Cinderella's Scandalous Secret. Melanie Milburne

fling. Sex had brought them together in a thunderclap of attraction at their first meeting in a bar—an explosion of lust that had sent shockwaves through her entire body. She hadn’t really enjoyed sex until she experienced it with Rafe. It had been out of this world sex and even now she could feel the memories of it coursing through her body. Little pulses and tingles in her flesh—the flesh he had awakened with his lips and tongue, as if being in the same room as him triggered her body into remembering, longing, wanting.

      Isla snatched up some fresh towels from her trolley, desperate to hide the slight bulge of her belly. No one was going to be cracking coconuts on her abdomen any time soon. She had never had a particularly flat stomach, which made her hope Rafe wouldn’t notice the slight change in it now. It had always surprised her that he had found her so attractive. She was nothing like the super-slim and glamorous women he normally dated. She was desperate to occupy her hands in case they were tempted to slap that imperious look off his too-handsome face. Or worse—pull his head down to crash his mouth against hers to make her forget everything but the heat and fire of his masterful, mesmerising, bone-melting kiss.

      ‘I work at this hotel. Now, if you’ll let me finish your room, I’ll get out of your way and—’

      ‘I thought you were going back to London to resume your Fine Arts degree?’ A frown tugged at his brow, his green and brown flecked gaze holding hers with the force of a searchlight. ‘Wasn’t that the plan?’

      ‘I...I changed my mind.’ Isla swung away and strode into the bathroom with the towels. She placed the new ones on the towel racks and then gathered up the damp ones, bundling them against her body like a barrier. Her plans had changed as soon as she found out she was pregnant.

      Everything had changed.

      Rafe followed her into the palatial bathroom, his presence shrinking it to the size of a tissue box. Isla caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror over the twin basins and inwardly groaned. She had never been more conscious of her lack of make-up, the dark circles under her eyes, the lankness of her red-gold hair under her housemaid’s cap. Or the secret swell of her belly beneath her housemaid’s white frilly apron. Was he comparing her to his latest lover? She had seen photos of him with numerous women in the time since she had brought their relationship to an end. She wondered if it had been deliberate on his part—to be seen out and about with as many women as possible as an I’ll show you how quickly I can move on from you slap to her ego. After all, Isla had been the one to end their fling, which clearly wasn’t something he was used to. Women were queuing up to be with him, not rushing to leave.

      ‘That was rather sudden, was it not?’ His voice contained a note of scepticism that matched the piercing focus of his gaze. ‘I thought you liked living in London?’

      Isla sucked in her tummy to her backbone. She straightened the toiletries on the marble counter for something to do with her hands, annoyed they weren’t as steady as she would have liked. ‘I felt ready for a change of scene. Anyway, I could no longer afford living in London.’

      His top lip curled and his glittering eyes pulsated with barely controlled anger. ‘Is there someone else? Is that why you called time on us?’

      Isla met his gaze in the mirror, her stomach freefalling at the bitterness shining in his eyes. ‘Us? We weren’t an “us” and you know it. It was a fling, that’s all, and I wanted it to end.’

      ‘Liar.’ The word came out like a bullet. Hard. Direct. Bullseye. ‘At least have the decency to be honest with me.’

      Honest? How could she be honest about anything about herself? About her background. About her shame. It didn’t matter if she was wearing haute couture or hand-me-downs, the shame burned like a flame inside her. ‘There’s no one else. I told you in my note—I simply wanted out.’

      Finding out she was carrying Rafe’s baby had thrown Isla into a terrifying world of uncertainty. The thought of him rejecting her, throwing her and their baby out of his life like her father had done to her had been too painful. She couldn’t think of any way she could tell him about her pregnancy that wouldn’t cause irreversible destruction in his life. She hadn’t known him long enough or well enough to trust he wouldn’t try and pressure her into having an abortion. Not that she would have allowed him or anyone to do that. She had enough doubts about her own mothering ability. She had been in and out of foster care since she was seven; her memories of her own mother were patchy at best, painful at worst. What sort of mother would she make? It was a constant nagging toothache type of worry that kept her awake at night. The doubts and fears throbbed on the inside of her skull like miniature hammers.

      ‘Ah, yes. Your note.’ There was a disparaging bite to Rafe’s tone.

      Isla forced herself to hold his searing gaze. She put on her game face, the one she had perfected over the years. The face that had helped her survive yet another placement with strangers. The mask of cool indifference that belied the churning, burning, yearning emotions fighting for room in her chest.

      ‘You’re the one who needs to be honest. You’re only angry because I was the one to leave you. But you would’ve called time sooner rather than later. None of your flings last longer than a month at the most. I was already on borrowed time.’

      A muscle worked in the lower quadrant of his jaw, his eyes still brewing and boiling with bitterness. ‘Couldn’t you have waited until I got home from New York to speak to me face to face? Or is that why you didn’t come with me on that trip while I negotiated that deal? Because you’d always planned to leave while I was away. You didn’t want to risk having me try to change your mind.’

      Isla pressed her lips together, struggling to keep her own temper in check. She had known how important that deal was to him. The biggest of his career. The man he was negotiating the deal with was a deeply religious family man who might not have signed off on the deal if news broke about Rafe’s pregnant lover with the salacious background. She had started to feel nauseous just before he’d suggested she come with him to New York. Thinking at first it was a mild stomach bug, she had decided to stay at his villa in Sicily while he went abroad. She had gone everywhere else with him during their two months together, slotting into his life without giving too much thought as to why she shouldn’t be subsuming her life so readily, so recklessly into his. But then a wriggling worm of suspicion about the possibility of pregnancy had tunnelled into her brain to such a degree it was all she could think about. She’d had to know one way or the other. And she’d wanted to be alone when she did. She hadn’t wanted him finding her with a test wand in her hand, or finding her bent over the toilet heaving her insides out.

      Once she’d seen the test was positive, she’d known what she had to do.

      End it.

      End their fling and get the hell out of his life before more harm was done. Because she would have brought him harm. Great harm. Harm from which there would be no easy recovery. The Pandora’s Box of her past would have created havoc and mayhem in his well-to-do circles. The New York deal would have been compromised—the deal he had worked on for months and months. One leaked photo of her in lingerie, dancing in that sleazy gentlemen’s supper club, and Rafe’s desire to chair a prominent children’s charity would be destroyed. Future business deals of his would be jeopardised from the stain of her background.

      Isla had pictured the headlines—Exotic dancer pregnant with billionaire Italian hotelier Raffaele Angeliri’s love-child! He would not have come back from that easily, if at all. Scandals stuck to high-profile people, sometimes for the rest of their lives. She couldn’t do it to him; she couldn’t do it to their child. To have it surrounded by shame from the moment it was born, even before it was born.

      Isla raised her chin and chilled her gaze to freezing. ‘You wouldn’t have been able to change my mind.’

      His eyes went to her mouth and then back to her gaze. ‘Are you sure about that, cara?’ His voice was a deep gravelly burr that was as wickedly sensual as a slow stroke of one of his hands between her legs. And his smouldering gaze threatened to scorch her eyes out of her head and leave two smoking black holes in their place.