Flora's Defiance

During the period that followed, Flora was examined and subjected to several tests. Natalie and her nurse were very pleasant. Finally, Flora sat down to face the doctor across her desk. ‘Well?’ she pressed nervously.

‘Yes, I can confirm that you are pregnant.’

Flora lost colour. ‘Are you absolutely certain?’

‘Yes, I am. Is this an unintentional conception?’ the brunette doctor asked delicately.

Flora was too much in shock to do anything other than nod like a rather vacant puppet. Pregnant! And by Angelo van Zaal! Dry-mouthed and on wobbly legs, she indicated that she did not wish to discuss the matter further and she returned to the waiting area where Angelo was engaged on yet another phone call, this time in French. Snatches of dialogue about defective materials and an inefficient supplier buzzed in and out of her head while her dazed green gaze sought out his. She encountered brilliant blue eyes of cool enquiry and stared at him with some of the shocked disbelief she was experiencing. She registered the exact moment that he realised what news she had just received because he said something curiously indistinct for a change and, lowering his phone and ending the call, he sprang restively upright.

Every time they met she forgot how tall Angelo was until he stood beside her and she was forced to look up at him, a necessity that rarely came her way, particularly not when she was sporting high heels. For a split second her mind wandered and she recalled how Peter, who had been the same height as her, had hated her to wear heels and stand taller than him.

‘You’re so tall for a woman,’ his mother had once remarked with a raised brow, as if a woman being so tall was somehow in the poorest possible taste.

But then so many men preferred their women to be petite and delicate in stature, Flora reflected helplessly, thinking of how popular her sister, Julie, and her friend, Jemima, had invariably been with men. Being little was generally seen as cute and appealing. Being tall was somehow viewed as being less feminine and desirable.

‘Let’s go,’ Angelo urged, his hand curving to Flora’s rigid spine. His beautiful sapphire-blue eyes had a stunned quality before he lowered his ridiculously lush black lashes to conceal his expression.

‘So you’re not quite as lucky as you think you are and, apparently, neither of us is infertile,’ Flora remarked drolly on the way out onto the street.

‘We’ll discuss this in private,’ Angelo pronounced crushingly.

‘It’s all right to be shocked,’ Flora told him helplessly. ‘I’m shocked as well.’

But unlike Flora, Angelo wasn’t used to being shocked or put into a situation in which he was not in control of events. Suddenly, he appreciated, his life was yoked to Flora Bennett’s whether he liked it or not. That was, assuming she planned to have his child. He swallowed back his questions and chose silence while he marshalled his thoughts.

In a world of her own, Flora sat in the limousine, struggling to adjust to the startling concept that in nine months’ time she would become a mother. Her brain reminded her that there were other options that ranged from adoption to termination. The prospect of having to make either tough choice filled Flora with instinctive recoil. Eighteen months earlier, her sister had refused to consider any option other than giving birth to and keeping her child. But then Julie had been in love with Willem and he had been very much involved in that decision.

Yet Flora even now felt able to reflect that her own baby was already a part of her and, like little Mariska, would be her only other relative and the promising start to a new family circle. The very word ‘family’ warmed the chill of shock that still held Flora taut.

All right, admittedly, the baby wasn’t planned, but life was all about rolling with the punches, wasn’t it? And just as she was prepared to reorganise her life to become Mariska’s mother she could hardly consider doing less when it came to her own child’s future. She had money in the bank, a comfortable home and a viable business. Those acknowledgements gradually sent greater calm spilling through Flora, a calm that soothed her ragged nerves and fears while she reasoned that she could have found herself pregnant in a much worse situation.

Essentially it didn’t matter how Angelo felt about her being pregnant with his child, she ruminated, and having recognised that truth it was as though a heavy weight fell from her shoulders. She sat a little straighter in her seat and felt a good deal less awkward. She was convinced that she didn’t need Angelo for support and that belief acted like a shot of reassurance in her veins, for not needing a man for anything was a cause that lay very close to Flora’s securely guarded heart.

CHAPTER FIVE

‘WHERE are we?’ Flora asked in dismay, lashes fluttering in bemusement as she appreciated that—unbelievably—she had actually followed Angelo blindly out of his limo into a building and, from there, into a lift.

‘On the way up to my apartment. We have to talk,’ Angelo informed her, his wide sensual mouth set in a deadly serious line.

At that point, Flora discovered that she had a deeply inappropriate desire to giggle. Angelo was poker-faced, the smooth, darkly handsome planes of his lean visage taut with self-discipline. He was determined not to put any real emotion on show, she realised with regret. Yet he was pure volatile male below that cool, calculated front that he showed to the world, she reasoned ruefully. She could not resist recalling the shockingly hot and explosive surge of the passion he had unleashed in Amsterdam. Heat slowly crept up from low in her tummy to the responsive peaks of her breasts, stiffening her nipples into tight dagger points below her clothing.

‘Don’t look at me like that, enamorada mia,’ Angelo purred, his rich drawl low and rough-edged in pitch while he surveyed her with his amazing royal-blue eyes, the dark pupils as dilated as no doubt her own were.

Suddenly the atmosphere was thick as wet cement and the breath rattled in her throat. ‘What does enamor—whatever—mean?’

‘My lover,’ Angelo supplied huskily.

‘No, I’m not, not really,’ she reasoned jerkily, fighting the compulsive pull of his charismatic masculinity with all her might, for every skin cell and nerve-ending she possessed was urging her to walk right into his arms.

His stunning eyes, accentuated by the ebony luxuriance of his lashes, narrowed to become even more devouring and magnetic. ‘Then, what are you?’

Denying her vulnerability, Flora deliberately dropped her attention to study the floor at their feet. ‘A mistake?’

‘That is not how this feels,’ Angelo growled, reaching out a hand to close long brown fingers round her wrist and tug her closer. But he knew he was lying, because that same word was flashing on and off like a warning neon sign at the back of his brain. Yet, as his attention slid from the pouting cherry-tinted invitation of her luscious mouth to the telling indentation of her prominent nipples below her top he had never been further from intellectual control; he was hard and erect and hungry for the tight sheath of her body and that was all that mattered to him.

As Angelo drew her to him dismay sent Flora’s lashes skyward, green eyes flaring bright as jewels as she looked up at his bronzed sculpted features, scanning the slash of his high cheekbones, the jut of his arrogant masculine nose and his obstinate jaw line. This late in the day his golden-toned skin was steadily darkening with a shadow of stubble that simply highlighted his beautifully shaped mouth. Colliding with his startlingly blue eyes, she was utterly transfixed: he truly was gorgeous.

‘Mistake,’ she told him again unevenly. ‘We’re a mistake—’