Blackmailed For Her Baby. Elizabeth Power

her eyes. A man who was lethally attractive and ruthlessly uncompromising. A man definitely not to be crossed. It hadn’t just been mutual dislike that she had shared with Romano Vincenzo. It had been something more. Something much stronger and intensely profound that she had never been able to put a name to, and which she certainly wasn’t going to waste any time wondering about six years on.

      It was all in the past, and over the years she had become adept at hiding her emotions, which she did now, crushing her unwelcome reverie beneath a bright smile as Fran asked, ‘Are you coming to the party tonight, Blaze?’

      ‘You try and stop me!’ It was a first-rate performance she was giving and she knew it; knew also that it was one she would have to keep up until she could change, get back to the Porsche and slam out of there, away from the turmoil of her unwelcome thoughts; of memories—resurrected by a simple skin-cream commercial—which she couldn’t bear to face. ‘After a week of staying in every night, getting up at four am and coming here to be bitten by mosquitoes,’ she forced out laughingly over her shoulder, ‘I’m going to party till dawn!’

      Well, what had he been expecting? Romano thought, standing there in the trailer, when Libby, not looking where she was going, almost collided with him. That she had changed?

      He caught her small gasp, felt her warmth and closeness and the pure femininity of her washing over him on a sensual wave.

      ‘Buon giorno, Libby.’ His senses, normally so controlled, were leaping into overdrive, making his heart race, his voice take on a husky quality as he watched the colour drain from the smooth texture of her high, Slavic cheekbones, saw her lush red mouth open in a gesture of pure shock.

      ‘I’m sorry, Blaze…’ Fran’s voice followed her in, quickly contrite, breaking in on the whirling chaos of her thoughts. ‘I meant to tell you. I’m sorry, Mr Vincenzo…’ The woman’s tone had changed in deference to the tall, tanned Italian hunk looming there in the aperture of her mobile studio and whose dark designer suit couldn’t conceal the hard masculinity of the man beneath. ‘I hadn’t forgotten you were waiting…’

      Romano’s sleek black hair gleamed like jet as he gave a curt nod before reaching around the stunned Libby and pulling the trailer’s sliding door closed with a rattling firmness that blocked out Fran and the rest of the world.

      He hadn’t changed, some small functioning part of Libby silently acknowledged. A high-profile entrepreneur, with that overall impression of lithe fitness and impeccable style, he still dominated any room he happened to walk into, still held sway over others with that bred-in-the bone confidence and effortless authority.

      ‘Wh-what are you doing here?’ Struck by the ridiculous notion that her thoughts must have conjured him up, Libby found herself as she’d always been in this man’s company, a mixture of tongue-tied nervousness and challenging rebellion. And then, as shock receded and rational thought took over, she was urging in a voice strung with blind panic, ‘What’s wrong? What is it? Is something the matter?’

      Some racing emotion darkened the long green eyes gazing up at him from beneath their rich mahogany lashes as they had done from the covers of countless glossy magazines over the years.

      ‘Not that I know of.’

      He saw her eyes close, the pressing of those long, feathery lashes against the alabaster skin a response he understood and accepted, though not without a measure of surprise.

      ‘How long have you been here?’ Weak-kneed with relief—from this unexpected encounter with Luca’s brother—Libby tried to get a grip on her errant thoughts.

      ‘Long enough.’

      His deeply-accented voice was as rich as she remembered it, his face as hard-boned and as classically structured, from his high intellectual forehead, straight nose and that forceful, darkly shadowed jaw to those penetrating black eyes that had always seemed to probe right down into the depths of her soul.

      Her nostrils flaring, guardedly she demanded, ‘Why didn’t you make yourself known?’

      His wide masculine mouth compressed, a mouth that could curl with disdain or make a woman’s bones melt in the blaze of one smile. ‘And miss watching the nation’s loveliest model playing at doting motherhood?’

      His double-edged compliment hit home hard and she swept determinedly past him, the brush of his jacket as their shoulders collided sending a tingling friction across her bare skin.

      She gave a nonchalant little shrug, her feelings held on a throttle-tight leash. ‘It isn’t a role I’d normally have chosen.’ In fact she had tried to refuse the job, but it was her agent who had warned her of the inadvisability of turning down such opportunities and who had won in the end.

      Something flickered in Romano’s eyes beneath his midnight-black lashes.

      ‘Is that why you handed the kid over like she was a sack of potatoes?’

      ‘Did I?’ It was hard trying to pretend he wasn’t unsettling her when even to her own ears her voice was shaking. ‘I thought I was being careful.’

      The firm mouth tugged downwards. ‘As careful as you were when you handed over Giorgio?’

      ‘Giorgi?’ The name escaped her like a helpless little plea. He’d said there was nothing wrong, but something had to be because in all these years he had never chosen to patronise her with so much as a social call. ‘He’s all right, isn’t he?’

      It was only a heartbeat before he answered, and yet it seemed an eternity.

      ‘That hasn’t worried you for the past six years. So why should it suddenly concern you now?’

      She couldn’t tell him how much she had grieved for the baby son she had been forced to hand over so cruelly; how much she ached to see him, know him, her concern for his welfare and her need to be with him an excruciating pain that tore at her constantly no matter how many days, weeks, months or years dragged by.

      ‘You wouldn’t be here if it didn’t concern Giorgio,’ Libby breathed, feeling like a slave begging for mercy from a powerful master who held the key, not just to her happiness, but also to her very existence on this earth. ‘Are you going to tell me what it is?’ Her eyes were dark pools against the pale oval of her face. ‘Or are you taking some sort of warped satisfaction out of seeing me suffer?’

      ‘Suffer?’ A thick eyebrow arched darkly against his tanned forehead. ‘You? I don’t think so, Libby. A moment ago you had nothing on your mind but partying until dawn.’

      Libby felt something snap inside of her and the next moment, to her own horror, she was flying at him, fingers clamping like angry claws onto the expensive cloth of his jacket, her teeth clenched in an agony of frustration.

      ‘Are you going to tell me? Or am I going to have to rip it out of you?’ she sobbed, suddenly all too conscious of his physicality and the sheer power of him, the knowledge that he could subdue her with just one gram of his latent strength should he choose to do so.

      Fortunately he didn’t. Instead he caught her angry hands and held them against his chest, bringing her startlingly alive to the hard warmth of him beneath the impeccable cut of his clothes.

      Some hot emotion burned in the incredibly dark gaze resting on her lips, strangely at odds with the deepening furrow between his eyes. ‘Easy. Take it easy,’ he advised hoarsely.

      If he was truthful with himself, Romano thought, he was shocked by the strength of her reaction to what had, after all, been his unprovoked taunts. But what human being wouldn’t feel justified in making them? he vindicated himself with his jaw clenching. Knowing exactly what made this single-minded little opportunist tick? But perhaps that was the reason for her wild and totally unexpected outburst. Guilt, it occurred to him suddenly. She’d be less than human if what she had done hadn’t left her with some measure of remorse, so perhaps she had suffered. Because she was human, and very much a woman, two aspects he was vitally aware of now as he became conscious of the slender bones of her wrists beneath the