Secret Heirs Collection. Коллектив авторов

       CHAPTER FIVE

      THE WRETCHED WEDDING was here. In the thrill of being with Sergio she had forgotten about it, even though her mother and her sister had made sure to remind her at frequent intervals, had quizzed her as to whether she had bought a dress.

      Susie wondered whether they expected her to show up in an artist’s smock with a paintbrush stuck behind her ear. Or maybe wearing a pair of jeans and a tee shirt and trainers, because she always left the ‘looking smart’ stuff to Alex, who did it so much better. Alex was tall, leggy, brunette, sophisticated. Clothes just always seemed to hang better on her.

      Being five foot four, prone to looking round, with wild blonde hair that strenuously resisted the call of straighteners was always going to be a challenge to smart outfits.

      But she had bought a dress and now, sitting cross-legged on her bed, she stared at it without really seeing it at all.

      Of course Sergio wouldn’t be going with her. Even though they had now been seeing one another for nearly two months—two blissful, sexy, passionate months.

      She felt a lump in her throat and tears begin to gather at the back of her eyes, because soon it was all going to have to draw to a painful close. Painful for her, at any rate.

      She had only gone and disobeyed his orders not to get involved, not to see what they had as anything more than what it was—fantastic sex. It was the lynchpin of their relationship. They couldn’t keep their hands off one another. He had confessed that he was surprised, because he had expected it to fizzle out after a couple of weeks, and she had taken that to mean that however good the sex was she really didn’t have what it took to hold his interest.

      Not the way he held hers. The way that made her want more…the way that made her think of commitment and permanence…the way that made her crave a future and plans that went further than what they were going to do the following evening.

      She wouldn’t be seeing him tonight because he was in New York, clinching a big deal. He had been gone two days and he would be gone two more, conveniently over the wedding weekend, so she hadn’t even had to skirt round the issue.

      Not that he would have volunteered to come anyway. She had grudgingly confessed that the reason she had been so idiotically tempted into online dating had been to see whether the love of her life might have materialised out there, so that she could show him off at her cousin’s wedding and kill all those muted whispers about when she was going to find herself a decent guy.

      He had grinned and told her that he had never heard such a crazy reason for dating losers who went online to see what they could catch.

      She lay down on the bed and stared up at the ceiling, considering her options.

      Next to her was the little stick with the bright blue lines announcing that her life as she knew it was over.

       Pregnant!

      He had been beyond careful every single time they had made love except for that very first time, when he had moved inside her and then withdrawn almost immediately—but not fast enough, because he had left behind enough of himself to create the little tiny life that was beating away inside her now.

      He was going to go mad.

      He was going to run faster than a speeding bullet.

      Oh, yes, he would do the decent thing by her financially, but he didn’t do long-term relationships.

      She was facing a sea change and there would be no one by her side. Her parents were going to be disappointed. Her mother would shake her head and try to find a silver lining somewhere. Her father would make noises about her moving back home to live with them—although they spent most of their time out of the country anyway, so it wasn’t as though they would be around for babysitting duties. She and Alex had had nannies from birth, so it was unlikely that a surprise grandchild would suddenly convert her parents into the sort of people who would enjoy pushing a pram in the park and feeding the ducks.

      And Alex would be disappointed as well. How could you have been so careless? Contraception is free, Susie! So that this sort of thing can be prevented! She could almost hear her sister’s voice ringing in her ears.

      Disappointment all round.

      A wave of self-pity washed over her. Just when she was beginning to build up a steady base with her freelance work, just when she was on the verge of getting a commission from one of the museums to illustrate the natural history section for a book to be brought out the following year…

      Her cell phone buzzed and she glanced at Sergio’s number and debated whether she should just let it ring. He had called her at least twice a day since he had been in New York.

      ‘Hi.’

      She couldn’t resist hearing the deep drawl of his sexy voice. Even from across the Atlantic it still managed to do weird and wonderful things to her tummy.

      But she knew that she sounded flat, and she decided that she didn’t care because soon there would be no more of him anyway.

      She wasn’t quite sure when she would break the news. No rush. She had to take time out to get her head round it herself before she started trying to cope with his horror.

      ‘What’s wrong?’

      ‘Nothing.’ She tried to inject her usual ready laugh into her voice, but it petered out into a sigh and she lacked the energy to take it up a notch.

      Instead, she asked him what he was doing, how his deal was going, whether he had sorted it out. They never talked about his work. She knew he did high-powered stuff involving complicated finance and tricky acquisitions. And she now had a better idea of just how much he owned. Enormous amounts of money. Companies all over the place—from restaurants to a publishing house.

      However, she just didn’t have it in her to get detailed when it came to showing her interest—which, she guessed, was just one of those chasms between them. His future would include a woman who understood the ins and outs of what he did and could fully follow if he chose to discuss the details.

      Thinking about that brought her right back to a future he certainly wouldn’t want—and that would be one with a child he hadn’t banked on and a woman he fundamentally didn’t see as having a lasting place in his life.

      ‘Huh?’ She surfaced to realise that he had asked her something.

      ‘Spit it out, Susie. What’s bugging you? You’ve just asked me about my deal, which is something you never do, and you haven’t said a word about what you’ve been doing. Where’s my sexy chatterbox disappeared to?’

      Susie stiffened. Sexy. Chatterbox. That was what she represented to him, she thought with unusual bitterness. She was someone to get into bed with who talked a lot. She bored him with inane chatter about her work, her illustrations, conversations she’d had with random people during the course of the day, gossip she’d shared with her friends, all their escapades and little adventures. He always listened, but that wasn’t to say that he listened with interest, was it? He listened because it came as part of the package deal that included the sex he was