Flora's Defiance

‘I only visit the UK about once or twice a month,’ Angelo intoned curtly. ‘It will be difficult for me to offer you the level of support that you deserve.’

‘I’ll manage just fine on my own,’ Flora asserted, lifting her head high and watching anger flare in his bright blue eyes as he translated her response as yet another offensive rejection.

‘I will at least accompany you to your medical appointments,’ Angelo declared on a decided note of challenge.

‘That’s unnecessary …’

‘Clearly you intend to shut me out completely!’ Angelo growled in a driven undertone.

‘Not at all,’ Flora fielded uncomfortably. She was already moving back to the hall to take her leave, keen to evade the stab of conscience beginning to gnaw at her. After all, lots of men evaded their responsibility when a woman fell pregnant and Angelo did deserve her respect for his determination to give her his support. ‘But I do think that once the baby is born we’ll have more to talk about.’

Infuriated by her determination to keep him at arm’s length until that stage, Angelo strode after her. ‘My driver will take you home and I’ll stay in touch. Please don’t tell me that that’s not necessary either! ‘

Those words literally bubbling on the tip of her ready tongue, Flora reddened and sealed her soft lips closed again. They were at daggers drawn and she had not intended that but she did not see how she could change the situation. He had expected certain responses from her and he had lost patience with her when she failed to deliver those responses. He was a very powerful personality and he was accustomed to women falling in with his wishes. Flora, however, believed that it would be downright dangerous to get more deeply involved with Angelo van Zaal when the relationship would clearly be of short duration. The eventual breakdown of a relationship between them would only create bad feeling that might well jeopardise her ongoing ties with Mariska, as well as his with their unborn child. As someone whose own childhood had been deeply scarred by quarrelling, unhappy parents, Flora was keen not to inflict that lost sense of pain, fear and bewilderment on any other child.

Lean, dark face sardonic, Angelo felt bitter as he watched Flora leave his apartment. It was many years—indeed not since his stepmother had died—since Angelo had felt so angry with and exasperated by a woman. Once again, Flora Bennett had taken him by surprise. He had assumed she would grab at the opportunity to move in with him and not only for mercenary reasons either. The sexual heat between them was mutual and strong and in his opinion more than sufficient to sustain a relationship, yet she was refusing to take account of it. It was very hard for him to accept that although his first baby was on the way its mother wanted nothing to do with him. If that was her attitude now, how much was he likely to see of his child once it was born? His handsome mouth twisted. And all because she had deemed him unworthy for refusing to declare that there would never be another woma

n in his life.

Flora settled into her bed that night and fought off a powerful desire to picture what life might have been like living with Angelo in Amsterdam. It wouldn’t have lasted five minutes, she told herself staunchly. She would get hurt and humiliated when he became bored with her and then sought out other females for variety. After all, she was no sex goddess and he was a very good-looking, very rich tycoon. He was the sort of guy who would always be spoilt for choice and subject to temptation when it came to women. Besides, a brief and ultimately unsuccessful live-in arrangement would only have confused and upset Mariska; the little girl deserved better from the adults she had to depend on in her life.

But what, a little voice dared to ask, if it worked out between her and Angelo? What if Angelo was prepared to agree that she would be the only woman in his life for the duration of their relationship? In the darkness, Flora’s eyes shone at that unlikely but energising image of life as it might be in a perfect world. What if she was letting her fears rule her too far? What if she was wrong not to even give Angelo a chance?

At that point, Flora turned over and punched her pillow with unnecessary force. Next she would be believing that a fairy ready to grant her three wishes might be living at the foot of the garden, she scolded herself in exasperation. Angelo was not in love with her, so why would he give up other women for her benefit? He only saw her as a temporary aberration, a short-term affair, and nothing lasting was likely to come from such a weak foundation.

Her mother’s experience had taught Flora the lesson that it very often was women who took the greatest responsibility for their children and made the biggest sacrifices. Her childhood had been deeply scarred by her quarrelling, ill-suited parents. Although being a single parent was not the lifestyle she had foreseen for herself, she soon convinced herself that she had made the right choice in opting to pretty much go it alone with her pregnancy.

CHAPTER SIX

ANGELO slid lithely out of his limousine and studied the ivy-clad prettiness of Flora’s detached village home. There were three cars parked in the driveway. He frowned, wondering how many guests she had staying and how she was coping.

But then, such matters were none of his business according to Flora, he reflected with a grim light clouding his vivid blue eyes. Over the past two months it had become increasingly plain to him that Flora intended to keep him at a distance where he could neither interfere nor offer his assistance. His phone calls had met with stilted impersonal responses from her that told him virtually nothing. His attempt to pay her a monthly allowance to enable her to take life a little easier had been roundly rejected as well.

Angelo was bewildered by her attitude. Nothing about Flora Bennett added up and Angelo hated mysteries. If the private investigator’s report he had received on Flora and her sister two years ago had been on target, cold hard cash should have paved an easy path to Flora’s heart. She should have been eager to fit in with his plans and reap the generous rewards of pleasing him. That she was not eager or even willing told him that either the report had got her wrong or she was playing a much more clever game of deception than he had so far had cause to suspect. Yet would a materialistic woman turn down the opportunity to move in with a billionaire and live in the lap of luxury? And why would she refuse his financial help? Or was that a ruse to come back later through the offices of a court of law and sue him for a final settlement amounting to many, many thousands of pounds? That was perfectly possible, he acknowledged grimly.

His suspicions about Flora’s motives did not make it any easier for him to handle the mother of his future child. Furthermore, for the first time in his adult life, Angelo was dealing with a tricky relationship with a woman instead of turning his back and walking away, deeming her too much trouble to be worthy of his time and patience. He was not enjoying the process either, for her every rebuff infuriated him.

Indeed the problems created by Flora’s continuing hostility were matched by the widespread disruption of Angelo’s once regimented and perfectly composed mind. Angelo was uneasy with the unfamiliar feelings of frustration and anger regularly assailing him. His concentration was no longer what it was, nor was his famously single-minded focus zeroed in on business goals alone. All of a sudden, he was suffering from moments of abstraction. He was also noticing every pregnant woman and every redhead in his vicinity. He was even more disturbed by the fact that he had not slept with a single woman since Flora. Celibacy agreed with Angelo even less than mental turmoil. Sex had always been his foolproof means of unwinding from his demanding schedule. Sex had never been any more complicated for him than a good workout at the gym. But Angelo had recently become worryingly impervious to the sexually sophisticated women who had once entertained him most effectively outside working hours. His highly active libido had taken a hike and he had no idea why or what to do about it.

He hit Flora’s doorbell, knowing in advance that his uninvited visit would be as welcome as a snow shower in summer. In an unusually disorganised and last minute decision the night before, Angelo had reached the end of his patience and he had flown over to England too late at night even to call Flora. The door of her home was opened by a stranger and the hall was confusingly awash with more strangers. He counted three middleaged couples, presumably Flora’s current boarders.

‘Where’s Flora? ‘ he asked.

‘Upstairs in the bathroom … she’s not well,’ one of the women informed him. ‘We’re getting ready to leave.’

’Without our breakfast,’ a disgruntled older man pronounced.

‘If you’ll give me a few minutes to check on Flora, I’ll sort that out for you,’ Angelo declared, his concern at the news that Flora was unwell prompting him to take the stairs two at a time. It took him a minute or two to establish which door led to the bathroom.

That achieved, he rapped loudly on the solid wood. ‘Flora? It’s Angelo. Are you all right?’ he asked urgently.

Flora was very far from being all right. White and shaking, she clung to the edge of the sink to steady her wobbly lower limbs. She felt like death warmed up and her brain was woozy, thoughts coming only slowly. Why on earth had Angelo come to see her again? She felt too sick to protest as she usually would have done. Sickness had a way of making one concentrate only on the immediate. In any case, Angelo was so determined that protest would have been a waste of time and energy. Like a steamroller chugging unstoppably downhill Angelo just kept on rolling no matter what she said or did.

Flora opened the door a crack and clung to the handle for support. Angelo pressed the door wider open and she stepped back awkwardly. She was so much more colourful and somehow real than other women, he thought helplessly, immediately admiring the flame colour of her bright hair against her creamy skin and the sheer leggy elegance of her tall, slender figure. And his libido, which had steadfastly refused to react to a single one of the nubile models whose numbers were stored in his mobile phone, suddenly took high-voltage flight. That surge of intense sexual arousal froze Angelo in place and the source of it so much took him aback that he then viewed Flora with instantly cooler and more critical eyes. Just as quickly he saw the change in her and consternation took hold of him instead.

‘I’m fine … I’m just suffering from nausea,’ she told him wryly. ‘Welcome to the reality of being pregnant.’

But Angelo was shocked by her shadowed eyes and pallor and he recognised from the sharpness of her cheekbones and the loose fit of her clothing that she had lost a good deal of weight since he had last seen her. ’Dios mio, you look terrible,’ he breathed, backtracking from his opinion a mere sixty seconds earlier when just a welcome glimpse of her warm familiar colouring had instantly convinced him that she looked terrific.