taxi on the way back to the flat. ‘This has happened to a couple of my friends at work. It’s why some women won’t tell anyone that they’re pregnant until they’re past the first trimester. That’s the danger period...’

Isla nodded vigorously, striving to be strong and stoic, reluctant to subject her friends to the tears penned up inside her. ‘It could have been the flu I had,’ she mumbled.

‘It could have been any of a dozen things.’ Lindsay sighed. ‘Do you want to talk about it?’

But, suddenly, Isla felt that there was nothing left to talk about. Talking wasn’t going to bring her baby back and she had already kept Lindsay out of bed for half the night, she reflected guiltily. Her poor friend still had to go into work in the morning and she was already exhausted. Assuring Lindsay that all she wanted to do was sleep, she went back into the bedroom. Her first real thought was that she would have to tell Alissandru and that he would be pleased. Not that he would dare to say it, she assumed bitterly, but he had seen their baby as an undesirable complication and now that their baby was no longer on the way, he could only be relieved.

Unfortunately, Isla wasn’t relieved because the whole cosy future she had envisaged around that precious baby had suddenly been cruelly taken from her and she didn’t know what to do next. That was scary when she had felt so confident about managing everything after she first realised that she was pregnant. Now the floor of her world had suddenly vanished and she was fighting just to stay afloat.

The next morning, she agonised at length over the need to contact Alissandru. She couldn’t face phoning him, saying those wounding words out loud about her baby and, midmorning, she sent him a text bluntly telling him that she had had a miscarriage.

In receipt of that unexpected message, Alissandru stared at his phone and felt sick. A miscarriage? How had that happened? Suddenly he was full of anxious questions.

‘Something wrong?’ one of his directors asked, and Alissandru glanced up, only then registering that his companions were regarding him expectantly.

‘I’ve had bad news,’ Alissandru admitted soberly. ‘If you will excuse me...’

Isla’s news had blindsided him even more than the announcement that she was pregnant. One minute they were having a baby, the next...? It was dead. He stared out of his office window, fighting the feelings engulfing him just as he had fought them when he’d learned that Paulu had died. He had to be strong, he always had to be strong because other people relied on him to be that way. When it had been Paulu, his mother had needed him, but now Isla needed him more because Isla had wanted that baby. Their baby, he adjusted, reluctant to credit any other option in that moment. He remembered Isla’s glorious smile as she’d admitted how much she was looking forward to becoming a mother and he lost colour, his eyes prickling. She had to be devastated. He rang her immediately.

‘Isla, it’s Alissandru.’

‘I’ve got nothing to say to you,’ she framed woodenly.

‘I got your text and obviously I want to see you and talk to you. I’m very sorry.’

‘Are you?’ she questioned doubtfully.

Anger flared in Alissandru’s dark golden gaze. ‘Of course I am! I’d like to come round and talk to you.’

‘No, thanks,’ she cut in immediately. ‘I don’t want to see you.’

‘Have you had proper medical treatment?’ Alissandru asked worriedly.

‘Yes. I’ll be fine,’ she told him stiffly.

‘Obviously, it wasn’t meant to be,’ Alissandru said heavily, raking long fingers through his tousled black hair in a gesture of frustration because he honestly didn’t know what else to say to her. Words were empty. Words wouldn’t change anything. He didn’t want to mutter meaningless platitudes the way people did when they were faced with a difficult situation, nor did he feel that he could dare admit that he was upset, as well. Because she would never believe him, never believe that he too was full of regret for what was not to be.

He had warmed up to the idea of the baby just a little too late, he acknowledged grimly. The baby had been a surprise and he wasn’t good with surprises. He had never liked the natural order and routine of his life being changed or threatened. Predictably the advent of a baby would have altered many things and he had resisted that prospect to the best of his ability, until he’d defrosted enough to concede that a baby could just be the best thing that had ever happened to him.

It wasn’t meant to be... Isla flinched from that crass and demoralising assurance that cut to the quick. No, in Alissandru’s rarefied world, billionaires did not have babies with former waitresses. Now, mercifully for him, if not for her, the real world had intervened, and no such baby would be born and the status quo would be preserved. Of course, he was relieved and fatalistic about her miscarriage. He hadn’t wanted their baby in the first place, could hardly be expected to cry crocodile tears now that there was no longer a baby to worry about. Unlike her he hadn’t learned to love their child, hadn’t even begun to accept that the ba

by she carried was his child.

A bitterness as cutting as a knife slashed painfully through Isla and she finished the call. Without even thinking about it, she blocked Alissandru’s number on her phone because she didn’t want to be forced to speak to him again, ever again. That connection was finished for ever, severed by fate. She would never have to see him again, never have to speak to him again, never be hurt by him again. Eyes wet, she discovered that that was no comfort whatsoever.

The following morning, Lindsay got a call from her parents and grimaced through the conversation while offering repeated apologies for being unable to change her own plans.

‘What’s wrong?’ Isla prompted.

Lindsay grimaced. ‘My parents’ friends are going on a round-the-world trip and they had a house-sitter organised to look after their pets. Now the house-sitter has cancelled and Mum and Dad are trying to put together a group of us to look after their house and their animals. I feel awful for saying no but I’m not prepared to use up my leave sitting in the back of beyond looking after dogs and cats,’ she confided guiltily.

Isla, petting Puggle, who was turning into a lapdog, given to sleeping across her feet and nestling in her lap at every given opportunity, looked thoughtful. ‘Could I do it? The house-sitting, I mean?’

‘You?’ Lindsay queried in surprise.

‘Well, if I could bring Puggle with me, I’d be glad to get away for a while. I mean, I have to find somewhere to live anyway and the change, a little breathing space, would do me good while I decide what to do next.’

Lindsay frowned thoughtfully and warned Isla that her parents’ friends lived in a converted farmhouse down a long track in Somerset and that it was a very quiet area. After a few minutes, however, she called her parents back and before Isla could even catch her breath it was all arranged and she was agreeing to travel to Somerset at the end of the week to meet the Wetherby family and receive their instructions before they departed. Isla breathed easier at the prospect of leaving London and Alissandru far behind her. A change of scene and the time and space to make practical plans were exactly what she needed, she told herself urgently.