Carole Mortimer - Fascination

Although she hadn’t exactly had dinner with Cesare—or at least they had never finished eating!—she inwardly acknowledged ruefully, still writhing with embarrassment inside herself every time she so much as thought of the time she had spent in Cesare’s arms the previous evening.

Nothing like that had ever happened to her before.

Oh, the physical side of her marriage to Giles had been satisfying enough at the beginning. Less so as they’d become caught up in the tests and charts and temperature-taking that had been part of their effort to conceive the child Giles so wanted. The child Robin had wanted too.

That she was now going to have in Marco, if her marriage to Cesare Gambrelli took place.

And now she’d met Marco, she had every intention that it would.

She had woken up this morning—in her own bed, thank goodness—filled with what she could only describe as a feeling of satisfied langour. Caused by Cesare’s lovemaking, she knew.

But it was that langour, the knowledge that when she and Cesare were married she would become his wife in the full sense of the word, as well as her joy in the prospect of becoming Marco’s mother, which had encouraged her to start the awkward process this morning of breaking the news of their relationship to her father.

The sooner he knew, the sooner she could become mother to that enchanting little boy.

Her father looked stricken by her news as he stared across the breakfast table at her. ‘I—But … Cesare Gambrelli, Robin?’ he finally burst out disbelievingly. ‘I wasn’t aware that you even knew the man!’

‘You introduced the two of us last Saturday at the charity dinner, remember?’ she reminded gently.

‘Well, yes, but—’ He shook his head. ‘When did the two of you meet up again?’ His brow furrowed.

Robin was aware that this conversation was going to be delicate, to say the least, and also aware that Cesare wasn’t the most patient of men—that if she didn’t talk to her father then Cesare surely would. It would be so much better coming from her.

‘He called at the house to see me.’ She deliberately didn’t say he had come only yesterday. ‘To invite me out to dinner. And I accepted.’

‘He came here?’ Her father’s face was very pale.

‘Yes.’ Robin tilted her head to one side. ‘Is there some reason why he shouldn’t have?’ She kept her tone deliberately light.

Her father stood up to pace the room, still in his dressing gown as it was Saturday morning and he didn’t have to go in to work—although he had brushed his hair and shaved before coming down to breakfast.

‘Perhaps I should have talked to you about this earlier, Robin,’ he admitted, ‘but I had no idea you and Gambrelli would ever meet again after the charity dinner. Damn it, I hoped you would never meet again! You see, Robin, the other driver involved in Simon’s accident—’

‘Was Cesare’s young sister, Carla,’ she interrupted calmly. ‘Yes, I know.’

‘You know?’ her father breathed, and he stopped his pacing.

She nodded. ‘Cesare and I have talked about it—’

‘You’ve talked about it?’ he repeated.

‘Daddy, I’m sure we’ll get much further with this conversation if you stop repeating everything I say. And, yes,’ she sighed, ‘Cesare and I have talked about the accident—about Simon and Carla’s deaths. Strangely, it only encourages both of us in the belief that the two of us were meant to meet …’

She was laying it on a bit thick, Robin knew, but for his own sake she really did have to convince her father that her relationship with Cesare was a love match, and not the vendetta against the Ingram family that it really was.

Her father looked desperately upset just at the thought of her going out with Cesare Gambrelli. How much more upset would he be if he knew his beloved only daughter was being forced into a marriage with this man?

Or at least it had been coercion on Cesare’s part …

Meeting Marco, holding him in her arms, being captivated by the warm innocence of his baby smile, had changed all that.

She refused to allow that the pleasure she had found last night in Cesare’s arms might also have had something to do with her change in attitude.

‘Daddy, wouldn’t it be wonderful if something good could come out of that tragedy?’ She looked up at him appealingly, slightly ashamed of herself for using such feminine wiles on her father—he never had been able to resist the appeal in her violet-coloured eyes—but ultimately knowing it was for the best.

Better that her father should voice his reservations about her relationship with Cesare now, and have those reservations allayed, than he should learn the real reason she was seeing the other man and then absolutely refuse to let her comply with Cesare’s demands.

‘Well, yes, of course it would …’ Charles acknowledged distractedly. ‘But I wrote to the man after the accident, you know. The letter came back inside another envelope a week later—ripped into four pieces!’ He grimaced. ‘I had the distinct feeling he would rather have plunged a knife into my throat!’ he added with a shudder.

So, Cesare had received her father’s letter of condolence, and had obviously read it—before returning it in a way that could only be perceived as a threat.

No wonder her father had warned her to stay away from Cesare!

She gave a rueful smile. ‘Cesare can be a little … dramatic, can’t he?’ She forced the sound of affection into her voice. ‘It’s all that Latin blood,’ she continued brightly. ‘But I can assure you that he’s no longer angry about what happened.’

Her father looked sceptical. ‘Are you absolutely sure about that?’

‘Positive.’ She beamed reassuringly, putting her cup down to stand up and give him a hug. ‘Now, take that frown off your face and be happy for me. I’m hoping to introduce Cesare to you as your future son-in-law some day soon!’ she told him gaily.

‘You’re going to marry the man?’ her father said disbelievingly.

‘If he asks me.’ Robin nodded. ‘And I think he will.’

‘But you said you were never going to marry again! That no man would want you because you can’t give him children—though I’ve never believed that,’ he told her firmly.

‘But that’s the wonderful thing about Cesare,’ Robin came back brightly. ‘He already has a male heir to inherit, so it isn’t going to matter that I can’t give him children of his own,’ she dismissed, not inclined to get into a discussion of exactly who Cesare’s heir was.

In fact, it might be better if she changed the subject altogether! ‘Keep your fingers crossed for me, hmm, Daddy?’ she encouraged happily.

Her father still looked as if he would prefer to lock her in her bedroom and keep her there until Cesare Gambrelli had disappeared from London altogether. But, as he really wasn’t about to do that, he had no choice but to accept what she told him.

‘Just take care, Robin?’ he said gruffly, and he laid his hand on her cheek affectionately. ‘I’m not sure I altogether trust Gambrelli’s motives.’

‘Don’t be silly.’ She smiled confidently. ‘And of course I’ll be careful,’ she assured him, feeling her heart aching at the deception she was practicing on her father, but knowing it would ache even more if he were to discover the truth and forbid her to marry Cesare, and so force Cesare into carrying out his threat against Ingram Publishing.

No, it was much better this way, she reassured herself.

She had no intention of showing Cesare any of that compliance when she met him at Gregori’s restaurant later that evening, as they had arranged during a very brief telephone call earlier in the day. Had no intention of making this any easier for Cesare than she already had with her response to him the previous evening.