Untouched Until Marriage. Chantelle Shaw

Carducci family with her staff? he wondered furiously. Had she boasted of her affair with a rich Italian aristocrat to the whole damned village? He glared at the curtained doorway, trying to see if the owner of the shop was lurking behind it, but his view was obscured by the strings of gaudy plastic beads.

      He gave an impatient shrug. ‘Si, Pietro Carducci was my father. But my business is with Ms Maynard—so if you would please inform her that I am here.’ He could no longer contain the bitterness that had eaten away at him like a corrosive poison since he had been informed of the terms of his father’s will, and he bit out savagely, ‘No doubt she will be delighted when she learns that giving birth to my father’s illegitimate son has ensured her a meal-ticket for life. She will no longer have to scrape a living from running this place,’ he added, casting a disparaging glance at the array of health foods and potions, the stacks of decorative candles, and the smouldering joss-sticks that gave off a peculiar sickly scent as they burned. ‘I fear, signorina, that you will soon have to look for another job.’

      Libby stared at Raul Carducci in dumbstruck silence. Her mother had mentioned that Pietro had a son, but Liz’s affair with her Italian lover had been no more than a brief holiday fling, and she had learned few details about his family. Her mum hadn’t even realised that Pietro was the head of the world-famous Carducci Cosmetics company until she’d read an article in a magazine about him while she’d been waiting for an antenatal appointment, Libby thought bitterly. Liz had agonised over whether to tell her lover she was pregnant, but when she had finally written to him to inform him she had given birth to his child Pietro had not bothered to reply.

      But although Pietro Carducci had not acknowledged his child, he must have told his older son about Gino, Libby realised shakily. Raul’s harsh words, ‘my father’s illegitimate son’, filled her with a deep sense of unease. He sounded far from delighted about the existence of his half-brother. She did not know what to say, and while she hesitated the silence was broken by the jangling sound of the windchimes above the door.

      Raul glanced round to see a woman manoeuvre a pushchair into the shop. ‘Here we are, Gino, back in the warm,’ the woman said cheerfully, her voice barely audible over the yells coming from beneath the buggy hood. She lifted the waterproof plastic cover, revealing the screwed up face of a screaming baby boy. ‘All right, my lovely. I’ll get you out in a second.’

      Raul’s eyes were drawn to the pushchair, and some indefinable emotion gripped him as he focused on the baby’s olive skin and tight black curls. The woman had called the child Gino, and even though he was less than a year old there could be no mistaking his resemblance to his father. Dio! Raul thought numbly. He had been determined to demand a DNA test to prove the child’s paternity, but there was no need. Indisputably this was Pietro Carducci’s son.

      He turned his attention to the woman, noting her ruddy cheeks, coarse brown hair and the lumpy figure shrouded in a beige coat. It seemed astounding that Pietro, whose love of classical beauty had led him to build a priceless art collection, had chosen this dowdy woman as his mistress—and it was even more impossible to imagine the woman working in a lap-dancing club!

      Raul’s mouth tightened as he recalled his meeting eight months ago with the lawyer his father had appointed as executor of his will.

      ‘“This is the last will and testament of Pietro Gregorio Carducci,’ Signor Orsini had read aloud. ‘“It is my wish that control of my company, Carducci Cosmetics, be shared equally between my adopted son, Raul Carducci, and my infant son and only blood heir Gino Maynard.”’

      Seeing that Raul had been struck dumb by the revelation that Pietro had a secret child, the lawyer had continued reading. ‘“I leave to my two sons, Raul and Gino, equal share of the Villa Giulietta. It is my wish that Gino should grow up in the family home. His share of the company and the villa are to be held in trust for him until he is eighteen, and until he is of age it is my wish that his mother, Elizabeth Maynard, will live at the villa with him, and will have control of Gino’s share of CC.”’

      At that point Raul had sworn savagely, shocked beyond words at the news that he would not have sole control of the company he had been groomed for most of his life to run. He had found the expression ‘blood heir’ deeply wounding. He had been seven years old when Pietro and Eleonora Carducci had collected him from an orphanage in Naples and taken him to live at the Villa Giulietta. Pietro had always insisted that his adopted son was his rightful heir, who would one day inherit Carducci Cosmetics. Father and son had been close, and the bond between them had deepened after Eleonora’s death ten years ago.

      That was why it was so utterly unbelievable that Pietro had had a secret life, Raul thought bitterly. The man he had called Papa, the man he had wept for at Pietro’s funeral, was suddenly a stranger who had deliberately withheld the fact that he had a mistress and a baby son.

      ‘There is a clause in your father’s will that I think you will find interesting,’ Signor Orsini had murmured. ‘Pietro has stated that if Ms Maynard should marry before Gino is eighteen, control of the child’s share of CC would pass to you until he is of age. I imagine Pietro made this stipulation to protect the company should Ms Maynard make an unsuitable marriage,’ the lawyer had added.

      ‘Carducci Cosmetics will need all the protection it can get if I am forced to share the running of it with a lap-dancer,’ Raul had growled savagely. ‘My father must have been out of his mind.’

      At that, Bernardo Orsini had shaken his head. ‘Despite the fact that Pietro had been diagnosed with an aggressive brain tumour, I am absolutely certain that he was of sound mind when he made his will. His main concern was for his infant son.’

      Raul dragged his mind back to the present and stared at the woman who had entered the shop. According to the lawyer, Elizabeth Maynard had worked as a lap-dancer at a club called the Purple Pussy Cat, but six months ago she had disappeared from her South London flat, owing her landlord several thousand pounds in rent arrears. Raul had visualised his father’s mistress as a bleached blonde tart, but even though the drab woman who was lifting the baby out of the pushchair looked nothing like he had imagined, he still balked at the idea of her moving into the Villa Guilietta, while the prospect of sharing control of Carducci Cosmetics with her would be frankly amusing if he had not been consumed by rage and resentment at his father’s dying wishes.

      ‘I knew he’d stop crying the minute he saw his mummy,’ the woman said cheerfully, and handed the child over to the young shop assistant.

      Shock ricocheted through Raul. He stared—at first uncomprehendingly, and then with a growing sense of rage—as the flame-haired girl kissed away the tears from the baby’s cheeks and settled him comfortably on her hip. His brain finally accepted what his eyes had seen.

      ‘You are Elizabeth Maynard?’ he demanded harshly.

      The girl lifted her head and met his gaze. ‘I am—although most people call me Libby.’

      Raul did not give a damn what most people called her. He was still struggling to comprehend that this stunningly pretty girl had been his father’s mistress. She could not be more than in her early twenties, and Pietro had been in his mid-sixties. Revulsion swept through him, and with it another emotion that filled him with self-disgust when he recognised it as jealousy. Dio! No wonder his father had kept quiet about this flame-haired siren. He had no problem picturing her working in a lap-dancing club, Raul thought as his eyes focused on the rounded contours of her breasts outlined beneath her stretchy top. An image flashed in his mind of her dancing in a skimpy costume, tossing her mane of fiery hair over her shoulders as she unfastened her bra and slowly let it drop…

      He bit back an oath, infuriated by his body’s involuntary reaction to his wayward thoughts. ‘You are Gino’s mother?’ He sought clarification, aware that he had initially jumped to the conclusion that the older woman had been his father’s lover.

      Libby hesitated. Margaret was making a show of hunting through her handbag for something, but she was conscious of the older woman’s avid curiosity. Her neighbour was a kindly woman, who often babysat Gino, but Margaret was an inveterate gossip. If she overheard