The Heir From Nowhere (12 page)

She loved her new look, even with the way her waist was thickening, her body changing. She was putting on weight and she liked it and insanely she wanted Dominic to notice, to see that she didn’t always look like something the cat had dragged in. But he never seemed to be around, instead always busy or buried away in his office or the garage downstairs. And as much as she loved Rosa, it would be nice to talk to another adult every now and then.

She sighed. Right now she was all shopped out, swimming pooled out and relaxed out. Even sitting reading in her favourite spot in the ballroom with the ocean just outside was beginning to lose its appeal. She needed to do something.

She headed for the kitchen, with its granite-topped benches and white cupboard doors and hanging pots and pans, and where Rosa took pity on her and sent her out to get milk. She came back from the local supermarket a few minutes later with the milk, an application form and a smile a mile wide.

‘What are you making?’ she asked, slipping up onto a stool to watch as Rosa placed spoonfuls of mixture onto circles of pasta and then deftly folded and twisted them into little packets.

‘Tortellini. Spinach and ricotta this time. Last time I made you chicken and mushroom, remember?’

‘I remember! I loved it. You know, I never actually realised people made pasta from scratch.’

Rosa laughed. ‘Most people don’t bother.’ She shrugged. ‘Me, I love to cook and Dominic, he loves
to eat. It works well. And now there is you to cook for too.’

‘I’m putting on weight, you know. All this good food you’re feeding me.’

The older woman nodded her approval. ‘Then you are doing exactly what you’re supposed to be doing.’

Angie watched her quick fingers flying for a while. ‘I wish I could cook.’

Rosa’s fingers stopped mid-parcel. ‘Who says you can’t cook?’

‘I’m hopeless. Really. Never learnt and Shayne, my ex, he hated anything too fancy so there was no point.’

‘I could teach you, if you like.’

‘Really? You’d do that?’

‘Of course! Come, you can start now. I’ll show you what to do. Here, watch me …’

He heard the laughter long before he found the source. Good sense told him to turn away and head for his office or the workshop where he’d been spending plenty of evenings lately, but the sound defeated him. He hadn’t heard laughter in this house for how long?

And he’d never heard her laugh.

What was so funny?

He found them in the kitchen, so absorbed in their task that they didn’t notice him enter. They were concentrating now, Rosa showing Angelina something and Angelina, with flour on her hands, one of Rosa’s pinnies tied around her and a pile of what looked like disasters alongside, was trying to copy her. A dollop of mixture, and then her fingers working furiously, her teeth biting her bottom lip in concentration. Until a triumphant, ‘Ta da!’ as she held the object aloft in her palm.

Across the room their eyes met, caught and froze and
Rosa stopped clapping and smiled. ‘Dominic, you’re home early for a change.’

‘I have a late flight to Singapore. I came to pick up a few things.’ He looked from one woman to the other.

‘What are you doing?’

‘Angelina’s helping me make tortellini. Will you have time to eat before you go? I’ll get some ready now if you like.’

He nodded his thanks to Rosa, took one final look at the thankfully mute woman standing by her side and made his exit, tugging on his tie as he went. He hadn’t seen her since that night in his office. He’d kept his distance and she’d kept out of his way and it had proved this thing was possible. He’d known it would work out. In a house this size, there was no reason why they should bump into each other at all.

‘Dominic?’

Then again …

He turned. She looked abashed. ‘Sorry. Mr Pirelli.’

‘Dominic is fine. It is my name.’

‘Oh.’ Her lips were pink, her cheeks were red, except for where she’d left a swipe of flour. He had to stop his hand from reaching out and wiping it off. ‘Only if you’re sure.’

‘Of course I’m sure. As I will drop the Mrs Cameron and call you Angelina. I’m assuming Cameron is Shayne’s name?’

She nodded, her teeth catching her bottom lip, some kind of paper dangling forgotten from her fingers.

‘Then you don’t need it. Angelina it is. And now I really must get moving, if that’s all?’

‘Mr Pirelli—Dominic. I wonder if you would do me a favour.’

He regarded her suspiciously, registering for the
first time that she wasn’t wearing jeans; instead, had some kind of skirt on behind that apron. Nice ankles, he had time to register before he asked, ‘What kind of favour?’

‘I wondered if you could possibly be a referee for me.’

‘What?’

‘Only there’s this job going at the local supermarket. I could use my old contacts, only it would look so much better coming from you.’

He turned away. ‘No. No reference.’

She stopped him with a hand to his arm. ‘Oh, but—’

He looked down at her pale fingers, wondered why something so cool-looking should feel so warm. ‘Because you don’t need a job. Don’t I give you enough money?’

‘It’s not about the money.’

‘Good. So we’re agreed. You don’t need a job.’

‘No! It’s about keeping busy. I’m bored, Dominic. There’s nothing to do here but loll around by the pool and read books or magazines all day. I need something to do.’

He wasn’t sure he was hearing her right. A woman was complaining about having nothing to do but lounge by the pool or go shopping? Carla had never complained about not having a job. Carla had never complained about not having anything to do. But he shoved thoughts of Carla away. At least he knew from what he’d seen and what Rosa had confirmed, she knew how to eat. ‘You didn’t sound bored when I walked in before.’

‘Rosa took pity on me. She’ll soon get sick of it. But if I had a job at the supermarket—’

‘No.’

‘It’s only just around the corner—’

‘Out of the question.’

‘Just a few shifts a week—’

‘Is there something wrong with your hearing? I said no!’

She stamped her foot. ‘Then what am I supposed to do all day? What am I allowed to do by the lord and master of the house?’

He shrugged, half smiling to himself. Did she have any idea how cute she looked when she got angry and stamped her foot?

‘Why not decorate the nursery, if you’re so keen to keep busy?’

‘The nursery?’

‘I’ll need somewhere for this baby when it’s born.’

‘But I don’t … It’s not … Dominic, it’s not my place to organise your baby’s nursery. It’s not like it’s my baby.’

He looked at her levelly, resenting the way she could so easily divorce herself from the child she carried as if it meant nothing to her. Wasn’t she a woman? Surely she must have one maternal bone in her body? ‘You wanted a job. I’m giving you one.’

Singapore was hot. Drenching. The negotiations over the sale of an office and shopping complex even more draining. But the buyers had wilted first, and he’d got his price and even an earlier flight home to Sydney. Now all he wanted was a shower and a cold beer and a chance to read the article he’d spied in a woman’s magazine left on the seat next to him in the plane, not necessarily in that order.

He pulled the car up outside the garage. He’d put it away later on when he went down to the workshop after
dinner. It relaxed him even when it frustrated him, and it frustrated him a lot. He still didn’t know what he was doing, but he sensed he was getting better. Or maybe he just needed the escape.

A sound alerted him—a splash that hadn’t come from the low swell on the rocks below. Someone was in the pool? Curious, he went to investigate, rounding the wall that screened off the pool area.

Someone
was
in the pool, submerged dolphin style halfway along the bottom. Angelina, he realised, with those long limbs, although it was hard to see anything more than two brief splashes of colour through the water. A few more underwater strokes and she neared the end, rising to the surface with a gasp. Not bad, he acknowledged. He knew what it took to get from one end of that pool to the other on one breath. Not bad at all.

And then she climbed out of the pool and his own breath was punched out of him. She was long and sleek and glowing wet, the bikini top struggling to cover her breasts, her upper arms slim rather than skinny now, even managing to look toned.

She’d put on weight, he realised approvingly. And as his gaze travelled down, he saw her belly, softly rounded, and felt a surge of masculine pride that was aeons old.

That was his child growing. His child swelling this woman’s body and turning her lush like fruit ripening on a tree. As he watched, she turned her face up to the sun and squeezed the water from her hair, the action lifting her swelling breasts and emphasizing the long, fluid lines of her body.

God, but she looked sexy with his baby in her belly. And he was hit by a surge of lust so sudden and overwhelming that he had to force himself not to bridge
the distance between them and snatch her up and bury himself in her long, sleek depths.

A moment later, appalled, he strode into the house. What the hell was wrong with him? How long had it been since he’d had sex? Clearly too long if he was starting to have fantasies about the likes of Mrs Cameron.

Rosa met him inside. ‘Welcome home, Dominic. I trust everything went well. Is there anything you need?’

‘A shower,’ he said thickly, having no trouble working out the order he wanted things now, unable to meet Rosa’s gaze in case the images he’d seen were still burned on his eyes for all to see.
A long cold shower.
‘That’ll do for starters.’

H
E WAS
doing it all wrong. He was in his office, showered, with a cold beer in a frosted glass beside him, poring over the article.

He was only on page two of
Bonding with Your Unborn Baby,
but he didn’t have to finish it to know he was doing it all wrong.

It was important, the experts advised, to start bonding with your child even before it was born. Women had an advantage over men, the article maintained, the bond developing naturally over the course of nine months of pregnancy. Women naturally connected with the baby sooner. Men had to make an effort.

He rubbed his jaw with one hand. He wasn’t making an effort. He’d done everything he could in the last month to avoid contact with the woman who bore his child. Which might have been all right if Angelina was picking up the slack.

But she wasn’t going to be around after the baby was born. She didn’t even want a baby. She was the last person who was into forming bonds or making connections. Hell, she was so not into this child that she hadn’t even wanted to have anything to do with organising a nursery for it!

Which meant he had no choice. He was just going to
have to become more involved. It wasn’t as if he couldn’t survive the odd encounter with Angelina for his baby’s sake. And he might as well start with organising the nursery.

‘Do you have a list?’ he asked as he steered the car onto the road.

‘A long one. Not that you need everything now. Some things can wait.’

‘Best to get it all now,’ he said. ‘Rosa will be too busy with the baby afterwards.’

‘Rosa is going to be looking after the baby? Does Rosa know that?’

‘It was her idea. Do you have a problem with that?’

She tried to suppress her objections. It wasn’t her place to be concerned with how he intended to manage the care of a new baby with the hours he worked. But still … ‘Rosa would do anything for you and you know it. But she already does so much. How’s she supposed to manage the house and the cooking and a new baby?’

He glanced sideways at her. ‘I thought you were happy to walk away. Why should you even care what happens after you’re gone?’

‘I don’t care,’ she huffed, tired of the direction the conversation was taking, blinking against the sun emerging from behind the dark cloud responsible for the last rain shower and now slanting through her window. ‘You do what you like.’ She tried to tell herself she didn’t care. But he couldn’t be serious, surely? There was no way he could expect Rosa to do all she did and lumber her with a new baby as well.

She tugged on her seat belt, releasing some of the tension so she could angle herself away from the sun, already intent on turning the damp road to steaming. She
idly rubbed her belly with her free hand. She was more and more aware of her growing bump now and what it did and didn’t like. Humidity it didn’t.

She wasn’t big by any means, but the changes in her body were a revelation. Every day she seemed to notice something new, a slight change in her shape or the fit of her clothes as her bump grew and her waist thickened.

‘So who would have looked after this baby if it had been yours?’

She swung her head around. ‘Me, of course.’

‘But you never wanted a baby. That’s what you told me.’

So what if she didn’t? ‘Is this actually relevant to anything?’

He shrugged, looked in his mirrors as the lane in front blocked up and smoothly changed gears and lanes in one fluid movement.

‘Why did you marry him?’

‘Did I miss a clause in that agreement I signed? The one that said you were entitled to know my deepest and darkest secrets, along with my most stupid mistakes.’

He flashed her a smile that made her bones turn to jelly and made her glad she was sitting down. He never smiled at her. He avoided her. And when he couldn’t avoid her, he tolerated her. He didn’t smile. ‘Clause twenty-four, sub-clause C. You must have missed it.’

‘Fine,’ she said, still wilting under the combined effects of the sun and one devastating smile. ‘In that case, it was my mother’s fault.’

‘You’re blaming your mother for you marrying Shayne?’

‘Yes. No. Well, sort of. We hadn’t been going out long when we learned she was sick. He was good to me then—
good to us
—and my mother wanted to see me
settled before she died. Wanted me to have the whole white wedding she’d never had. Shayne seemed keen.’ She shrugged. ‘It was the least I could do, under the circumstances.