LITMIR.BIZ

       CHAPTER TEN

      DARCY’S FIRST INKLING that something was wrong came on a Monday morning. At first she thought it was nothing—like looking up at the sky and thinking you’d imagined that first heavy drop of rain which heralded the storm.

      Renzo was in London unveiling his design for the Tokyo art gallery at a press conference—having left the house at the crack of dawn. He’d asked if she’d wanted to accompany him but she’d opted to stay, and was in the garden pegging out washing when the call came from one of his assistants, asking if she was planning to be at home at lunchtime.

      Darcy frowned. It struck her as a rather strange question. Even if she wasn’t home, Renzo knew she wouldn’t have strayed much further than the local village—or, at a pinch, the nearby seaside town of Brighton. All that stuff they said about pregnant women wanting to nest was completely true and she’d built a domestic idyll here while awaiting the birth of their baby. And hadn’t that nesting instinct made her feel as though life was good—or as good as it could be? Even if sometimes she felt guilt clench at her heart unexpectedly, knowing that her husband remained ignorant of her biggest, darkest secret. But why rock the boat by telling him? Why spoil something which was good by making him pity her and perhaps despise her?

      Placing the palm of her hand over the tight drum of her belly, she considered his assistant’s question. ‘Yes, I’m going to be here at lunchtime. Why?’

      ‘Signor Sabatini just asked me to make sure.’

      Darcy frowned. ‘Is something wrong? Is Renzo around—can I speak to him, please?’

      The assistant’s voice was smooth but firm. ‘I’m afraid that won’t be possible. He’s in a meeting. He said to tell you he’ll be with you soon after noon.’

      Darcy replaced the receiver, trying to lose the sudden feeling of apprehension which had crept over her, telling herself it was only because that fractured phone call felt a little like history repeating itself which had made her nervous. At least it hadn’t been the same assistant who had stonewalled her attempts to get through to Renzo to tell him she was pregnant. That assistant had suddenly been offered a higher position in a rival company, something which Darcy suspected Renzo had masterminded himself. He’d seemed to want to put the past behind them as much as she did. So stop imagining trouble where there isn’t any.

      But it didn’t matter how much she tried to stay positive, she couldn’t seem to shake off the growing sense of dread which had taken root inside her. She went inside and put away the remaining clothes pegs—something her billionaire husband often teased her about. He told her that hanging out washing was suburban; she told him she didn’t care. She knew he wanted to employ a cleaner and a housekeeper, and to keep a driver on tap instead of driving herself—in the fairly ordinary family car she’d chosen, which wasn’t Renzo’s usual style at all. The private midwife who lived locally and could be called upon at any time had been her only concession to being married to a billionaire.

      But she wanted to keep it real, because reality was her only anchor. Despite Renzo’s enormous power and wealth, she wanted theirs to be as normal a family as it was possible to be. And despite what she’d said when he’d railroaded her into the marriage, she badly wanted it to work. Not just because of their baby or because of their unhappy childhoods. She looked out the window, where her silk shirt was blowing wildly in the breeze. She wanted it to work because she had realised she loved him.

      She swallowed.

      She loved him.

      It had dawned on her one morning when she’d woken to find him still sleeping beside her. In sleep he looked far less forbidding but no less beautiful. His shadowed features were softened; the sensual lips relaxed. Two dark arcs of eyelashes feathered onto his olive skin and his hair was ruffled from where she’d run her hungry fingers through it sometime during the night. She remembered the powerful feeling which had welled up inside her as the full force of her feelings had hit her and she wondered how she could have failed to recognise it before.

      Of course she loved him. She’d been swept away by him from the moment she’d looked across a crowded nightclub and seen a man who had only had eyes for her. A once-in-a-lifetime man who’d made her feel a once-in-a-lifetime passion, despite the fact that he could be arrogant, tricky and, at times, downright difficult. And if fate—or rather pregnancy—had given her the opportunity to capitalise on those feelings and for passion to evolve into love, then she had to make the most of it. He might not feel the same way about her but she told herself that didn’t matter because she had more than enough love to go round. She planned to make herself indispensable—not just as the mother of his child, but as his partner. To concentrate on friendship, respect and passion and reassure herself that maybe it could be enough. And if sometimes she found herself yearning for something more—well, maybe she needed to learn to appreciate what she had and stop chasing fantasy.

      She spent the next hour crushing basil leaves and mashing garlic, trying to perfect a pesto sauce as good as the one they’d eaten in Rome on the last evening of their honeymoon. Then she picked a handful of daffodils and put them in a vase and had just sat down with a cup of tea to admire their yellow frilliness, when she heard the front door slam.

      ‘I’m in here!’ she called. She looked up to see Renzo framed in the doorway, her smile and words of welcome dying on her lips when she saw the darkness on his face. She put the cup down with a suddenly shaking hand. ‘Is something wrong?’

      He didn’t answer and that only increased her fear. His hands were white-knuckled and a pulse was beating fast at his temple, just below a wayward strand of jet-black hair. She could sense an almost palpable tension about him—as if he was only just clinging on to his temper by a shred.

      ‘Renzo! What’s wrong?’

      He fixed her with a gaze which was cold and hard. ‘You tell me,’ he said.

      ‘Renzo, you’re scaring me now. What is it? I don’t understand.’

      ‘Neither did I.’ He gave a harsh and bitter laugh. ‘But suddenly I do.’

      From his pocket he took out an envelope and slapped it onto the table. It was creased—as if somebody had crushed it in the palm of their hand and then changed their mind and flattened it out again. On the cheap paper Renzo’s name had been printed—and whoever had written it had spelt his surname wrong, she noted automatically.

      His lip curved. ‘It’s a letter from your friend.’

      ‘Which friend?’

      ‘Shouldn’t take you long to work that one out, Darcy. I mean, it isn’t like you have a lot of friends, is it?’ His mouth twisted. ‘I never really understood why before. But suddenly I do.’

      She knew then. She’d seen the look often enough in the past not to be able to recognise it. She could feel the stab of pain to her heart and the sickening certainty that her flirtation with a normal life was over.

      ‘What does it say?’

      ‘What do you think it says?’

      ‘I’d like to hear it.’ Was she hoping for some sort of reprieve? For someone to be writing to tell him that she’d once told a policewoman

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