LITMIR.BIZ

      MILLS & BOON

       Before you start reading, why not sign up?

      Thank you for downloading this Mills & Boon book. If you want to hear about exclusive discounts, special offers and competitions, sign up to our email newsletter today!

       SIGN ME UP!

      Or simply visit

      signup.millsandboon.co.uk

      Mills & Boon emails are completely free to receive and you can unsubscribe at any time via the link in any email we send you.

      CONTENTS

      CHAPTER ONE

      CHAPTER TWO

      CHAPTER THREE

      CHAPTER FOUR

      CHAPTER FIVE

      CHAPTER SIX

      CHAPTER SEVEN

      CHAPTER EIGHT

      CHAPTER NINE

      CHAPTER TEN

      CHAPTER ELEVEN

      EPILOGUE

      CHAPTER ONE

      ‘ONE more take, Blaze! That’s it! Toss back that glorious mane of yours and smile. Smile up at the child. She’s your daughter, remember. Higher! Lift her higher! Perfect! That’s beautiful, darling! Bea-u-ti-ful!’

      The gushing praise from the cameraman was as synthetic, Libby thought, as the relationship between herself and the giggling baby suspended high above her head. Like the nickname someone had given her at the outset of her career that had helped propel her up the ladder to supermodel status following a chance discovery at a small fashion show she had paraded in for a local charity.

      What did it matter to the Press and the public that she was weary of pretending? That behind the shining trademark of her heavy red hair, the clothes and make-up and the pure artifice in standing in a summer meadow, promoting an exclusive range of skincare, which purported to make her skin as soft as that of any baby’s, she was still just Libby Vincent. Or rather Vincenzo, she thought with a pained mental grimace. An average girl from an average background, who couldn’t run away from who she really was no matter how hard she tried, or from the far from average burden of guilt she carried everywhere.

      ‘OK! That’s it! Beautiful, darling. Perfect!’

      With an indiscernible sigh, she brought her arms down and the child with them, mercifully relieved that the shoot was over. She didn’t think she could have endured another second.

      The snowy fabric of her peasant skirt brushed her slender calves as she trudged back through the long grass. The baby she was reluctantly cradling crooned up at her, revealing two small white teeth, its little button nose wrinkling as it grasped her camisole with one tiny pink hand.

      Libby dragged air through her lungs, a longing of such intensity sweeping over her that for an endless moment she couldn’t seem to breathe as she fought the urge to clasp the infant fiercely to her.

      Keeping a tight rein on her galloping emotions, her flawless features rigid as stone, somehow she made it back to the mobile make-up unit, where the rest of the team were waiting.

      ‘Here.’ The emotion clogging her throat made her sound decidedly curt as she thrust the child towards its mother, while the baby, obviously sensing the tension in Libby, began to bawl, her eager little arms outstretched as the other woman took her, leaving Libby to spin determinedly away.

      ‘Isn’t she a cutie?’ Fran, a mature brunette with two growing boys of her own, couldn’t help drooling as Libby approached, seeking only the seclusion of the huge green trailer behind them.

      Beneath the make-up that Fran had applied so expertly earlier, Libby’s face felt like a tight, tense mask. ‘If you say so.’

      ‘You’d forgotten, Fran.’ It was the cynical voice of Steve Cullum, one of the technicians who had once asked Libby out and received the same polite brush-off for which she was renowned with the opposite sex. ‘Blaze doesn’t do maternal. Or any other sort of relationship for that matter.’

      It was something the Press often speculated about. Her past. The lack of men in her life. Even, at times, her sexuality.

      “Beneath the fire, is there only ice?” one tabloid newspaper had printed after she had refused to give them an interview, share with them her views on love, on marriage, on children.

      And why should she? she thought bitterly now. These things were private. Which was why, unsurprisingly, they had never found out her real name, never been able to connect her with Luca.

      Anguish speared her as she thought about the boy she had married; about the tragic waste of life when he’d been killed in that car accident less than a year later. She had loved Luca; had had plenty of thoughts and feelings then. But that was a long time ago, before her emotions had been numbed by events and actions that were too damning even to think about; when loving had come naturally and she’d believed that happiness was everyone’s birthright—even hers.

      Inwardly she ridiculed herself for her gross naïvety. Because of course that was before she had met the prejudice and disapproval of the Vincenzo family. Before she’d felt his father’s tyranny; known the cutting censure of Luca’s

Скачать книгу