LITMIR.BIZ

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It should have been you who died.

      The memory still caused a spike of pain. She pushed the thought away. Marion was the one who’d ruined her father’s life. She’d made a bad choice. It wasn’t Emma’s fault.

      Though it sometimes felt that way. She swallowed. If only her father were still alive. He always had known the right thing to do....

      She walked past the gate. Her lips pursed as she remembered meeting Alain Bouchard for the first time six months ago, here in the front garden. He’d shown up drunk and wanting to start a fight with Cesare, his former brother-in-law, blaming him for his sister’s death. Fortunately Cesare was away, on a business trip to Berlin; Emma knew he’d never gotten over Angélique’s tragic accidental death ten years before.

      Emma could have called the police. That was what the rest of the staff had wanted her to do. But looking at Alain’s grief-stricken face, she’d invited him into the house for tea instead, and let him talk himself out.

      The next day, Alain Bouchard had sent her flowers and a handsome note of apology for his drunken ravings. That was the proper way of showing someone appreciation, Emma thought. Not by throwing expensive jewelry at them, bought in bulk, via a paid employee.

      She stalked up the shadowy steps to the mansion, punched in the security code and entered. The foyer was dark, the house empty, gloomy as a tomb. None of the other staff lived in. When Cesare was gone, which was often, she was alone. She’d spent too long in this lonely tomb.

      Well, no more. Throwing down her handbag, Emma ripped off her coat and ran up the stairs, taking them two at a time. She was going to pack and leave for France immediately. Before she’d even reached her bedroom at the end of the hall, she was pulling off her knit dress, the pretty dress that hit her curves just right, that she’d bought that very day in a foolish attempt to impress Cesare. Yanking it over her head, she tossed it to the hall floor. She’d wear comfortable clothes on the train, black trousers and a plain shirt. She’d be in Paris within three hours—

      A small lamp turned on by her bed. Startled, she turned.

      Cesare was sitting in her antique chair with blue cushions by the marble fireplace.

      She gasped, instinctively covering her lace bra and panties. “What the hell are you doing here?”

      “I live here.”

      She straightened, and her expression hardened. “Oh, so you just remembered that, did you?”

      His eyes were black in the dim light. “You left the hotel before we could discuss something important.”

      “How did you—” she breathed, then cut herself off. He couldn’t possibly know about the baby. And she didn’t intend to let him know now.

      Cesare rose to his feet, uncoiling his tall, powerful body from the chair. He looked down at her.

      “I’ve decided not to accept your resignation,” he said in a low voice. “I want you here. With me.”

      For a moment, they stared at each other in the shadows of her bedroom. She heard a low roll of thunder outside, the deepening patter of rain. Water dripped noisily from her hair onto the glossy hardwood floor.

      Her arms dropped. She was no longer trying to cover her body. Why should she? He’d already seen everything. And she meant nothing to him. Never had. Never would.

      “I don’t belong here,” she said. “I won’t stay.”

      “Just because we slept together?” His eyes narrowed dangerously. “Do you really have to be such a cliché?”

      “You’re the cliché, not me.”

      “One stupid night—”

      “No,” she cut him off. She looked at him, and said deliberately, “I’m in love with you, Cesare.”

      Oh, that did it. She saw him flinch. He’d taken the words like a hit. Which was fine, because she’d meant it that way.

      His black eyes glinted with fury as he grabbed her shoulders. “You don’t love me. It’s just because I was your first experience in bed. You haven’t learned the difference between sex and love.”

      “But you have?”

      Cesare didn’t answer. He didn’t have to. The whole world knew his tragic story: how he’d married young, and had been desperately in love with his wife, a beautiful French heiress, before she’d died just three years later. His heart had been buried with her.

      She’d known this. And she’d still let herself hope...

      Pulling away from him angrily, Emma went to her closet and reached up to the top shelf for the beat-up old suitcase that had once belonged to her father. Tossing it open on the floor, she turned back to her wardrobe to reach for her clothes.

      He put his hand over hers, stilling her.

      “Emma. Please.”

      Just that one word. The word he’d never said to her before. Please. She swallowed, then looked at him.

      “Let me go. It’s better for you this way. Better for all of us.”

      “I can’t,” he said in a low voice. “There are so few people in my life I trust. So few who actually know me. But you do. That’s why I know—I know—you can’t really love me.”

      His words were strangely bleak. Her heart twisted. He was right about one thing. She, of all people, did know him. She knew he was not the emotionless man the world believed him to be.

      Emma ached to reach up and stroke the roughness of his cheek, to whisper words of comfort. Her hand trembled. Shadows from the closed window blinds left lines across his dark, handsome face. His eyes burned through her.

      But even more: her secret burned inside her, with every beat of her heart. She was pregnant with his child. Her silence in this moment was the biggest lie any woman could tell any man.

      “Why ever did you think you couldn’t get pregnant, Mrs. Hayes?” her physician had asked, looking shocked. “Childhood cancer, especially ovarian cancer, can occasionally cause difficulties, yes. But in your case it worked out just fine. I see it’s a surprise, but this baby is wanted, yes?”

      “Of course this baby is wanted,” she’d answered. Oh, yes. Emma had believed for so long that she’d never be a mother. That it wasn’t even a possibility. Fighting the same deadly, silent disease years before, her mother had never been able to have another child. Caroline Hayes had ultimately died when Emma was only four, at the age of twenty-nine. Barely older than Emma was now.

      “Cara.” Cesare’s handsome face was almost pleading as he gave an awkward laugh. “How many times did we joke about it? That I wasn’t worthy of any good woman’s love?”

      She blinked hard. “Many times.”

      “So you must see. What you think you feel—it’s not love. Just sex.”

      Hot tears burned at the backs of her eyes and she feared at any moment tears would spill over her lashes. “For you.”

      “For both of us. You just aren’t experienced enough to realize it yet,” he said gently. “But someday soon, you will...”

      Emma stiffened. Was he already picturing her moving on, finding sex or love with another man? Cesare could imagine this, without it ripping out his heart?

      Not Emma. It had nearly killed her to find him with Olga. And even if he hadn’t slept with her—that time—she knew there had been other women. Many, many others. And there would always be.

      She ripped her hand away. She didn’t have to live like this. Not anymore. She’d never have to spend another lonely night staring at her ceiling, listening to the noise down the hall while he had yet another vigorous one-night stand with yet another woman he’d soon forget. She was done.

      It was like a burst of sunlight and

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