Blackmailed For Her Baby. Elizabeth Power

it, Libby. But I’m offering you the chance to make amends.’

      ‘Make amends?’ She looked at him obliquely, hot, angry tears smarting against her eyes. Just who did he think he was? Her judge and jury? ‘How magnanimous of you!’ she bit out, her defences in shreds. But, needing to ease the ever-present guilt, redeem herself in her own eyes if no one else’s, she was crying out in bitter denial, ‘I didn’t sell my child!’

      The firm masculine mouth tugged with grim scepticism. ‘Find a way of telling that to Giorgio when he grows up.’

      Pain darted across Libby’s already tortured features, pale now against the rich red lustre of her hair. ‘That surely isn’t what you…what your parents…’ She couldn’t bring herself to finish. It was too awful even to contemplate that they might have said as much to the little boy.

      ‘You think I’d be—’ he broke off, his eyes hard ‘—let anyone be that cruel?’

      A surge of relief lifted Libby’s chest. Luca’s brother might feel only contempt for her, but he did seem to have some sensitivity where Giorgio was concerned.

      ‘I have evidence of it, Libby,’ he went on in those deep, relentless, self-assured tones. ‘You were paid…’ He paused before spelling out the exorbitant sum of money that his father had drafted into her bank account on the handing over of her eight-week old son. ‘And unless my accounts are well and truly—what is the expression?—up the creek—there isn’t any doubt that all the money was cashed within a few months.’

      Well, he owed me something! Libby wanted to scream, though nothing had, or ever could, compensate for, or ease the loss of her child.

      ‘Yes, I cashed it,’ she uttered vehemently, because she had no intention of explaining to this hard-headed Italian who had formed so many erroneous opinions about her what she had done with the money. He was a Vincenzo after all and, with the exception of Luca, just like the rest. ‘I had to live.’

      ‘Si.’ There was only raw cynicism in his reply as his gaze fell on a back issue of a leading magazine someone had left on the cosmetics shelf. The cover featured a Ferrari with Libby draped over its gleaming red bonnet, dripping with the gold jewellery she had been advertising. ‘And quite well if that fancy car you drive out there and that string of homes you appear to own besides your expensive London apartment are anything to go by. One in Jersey. A couple on the continent. Two beach houses in Florida. Not bad for a girl who started out without a bean to her name.’

      No, she had all that, she accepted gratefully. But, just like with the money, it was none of his business, and she was darned if she’d be made to feel accountable to him for why she had invested in so many homes!

      Her chin coming up, exposing the pale line of her throat, she said simply, ‘Are you sure there isn’t anything else you’d like to throw at me?’

      His dark gaze plundered hers as though searching for something beyond their defensive green depths.

      ‘I appreciate that you have commitments. That it isn’t going to be easy for you to…drag yourself away.’ Carefully chosen words, Libby felt, to make each statement a precision-aimed snipe. The lining of his jacket gleamed darkly as he reached for something in his inside pocket, the action exposing the dark shading of body hair through the fine material of his shirt. ‘So name your price,’ he invited silkily. ‘I’m sure together we can come to a suitable figure.’

      To see Giorgio? He thought she needed payment before she’d consider helping her son!

      ‘How dare you?’ She lashed out at the black leather folder he was opening, almost hitting it out of his hands. ‘Get out! Get out of here if all you can do is stand there and sling insults at me!’

      From the way his brows lifted, clearly her reaction had taken him unawares. His hands were remarkably steady, though, as he repocketed the offending cheque-book. ‘Forgive me,’ he said coldly. ‘I forgot. These days Vincenzo money doesn’t hold the same attraction for you that it did.’

      ‘No, that’s right,’ Libby breathed, hating him more with every second that passed. If he wanted to think the worst about her, then let him think it! ‘And as for my car and all my houses…I do have my image to think about!’

      She thought he would come back with some further cutting remark, but all he did was stand there looking down at her for a few dissecting moments from his superior height.

      Eventually he took something out of his wallet, handed it to her. A card with the familiar Vincenzo logo printed at the top. ‘I’ll be here in London for a couple of days, ‘ he stated in a cool, unperturbed voice. ‘If you’ve a glimmer of conscience or compassion behind that beautiful face of yours—call me. It might do you good to step down into the real world for a while—see how the other half lives.’

      His comments flayed as he pushed back the sliding door, his broad shoulders filling for a moment the gap he had created, before he stepped lithely down from the trailer and strode away.

      Staring after his lean, elegant figure, Libby felt frustrated tears bite behind her eyes. The real world, he’d said. Was that what he called the Vincenzo mansion and its accompanying millions? When it was his and his family’s world that had taught her how the other half lived! The half who could buy anything, threaten anything, just as long as they got exactly what they wanted, when they wanted it, regardless of who got hurt!

      Her knuckles whitening as she gripped the open door, anguish a crushing weight in her chest, she almost gave in to the urge to call him back. Tell him that she would go to Italy with him. Now if he demanded it of her. Agree to anything he stipulated just so long as she could see Giorgio again. But he was already folding himself into the low sports saloon parked in front of her own favoured Porsche that he had spoken of so critically, and the next instant the powerful car was growling away.

      Without even bothering to cream off her make-up, Libby packed up her few belongings and followed his example. The day, accommodatingly bright and cloudless for the shoot, was turning overcast as she headed back to the city and the rain had set in heavily before she had got very far. She tried to keep her mind on her driving, but even concentrating hard on the wet road through the double speed of the windscreen wipers couldn’t keep the bitter memories at bay.

      CHAPTER TWO

      SHE had still been at college when she had met Luca Vincenzo.

      Motherless, with her father pensioned off early through ill health, she had been waiting tables at weekends and during term holidays in a chic little bistro in the Sussex village where she lived, eager to contribute in whatever way she could to their frugal finances.

      She couldn’t deny that her unusually photogenic looks and striking red hair, which she accepted without a trace of vanity, helped to get her noticed with the customers, bringing in more than a fair share of tips from admiring male members of the clientele, from whom she always managed to pleasantly but firmly distance herself.

      Luca had been the one exception to the rule. A handsome Italian boy with a daredevil attitude to life, he had dined there every night for a month, wooing her with his crazy Latin charm and that hint of devilry in his sparkling dark eyes until she took his threat of hiring a helicopter and lowering himself onto the top of Nelson’s column, where he promised to stay until she put him out of his misery and agreed to go out with him, as serious. It was only after she had laughingly consented to that she discovered exactly who he was; what a wealthy, respected and—in his own words—stifling family he had been born into.

      Braking to allow a van to pull across into her lane, she remembered how much her father had liked Luca. As he’d liked Luca’s grandfather, Giovanni Vincenzo, she recalled fondly, whom he’d worked for, prior to his forced retirement, as head gardener on the man’s large country estate fringing the village. When Giovanni Vincenzo had died, it was Luca’s father, Marius, who inherited the family empire. Preferring to run his international enterprises from his native Italy, he had turned the house into a conference centre and country club and, with the exception of a few small properties,