Hot Christmas Nights: Shameful Secret, Shotgun Wedding / His for Revenge / Mistletoe Not Required
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‘No, Giancarlo,’ said Cassie firmly, even though she could barely recognise the sleek, chic woman who stared back at her from the mirror.
‘Why not?’
‘Because…because it’s so expensive.’
‘Well, why not? You’re worth it…’
‘No!’ she said fiercely, her cheeks growing pink. ‘Please don’t say that. It makes me feel like some kind of…of…commodity.’
There was a pause. ‘If you’re trying to make me feel bad, then let me warn you now that you won’t succeed,’ he drawled, but Cassie couldn’t mistake the irritation which underpinned his words.
In the brightly lit shop their eyes clashed and one word leapt to the forefront of Cassie’s mind, while nearby the sales assistant pretended not to notice.
‘Warn me?’
‘Just don’t bother trying to lay a guilt trip on me, bella. It’s coming to the end of our time together and I wanted to buy you a warm coat, that’s all. I’ve noticed you don’t have one—and there’s a long, cold winter ahead.’
Cassie stared at him, feeling sick. He was making her sound like some urchin from a Victorian melodrama—standing in a threadbare coat selling matches while snowflakes swirled down around her!
‘You know what you can do with your damned coat,’ she flared as she pulled it off and thrust it at him. And, turning round, she walked out of the shop without looking back.
He caught up with her outside and his face was dark with fury as he caught hold of her, his fingers biting into the thin material of her coat, which now seemed to mock her. ‘Don’t ever do that again,’ he snapped.
‘What, refuse to be bought off?’
‘I’m talking about making a scene in public. Do you think I don’t care about my reputation—even if you have no regard for your own?’
Her body beginning to tremble, Cassie stared at him. And as his critical words registered the scales began to fall from her eyes. How could she have been so stupid? Just because she had allowed herself to be completely captivated by his magnetism and charm, she had credited him as having all kinds of attributes which didn’t exist outside her wistful imagination.
Because to Giancarlo she was a commodity. She was his mistress and he paid the bills. He brought her to Paris and in return she provided sex on tap. It was temporary and it meant nothing. Nothing.
He had spoken of reputation, but he had missed the point somewhere along the way. Because with one stroke he had managed to both save and ruin her reputation. Yes, he had ensured she didn’t have to return to Cornwall after being sacked for suspected theft—but he had persuaded her to enter into a liaison which made a mockery of all the things she believed in. Her idealistic dreams of love and fidelity had been smashed.
She had learnt that if a woman provided good sex to a rich man she was rewarded with clothes costing tens of thousands of pounds. That had been the price she’d been paid for the loss of her innocence—and maybe the cost was too high. An adventure in London had become nothing but a sordid affair—and the sooner she left it all behind, the better.
But afterwards she half wished that she had just gone ahead and let him buy her the coat because it ruined the rest of the trip—and, in a way, it ruined their goodbye.
Countless times she had played out in her head what he might say. What she might say to him when the moment of departure came. Prior to the ugly scene in the Parisian shop, she had allowed herself to pretend that he might just tip her chin and look deep into her eyes and ask her if she would consider staying until spring…
But none of that happened. The train journey back from France was mainly silent and this time they drank no champagne. Cassie felt flat and empty as his car drove them back from the station and Giancarlo disappeared to his office the moment they arrived home.
Home.
Had she taken complete leave of her senses? This felt nothing like home. It was just a tall, city mansion inhabited by a man who saw what he wanted and ruthlessly went out and took it. Maybe it was because the woman he had loved had dumped him for his twin brother but—whatever the reason—he would never change. Why should he?
She booked her ticket back to Cornwall without telling him and when he arrived back from work she told him that she was catching the train first thing in the morning.
‘That soon?’
Cassie hesitated. ‘Well, yes. I…think it’s best, don’t you?’
He studied her face and, eventually, nodded. ‘Maybe it is. But you don’t have to travel by train, bella—my driver will take you.’
‘It’s very kind of you,’ she said stiffly, ‘but I’d prefer the train.’
‘Why?’
Was he entirely lacking in comprehension? Couldn’t he see it from her point of view? Of course he couldn’t. Giancarlo had been hurt and betrayed once in his life and, since that day, he had been building higher and higher barriers around his heart. He didn’t let anyone inside them—and maybe they’d grown so high that he couldn’t see the outside world with any degree of clarity.
‘It’s a small village,’ she explained awkwardly. ‘And people will gossip if I turn up in a big, chauffeur-driven limousine.’
With a stab of guilt, Giancarlo registered the whiteness of her face and the blue shadowing the delicate skin beneath her eyes. And in that moment he recognised that something had changed. He found himself regretting the bitter words they had spoken in Paris—but perhaps they had been inevitable. The smooth, sophisticated farewell he had wanted had been nothing but wishful thinking—because he had suspected for days now that she was reading more into the affair than he had ever intended.
But he would give her a night to remember. So that one day she would be able to look back and remember how good it had been. She would appreciate all that he had taught her—and her future husband would benefit from him having made her an exemplary lover.
‘Okay, it is agreed—you will go by train. And now stop frowning, mia bella, and come upstairs with me. I want to make love to you—and I want it very badly.’
‘But it’s only seven.’
‘I know it is.’
‘And Gina will be preparing dinner.’
‘I have given Gina the evening off.’
‘Oh? And why would that be?’
‘Because I want you on my own,’ he growled.
Cassie felt pride warring with desire and desire won hands down. Sliding her arms around his neck, she lifted her face to be kissed and silently forgave him. He hadn’t broken any promises. Maybe she should commend him for that. He’d never filled her heart with false hopes—and if that heart was feeling wounded it was her fault for not having heeded his words. ‘Then what are we waiting for?’ she whispered.
The night which followed was bittersweet—the sex sublime—but Cassie found the hours between dawn and daybreak unbearably poignant as Giancarlo slept by her side and she stared wide-eyed at the moon-dappled ceiling. This is the last time I will lie here listening to his breathing, she thought, gently touching her fingertips to the rhythmical rise and fall of his powerful chest. Never again will I waken to the soft seduction of his kiss or to feel his limbs entwined with mine. Some day I may sleep with another man and make love with another man—but it won’t be Giancarlo.
Next morning, she picked at a breakfast she didn’t want and Giancarlo walked her to the door, kissing her one last time before putting her into the car with her single suitcase. She had told him to take all the clothes he’d bought her to the charity shop—and his face had darkened as he had demanded to know why. Falteringly she’d told him that there would be nowhere to wear them back in Trevone—and how on earth could she explain to her mother that she happened to have acquired a whole heap of designer clothes on a shop assistant’s salary?
But just before he closed the car door, Giancarlo leaned inside and placed a turquoise box tied with a white ribbon into her hand. Cassie stared down at it.
‘What’s this?’
‘It’s a present.’ His lips curved in gentle mockery. ‘Don’t you know that this is the time of year for giving?’
‘But I haven’t got anything for you.’
For a moment he hesitated as a mixture of guilt and desire heated his blood, thinking that she had given him the greatest gift a woman could give a man—her purity and her innocence. ‘You’ve been the best present a man could ever want, cara,’ he said softly. ‘Just don’t open yours until Christmas morning.’
The car pulled away from the kerb and automatically Cassie found her fingers closing tightly around the box—as if wanting to treasure it as the last thing he had touched. And it was only when they were safely away from the elegant crescent and the possibility of being seen that she allowed the tears to fall.
Chapter Seven
CASSIE couldn’t wait until Christmas morning to open Giancarlo’s present. The turquoise box burned a hole in her pocket all during the long train journey back to Cornwall—when the carriage was all noisy with revellers going home for the holidays.
Was it her imagination or did everyone seem happy and smiling and filled with hope and expectation? Was it only her who felt as if someone had squeezed her heart very tightly and left it all bruised and hurt?
She felt a fraud as she greeted her mother with a big hug—as if she’d changed beyond all recognition while she’d been away. And that the person who laughed and admired their ancient little silver Christmas tree was an imposter; the real Cassie far away in the remembered bliss of a cynic’s embrace.
She tried her best to get into the festive spirit, the same way as she always did. She went to the pub on Christmas Eve. Gavin was there—along with a whole bunch of other people she knew. But again, she experienced that strange sensation of no longer feeling part of anything. As if Giancarlo had taken her away from her safe little harbour and cut her adrift—and she no longer knew where she belonged.
‘Where’s lover boy?’ questioned Gavin. ‘Not joining us tonight? Not flying in by helicopter for a quick pint?’
Cassie gave a smile which she hoped was less wan than it felt. ‘No. It’s over between us, Gavin. It was only ever a temporary thing. I told you that’s how it was.’
‘And you’re okay with that?’
Behind her glued-on smile, Cassie gritted her teeth. ‘Absolutely okay with that.’
But later that night, when the midnight bells were chiming around the village and the ever-present roar of the waves from the nearby sea was sounding in her ears, Cassie knew she could wait no longer. Climbing into bed, she untied the white ribbon from the turquoise box and began to open it, her fingers flying to her lips as she looked inside.
For sitting on dark and luxurious velvet was a fine platinum chain from which hung a single bright diamond the size of a small pea. As she lifted it out it seemed to capture the light and sparkle it back at her in a rainbow cascade—and Cassie could have wept, knowing that she would never be able to wear it. At least, not in public. It wasn’t the kind of jewellery you could pass off as fake since even the most untutored eye would have recognised its worth. So she wore it hidden beneath her dress on Christmas Day—and the cold stone which dangled against her skin felt like a constant reminder of the man who had given it to her.
And when she started back at work just after the New Year the shop seemed doll’s-house tiny after the mega-stores of London. It was hard summoning up her customary enthusiasm—especially when Patsy, her boss, wanted to know all about working at Hudson’s and Cassie wasn’t mad-keen to relive any of it.
‘Did you feel you learnt a lot there?’ Patsy questioned. ‘And in London generally?’
‘Oh, masses,’ said Cassie truthfully as guilt scorched through her. Imagine if Patsy knew the truth—that she had been accused of theft and sacked because a man with black eyes had made her concentration fly out of the window.
But the shame of losing her job paled into insignificance when measured against the pain of missing Giancarlo—a sharp, searing loss which seemed to haunt her every waking moment. All she could do was keep telling herself over and over again that she would get over it. It might take time but she would—because didn’t they say that nobody ever died of a broken heart?
Throwing herself into work, she volunteered to redress the shop window and Patsy was flatteringly pleased with the results. Cassie suggested that they might have a preview evening for customers—offering wine and snacks—whenever the season’s new stock came in and the idea was received with enthusiasm. She was promised a pay-rise in the spring and she tried to focus on the thought of the winter evenings growing lighter and the primroses pushing their pale yellow heads through the cold earth.
The only fly in the ointment was the slight queasi-ness she felt upon waking each morning. At first she thought it was because she’d been eating badly since getting back. Wolfing down squares of chocolate at inappropriate times, which she put down to Christmas greed—and showing a marked lack of interest in eating normal food, which she blamed on missing Giancarlo. It was easy to blot things out, when you really wanted to. And denial was easy, Cassie discovered—a safe and comfortable place to be.
Until one morning when she was actually sick—retching quietly in the small bathroom, terrified that her mother would hear and guess at the awful fear which was daily growing larger in Cassie’s mind.
She waited until her mother had gone to her weekly salsa class before she dared do a test. Even buying the kit had seemed as if she was jinxing herself. She told herself that it was bound to be negative, that they’d used contraception every time—she told herself that because she refused to consider any alternative scenario. It had to be negative!
But it wasn’t.
It wasn’t.
It was glaringly and frighteningly positive.
Cassie went to bed, huddled beneath the duvet and pretended to be asleep when her mother got back. For the next five days she carried on trying to convince herself that there had been some awful mistake when deep down she knew there had not. And that she had to tell him.
In a way, the phone call was made worse by the realisation that Giancarlo had meant what he’d said. Because if there had been a small part of her which had longed for him to retract his words and go back on his intentions, then she had been sorely disappointed. There was no change of heart from her ex-lover. No emotional telephone call on Christmas Day, telling her how much he was missing her—even though she had stared at the phone and willed and willed it to ring. Nothing on New Year’s Eve either—the other prime time when people allowed sentiment to take over from sense. He had meant what he said. It was over—and he had planned never to see her again.
Even making the telephone call required careful planning—it mustn’t be anywhere where she could be overheard, and she couldn’t make it outside because of the freezing weather and the ever-present pounding of the sea.
In the end she called when her mother had gone out for the day, praying that he would pick up and not let the call go through to voicemail. Because she couldn’t tell him in a recorded message. She couldn’t.
Pick up, she urged silently as she listened to the ringing tone.
Pick up!
‘Cassandra?’
She was so startled by the sound of his richly accented voice that for a moment she was rendered speechless by a hundred different emotions, of which longing and sadness were the main ones. But she had never heard that note of wariness in his voice before—a note which told her more clearly than words that this was not a welcome call. If she had simply been calling on the off chance that he might want to see her again she would have ended the conversation as quickly and with as much dignity as possible. But she was not in a position to do such a thing. And how on earth did she even begin to tell him her momentous news?
‘Giancarlo. I need to speak to you.’
At the other end of the phone, Giancarlo frowned, wondering what had made her abandon the pride he had so admired in order to ring him. Was she calling him on some flimsy pretext—the supposedly forgotten pair of earrings she had neglected to take with her, or the book she had been reading, which she had left behind? Was this a ploy to get back into his bed—and, if so, wasn’t there a small part of him which was tempted to indulge her? For hadn’t he missed the warmth of her beautiful body in his arms and the sight of her sweet smile greeting him when he returned from work each day?
‘Giancarlo, are you still there?’
His eyes narrowed as he noted the lack of affection or everyday courtesy in her voice. This was not the wheedling tone of a woman who was prepared to trample on her own pride to get him back—and his senses were immediately alerted.
‘You are speaking to me,’ he pointed out coolly.
‘I meant…in person.’
‘In person might be difficult.’ He thought of her firm young body. Her violet eyes and rose-petal lips. The way her hair had spilled like a pot of pale gold all over his bare chest. Yet what would be the use of seeing her again and letting temptation distort his thinking? Long-term she was an unsuitable consort for all kinds of reasons—he knew that and he thought that she had known it, too. This wasn’t going anywhere—and maybe he needed to spell it out to her. ‘I have a business trip coming up. Time is tight, Cassandra—you know how it is.’
In her little Cornish sitting room, Cassie flinched, wishing that she’d just come right out and told him—for then she would not have had to face the reality of hearing that note of cold dismissal in his voice. And hadn’t there been a part of her which had hoped that maybe he was regretting letting her go? The little-girl part of every woman who clung onto a dream that he might want her back in his life—even when that was a hopeless and foolish fantasy? Well, she had just received her wake-up call because he very definitely didn’t.
And, meanwhile, the harsh reality was that she still had to tell him…
‘I’d prefer not to have to tell you this on the phone.’
‘Tell me what?’
She swallowed. What else could she do but come right out with it? ‘I’m pregnant, Giancarlo.’
The world tipped on its axis. Giancarlo heard the rapid thunder of his heart and felt a sensation of complete and utter powerlessness. And then anger. Pure and blinding anger.
‘You can’t be pregnant,’ he said flatly.
‘I can assure you that I am.’
His mind raced as he wondered how or when it could have happened when he had made sure that he had protected them—even though at times he had wanted her so badly that the short wait to don a condom had felt like an eternity.
‘How pregnant?’
‘Only a few weeks.’
He felt the heavy beat of foreboding while anger continued to pulse through his veins like all-pervading poison—so that the words came out before he could stop them. But didn’t the cornered and powerless side of him want to lash out, and to hurt her? ‘And you’re quite sure it’s mine?’
Cassie sank down onto the sofa as if he had struck her, temporarily winded by the harsh cruelty of his accusation. The blood pounded in her ears. Did he think that she was so hungry for sex and so easily able to forget him that she could have leapt from his arms, straight into the arms of another? And can you really blame him if he thinks that? Didn’t you give him good reason to think that with the way you just fell straight into bed with him?
But in the midst of her hurt and her shame that he could think so little of her Cassie felt the first faint flicker of something she didn’t recognise. Something primitive which had empowered women since the beginning of time. Suddenly, the stark and unwanted news became a miracle as her fingertips strayed towards her belly, fluttering like a butterfly as they drifted over the still-flat surface before coming to rest there protectively.
For a moment she just sat there as Giancarlo’s words filtered back into her mind. Hateful, hurtful, unforgivable words in the circumstances. You’re quite sure it’s mine? How could he possibly ask her that when she had given him her virginity as well as her heart?
She sucked in a shuddering breath and the fingers on her belly curled into a determined little fist. ‘No, it’s not yours,’ she said bitterly. ‘The baby is mine—all mine! You don’t have to do a damned thing—in fact, you can stay away from us, Giancarlo, because we don’t want you or need you! I told you because I felt that it was your right to know—that’s all.’ And with that, she slammed the phone back down on its cradle and sank back against the cushions on the sofa.
Remembering that her mother would be back at some point, she forced herself to recover something of her equilibrium by realising that she was going to have to start looking after herself from now on. That she had a responsibility to the new life which was growing inside her. She needed to make plans—but she needed to do it without outside influence or pressure. No need for her mother to know. Not yet. Or Patsy. In fact, no one at all need know until she had decided how best she was going to cope.
There had been only one person in the equation who’d had any right to hear her momentous news and he had treated that announcement with contempt. For now, the most important thing was taking care of herself with good food and plenty of rest and working out what to do.
But she needed to get out of the house before her mother came back—took one look at her pale and tear-stained face and guessed at the huge change which had taken place in her life.
Wrapping up in warm layers and cramming a woollen beany over her plaited hair, she set off for a walk.
The ocean wasn’t far away from anywhere in the village—that was one of the best things about it. Everywhere you went you could hear it swishing away in the background. There was something oddly comforting about its relentless motion and constant presence and Cassie wondered how many little human dramas it had lain witness to. How many women like her had walked along its shores while salt droplets had mingled with tears on their cold cheeks and they railed against men who didn’t want them?
On a grey, January day like today the mood of the water reflected her own inner turmoil as giant breakers foamed up from the grey waters and crashed down onto the shiny dark slate rocks. All around her the wind howled like a caged beast and even the gulls sat motionless on the rocks—the gusts of air too violent for them to risk flying.
Cassie walked up the coastal path which led over the cliffs—a walk she had done countless times—and which usually left her feeling exhilarated and glad to be alive. But today her head was so full of troubled thoughts that it made counting her blessings a real challenge.
On and on she walked, until, aware of the fading light, she set back for home—still trying to work out some of the practical problems which lay ahead. At least the fresh air and exercise had left her feeling better and reinforced the fact that she was young and fit and could face anything. And at least she had a supportive mother and a roof over her head—women had brought babies into the world on much less than that.
But as she approached the final descent towards the village she narrowed her eyes in disbelief. For striding along the coastal path towards her was a figure which had once been so dear to her, but who now seemed to strike misery at her heart.
Giancarlo.
Giancarlo?
Clothed completely in black, he seemed like the personification of the devil. His black hair was windswept, his eyes were sending out ebony sparks—and the angry set of his features made him look positively forbidding.