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Di CESARE PREGNANT MISTRESS - Chapter 23
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Alexander swore succinctly. ‘Tell me, bella, do you intend to sulk indefinitely because I’ve wrecked your chance of securing yourself a wealthy sugar-daddy? Or is there a chance you could behave like an adult so that we can establish a reasonable working relationship?
‘I never regarded James as a sugar-daddy,’ Stephanie threw her hands in the air. ‘I am not after his money.’
Alexander gave a disbelieving snort. ‘I find that hard to believe when you lead such an expensive lifestyle, you drive a new top-of-the-range car, and your designer clothes will not have come cheap. How can you afford to shop in Bond street on the salary a small company such as Spectrum must pay you? Someone must have been supplementing your income, and my guess is that you encouraged James to buy you those things you craved but were out of your price range,’ he accused her scathingly.
‘I did not.’ Twin spots of colour appeared on Stephanie’s cheeks. ‘James has never bought me anything.’
‘What about a diamond necklace worth several thousand pounds?’
‘That was different—it was my birthday present,’ Stephanie’s face burned hotter. ‘It didn’t really cost thousands, did it?’ She faltered. ‘I know I should have refused to accept it, but I didn’t want to hurt James’s feelings.’
‘That was most thoughtful of you bella,’
The mockery in Alexander’s tone made Stephanie want to hit him. ‘I bought my car and my clothes with some money I inherited,’ she told him furiously, ‘it wasn’t a fortune, but it was a sizable sum. The sensible thing would have been to invest,’ she admitted. ‘But the last couple of years since my divorce haven’t been much fun and when the money came through my family encouraged me to go mad for once—which I did,’ she added defiantly, lifting her chin to meet his sceptical gaze. ‘I have never asked James for anything, and I certainly didn’t appeal to him to put money into Spectrum. My brother told me that James offered to help—but trust you and your horrible, twisted mind to think the worst.’
She blinked hard to banish the angry tears that stung her eyes. Alexander was looking at her as if she was something unpleasant on the bottom of his shoes, and she was angry with herself for caring what he thought of her. But for some stupid reason she did care, and she could not drag her gaze from him.
In his black designer suit he looked every inch the powerful, billionaire businessman, but as well as supreme confidence, he exuded a raw sexual magnetism that triggered a response in her she was powerless to control. She hated the effect he had on her—and, even worse, the mocking gleam in his eyes that told her he knew exactly how he made her feel.
‘Did something happen in your past to make you so bitter and mistrustful?’ She demanded. She guessed that being a billionaire had its downside. Had he fallen in love with a woman and later discovered she had only been interested in his money? It was impossible to imagine the hard, ruthless Alexander she knew in love, but perhaps when he had been younger…?
Alexander was silent for so long that she thought he would not answer, but then he glanced at her, his face shuttered. ‘Oh, yes, something happened,’ he murmured derisively, and his tone made her blood run cold. He paused, and then continued in a hard tone, ‘I grew up at the Villa Rosala—an idyllic childhood, with parents who adored each other as much as they adored their children. When my mother died, at about the same age as Lilly Grainger when she lost her life, my father was devastated. After thirty blissful years of marriage he was lost and lonely, despite the efforts of my sister and I to comfort him. But then he met a young woman.’
Alexander’s face hardened, and Stephanie was shocked by the note of undisguised loathing in his voice.
‘Monica was an actress, with a complete lack of talent but a willingness to sleep with anyone who might further her pathetic career. When she met my father she was in her twenties, and he was over sixty with a heart condition. My mother had died less than a year before, and as soon as Monica learned that my father was the president of the House of Di Cesare she attached herself to him like a leach. They married a few weeks before the first anniversary of my mother’s death,’ he revealed bitterly, ‘and Monica immediately insisted that they move to a huge house in the city—more in keeping with her position as the wife of a billionaire.’
‘So, did you stay on the Villa Rosala?’ Stephanie queried.
‘No, I was a young man, in my early twenties, and in my last year at college. My father wanted us all to live as a family.’ Alexander gave a harsh laugh. ‘I loved him, and I wanted to be with my sister, Jocasta, so I gave in to his pleas and moved to his new house, knowing that it was big enough for me to be able to avoid Monica most of the time. Unfortunately, she had other ideas.’
His face darkened, and Stephanie shivered at the fury glinting in his eyes. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean that my dear stepmother quickly grew bored with having an invalid husband more than twice her age, and thought that I would provide her with the active sex-life she presumably wasn’t getting with my father.’ He saw the shocked expression on Stephanie’s face, and his mouth curved into another grim smile. ‘When I refused to play ball she was furious, and determined to pay me back for rejecting her. She engineered a situation. I can’t even remember now the exact reason she made up to lure me to her bedroom—suffice to say that when I arrived she was *****, and flung herself at me just in time for my father to walk in and find me—as he believed—making love to his wife.’