Charlene Sands - Special Deliveries - Her Nine-Month Secret - The Secret Casella Baby / The Secret Heir of Sunset Ranch / Proof of Their Sin

‘I had my picture taken a few times in front of the house,’ Luiz said with a shrug. ‘But I have a few beefy security guards at my disposal. No one gets too near. Besides, they probably know that answering questions isn’t my thing, which is why you make a much better target.’

‘I haven’t said a word to anyone!’

‘And they won’t give up until you do. These people can be determined when they’re in pursuit of a story. It’s their bread and butter. In fact, I could tell you some stories of friends who have had their lives wrecked by cameras poking through windows and telescopic lenses capturing each and every private moment…’

Holly blanched.

‘I know.’ Luiz oozed sympathy. ‘It’s a shocking thought but there’s no point evading reality. I’ve phoned and explained the situation to Andy. He’s going to take over running the place for the time being. You never told me that he had plans to move back down to London.’

‘He and Marcus are getting back together.’ Holly wondered what ‘for the time being’ meant.

‘Yes. He explained. He’s over the moon. I’ve offered him the temporary use of one of my apartments until he finds his feet.’

‘And he’s accepted?’ Somehow that reeked of treachery. She knew that Andy had been bowled over when the truth about Luiz’s background had surfaced, but to accept his handouts? Really?

‘Why wouldn’t he?’ Luiz said carelessly. ‘Not everyone’s hung up on making judgement calls about someone’s good character because they happen to be rich.’

Holly’s lips thinned. She refrained from telling him that it was all right for Andy. He hadn’t been lied to and deceived and told that he wasn’t good enough for a relationship. Besides, Luiz Casella was a fine one to talk. Hadn’t he made judgements about her based on her lack of money? Somehow she knew that to go down that road, however, would make her sound churlish and petty. Besides, how much mileage was there in opening up raw wounds over and over again?

‘But that’s besides the point. Did you bring your passport?’

‘Yes, but you didn’t explain why it was necessary.’

‘You once said that we should go on holiday together.’

‘That was when I thought we had a future. That was when I thought we could save up and take a trip abroad. Before I knew that saving up was something you didn’t have to do. In fact, before I found out that all you had to do was snap your fingers and you could go wherever in the world you wanted.’

She flushed because the last thing she wanted was to sound like an embittered woman, frustrated and disillusioned because the guy she loved hadn’t picked her for the last dance. ‘Sorry,’ she mumbled. ‘I do realise that bickering isn’t going to get us anywhere.’

‘You need your passport because we’re going abroad.’

It was something she had dreamed of. A trip away, just the two of them… It would have taken a lot of planning because she would have had to arrange supervision for her animals and—she had supposed at the time—he would have had to book time off with his boss. But the idea had never got off the ground.

Now she wondered, with his vast knowledge of the goings-on of the paparazzi, whether he had sidelined holiday chat because he hadn’t wanted to risk her finding out who he really was. Reporters wouldn’t have been interested in the Luiz Gomez he had claimed to be. At any rate, how ironic that her much wanted holiday with him had been suggested in these circumstances. How ironic that his suggestion of a holiday now had all the hallmarks of someone trying to run her life for her.

‘I don’t want to go abroad,’ she said firmly.

‘Your choice. If you want to take on the piranhas of the journalistic world, then be my guest. I am tough enough to deal with whatever gets thrown at me in the press, but I don’t think you are.’

‘I’m not quite the fragile person I once was,’ Holly informed him coolly and his mouth curved into a smile of pure amusement that instantly sent her zooming back to those halcyon days before the truth had come as a wedge between them.

‘Energetic… carefree… sexy… Those are things that come to mind when I think about you,’ Luiz murmured, still amused. ‘Fragile, not so much. Tree trunks never stood a chance when it came to being cut down to size to feed your fire. It was just one of the things I liked about you. So, fragile? Maybe not…’

The way those dark eyes were lingering on her made every bit of her burn. Even as she was telling herself that to be told that she wasn’t fragile was an insult, all she could think was that he had found her sexy. Not that she hadn’t known. He might have kept his real identity locked away, but when it came to the physical side of their relationship there had been no doubt as to the genuine fervour of his responses. Even as she was sternly recognising that she had to detach herself from him, erect defences to protect herself, she was succumbing to the glorious melting feeling he had always been able to induce in her.

‘That’s not what I meant,’ Holly said in a strangled voice while he continued to stare at her with that sexy half-smile, his head half-inclined. They were separated by the width of the room but her body was reacting as though he was right next to her, touching her. ‘Where would we go?’ She felt as jumpy as a cat on a hot tin roof when she thought about being alone with him, even though they had spent loads of time alone together.

‘Some place where we can’t be reached or spied on. Give it a couple of weeks and our riveting saga will have been superceded by something more exciting. Reporters are a fickle bunch.’

‘I feel as though I’m being steamrollered into this…’ He had been the one she turned to for advice for so long that she automatically voiced her concern aloud. Luiz felt a heady sense of powerful satisfaction at that instinctive inclination to yield to him.

‘Trust me,’ he drawled lazily, pushing himself away from the window and strolling towards the door. ‘It’ll be for the best.’

THERE WAS so much Holly was finding out about this man she had spent nearly two years loving, yet it seemed that there was room to find out still more. Beyond the reality of his background and wealth, she was also discovering the reach of his power and how fast things could move if he so dictated. It seemed he had an army of people at the ready to turn his commands into instant reality.

Having had a long bath, she emerged an hour and a half later to the sound of voices emanating from one of the many reception rooms. Caught in the weird situation of having been intimate with a man, and yet ignorant of a huge tranche of his life, Holly was uncomfortable with the notion of making herself at home. Somehow it didn’t feel right just to breeze into his kitchen—which wasn’t the kitchen she had disingenuously assumed he would have but a masterpiece of high-tech modernism—in order to make a cup of coffee, using a machine which looked as though it would require a degree in engineering to master it.

Nor would she have felt comfortable settling in one of the sofas and switching on the television—if there even was a television concealed somewhere in the sitting room. At any rate, there was no time for watching telly. She had to talk to him, clarify exactly what was going on. She followed the sound of the voices which led her to the enormous conservatory at the back of the house and a sight that made her mouth fall open inelegantly.

Sprawled on one of the chairs, Luiz was absently switching his attention between his laptop, which lay open on a small glass table next to him, and two women who were busily unpacking several boxes and carrier bags stuffed with clothes. He looked up as soon as Holly appeared.