Flora's Defiance

Her vo

ice died beneath the passionate onslaught of his sensual lips plunging down on hers and it was as if cautionary buzzers went off throughout her taut, quivering body. She craved him like a woman starved of oxygen, stretching up to kiss him back with fervour, needing and revelling in that heady taste of him with every fibre of her being.

She heard the whirr as the doors opened and he backed her out of the lift without breaking their connection. She stumbled in her heels until her spine was braced against a solid wall and she felt his hands splay to her hips, tilting her pelvis into provocative collision with the urgent thrust of his erection. A split second later, she was free again and reeling dizzily back against the wall for support with her body still greedily humming while she struggled to rescue her wits.

A mere step away, expelling his breath in an audible roughened hiss, Angelo thrust wide the door of his apartment for her entry. It was an effort for him to be that controlled. In fact it was a wonder that he wasn’t still trying to take Flora out on the landing, he acknowledged with derision, resenting and distrusting her sexual power over him. She roused the hot-headed all-consuming sexuality he had believed he had left behind him. With Flora sex was elemental and as fierce and basic in its energy as a hurricane. Still hugely aroused, he was fighting a driving instinct to haul her back into his arms and carry her off to his bed. As a cascade of erotic imagery engulfed the imagination he had not known he had he almost groaned out loud in frustration. She was pregnant, she was carrying his child, he reminded himself doggedly. Rampant sex would only cloud that serious issue and add to the complexities of their dealings.

Flora could not look at Angelo as she preceded him into a very large modern reception room with a polished floor, sleek contemporary furniture and a wall of full height windows that offered breathtaking views of the river Thames. A deep inner trembling was still afflicting her and she was uncomfortably aware of the damp ache between her thighs and the stinging tightness of her nipples. When he touched her he turned her inside out and she hated it, for her earlier sense of keeping herself together was now entirely destroyed.

Angelo focused on her slender, graceful figure, noticing how the silky strands of her copper hair shone in the sunshine. Renewed desire pierced his tough hide like the point of a dagger sliding between his ribs. ‘Obviously you’ll come back to Amsterdam with me,’ he heard himself say before he even knew he was going to say it, which was for him a most unnerving experience.

Wide-eyed, Flora spun back to look at his lean strong face, which, at every viewing, wreaked such havoc with her thoughts. ‘Why on earth would I do that?’

‘Primarily because you’ll need my support now that you’re pregnant.’

‘I don’t see why—I’m pregnant and healthy, not suffering from some dreadful disease,’ Flora pointed out tartly.

Angelo rested piercing blue eyes on her. ‘Are you planning to have this baby? Or is it too soon for me to ask you that question? ‘

Flora had frozen, her facial muscles pulling tight as she wondered if he was harbouring hopes that she might ultimately choose not to go through with the pregnancy. She lifted her chin. ‘I already know what I want to do and I intend to have my baby,’ she told him squarely.

Just as quickly Angelo was marvelling that he had ever cherished the smallest doubt on that score. Having a baby with a rich father was a lucrative passport to a more comfortable lifestyle for a scheming woman. And from the instant he had read Flora’s history in that private detective’s report two years earlier he had known how ambitious and grasping she really was. But he had chosen to take a risk without contraception and he could only blame himself for giving her the opportunity to hold him to ransom with a child for at least the next two decades.

His handsome mouth forming a cynical line, he said flatly, ‘Naturally, I will support you in that decision in every way possible. But it would be easier for me to follow through on that promise if you moved to Amsterdam.’

‘I don’t need your support,’ Flora proclaimed with pride.

‘You’re not thinking of the wider issues at stake here,’ Angelo told her coolly. ‘Mariska is in Amsterdam as well.’

Flora stilled, because in the first fine flush of discovering that she was pregnant she had indeed overlooked that connection and all its possibilities. ‘You mean … we could share her care between us?’

‘What other course would make sense now that you’re also carrying my baby?’ Angelo murmured drily. ‘We could raise both children together.’

‘Are you suggesting that we live together as well? ‘ Flora pressed uncomfortably, colour flaring over her cheekbones as she had not grasped that more intimate aspect of his suggestion when he first mentioned the idea of her moving to the city where he lived.

‘It would be the easiest solution,’ Angelo pointed out with a profound lack of emotion that struck her as very nearly an insult. ‘And the simplest solution is usually the best.’

In similar circumstances, Willem had once asked Julie to marry him. No, Flora had not expected Angelo to bite down on that sacrificial bullet, but the prospect of living under his roof and being forced to depend on him for all her needs filled her with consternation. In such a set-up she would lose her independence and become horribly reliant on her relationship with him working out. But if, in return, she would gain the much-desired right to be Mariska’s mother … ?

‘Yes, I can see that my living in Amsterdam would have definite benefits from the children’s point of view,’ Flora conceded grudgingly. ‘I would certainly like to be able to see Mariska every day and be a real part of her life rather than an occasional visitor—’

’But? ‘ Angelo cut in, impatient for the objection he sensed coming and frustrated by her inexplicable reluctance to embrace the rich and privileged lifestyle that he had just offered her. He wondered if he needed to spell out the material advantages with greater clarity.

‘I’m very independent. I like my own corner, my own way of life.’

‘Yet you insist that you want to adopt Mariska.’

‘I do, but you’re not being frank enough to tell me what I need to know,’ Flora condemned, lifting her bright head high with a glint of challenge in her clear green eyes. ‘Exactly what kind of relationship are you offering me? Do you expect me to be a parenting partner and friend?’

‘A lover.’ That very frank contradiction slammed back at Flora like a crack of thunder, although he had not raised his voice in the slightest.

Flora was shaken. ‘A l-lover?’ she stammered uncertainly, taken aback by an angle she had not foreseen. ‘I assumed you were talking about us coming to some platonic arrangement.’

Angelo’s brilliant gaze was hot electric blue as amusement and sexual heat combined in his compelling appraisal, while a wolfish smile tugged at the corners of his handsome mouth. ‘I don’t think that platonic would work very well for us. I am very powerfully attracted to you, enamorada mia.’

The unashamed fire in that steady look sent wicked heat and anticipation hurtling straight to the most sensitive places on Flora’s body. Uneasy at that rush of physical response and bemused by his bold statement of desire, Flora shifted position, her face burning pink as she struggled to think clearly. ‘So, you’re actually proposing that we live together in a relationship that would go much further than simply making a home for Mariska and the baby I’m expecting?’

This time it was Angelo who stilled to shoot her a questioning narrowed glance, his lean, darkly handsome features annoyingly unforthcoming. ‘How much further?’