The Italian Billionaire's Secret Love-Child

‘Because you would have been vulnerable!’

‘And all you wanted was sex,’ she whispered bitterly.

Riccardo swept his fingers through his hair and flushed. ‘That is not what it was all about!’

‘No? And that would be why you stood up for me when your mother started ranting about my unsuitability?’

Riccardo released a long, audible hiss of frustration. Those big, accusing blue eyes were making him feel like a cad and, damn it, he didn’t deserve that!

‘My mother wanted…’

‘Oh, yes! I know what your mother wanted—a good Italian girl for you! Someone with all the right connections! She made herself perfectly clear on the subject. In fact, she mentioned a certain Isabella. Perfect credentials! Did she make it to the altar after all?’

‘No one made it to the altar,’ Riccardo muttered, glowering at her. Her face was suffused with angry colour. She might have changed the haircut, and swapped her tee-shirts and short skirts for a business suit, but look past that and there was still the same girl underneath.

‘You’re right,’ he said heavily. ‘I should have stuck up for you a bit more.’

‘A bit more? You didn’t stick up for me at all! In fact, if my memory serves me, you were horrified that I’d landed on your doorstep!’

‘It was unexpected.’

‘An unexpected and unpleasant surprise,’ Charlotte amended, recalling it as if it had all happened the day before. ‘Especially to a young, vulnerable kid who thought that the first man she slept with might just turn out to be somebody who cared.’

‘And I was twenty-six who thought he had been having a pleasant fling with a twenty-four-year-old woman. A twenty-six-year-old with his career stretching in front of him and no thoughts of marriage on his mind!’

‘I never said that I wanted to marry you!’ But she had wanted a relationship, not just a meeting of bodies until they went their separate ways. And where else had that been heading but down an aisle somewhere along the way? Why kid herself? She shifted uneasily on her feet and tried not to see his point of view, but like it or not it still crawled under her skin and she reluctantly had to admit that he had just run scared, confronted by someone he thought wanted to tie him down. The age thing had probably been the final straw.

And now there was Gina.

‘And you have to understand that my mother is a traditionalist. A young, blonde English girl appearing on her doorstep would have been her worst nightmare.’

Charlotte was finding it somewhat harder to picture his mother as a kindly old lady who just happened to have been caught in a time warp.

‘Well, now that we have got that out of the way, maybe we could finish this tour of the house,’ she said tightly. They said that confession was good for the soul but, having spilt her guts, she just felt confused.

By the time they were back in the hallway, Charlotte was wrung out, even though nothing further had been said between them. She had said all the right things about the house and he had asked all the expected questions.

It was already dark And gloomy outside, even though it was still just mid-afternoon, and it was cold.

‘So…’ She looked at him when they finally made it outside, already feeling safer with her little car next to her. ‘If you’re interested, then you can get in touch with Aubrey James at our Henley office and he can take it from there.’ His face was all dark angles, and she shivered and wrapped her coat tighter around her.

‘Why not you?’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Wouldn’t it be more logical to get in touch with you, considering you were the one to show me around the house?’