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Di CESARE PREGNANT MISTRESS - Chapter 17
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‘And this time round she’s suffering from terrible morning sickness. I stayed on so that I could take the twins to nursery in the mornings and give Vicky a break,’
She felt Jess’s eyes on her and sighed. Her best friend had an uncanny knack of reading her mind, but right now Stephanie didn’t want to share her thoughts with anyone—or discuss the events of the previous weekend. Within twenty minutes of fleeing from Alexander’s room she had flung her belongings in her case, checked out of the hotel and raced out to her car, hurtling along the winding country lanes as fast as he had done earlier that day. Less than an hour later she had arrived at her sister’s house and invented an excuse about an uncomfortable hotel bed as she’d apologized for turning up on Vicky’s doorstep at midnight.
‘Well, that’s brilliant news,’ Jess murmured, glancing speculatively at Stephanie’s pale face and the purple smudges beneath her eyes. ‘But I suppose a little part of you wishes it was you expecting a baby?’
‘Tricky—unless I’ve developed the ability to reproduce without any help from a man,’ Stephanie drawled. She didn’t want to go there, or dwell on the hateful feeling of envy that had speared her when Vicky had announced her news. She loved both her sisters to bits and adored her little nephews and niece, but Jess was right, she had wished that she was happily married to a devoted husband, with a baby on the way.
‘So how was the wedding reception?’
‘Okay.’ Stephanie made a show of reading the gas bill, and her voice was deliberately non-committal, but Jess wasn’t fooled.
‘Just okay, hmm?’ She mused. ‘You didn’t meet any gorgeous men—or even one particular gorgeous man? Like the one who called here on Tuesday night?’
‘What man?’ Stephanie dropped the letters, her expression so haunted that Jess instantly dismissed the idea of teasing her friend.
‘Tall, dark, handsome—if you’II forgive the cliche,’ Jess said quietly. ‘Italian, I think, He didn’t give his name, but he left this.’ She withdrew the diamond necklace from her dressing gown pocket and dropped it into Stephanie’s hand. ‘He said he was sure you wouldn’t want to lose it. Oh, and he left a business card.’ She took a small card from the kitchen drawer. ‘He wrote a message on it, and I’ve been very good and haven’t read it.’ She made a vain attempt at humor, but her smile quickly faded. ‘Stephanie, what’s happened? Who is he?’
‘He’s no one.’ The necklace felt cold and hard in Stephanie’s palm. Almost as cold as the lump of ice around her heart. She glanced at the business card and despised herself for the way even the sight of Alexander’s name caused a fluttering feeling in her stomach. His message was brief.
You know we could be good together bella. I promise you will find me a generous lover, Call me.
The word generous made Stephanie want to scream. She could visualize him scrawling the message, could picture the haughty arrogance on his face and his confident, cynical smile that once she finished sulking she would jump at the chance of an affair with a billionaire. How could she have been so stupid, so trusting, and so criminally naive as to think he had actually fallen for her?
Ignoring Jess’s bemused expression, she tore the card in half and repeated the action again and again, before dropping the piece into the bin. ‘He doesn’t exist,’ she told Jess coolly. ‘Have you made that tea yet?’
The London traffic was teeming, and despite his chauffeur knowing all the short cuts, Alexander’s car was making slow progress back to his hotel. He had spent the day with his legal team, working on a takeover bid for one of the House of Di Cesare’s rivals, and negotiations had been tense. Usually he relished the cut and ****** of business, the tactics and manoeuvres of boardroom warfare, and the sense of satisfaction when he emerged the victor. But today, for some reason, his mind had not been as focused as usual, and several times throughout the day he had checked his messages on his mobile, annoyance mingling with faint disbelief that Stephanie Stewart hadn’t rung.
Of course he expected her to. Not immediately—he’d allowed for a couple of days while she raged and sulked before she accepted that James Grainger was not going to be her sugar-daddy. And she would read his message again and realised that a virile billionaire was not such a bad exchange for an elderly millionaire. Assuming that she was like all the other women Alexander had known, her finger would dial his number faster than you could say diamond necklace—but not yet, it seemed. She was cleverer than he’d thought.
The memory of the way she had rejected him on the night of the wedding reception taunted him and his jaw hardened. But she was not that clever, and she was in danger of over-playing her hand. He was returning to Italy next week, and he had no intention of phoning her before he left.
If he wanted female company there were several women he could have phoned who would immediately have accepted an invitation to dinner. But he chose to dine alone and spent the evening working. It was past eleven p.m. when he switched off his laptop and phoned James Grainger’s London residence—out of curiosity rather than any expectation of talking to the Earl. Jennifer had said her father regularly spent Friday nights in town, after his meetings with Stephanie, but he already knew that Stephanie was away—visiting relatives, her flatmate had explained—so presumably James had remained at Ditton Hall.
The phone rang five or six times, and Alexander was about to cut the call when a breathless female voice answered.
‘Hello—can I help you? Who’s calling, please?’
Stephanie waited impatiently for the caller to reply. It was probably a sales call, and she was tempted to slam down the receiver.