CAROL MARINELLI - Claiming His Hidden Heir - Claiming His Hidden Heir

How he had seen her looking at the necklace.

That he had noticed...

Yes, she was right to leave.

Because of this.

Because of those moments when he put her world to rights and she was utterly and completely crazy about him.

She had grown up with the dour warning that she did not want to end up like her mother and that men like Luka could only lead her down a dangerous path.

Yet, to her shame, it beckoned her at times.

Times like tonight.

When the easiest thing in the world would be to thank him with a kiss.

She knew where it would lead, though, for that was exactly where she wanted it to lead.

And Luka wouldn’t be hard to convince!

He was easy.

That much she knew.

He was, though, at least with her, the perfect gentleman.

Well, not perfect, and not always a gentleman, but from the beginning Luka had, in the main, accepted her boundaries and there had been no overt flirting.

Occasionally he would slip, but he’d quickly rein it in. He wasn’t a sleaze and played only where welcome. More than that, though, his world worked far better with Cecelia in it. He recognised talent and certainly she was brilliant at her job. Luka knew full well that he would lose the best PA he’d ever had if he chased that perpetual want.

And there was want in him.

Yet he knew his own track record, and Luka had never lasted with anyone for more than a month.

But look where behaving had got him, Luka thought.

He’d lost her anyway.

He decided now was the time to find out more about her.

‘How did your mother die?’ Luka asked, though he had already guessed her response— That’s personal, Luka , or, That’s not your concern .

She was about to deliver a response just like that, but then she remembered she was leaving.

Perfection was no longer required now that she had resigned.

And so she told him the truth, or at least the little she knew of it.

‘I believe she took too much cocaine.’

CHAPTER FOUR

OH, CECELIA!

Luka hadn’t expected to find out much at all, let alone that her mother had died from a cocaine overdose.

He thought of her, so prim and controlled, and had assumed her upbringing had caused that. Well, he concluded, it had , but not in the way he had imagined.

Still, he said nothing, because he didn’t want to say the wrong thing, and he desperately wanted to hear more.

Cecelia liked his patient silence. There wasn’t so much as a flicker of reaction that she could read in his expression as she revealed the dark truth, and Cecelia inwardly thanked him for that. ‘She was at a party, I’ve been told.’

‘Was it a one-off—?’ he started to ask, but Cecelia cut in.

‘No, it was a regular occurrence. My mother loved to party, she lived a very debauched life.’

‘And you lived with her?’

‘I did.’ Cecelia nodded.

‘What was that like?’

She wanted warm memories of her early childhood.

Cecelia wanted to say that in spite of everything there had been so many amazing times and that despite her mother’s ways she’d been loved.

Yet she could not, and so she described what it had been like to live with her mother. ‘Unsafe.’

Yes, he understood her a little better now.

He thought of her neat desk and tidy drawers and her utter reluctance to unbend and have fun, but now he watched as she reached for her purse and stood.

‘We had better get back,’ Cecelia told him, deciding that she had said far too much.

‘No, sit,’ Luka said, but she shook her head.

‘I don’t have time to sit by the river and reminisce,’ Cecelia said. ‘And neither do you. You have a meeting with Garcia at ten.’

‘I’ve already said he can wait.’

Well, she wouldn’t.

Cecelia walked off swiftly, embarrassed and unsure why she had told him about her mother when usually she did all she could to conceal that side of her past.

Usually she loathed people’s reactions to it—their shocked expressions and the recriminations. She felt like crying as she remembered her so-called friends’ reactions at boarding school when they had stumbled on the salacious news articles and the endless dissection of her mother’s death.

Schooldays had certainly not been the best times of Cecelia’s life.

They had read out every embarrassing detail to each other with relish as she had lain in her bed in the dorm, night after night. And then had come the endless questions.

‘Was it a party or an orgy your mother was at?’ Lucy, the ringleader had asked. ‘And what do they mean by “compromising position”?’

It hadn’t been much better during term breaks. Cecelia’s pace quickened as she thought of her aunt and uncle. They had rarely mentioned her mother and when they had they’d spoken in disapproving tones.

The deeper truth was that home had been no better, because actually her aunt and uncle had rarely spoken to her at all.

As for Gordon—well, with him, her mother had been she who must not be named , just a sordid part of Cecelia’s past that was best forgotten.

Yet Luka had wanted to know more about it.

‘Wait,’ he called, and though she did not slow down he soon caught up with her. ‘Why walk off when we’re talking?’

‘Because there’s work to do, because...’ You’re work .

Constantly she had to remind herself of that fact.

Four more weeks of this felt too long, but then Cecelia reminded herself that he would be away for the next two.

She would be mad to get involved with him.

Mad.

She wasn’t flattering herself to believe she could have him.

Cecelia also knew Luka well enough to know it would only be for a night, or a couple of weeks at best.

Cecelia knew, absolutely, how it would end—indifference, then avoidance—for she had seen it all too many times, and the trouble was that she did not know how she would recover.

She had never felt such violent emotions about someone before.

Luka Kargas was her one weakness and that would never do.

And so, after their gorgeous riverside dinner, they took the elevator back up in silence. Back in the office, she went to set up for the meeting that had been rescheduled and delayed over and over again. She made sure his notes were on his desk and she tried to ignore the rich scent of him as she chatted online with Stacey, who was Mr Garcia’s PA.

‘He’s going to be another half-hour,’ Stacey said, and Cecelia inwardly groaned for she just wanted this day to be over with. ‘Are you able—?’ Her voice cut off and the screen went black, and only then did Cecelia register that Luka had deliberately turned the computer off.

‘What on earth are you doing?’ she asked.

‘I don’t like to be kept waiting.’

‘But you were the one who cancelled this morning’s meeting.’

‘So...’ Luka shrugged ‘...tomorrow you can say that we lost the connection. I can’t sit through a meeting about figures now.’

‘Fine,’ Cecelia snapped.

This bloody meeting had been moved and delayed so many times that she wondered how anyone did business with him.

Yet she knew the answer.

Luka was brilliant.

And they would wait.

‘I want to talk to you,’ Luka said.

‘Is it about work?’ Cecelia asked.

‘No.’

‘Then there’s nothing to discuss. I’ll go and pack for you,’ Cecelia said. ‘And then I’ll be off.’

She headed to his suite.

Usually it took five minutes to pack for him as she had it down pat, but he wasn’t going away for business and his wardrobe here consisted mainly of suits, shirts and ties.

She stood in his suite looking at his wardrobe for a moment as if more choices might appear, and then headed out.