The Italian Billionaire's Pregnant Bride Read online

  The door safely shut behind her again, Kathy drank in a quivering breath of oxygen to replenish her starved lungs. She wondered who he was and then discarded the thought again. What did it matter to her who he was? On the way past the chessboard, with its pieces fashioned of polished metal and glittering stones, she hesitated, studied the state of play and swiftly sacrificed a pawn, hoping to tempt the other player into relaxing their guard. Was it him? She thought it highly improbable: there were two other large offices linked to that inner hallway and one of them contained half a dozen desks. A posh guy with gold cuff links and a cold upper-class accent that just shrieked an English public school education struck her as a very unlikely candidate for exchanging long-distance chess moves with a total stranger. She sped back down the corridor to continue the work he had interrupted.

  Sergio was closing his laptop when the phone rang.

  ‘We’ve got the mysterious chess joker on camera, sir,’ Renzo revealed with satisfaction.

  ‘When did you manage that? This evening?’

  ‘The incident took place last night. I’ve had a man checking the surveillance footage for hours. I think you’ll be surprised by what I’ve found out.’

  ‘So, surprise me,’ Sergio urged, stifling his impatience.

  ‘It’s a young woman, one of the maintenance staff, who works nights—a cleaner called Kathy Galvin. She started here a month ago.’

  Incredulity awakened in Sergio’s cool dark features and was swiftly followed by strong curiosity. ‘Send the relevant images to my computer.’

  Sergio ran the footage on screen while keeping Renzo on the telephone, and there she was: the ravishing redhead. He watched her get up from the sofa in the vestibule where she had evidently been taking a nap and stretch. With a cursory glance down at the board she moved the white knight. Was it sexist to suspect that someone much cleverer was advising her by mobile phone on her skilful game? She then began to tidy her tousled hair, unclasping it and pulling out a comb. He was put in mind of a mermaid showing off her crowning glory to tempt sailors onto the rocks. He wondered if she knew the camera was there while he feasted his attention on her exquisite face and froze her image on screen.

  ‘It’s misconduct, sir,’ Renzo told him eagerly.

  ‘You think so?’ Sergio got up from his desk, taking the portable phone with him as he strolled out to take a look at the chessboard. Evidently she had abandoned caution and made another move directly after leaving his office. Why? No doubt she was keen to help him to speedily unveil her identity and take the bait. Illicit napping on the job aside, the humble toil of cleaning duties had to be a serious challenge for a woman only doing it in an effort to cross his path.

  ‘She’ll be disciplined, probably sacked by the contract company when we lodge a complaint—’

  ‘No. Leave this matter with me and be discreet about it,’ Sergio interposed softly. ‘I’ll handle it.’

  ‘You’ll handle it, sir?’ his security chief repeated in audible astonishment. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Of course. I also want that surveillance camera put out of commission right now.’ Sergio tossed the phone down. His astute dark eyes were shot through with derisive gold. So she wasn’t a genuine hard-working salt-of-the-earth cleaner worthy of his respect. Why had he been willing to believe she was for even five minutes? Put that glorious face and body in tandem with the creative chess game aimed at attracting his attention and he had yet another gold-digger in hot and original pursuit.

  Open season for the hunt, Sergio mused with sardonic amusement. He was a hell of a good shot and he intended to have some fun. And sooner rather than later, because he was leaving London the next day to compete in a cross-country skiing marathon in Norway. After that he had business to attend to in New York. It would be ten days before he was back in the UK.

  Rising to his full imposing height of six feet three inches, Sergio strode out of the office and down the corridor in search of his quarry. He found her dusting a desk. Her fabulous hair glittered in multi-shaded splendour below the ceiling lights. When she straightened and saw him in the doorway, an expression of surprise grew on her delicate features. Grudging amusement assailed Sergio: she knew how to stay in role all right. Looking at that frowning air of enquiry, nobody would have dreamt that she had been teasing and tantalising him with a game that he considered very much his own for almost three weeks.

  ‘Let’s play chess in the real world, bella mia,’ Sergio suggested with silken cool. ‘I challenge you to finish the game tonight. If you win, you get me. If you lose, you still get me. How can you lose?’

  CHAPTER TWO

  KATHY stared at Sergio Torrente for a good ten seconds. Her every expectation was shattered by that challenge coming at her out of the blue, and from such a source as the powerfully built male confronting her. For a long time now, she had protected herself by never taking a risk and never stepping out of line to be noticed. Sudden unexpected attention from a stranger and the belated realisation that she had foolishly invited it unnerved her.

  Yet she was mortifyingly aware that it was his bold, dark masculine beauty that claimed her attention first. Win or lose, he was on offer? Was he serious? If he was, would she dare to take him up on it? While she’d worked she had told herself that he could not have been half as attractive as she had thought he was. Now here he was again in the flesh to blow that staid and sensible belief right out of the water. Just looking at the proud, chiselled planes of his darkly handsome features gave her the strangest sense of pleasure. A frisson of dangerous exhilaration gripped her while butterflies fluttered in her stomach. She parted her lips without even knowing what she intended to say. ‘I—er—’

  Glittering black eyes centred on her with laser beam intensity. ‘Backing down from a face-to-face contest?’ he murmured with unconcealed scorn.

  Anger shot through Kathy with a power and sharpness that she had forgotten she could feel and she lifted her chin in answer. ‘Are you kidding?’

  Sergio stepped back to allow her to precede him from the room. ‘Then let’s go and play.’

  ‘But I’m working,’ Kathy pointed out with a slow bemused shake of her head. ‘For goodness’ sake, who are you?’

  A mocking ebony brow quirked. ‘Is that a serious question?’

  ‘Why wouldn’t it be?’

  ‘I am Sergio Torrente and I own the Torrenco Group,’ Sergio delivered drily, wondering whether she thought it was clever to make what he considered to be an outrageous claim of ignorance. ‘Every company in this block belongs to me. I find it hard to believe that you’re not aware of those facts.’

  Kathy was paralysed to the spot by that revelation. It had not even occurred to her that he might be that important. But, even so, she had never heard of him before. She had never been on any floor other than the one she was on now and she had had no interest whatsoever in the business world or the personalities that powered the huge building during the hours of daylight.

  ‘So will you play?’ Sergio prompted with impatience.

  An adrenalin rush was firing self-preservation skills in Kathy. It was clear to her that she had picked the wrong chessboard to get familiar with and the wrong guy. Why had she not even suspected that he might be her opponent? His smooth urbane façade had deceived her, she conceded tautly. He radiated an aura of sophisticated ease and cool. But the breathtaking elegance of his designer suit concealed a purebred predator, for he was a highly aggressive and clever player who took advantage of every tactical opportunity to attack. In short, he was very much an Alpha male incapable of ignoring any perceived challenge to prove his strength. Not a guy to tangle with, not a guy to offend.

  ‘I could take my break now,’ Kathy told him, ready to get her punishment over with, as instead of beating him in two moves as she had previously planned she decided that it would be wiser to let him win.

  Sergio nodded, hooded dark golden eyes nailed to her because he had yet to work out what script she was trying to follow. Was he
really supposed to credit that she didn’t know who he was?

  ‘I’ve had the board moved into my office so that we can play undisturbed.’

  Her heart was now beating very fast with nervous tension. He thrust open the door of his office, then stood back. Momentarily she was close enough to catch the faint evocative scent of some expensive male cologne. She snatched in a charged breath. ‘How did you know it was me? How did you find out?’

  ‘That’s not important.’

  ‘It’s important to me,’ she dared.

  ‘Surveillance camera,’ he supplied.

  Kathy lost colour. There was a security camera in that hallway? She was appalled by that news. She took her breaks there and, once or twice, when she had been very tired, she had set the alarm on her watch and taken a nap on that sofa. Proof of those facts would be sufficient to put her out of a job.

  ‘Would you like a drink?’

  Her slender figure now tense as a bowstring, Kathy hovered in the centre of the carpet. A pool of light shone across the board and the sofas in one corner. It was a very intimate backdrop. If the supervisor came looking for her and found her in such a situation she would get totally the wrong idea and alcohol was a sackable offence. ‘Are you trying to get me fired?’

  ‘If you don’t talk, I won’t,’ Sergio countered with lazy indifference.

  An automatic negative was on Kathy’s lips, but suddenly a spirit of rebellion sparked inside her. With the proof he already had of her stealing a nap during her break, there was little point splitting hairs. ‘You’re only young once,’ Bridget had scolded that same day. But Kathy had never really known what it was to be young and carefree. Since she had regained her freedom she had followed every rule she met everywhere to the letter, no matter how small the rule, no matter how petty. The habit had become engrained in her, the new secure framework by which she lived. The chess game had been the only deviation and only because she couldn’t resist the temptation of reliving the challenges her late father had once set her. In truth she could not even recall when she had last tasted alcohol and that made her feel pathetic, sad and defiant. She named a fashionable drink that she had seen advertised on a billboard.

  ‘You seem very tense.’ Sergio passed her a glass. Translucent green eyes rested on him, providing an alluring contrast to her alabaster skin and copper and red streaked hair. Predictably, he went straight for it. ‘Don’t stress, bella mia. I find you incredibly attractive.’

  The annoyance and embarrassment that Kathy usually felt at such moments was entirely absent. So, he had been serious. She felt as if her heart were pounding right at the foot of her throat. She was shaken by the discovery that she was thrilled by his approach. Her fingers tightened round the glass, her hand shook a little. She sipped and swallowed, sipped and swallowed again, to conceal the reality of her physical weakness. It was so uncool to be so excited. Locked into his stunning dark golden gaze when she finally raised the courage to look up, she could not have breathed to save her life.

  Unhurriedly, Sergio angled his lustrous dark head down. He was testing the boundaries, amusing himself. The delicate fresh scent of her skin made his strong, hard body tauten. Arousal slivered through him with a force that surprised him and speedily tipped him out of teasing mode. He claimed her luscious pink lips with hungry urgency and that first taste only whet his appetite for more.

  Kathy couldn’t credit what she was doing, but she wouldn’t have shifted an inch to prevent it happening, either. A storm tide of feeling engulfed her and she couldn’t get enough of it. It was as energising as hitching a ride on a rocket and it left her equally dizzy and disorientated. He kissed her and fireworks of sensation shot through her and she pulsed and tingled with response. Honeyed warmth pooled in her tummy, a tightness forming at her pelvis. She shivered violently when the sensual glide of his tongue probed the tender cave of her mouth. The throb of desire that flashed and stabbed through her slim length was almost too much to bear and she moaned in protest.

  ‘You are so hot, you burn,’ Sergio framed and, as his deep, dark drawl roughened, a faint Italian accent broke through to mellow the syllables with a lyrical edge. ‘But we have a game to finish.’

  Kathy wasn’t quite sure her legs would keep her upright long enough to reach the sofa at her side of the board. She would have found it easier to fall back into his arms than walk away, an acknowledgement that shook her up even more. Her body felt tight, overheated and unfamiliar. She was aware of it in ways that were new to her. All the time her brain was set on enumerating her mistakes. She shouldn’t be in a room alone with him, shouldn’t have allowed him to kiss her, and certainly shouldn’t have encouraged him by responding. But while her intelligence knew each and every one of those things, the hunger he had awakened and the dissatisfaction he had left behind had an even stronger hold on her.

  Two moves later, the chess game was over.

  When Sergio won, his black brows drew together and then anger illuminated his narrowed gaze to gilded bronze. ‘Either someone else has been telling you how to play for the past three weeks, or you just deliberately threw the game to let me win!’

  Kathy was dismayed by his discernment but determined to tough it out. ‘You won…okay?’

  ‘No, it is not okay. Which was it?’ Sergio countered icily.

  The silence felt suffocating. Tension made it hard for her to swallow. She scrambled up. ‘I should get back to work.’

  Hauteur stamped on his lean hard features, Sergio vaulted upright, well over six feet of lean, muscular male. ‘You will go nowhere until you give me an answer.’

  Kathy dealt him a troubled glance and screened her green eyes. His cold anger took her aback. ‘My goodness, it’s only a game,’ she mumbled.

  ‘Answer me,’ Sergio commanded.

  Kathy heaved a sigh and shifted her hands in a dismissive gesture. ‘I let you win…all right?’

  Sergio could not recall when he had last been so outraged by a woman. ‘Is that what you believe I wanted or expected from you? Do you think I am so vain that I need a fake victory to bolster my ego?’ he shot at her with stinging contempt. ‘I don’t need that kind of sacrifice and I don’t like flattery. This is not the way to please me.’

  Temper like a red-hot flame was darting through Kathy’s willowy form. ‘Well, then, you should stop throwing your weight around and behaving like a bully!’ she launched back at him half an octave higher. ‘How do you expect me to behave? How am I supposed to cope with you? Let’s not pretend that this is a level playing field or that you gave me a choice—’

  ‘Don’t shout at me,’ Sergio breathed glacially while inside he reeled in stunned disbelief from that condemnation.

  ‘You wouldn’t be listening otherwise. I’m sorry I touched your stupid chess set, but it was only meant to be a harmless piece of fun. I’m sorry I let you win and offended you. But I wasn’t trying to please you—I couldn’t care less about pleasing you!’ Kathy flung back at him in disgust. ‘I was trying to placate you…I’m supposed to be working. I don’t want to lose my job. Can I get back to work now?’

  Her attitude shone a bright revisionist light on the confrontation for Sergio. He had a brilliant penetrating mind and an unequalled talent for strategy. In business he was invincible, for he united the survival skills and killing instincts of a shark with a similar lack of emotion. He had learned early not to accept people at face value. But would a woman out to impress him shout at him? He had no evidence of anything calculated in Kathy Galvin’s behaviour. Why should she have known who he was?

  Sergio reached a decision on the basis of the facts. ‘You really are just the cleaner.’

  An affronted flush coloured Kathy’s face as she wondered what on earth that comment was supposed to mean. Had he perhaps thought she was an undercover spy? Or a hooker moonlighting with a mop? ‘Yes,’ she said tightly. ‘Just the cleaner—excuse me.’

  As the door flipped shut on her quick exit Sergio swore softly in Italian, because he
had not intended to humiliate her. The phone rang.

  It was Renzo again. ‘I’ve been running a check on the cleaning lady with the chess fetish—’

  ‘Unnecessary,’ Sergio interposed.

  The older man cleared his throat. ‘Galvin has a dodgy CV, sir. I don’t think she’s what she says she is. Although she’s a very bright girl with a fistful of top grades from school, her employment record only contains some very recent restaurant work. It doesn’t add up. There’s a gap of three years and no adequate explanation for it. According to the résumé she was travelling all that time, but I don’t buy it.’

  ‘Neither do I.’ His lean, strong face hard, Sergio considered the fact that for the first time in a decade he had almost been conned by a woman.

  ‘I think she’s probably another bimbo on the make, or even a paparazzo. I’ll ask the cleaning company to remove her from the rota. Thankfully, she’s their problem, not ours.’

  But Sergio was unwilling to let Kathy Galvin off so easily. When had he ever walked away from a challenge?