Her Pregnancy Bombshell Read online

  Before she could think, reach for him, he’d turned and stumbled from the hangar.

  The airfield was bounded on one side by a steeply wooded hill and in the few moments it had taken her to gather herself he had reached the boundary.

  ‘Stop!’

  She grabbed his arm and he swung around. For a moment she thought he was going to fling her aside but instead he caught hold of her, pulling her to him and, his voice no more than a scrape against his vocal cords, he said, ‘Help me, Andie…’

  He hadn’t called her that since the days when he’d teased her, encouraged her, kissed her in the shadowy corners of her father’s aircraft hangar and her stupid teenage heart had dreamed that one day they would fly to the stars.

  He was shaking, falling apart and she reached out, slid her arms around his chest, holding him close, holding him together until he was still.

  ‘I’m sorry—’

  She lifted a hand to his cheek and realised that it was wet with tears.

  ‘I can’t—’

  ‘Hush…’ She touched her lips to his to stop the words, closing her eyes as he responded not with the sweet, hot kisses that even now filled her dreams, but with something darker, more desperate, demanding. With a raw need that drilled down through the protective shell that she’d built around her heart, that she answered with all the deep-buried longing that she’d subsumed into flying.

  She felt a shiver go through him.

  ‘Andie…’

  There was such desperation in that one word and she slid her hands down to take his, hold them.

  ‘You’re cold,’ she said and, taking his hand, she led the way along the edge of the runway to the gate that led to her parents’ house. She unlocked the door and led him up the stairs and there, in the room filled with her old books, toys, dreams, she undressed him, undressed herself and then with her mouth, her hands, her body—giving him all the love hoarded inside her—she warmed him.

  CHAPTER TWO

  EXHAUSTED, A LITTLE SHAKY from a rough ferry crossing, Andie handed her passport to the border control officer.

  ‘Buongiorno, signora.’ He glanced at the back page of her passport and then gave her the kind of searching look a Roman traveller landing in the ancient port of Sant’Angelo two thousand years ago would have recognised. The kind of look that would bring even the most innocent traveller out in a guilty sweat. ‘What is the purpose of your visit to L’Isola dei Fiori?’

  ‘I’m running away,’ she muttered.

  From her job, her life, from the man she’d been in love with since the life-changing moment when he’d applauded her touchdown in a treacherous crosswind.

  Hiding the secret she was carrying.

  ‘Scusi?’

  She swallowed down the lump in her throat. ‘I’m on holiday.’

  He did not look convinced. She didn’t blame him but the clammy sweat sticking her shirt to her back had nothing to do with guilt.

  ‘You are travelling alone?’ he asked.

  That rather depended on your definition of alone…

  She nodded. ‘Yes, I’m on my own.’

  ‘And where are you staying?’

  ‘At Baia di Rose. The Villa Rosa.’ His brow rose almost imperceptibly. ‘My sister inherited it from her godmother. Sofia Romana,’ she added, in the face of his scepticism.

  The man’s eyebrows momentarily lost touch with gravity. Clearly the mistress of the late King Ludano would not be everyone’s choice as godmother but Sofia had started school on the same day as their grandmother. Their friendship had endured through a long lifetime and by the time their fourth daughter had arrived her parents had probably been running out of godmother options.

  He cleared his throat, returned to her passport, flipping through the pages. ‘You travel a great deal?’

  ‘Yes.’ She was in and out of airports all over Europe and the Middle East on a daily basis. ‘I’m a commercial pilot.’

  ‘I see.’ He gave her another of those long, thoughtful looks but it wasn’t his obvious suspicion that was making her feel faint, cling like a lifeline to the edge of the desk that separated them. ‘You look unwell, signora Marlowe.’

  ‘I’m not feeling that great,’ she admitted. Her skin was pale and clammy and her hair, blown out of the scarf she used to tie it back on the blustery deck of the ferry, was sticking to her cheeks and neck.

  She knew exactly what he was thinking and in his place she’d probably think the same.

  ‘I have to ask you if you are carrying—’

  ‘A baby.’

  She blurted out the word. It was the first time she’d said it out loud. She’d told her sister that she was tired, needed a break, and Posy, unable to get away herself, had been so happy that someone would visit the villa, make sure everything was okay, that she hadn’t asked her why she wasn’t going to some resort where she could lie back and be waited on.

  The first person in the world to know that she was going to have a baby was a border control officer who was about to ask her if she was carrying an illegal substance… ‘I’m carrying a baby,’ she said, her hand instinctively rising to her waist in an age-old protective gesture as she backed away from the desk. ‘And I’m about to be sick.’

  The ferry crossing from Italy had been choppy. The sandwich she’d forced herself to eat had gone overboard within minutes of leaving the harbour but her stomach seemed capable of creating a great deal out of nothing. It had been years since her last visit to the island but the Porto had not changed and she made it to the toilet before she disgraced herself.

  Once the spasms had passed she splashed her face with cold water, retied her hair, took a breath and opened the door to find the officer waiting with her passport, wheelie and a sympathetic smile.

  ‘Complimenti, signora.’ She hardly knew how to respond and he nodded as if he understood that she was feeling grim and might just be having mixed feelings about her happy condition. As if that were the only problem… ‘My wife suffered with the vomito in the early days but it will soon pass,’ he said. ‘Relax, put your feet up in the sun and you will soon feel better. Is anyone meeting you?’

  ‘I was going to grab a taxi.’

  He nodded, escorted her to the rank, spoke sharply to the driver who leapt out to take her bag.

  ‘I have told him to take it slowly, signora.’

  Out of the noisy terminal building, standing in the fresh air, the afternoon sunshine warning her face, she managed a smile. ‘Did he hear you?’

  His shrug and wry smile suggested that his words might well have fallen on deaf ears.

  ‘Could you ask him to stop at a shop…il supermercato? I need to pick up some things.’

  He exchanged a few words with the driver. ‘He will take you and wait.’

  ‘Grazie.’

  ‘Prego. Bon fortuna, signora. Enjoy your holiday.’

  Andie lay back against the cool leather of the seat as the driver drew carefully away from the taxi rank, out of the port and after a few minutes pulled into the car park in front of a small supermarket.

  Her sense of smell, heightened by pregnancy, had her hurrying past the deli counter. She quickly filled her basket with some basic essentials and returned to the car.

  *

  ‘Baia di Rose?’ the driver asked.

  ‘Sì. Lentamente,’ she added, using the word that the border official had used and Sofia had called after them as they’d raced down the path to the beach. Slowly…

  ‘Sì, signora,’ he said, pulling out into the traffic with exaggerated caution.

  It didn’t last.

  He was a native of this ancient crossroads in the Mediterranean; his blood was a distillation of the Greek, Carthaginian and Roman invaders who had, over the millennia, conquered and controlled the island. His car was his chariot and the hoots of derision from other drivers as they passed him were an affront to his manhood.

  She hung onto the strap as he put his foot down and flung the car around sharp bends, catchin
g glimpses of the sea as they climbed up out of the city and headed across the island to Baia di Rose and the villa that guarded the headland.

  She’d left London on a cold, grey day that spring had hardly touched. How many times had she and her sisters done that in the past when her grandmother had whisked the four of them out of England in the school holidays to give her mother a break?

  She still remembered the excitement of arriving in a spring so different from the one they’d left behind. Being met in a sleek Italian car by Alberto who, with his wife, Elena, looked after the Villa Rosa, its gardens and acted as chauffeur to Sofia and who treated them as if they were little princesses. The exotic flowers, houses painted in soft pastels and faded terracotta and the turquoise sea glittering in invitation.

  The house was only a few hundred yards up the hill from the village, perched on an outcrop in a swathe of land that stretched from the coast to the rugged, forested lands that led to the peak of the mountains in the heart of the island that King Ludano had declared as a national park.

  Portia, her older and more worldly sister had shocked them all by suggesting the real reason was to keep his visits to his mistress from prying eyes.

  Whatever his motive it had preserved this part of the island from commercial exploitation, the ribbon development of hotels along the east coast.

  The last stretch to an elevated promontory was reached by a narrow, twisting road. As children, they’d competed to be the first to catch a glimpse of the pale pink Villa Rosa. With its tiered roof and French doors opening onto a garden that fell away to the sheltered cove below, it was so utterly different from home.

  Inside was just as exciting. Endless rooms to explore and the excitement of being allowed to join grown-up parties in the vast drawing room with its arched ceiling painted in the pale blue, pink, mauves of an evening sky.

  There were dusty attics filled with treasures to explore if you dared brave the spiders and, her favourite place of all, the cool covered veranda looking out to sea where you could curl up with a book in the heat of the afternoon.

  When they were children the gates had stood wide open in welcome and as soon as the car came to a halt they’d tumbled out, rushed down to the beach, kicked off their shoes and socks and stood at the water’s edge, shrieking with excitement as the water ran over their feet.

  Today the gates were closed and it was too early in the year to swim in the sea. Too late in the day to go down to the beach. She just wanted to curl up somewhere and sleep off the flight from London, the ferry trip across from the Italian mainland.

  The driver asked her a question in something that wasn’t quite Italian, that she didn’t understand, but his look of concern suggested he was asking if she was in the right place. She nodded, smiled, paid him and waited while he turned and headed back down the hill.

  Once he’d gone she took the weighty bunch of keys that Posy had given her from her bag, opened the small side gate and stepped into the peace and tranquillity of the villa courtyard.

  On one side there was a low range of buildings that had once been stables but, for as long as she had been coming here, had been used as garages and storerooms. On the other side of the courtyard was the rear of the house with its scullery and kitchen. The door that, wet and sandy from the beach, they’d used as children.

  It had been eight years since their last visit. She and Immi had been sixteen, Posy fifteen. Portia hadn’t come with them. She had been in her first year at uni and thought herself far too grown-up for a family holiday by the sea, even in a glamorous villa owned by the mistress of the island’s monarch.

  Those years had not been kind to the villa.

  King Ludano had died and Sofia had been left alone with only her memories to warm her in their love nest. Alone without her lover to call whenever something needed fixing.

  It was an old house, there were storms in the winter and the occasional rumble from the unstable geology of the island.

  The pink was faded and stained where rainwater had run from broken and blocked gutters. There were some tiles missing from the scullery roof and there was a crack in the wall where the stucco had fallen away and a weed had found a home.

  Posy’s wonderful bequest from her godmother needed some seriously expensive TLC and she would have been lumbered with something of a white elephant if it weren’t for its location.

  The Villa Rosa was the only property on this spectacular part of the coast. It had a private beach hidden from passing boats by rocky headlands that reached out into the sea like sheltering arms and, thanks to the island’s volcanic past, a pool fed by a hot spring where you could bathe even in the depths of winter.

  As soon as she put it on the market she would be swamped with offers.

  The sea sparkled invitingly in the low angle of the sun, but this early in March it would still be cold and all she wanted was hot mint tea and somewhere to sleep.

  Tomorrow she would go down to the beach, feel the sand beneath her feet, let the cold water of the Mediterranean run over her toes. Then, like an old lady, she would go and lie up to her neck in a rock pool heated by the hot spring and let its warmth melt away the confused mix of feelings; the desperate hope that she would turn around, Cleve would be there and, somehow, everything would be back to normal.

  It wasn’t going to happen and she wasn’t going to burden Cleve with this.

  She’d known what she was doing when she’d chosen to see him through a crisis in the only way she knew how.

  She’d seen him at his weakest, broken, weeping for all that he’d lost, and she’d left before he woke so that he wouldn’t have to face her. Struggle to find something to talk about over breakfast.

  She’d known that there was only ever going to be one end to the night they’d spent together. One of them would have to walk away and it couldn’t be Cleve.

  Four weeks ago she was an experienced pilot working for Goldfinch Air Services, a rapidly expanding air charter and freight company. She could have called any number of contacts and walked into another job.

  Three weeks and six days ago she’d spent a night with the boss and she was about to become a cliché. Pregnant, single and grounded.

  She’d told the border official that she was running away and she was, but not from a future in which there would be two of them. The baby she was carrying was a gift. She was running away from telling Cleve that she was pregnant.

  He would have to know. He would want to know, but the news would devastate him.

  She needed to sort out exactly what she was going to do, have a plan firmly in place, everything settled, so that when she told him the news he understood that she expected nothing. That he need do nothing…

  She sorted through the keys, found one that fitted the back door. It moved a couple of inches and then stuck. Assuming that it had swollen in the winter rain, she put her shoulder to it, gave it a shove and her heart rate went through the roof as she was showered with debris.

  ‘Argh…’ She jumped back, brushing furiously at her hair, her shoulders, shaking herself, shaking out her hair, certain that there would be spiders…

  *

  Cleve tossed his cap onto its hook and crossed to the white board listing the flight schedule.

  ‘Where’s Miranda?’ he asked. ‘I don’t see her on the board.’

  ‘She’s taken a few weeks’ leave.’

  Leave? He turned to Lucy, his office manager. ‘Since when?’

  ‘Yesterday afternoon. She flew down to Kent in the morning and picked up the guys from their golf tournament but she wasn’t feeling too good after lunch,’ she said, without looking up from her VDU. ‘She hasn’t been looking that great for a few days.’

  ‘She’s sick?’ His heart seized at the thought.

  She shrugged. ‘She appears to have picked something up. The punters take exception to the pilot using the sick bags so I told her to take a few days off to get over it.’ Lucy finally sat back, looked up. ‘She hasn’t taken more than the odd da
y off since last summer so she decided to make it a proper break.’

  ‘As opposed to an improper one?’

  ‘Let’s hope she gets that lucky.’

  He bit down hard in an effort to hold in the response that immediately leapt to his lips. ‘Why didn’t you run this by me?’

  ‘You’ve been in Ireland for the last three days.’

  ‘You’ve heard of email, text, the phone?’

  ‘I’ve heard you tell me not to bother you with the minor details,’ she reminded him. ‘If you want me to call and ask you to approve time off for someone who never takes a day off sick, who hasn’t had a holiday in nearly a year, then you need to start looking for a new office manager.’

  ‘What? No…’ Lucy might be a total grouch but he couldn’t run the office without her. ‘No, of course not, it’s just that…’ It was just that he’d finally geared up the courage to face Miranda, talk to her. ‘She’s…that is everyone…is supposed to give a month’s notice before taking time off.’

  ‘She could have taken a week’s sick leave,’ she pointed out, clearly not impressed with his people skills.

  ‘I know. I didn’t mean…’

  He turned to the gallery of Goldfinch pilots on the office wall. Miranda looked back at him from her place in the top row, her calm, confident smile never failing to instil confidence in her passengers and guilt, sitting like a lump of lead in his chest, exploded.

  He’d broken every rule in the book. He’d lost control, taken advantage of her kindness, behaved in a way that he would have utterly condemned in anyone else.

  He’d been a wreck and Miranda’s sweet tenderness had been a healing balm, a gift that he could never repay. Her scent, the softness of her skin, her hair falling from its pins and tumbling over his skin, the life-giving sweetness of her mouth…

  Every time he thought about her he was swamped with the memory of that night. Waking with her spooned against his body, the curve of her neck just inches from his lips. Fighting the temptation to rouse her with a kiss and take more of her precious warmth.