Pregnancy of Revenge (16 page)

'
Basta
, Diego, and stop trying to pick up my wife on our wedding day,' Jake growled.

'As if I would.'
Diego winked at Charlie. 'Though I have tried with the lovely Amy—unfortunately she's already taken. But I now have my eye on a rather attractive barmaid.' Waving his empty glass, he said, 'Wish me luck,' and headed for the bar.

'Diego is fun. I like him.'

Moving her supple body in front of him, Jake looked down into her luminous sapphire eyes. 'Not too much, I trust; you're my wife now.' With his free hand he cradled the back of her head and kissed her passionately.

A scarlet-faced Charlie heard the cheers of the guests, and Dave's yell that the wedding car had arrived, in something of a daze. Jake took an exaggerated bow, and she had to laugh as he swung her into his arms and carried her to the waiting vehicle.

'Oh, my God!' she squealed. She had been right about the cans, bottles and slightly dubious graffiti scrolled all over the white limousine. But Jake, not in the least fazed, lowered her into the back seat and
quicklv
followed her.

'Now I see why the car was delayed.' He chuckled and with a single finger he outlined her softly parted lips. 'But
you, my darling wife, are worth any wait. You're so beautiful, you make me ache.' And his mouth took hers in a kiss of such wondrous promise and passion she knew that whatever the future held for them she would always love Jake— her husband.

CHAPTER EIGHT

A
LIMOUSINE
met them at Genoa airport and, tucked under Jake's arm, Charlie gazed out of the window as the car cruised along a winding road by the sea and into the hills, stopping at a massive pair of iron gates, complete with gatehouse. A security guard opened the gates and the car sped up a mile-long drive to what to Charlie looked like a mansion.

Jake helped her out of the car and she looked up in awe. The house was magnificent. Of surprisingly modern design, it was mostly constructed in glass and steel. It was situated a few miles from Genoa, with the Dolomites as a backdrop, and a spectacular view of the Mediterranean to the front.

'Your new home,
Signora d'Amato.
Do you like
it2
'

It’s spectacular.' Laughing, Jake swept her up in his arms and carried her through the massive double doors.
'Oh, my God, a glass staircase!
It's fantastic,' Charlie exclaimed, and then she
realised
a reception committee of two were waiting in the enormous hall.

Lowering her to her feet, Jake introduced her to
Marta,
a pretty, dark-haired lady, and Charlie blushed as she shook her hand, remembering her crazy call. Then she was introduced to an adorable little
boy, Marta'
s
son
Aldo,
and to Charlie's delight he spoke to her in good schoolboy English.
Marta'
s
husband
Tomas
joined them: he was the chauffeur, and a bottle of champagne was produced and a toast drunk. Then
Tomas
and his family departed to their cottage in the grounds with smiles and grins, and Jake closed and locked the door behind them.

Charlie looked around. The furniture was an eclectic mix of traditional and modern but it was the paintings that caught her attention. She recognized a Matisse and two
Monets
.

'At last we are alone.' Jake swept her up in his arms and carried her up the stairs. Her shoes fell off and she tightened her grip around his neck with a startled, 'Oh!'

'One less item to remove.'
Jake gave her a wicked grin and they both burst out laughing as he walked into the master bedroom.

With less than his usual grace, he stumbled over her suitcases already deposited in the bedroom. 'Don't you dare drop me,' Charlie commanded, still laughing.

'Never,' Jake responded with an abashed grin. Their eyes met and the laughter stopped.

Slowly he lowered her to her feet, and her eyes widened fractionally as he touched a gentle finger to her lips and traced the upper outline, and then the lower curve. Incredibly she suddenly felt nervous. She had slept with Jake countless times, but this time was different.

Jake's eyes didn't leave hers as he stepped back and shrugged off his jacket and tie. Then, with slow, deliberate movements, he removed the rest of his clothes until he was standing before her, tall and broad-shouldered with bronzed skin sheathing hard-backed muscle and sinew and wearing only white silk briefs that did little to hide his arousal. Warm
colour
tinged her cheeks, and for a long moment she simply stared, the sexual tension simmering between them.

'No need to be nervous, Charlotte,' Jake said, accurately reading her mind, and closed the distance between them. 'Have I told you today you look beautiful,
cara
?
He asked softly as he lowered his head down to hers.

Warmth flooded her body and became a pulsing heat as
he slid her jacket from her shoulders, and a moan sounded in her throat at the touch of his mouth on her own.

His hands skimmed her breasts, and down her thighs, and in one fluid movement the raw silk dress slid down to pool at her feet leaving her naked except for delicate white lace French panties.

Jake stepped back, the better to appreciate her lush shapely body tantalizingly enhanced by the pearl choker and the seductively cut lace panties. Her breasts were fuller, her stomach where his child lay still flat.

'I feel as if I have waited a lifetime to see you like this.'

It was incomprehensible, but Charlie, who had the confidence to do anything, was suddenly plagued by self-doubt as Jake's dark, obsessive gaze roamed intently over her. He was so perfect, tall and golden, and she wanted to be perfect for him, but she was pregnant and it was over seven weeks since they had been together. Her breasts were fuller, not so firm, and Jake was used to perfection: his house, his art. Her eyes flicked past him in a brief panicky movement and she saw the picture on the wall behind him. It was a Gauguin, an island woman with long black hair, and it reminded her of another painting and Diego's comment about Anna.

Jake's hands reached for her and settled on her waist.

'Who was Anna?' She murmured the thought even as her eyes were drawn back to meet smoldering black and the uninhibited desire, the raw hunger she saw there ignited a fire deep in her belly.

But as she swayed towards him his head reared back, his fingers digging into her waist almost to the point of pain in a knee-jerk reaction to her question. 'Where the hell did that come from?' he ground out harshly.

It was nothing,' she said quickly. 'I caught sight of the
painting on the wall and it reminded me of the painting you bought and something Diego said today.'

Jake's face hardened, but his hands eased slightly on her waist. 'Diego has a big mouth. Whatever he said, forget it, and drop the subject.'

If the command had not been so curtly delivered Charlie might have done so, but his strange attitude made her all the more determined to get to the bottom of the mystery.

Before she could lose her nerve she said, 'Diego thought you and I might have met earlier, because she was my father's lover and also a friend of yours. He actually thought Anna might have introduced us.' Drawing in a shaky breath, she asked the question she had wanted to avoid. 'Was she an ex-lover of yours?'

'
Dio
, no.' Jake was angry, ridiculously angry, and he had no right to be. Her question was ill-timed, but perfectly valid. Unfortunately, the subject of Anna aroused conflicting emotions inside him: the loyalty he owed to the
Lasios
, the guilt he could not quite dismiss, and the frustration he felt that his wife of a few hours was looking at him with puzzled rather than passion-filled eyes.

Flattening her hands on his shoulders, she tilted back her head. 'Then why won't you tell me who she was?'

'You know who she was,' he said with a harsh laugh that was no laugh at all. 'She was the lover of your lecherous father, and over twenty years his junior. Now let's forget her, and concentrate on us.' He pulled her hard against him. 'This is our wedding night, and arguing with you was not what I had in mind.'

He was being evasive, but he was also right. A few seconds of feminine insecurity and she had ruined the mood. Why hadn't she kept her mouth shut?
Because she was curious about the mysterious Anna of the portrait.
She sighed, answering her own question.

'I'd like to think that was a sigh for me, for sex,' Jake said dryly. 'But I rather think it is frustration of another sort: your insatiable curiosity about a certain painting.'

He had read her mind and she flushed a little, but there was no point in denying it.

He shrugged his broad shoulders, his austerely handsome face suddenly devoid of all expression. 'You want the truth? Why not? According to all the marriage pundits, it's the way to go for a good marriage and so far ours appears to be going nowhere fast.' His voice was sardonic. 'Anna was my foster-sister, and I loved her. I was there when she was born, I watched her grow into a beautiful young woman, and I saw her destroyed by your father. She imagined herself in love with him and for two years she thought he was going to marry her.'

Charlie paled as the full import of his words sank in. The relief she had felt that Anna had never been Jake's lover vanished as she
realised
the truth was much worse. An ex- lover could be forgotten, but a sister never.

When she had met Jake he'd told her the painting was the only one he wanted. Not surprising if, as Diego had said, Anna had died recently. She remembered the look in the girl's eyes. And she remembered the glazed look in Jake's when he'd looked at it. How he must have hated to see her exposed like that...

A host of moments with Jake spun in the whirlpool of her mind, and began to assume a different meaning.
Their first night together.
She recalled his coldness after they had made love, his questioning her as to what she thought about an older man taking a young woman as a lover. Naively she had thought he was referring to the twelve-year gap between them. Now she realized he must have been thinking of her father.

She caught her breath in shock.
'My God!
You hated my father.' She stared at him in horror. 'I'm right, aren't I?'

'I never met him, but, yes, I hated him.' Jake slid a lean hand around her waist. 'But don't let it bother you.' His voice was almost mocking. 'The man is dead, as is Anna. And you are my wife.' His other hand stroked down her throat and deftly unfastened the choker so it fell unheeded to the floor before trailing lower to cup her breast, a thumb testing the hardening peak. 'And we have wasted enough time already.'

'No.'
She
tried to deny him, but her treacherous flesh was already craving more. 'Let go of me,' she said jaggedly in an atmosphere suddenly raw with sexual tension. 'We need to talk.'

'What you need is very evident.' His dark eyes slanted down to her naked breast, where the rigid tip was a real give-away,
then
back to her face. His mouth touched hers, very lightly. 'And it certainly isn't talk. It is me,
cara
.'

The arrogance of his comment and the truth of it mortified her and inflamed her temper at one and the same time. He admitted he hated her father and in the next breath expected her to fall into his arms. His conceit was monumental, and, twisting out of his hold, she took a hasty step back and crossed her arms defensively over her aching breasts.

She was an intelligent woman, and with hindsight suddenly a lot of little things he had said made sense. While she had been driven by an all-consuming desire, even love, for Jake straight into his bed, she was now forced to question what had been his real motivation. The day they had gone to the museum, he had joked about his motivation, and the answer, she saw now, had been enigmatic.

Closing her eyes for a moment, she slowly fought to achieve a semblance of self-control, then, opening them again, she flicked a glance at his hard, handsome face.