Innocent Secretary...Accidentally Pregnant

‘I wasn’t expecting to see you again.’ Luca didn’t move to let Emma past, his broad frame barring the exit from the elevator just slightly. But it was an offer of conversation that Emma didn’t want to pursue. ‘I hear the interview didn’t go too well.’

‘It didn’t.’

‘Shame.’

‘I forgot my bag, I’m just going to get it…’ she offered by way of explanation, but as the lift door started to close she pressed it open. There was a pang, a twinge, almost a snapping. She didn’t want this ending to happen, because he really was divine, and she wished for just a fleeting second that she had the looks, the confidence, the experience to allow him to pursue her.

But she didn’t.

‘Going down?’ She pressed the hold button for him, and he stood back as she stepped out. She caught the heavy scent of him, the brush of his expensive suit as she passed him.

‘No—up…’ he grinned. ‘To the roof. Do you want to join me?’

‘I’m sure another job will come along…’ she said, watching a slow smile spread on his face as he got her dry humour.

‘I’m actually going to Paris.’

‘Lovely.’

‘Helipad’s on the roof.’

‘They usually are.’

‘Formal dinner, very boring. But maybe after…What are your plans?’

Dear Reader

I had a very clear vision of Luca when he arrived in my mind—he smiled at me and I promptly melted. He crooked his finger and I bounded towards him like a puppy in the window—pick me, pick me!

Oh, Carol!

I knew then that I was going to need a special heroine for Luca. Frankly, I’d have been putty in his warm hands, and would have made all the wrong choices (but, oh, so right at the time!). Thankfully, Emma has rather more self-control than her creator.

I loved finding out more about Luca—getting to know the real man behind his rich playboy veneer.

I hope you do too.

Happy reading.

Carol Marinelli x

Carol Marinelli recently filled in a form where she was asked for her job title, and was thrilled, after all these years, to be able to put down her answer as ‘writer’. Then it asked what Carol did for relaxation, and after chewing her pen for a moment Carol put down the truth—‘writing’. The third question asked— ‘What are your hobbies?’ Well, not wanting to look obsessed or, worse still, boring, she crossed the fingers on her free hand and answered ‘swimming and tennis’. But, given that the chlorine in the pool does terrible things to her highlights, and the closest she’s got to a tennis racket in the last couple of years is watching the Australian Open, I’m sure you can guess the real answer!

Carol also writes for Medical™ Romance!

For Beryl with love from Carol xxx

CHAPTER ONE

EMMA had been honest—had even admitted during her telephone interview that she was attending night school on a Wednesday night and studying art and that in a couple of years she was hoping to pursue it full-time.

Everything had gone really well, until the second Evelyn had walked out to greet Emma—and Emma truly didn’t understand why.

She’d prepared so carefully for the interview. Reading everything she could get her hands on about D’Amato Financiers—about their spectacular rise, even in gloomy times. Luca D’Amato had a no-nonsense attitude—there was no secret formula to his success, she had read in a rare interview he had given—just sound decisions and fiscal transparency and the refusal to be swayed by hype. Yes, she’d read up on him and then gone through her favourite glossy magazines and followed every last piece of advice in preparation for this afternoon.

Emma had scoured the second-hand shops and found a stunning—if just a touch tight for her well-rounded figure—pale lilac linen designer suit, had had her thick brown ringlets blowdried straight and smoothed up into a smart French roll, and, horribly broke, she had, on the afternoon of her interview, as one magazine had cheekily advised, gone to the make-up counter at a department store and pretended that she was a bride-to-be and trying out looks for her wedding day.

Her brothers had always teased her about her obsession with magazines and her father had moaned about how many she had bought, but they had been her lifeline. Growing up without a mother, living in a rough-and-tumble house that the little girls she’d invited to come over and play had never returned to, Emma had lived her childhood and teenage years reading the glossies for advice, about friends and bullying and boys. It was the magazines that had taught her about deodorant and kisses and bras. The magazines she had turned to when at twelve she had been teased for having hairy legs. And though her devotion to them had waned somewhat, at the ripe age of twenty-four it had been the magazines she had immediately turned to for make-up and grooming tips to land her dream job.

She looked fantastic, just the image she had been hoping to achieve—smart, sassy, groomed—exactly the right look for a modern working girl in the city.

Evelyn clearly didn’t agree.

Her interviewer was dressed in a stern grey suit, with black flat shoes. Her fine blonde hair was cut into a neat, practical bob and she wore just a reluctant sliver of coral lipstick. The antithesis, in fact, of the look Emma had been trying to achieve!

‘And Mr D’Amato would also prefer someone who speaks Japanese…’ Evelyn continued.

‘It didn’t say that in the advertisement,’ Emma pointed out. ‘And you didn’t mention it when we spoke on the telephone.’

‘Luca—I mean Mr D’Amato—does not like to put too many specifications in the advertisements for one reason, and I rather agree…’ she gave a small sniff ‘…that when the right person appears, we know.’

Well, there wasn’t much Emma could say to that— clearly at first glance it had been decided that she wasn’t the right person for the job.

Only…

Now, even though it had been an impossible dream, now that she had glimpsed it, Emma wanted it.

The salary was to die for—her family home, despite months on the market, hadn’t sold and the nursing-home fees were piling up. Evelyn had explained during their initial telephone interview that Luca’s staff burnt out quickly. He was a demanding boss, expecting complete devotion, and that this job and the travel would literally overtake her life, but that suited Emma just fine.

One year working hard and she could meet the nursing-home fees. Surely in that time the house would sell and pay off the backlog of debt? One year, burning herself out, and she would finally be free—free to pursue her dreams, free to live the life that had so far been denied her.

And now that glimmer of hope was rapidly being taken away. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me…’ Evelyn gave a thin attempt at a smile ‘…I have an important phone call to make.’

Well, at least Evelyn hadn’t kept her guessing, at least she wouldn’t be checking her phone every five minutes, or dashing to get the mail.

It couldn’t have been made any clearer—she wasn’t wanted.

‘Well, thank you for seeing me…’ She should just stand and go, shake Evelyn’s hand and leave, except, inexplicably, she was dragging it out and for some stupid, stupid reason tears were threatening as yet another door closed on her push for a better future. ‘Thank you for your time.’

It was her horoscope’s fault, Emma told herself as Evelyn scribbled a note on her carefully prepared CV.

It had told her to go for it, reminded her that you have to be in it to win it. Told her that Jupiter and Mars had moved into her tenth house, which assured success in her career…

Stupid horoscopes, Emma thought as she went to retrieve her handbag. She didn’t believe them anyway.

And then in he walked.

And the room went black.

Well, it didn’t go black, but it might as well have, because he was all she could see.

Dressed in a tuxedo at four p.m., he strode over. Evelyn stood up, knotting his bow-tie as she gave him, in a couple of minutes, what seemed like a month’s worth of messages, and all in a language that was foreign to Emma.

‘Mr Hirosiko wants an “in person” next week.’

‘No,’ came his bored response.

‘Kasumi was insistent.’

‘He can have a face-to-face.

‘And your sister rang, upset…she wants you there for the entire weekend.’

‘Tell her that given that I’m paying for the entire weekend…’ he had a thick, deep, Italian accent and Emma felt her toes curl ‘…I can choose my schedule.’ His eyes drifted around the room as Evelyn dealt with his cufflinks and then he gave Emma a bored glance that changed midway and utter disinterest shifted slightly.

He deigned to give her a second look, and it was one she recognised well. It was the same look her father and brothers had used on unsuspecting women—at the petrol station, the supermarket, school concerts, the pub, oh, anywhere…

It was a look that to Emma screamed danger.

Six feet two with eyes of navy blue, Luca D’Amato might just as well have had the word danger stamped on his smooth forehead. Jet-black hair was slicked back, but a thick, raven lock escaped as Evelyn declared him officially knotted, and with one manicured hand he raked it back through his hair and it fell into effortless shape. Oh, she’d seen photos of him, had known that he was good-looking, but a grainy newspaper photo didn’t do him justice, could never capture the essence of him, just the shocking presence of him. A scar ran the length of his left cheekbone, but that one imperfection merely enhanced his general faultlessness.

‘We haven’t been introduced.’ Full, sensual lips curved into a smile as he turned come-to-bed eyes on her, his deep, accented voice for her ears now. ‘This is…?’

Emma was struggling to find her voice, but Evelyn did it for her. ‘Emma Stephenson.’ Evelyn looked as if she were sucking lemons, and it dawned on Emma then that the real reason she hadn’t got the job was perhaps that Evelyn had been hoping for someone plainer, dowdier, older, bigger…in fact, someone who would withstand Luca’s charm. Well, she needn’t have worried. Emma could handle Luca’s sort with her hands tied behind her back—she’d grown up surrounded by them! ‘We were just concluding the interview.’

‘For the assistant PA job?’ Luca checked, holding his hand out, and, because it was the polite thing to do, Emma shook it, feeling his warm fingers close around hers. Then she looked up as he voiced what she was thinking. ‘But I’ve got a cold heart!’ He winked at her.

‘I’m sure you do!’ Emma retorted. He was shameless, utterly shameless, and Evelyn was welcome to him. ‘Well, again,’ Emma said, coolly walking to the door, absolutely refusing to be rattled, ‘thank you for your time.’

She walked out into the foyer, took the lift and only as she went to sign out did she realise that she’d forgotten her bag. That, despite appearances, despite appearing utterly and completely unruffled by his stunning presence, one glimpse of Luca D’Amato and her stomach was in knots. He was devastatingly handsome, with eyes that stripped, undressed and bedded you in a matter of seconds, and she had deliberately not returned the favour.

Emma headed back up in the elevator, moving to step out, only he was stepping in…

‘I wasn’t expecting to see you again.’ He didn’t move to let her pass him, his broad frame barring the exit, just slightly, and there was this offer of conversation that Emma didn’t want to take up. ‘I hear the interview didn’t go too well.’

‘It didn’t.’

‘Shame.’

How loaded with meaning was that single word, and Emma swallowed hard before speaking. ‘I forgot my bag, I’m just going to get it,’ she offered by way of explanation and as the lift door started to close she pressed the button to open it. There was this pang, this twinge, this snapping almost, this ending that she didn’t want to happen, because he really was divine, and she wished for just a fleeting second that she had the looks, the confidence, the experience to allow him to pursue her.

But she didn’t.

‘Going down?’ She pressed the ‘hold’ button for him, and he stood back as she stepped out and she caught the heavy scent of him, just the brush of his expensive suit as she passed by.

‘No, up.’ He grinned. ‘To the roof.’

‘Things that bad, then?’ Emma called over her shoulder, safer now that the doors were closing, but he halted them with his hands.

‘Do you want to join me?’

‘I’m sure another job will come along,’ she replied, watching a slow smile spread on his face as he got her dry humour. ‘Things really are never that bad.’

‘I’m actually going to Paris.’

‘Lovely.’

‘Helipad’s on the roof.’

‘They usually are.’

‘Formal dinner, very boring, but maybe after…What are your plans?’

‘TV dinner, a rerun of my favourite murder mystery.’ Emma gave a sweet smile. ‘So there’s really no contest!’

He really was smiling now, thinking he’d got his easy way, holding the lift and waiting for her to step inside. So, so arrogant, so, so assuming, he really thought he could just snap his manicured fingers and summon her—he only seemed to get the message when she opened the doors to his office suite, his rich, assured voice just a touch perplexed.

‘If you’re worried that you’ve nothing to wear…’

‘I’m not worried at all!’ Emma laughed, and she could be as rude as she liked, could tell him exactly where to go with his smutty offer because, after all, he wasn’t going to be her boss. ‘As I said, there’s really no contest!”

As the lift doors closed on him and she walked over to Evelyn’s office, she was too irked to think before she knocked. Her hand rose, the door flung open and Emma stood there stunned as she took in the sight of Evelyn. The assured, pompous woman, who had dashed her hopes just a few moments before, was sobbing her heart out, first jumping up and shooing her out, appalled at being caught, then too upset to care.

‘Negative!’ she wept as Emma just stood there. ‘I was so, so sure that I was.’

‘I’m so sorry!’ Well, what else could she say? ‘I’m very sorry.’

And what could she do other than lead the sodden bundle to the nearest chair and peel off tissues as Evelyn gulped out her sorry tale?

Married five years.

Trying for a baby for four and a half of those.

IVF and injections and nasal sprays and tests and scans and egg retrieval.

And now she had to ring Paul and tell him, Evelyn had sobbed, had to ring her lovely, lovely husband, who wanted a baby as much as she did, and say that they’d failed to conceive through IVF for a second time.

Emma really didn’t have to worry about saying the right thing, she couldn’t get a word in. Instead, she just sat there and listened and poured water and offered tissues, and finally, when Evelyn had cried a river, she seemed to remember where she was and who she was talking to.

‘You’ve been so nice—I mean, after I was so cool with you.’

‘It’s not a problem. If I’m not the right person…’

‘No, you see…’ Evelyn was wringing the tissue in her hands ‘…it has nothing to do with your experience or that you don’t speak Japanese…’

‘I know that now.’

‘No, I mean—’

‘I get it, okay? I admit, I assumed you must like him yourself, but…’

Emma giggled as Evelyn gave a watery smile and rolled her eyes. ‘Not at all—I’m just sick of training new assistants, only to have them leave once he’s bedded them. He’s incorrigible, you know.’

‘I know!’ Emma groaned. ‘He just asked me if I wanted to join him for dinner in Paris.’ Emma smiled. ‘Maybe you should look for a male PA.’

‘They’d fall in love with him too,’ Evelyn sighed, then she blinked. ‘You said no to Paris?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘You don’t find him attractive?’ she gasped.

‘He’s divine,’ Emma corrected her. ‘He’s side splittingly beautiful and any woman who says otherwise is a liar.’

‘So why did you say no?’ Evelyn wanted to know.

‘Because I know him,’ Emma explained. ‘Not Luca personally, but I grew up amongst his type—I’ve read their rule book from cover to cover. I grew up in an all-male household—an exceptionally good-looking allmale household at that. ‘

‘What about your mother?’

‘She died when I was four.’ Emma said, and there was nothing in her voice that requested sympathy—she merely stated the facts. ‘My brothers are all considerably older than me…’ She gave a thin smile at the memory of her childhood. ‘And my father, well, a good-looking widower attracts a lot of admirers—all wanting to change him, all assuming he’s just waiting for the next Mrs. Stephenson to come along—and he played them all well.’

‘Luca’s a nice man,’ Evelyn said, just a touch pink at her own indiscretion in discussing her boss so personally. ‘Beneath it all, when he’s not being horrible, he’s a really nice man. Take this assistant PA role that’s currently being advertised—that’s so I can cut back on my travel and late work nights…he’s great really.’

‘So long as you don’t love him,’ Emma said. ‘So long as you have absolutely no intention or hope that one day you might change him…’

‘You really do get it.’ Evelyn blinked in wonder.

‘I really do.’ Locating her bag, Emma plonked it on her shoulder. ‘I’d best get going.’

‘And I’d better ring Paul.’

And it had been no contest—not for a second had she considered accepting Luca’s extravagant offer, but sitting in her pyjamas, eating her TV dinner and watching the credits on her favourite show roll, the house was too big and too lonely for one.

Lonely…

She had never admitted it, not even to herself.

Oh, she had friends and a job and was kept busy— but sometimes, sometimes she wished she wasn’t so wise, so cynical, so mistrusting where men were concerned.

She reached for a magazine, skipped straight to the problem page and read about other people’s lives, other people’s problems, and for the millionth time in her life she missed her mum. Missed the chats that would surely have happened about boys and men. Everyone else seemed to find it so easy—her friends fell in and out of love, skipped from relationship to relationship, and some were even getting married, or moving in with their boyfriends.

Yet Emma felt as if she’d been left at the starting post.

Too embarrassed by her brothers’ teasing, too scared of getting hurt, she’d hid her first innocent crushes, had said no to dates in her teenage years, envying how others found this dating game so easy and just dived in and said yes.

Dear Barbara, she penned the letter in her head.

I’m an attractive twenty-four-year-old, I have friends, a job, a busy life and I’m still a virgin.

Oh, and I just said no to a night in Paris with the sexiest man on earth.

She’d make letter of the week!

And though it was great to have come home to no messages from her father’s nursing home or new bills in the mail, all she felt was deflated. She flicked off the TV, and for just a second she faltered.

A tiny, wobbly second, where she wished she were stupid, wished for that impulse gene where men were concerned that had been so sorely denied her.

Wished she’d just said yes to Luca’s dazzling offer.

Luca flicked through the channels on the television.

Not that he was watching it. It was on all day for background noise for the dog, Pepper—not that the animal appreciated it.

The night stretched on endlessly and he stood there, rueing the fact that he had been yawning and bored at eleven p.m. in Paris, but thanks to the time difference was wide awake and thoroughly restless at five minutes to midnight in London.

He should be exhausted, he had been up since five— but his head was clicking like an abacus. Hemming’s, a large shopping chain, had called him in way too late to stop them from going under.

Except he could see a way to save them.

He grabbed a beer from the fridge and tried not to think about it, tried to wind down—just fed up with all the travel, with the demands. Why did everyone want an in-person—why couldn’t they just settle for a face-to-face on a screen in the meeting room?

Hell, an email would usually suffice.

Sex would be nice.

And there were plenty who would be willing.

But he couldn’t be bothered to talk.

Couldn’t be bothered tonight to even pretend to be interested.

His tie must have been soldered on, along with his cufflinks—because he had to put down his drink to deal with them.

And deal with Pepper.

He snarled at the ginger miniature poodle, who snarled back at him. He let him out on his vast balcony to do whatever dogs did.

His maid would see to it in the morning.

Martha, an ex-girlfriend, had, after a trip back to his home in Sicily, decided to move in uninvited, and had conveniently forgotten Pepper when Luca had asked her to move out—three years ago!

‘You,’ Luca said, wandering back to the fridge and selecting a few choice morsels, ‘are the most pathetic excuse for a dog I have ever seen.’

He ripped a chicken leg off and gnawed it as he stretched out on his sofa, with Pepper quivering on the floor beside him.

‘You’re on a diet.’ Luca reminded him. Half watching a detective show on the television, finally Luca relented and threw some titbits to the floor in reward for their new game—having recently found out that if he changed the word ‘Paw’ to ‘High five’ the outcome was the same, only much more satisfying.

It had been hellish breaking up with Martha—her tears and protests at the unexpected end had been unprecedented—as over and over she had asked how he could end something so good.

And she’d left Pepper—just hadn’t taken him, sure that Luca would crack and ring, would make contact— but what she hadn’t truly realised was that when Luca ended things, he ended them.

That Luca would rather deal with a senile, smelly old dog than face her again.

The detective show actually wasn’t that boring…

Three minutes from the end of the final episode of the season, Luca decided it was something he might actually get into.

And then the credits rolled.

And he knew this was what Emma had been talking about.

Knew she was watching it too.

He just knew it. And he wished she’d said yes to Paris.

CHAPTER TWO

IT WAS a quarter to five on a Thursday afternoon and the entire staff of D’Amato Financiers, excluding Emma, seemed to be abuzz with excitement. As Emma walked back from a meeting with the manager of HR she could see make-up, slyly in some cases and blatantly in others, being applied at desks, and the general office area reeked of a clash of newly sprayed perfume. Even the guys were at it—appearing from the men’s room with a generous dash of newly applied hair product and a glint in their eyes as the end of the workday approached.