Demanding His Hidden Heir
Auteur
Jackie Ashenden
Lezers
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Hoofdstukken
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CHAPTER ONE
ENZO CARDINALI WAS not a man who appreciated parties. They were, in his opinion, nothing more than an excuse for people to waste time talking about trivialities while drinking themselves insensible and generally behaving badly.
He was not a fan of trivialities or bad behaviour either.
He stood in the corner of Henry St George’s lavishly appointed drawing room, watching all the gorgeously attired people in it laugh and bray and talk nonsense to each other, nursing the same tumbler of Scotch he’d been holding for the past hour, impatient and not a little irritable.
The house party he’d been invited to had gone on for what seemed like an eternity and he was done with it. He’d been done with it the moment he’d arrived. His usual state of being, in other words.
He had no tolerance for waiting and, since other people didn’t move at the speed he did, it felt as if waiting was all he did. Which made him constantly irritable.
Dante, his brother, had often told him he needed to cultivate a little patience, but Enzo didn’t see why he should. He hadn’t been put on this earth to make other people comfortable and, if they couldn’t keep up with him, that was their problem. Of course, that then made it his problem and that was the part he didn’t like.
He should have had Dante handle the particular bit of business he was in England for, but at the last minute he’d decided it was too important to let his laid-back brother handle it and so here he was. At a weekend-long house party at St George’s extensive stately home deep in the Cotswolds.
St George was a rich industrialist with deep pockets and a taste for old-fashioned parties, during which he conducted most of his business. A state of affairs with which Enzo was not particularly happy. However, he was putting up with it because St George also owned an island just off the coast of Naples that Enzo was desperate to get his hands on.
So far the party had been useful, in that he was halfway to convincing the old man to sell the island to him, and now all he needed was to close the deal.
Except St George was baulking—for what reason, Enzo didn’t know, nor did he care. What he cared about was having to exert himself and make nice, something that didn’t come easy to him, in order to close the deal this weekend.
Across the room St George’s white head bent as he leaned down to listen to a woman at his elbow. He was apparently a popular host and many of London’s business elite jockeyed to get invites to his house parties.
Enzo shifted restlessly on his feet. Dio, this was interminable. He’d been waiting for an opportune moment to corner St George and present him with a final offer, but the man was constantly surrounded by people.
Dante had warned Enzo to be polite about it, but maybe his brother could go to hell.
Enzo wanted that island, Isola Sacra. It was the closest thing to Monte Santa Maria he’d come across, the tiny island kingdom in the Adriatic that had once been his home before his father, the king, had made one petty power play too many and parliament had decided it had had enough of royalty, declaring itself a republic and politely inviting the royal family to leave. For good.
The Cardinalis had found a place for themselves on mainland Italy, in Milan, but it had never felt like home to Enzo. He’d been fifteen when they’d left Monte Santa Maria and he’d felt rootless ever since.
Once, he’d been heir to a kingdom. Now, he had nothing.
Well, nothing except a multi-billion-dollar property development company, but that wasn’t quite the same.
It was a home he wanted. And, since he could never go back to the one he’d had, he needed to find himself another somewhere else.
The guests in the drawing room swirled, the laughter and noise putting him on edge, making him feel even more restless.
St George was still talking to that woman and Enzo decided that, if he hadn’t finished talking to her in another couple of minutes, he was going to go over there and make St George an offer regardless of politeness. His brother’s advice be damned.
He wasn’t a stateless fifteen-year-old boy cowering in an apartment in Milan any more. He was the CEO of a billion-dollar company with offices in cities around the globe.
He might not have a country, but as far as the business world was concerned he was still a king.
Across the room the door opened suddenly, the movement catching Enzo’s attention, and a small child peered round it, scanning the room with wide eyes.
Enzo frowned. What was a child doing up at this time of night? It was nearly eleven p.m.
The child—a small boy—took a step into the room, looking around uncertainly. He wore blue pyjamas and his black hair was spiked up. There was something familiar about him. Something that Enzo couldn’t quite put his finger on.
The boy had to be St George’s young son—a surprise late-in-life baby, since St George was in his early sixties. He’d married a woman around half his age four years ago and her subsequent pregnancy so soon after the wedding had caused a minor sensation.
Not that Enzo had ever been particularly interested in gossip, and why he remembered it now was anyone’s guess.
But still. There was something about that boy.
The child took another few steps into the room, his eyes wide. They were an unusual colour. Gold. Like new-minted coins.
The familiarity tugged harder at Enzo. There weren’t many people with eyes that colour, not so clear and startling. In fact, he only knew of two: his father and himself. Golden eyes were a Cardinali family trait and in Monte Santa Maria they’d traditionally been a sign of royalty.
Strange that this child should have them too, though obviously a coincidence.
There was another movement by the door and it opened wider this time, another figure standing in the doorway. A woman.
She wasn’t dressed in high-end couture like the other guests, just a simple pair of jeans and a loose dark blue T-shirt. Her hair was piled up on top of her head in a messy bun, and it was as red as a fire against a twilight sky.
The tug of familiarity became a pull, deep and hard.
Her hair lying soft across his chest, a silken rope between his fingers as he’d pulled her towards him. Red as that hot mouth he’d kissed...
The woman scanned the room, giving him a good look at her face. High forehead and a sharp nose, a pointed, determined little chin. Freckles across her equally sharp cheekbones. Freckles that she’d fussed about in the tropical sun. Freckles scattered like gold dust across the luscious curves of her breasts, and he’d kissed every single one...
No. It couldn’t be.
She gave the room another scan and then, as inevitably as the sun rising, her gaze met his and he found himself staring into eyes the colour of storm clouds and ice, a pure, clear grey that belied the passion that burned inside her.
A passion he’d tasted for more hours than he cared to count.
A passion he’d never felt before or since.
A passion that had gone as cold as ashes the morning he’d woken up in the villa to find she’d gone.
Four years ago, on an island in the Caribbean, at his brother’s new resort, he’d met a woman.
A woman with red hair and freckles who’d turned him inside out. Who’d made him so hungry he hadn’t been able to think straight.
Who’d made him forget, just for a couple of days, the constant ache in his heart for what he’d lost.
And who’d left him without even a goodbye.
Her gaze went wide as it met his, blanking with shock, and he knew instantly that, yes, it was her. The red-headed, passionate woman he’d had a two-day fling with four years ago.
He’d tried to forget her. Dio, he’d even convinced himself that he had.
But as she stared at him with those wide grey eyes, and he felt the burn of a sudden physical hunger, he knew that he’d been lying to himself.
He hadn’t forgotten. Not the passion that had consumed them or the sense of homecoming that had come over him when she’d put her arms around him.
Or the fury when he’d woken up two days later, alone. His bed empty. His sheets cold.
The fury hit him again now, a hard punch to his gut, twisting with the hunger to become something so intense and volatile he could hardly breathe through it.
Four years, he’d dreamed of her. Four years, he’d woken up hard and aching, wanting something that all the money in the world couldn’t buy him.
Something that only she had been able to give him.
He hadn’t gone looking for her; he’d been too proud, telling himself that one woman would do as well as any other, but that was a lie and he knew it.
And now here she was, years later and thousands of miles from their island, standing in the doorway of an Englishman’s drawing room and staring at him as if what was happening to him was happening to her too.
What was she doing here? Where had she been?
He’d taken one unconscious step towards her when the child turned around suddenly and said, ‘Mummy.’ And launched himself towards the doorway, running to her and wrapping his arms around her legs.
Enzo stopped dead as another punch of shock hit him.
Mummy.
The woman—Summer, she’d told him her name was—put her hand on the boy’s head, but that smoky-grey gaze remained pinned to Enzo’s. As if she couldn’t look away.
That was St George’s child wrapping his arms around her legs. St George’s child, calling her ‘Mummy’. Which meant...
She’s St George’s wife.
The shock got wider, deeper, spreading out inside him.
It shouldn’t matter who she was. It shouldn’t mean a thing. He shouldn’t care, not after all this time.
He hadn’t wanted to visit Dante’s resort anyway. He’d just lost his first attempt at buying Isola Sacra after someone had bought it from under him, and the very last thing he’d felt like doing was checking up on a potential management issue on Dante’s behalf.
But his brother hadn’t been able to do it himself because of various commitments and Enzo was control-freak enough not to want to leave it to someone else.
He’d hated it the moment he’d got off the plane. There had been something about the dense tropical air and the brilliant blue of the sea that had crawled beneath his skin and unsettled him. Made him remember the land he’d come from and the home he hadn’t been able to forget.
He’d stood underneath the palms, listening to the resort manager catalogue the problems the resort had been having, sweating in his custom-made suit, his hand-made leather shoes full of sand, restless and impatient to be home.
And then he’d seen her, a pale, curvy woman in a bright-red bikini that somehow matched her hair. She was on her way to the pool, a towel around her shoulders and a book in one hand, and she’d glanced at him as she’d walked past. She’d had the body of a fifties pin-up and a mouth made for sin, and it had curved as her gaze had met his. And that in itself had caught him by the throat.
Because people didn’t look him in the eye—they were too afraid of him. But she had. In fact, there had even been a certain amusement in her gaze, as if she hadn’t seen the icy, powerful CEO that everyone else saw. The ruthless king of business he’d turned himself into.
It was as if she’d seen the man he was underneath instead.
It had suddenly made his trousers feel two sizes too tight.
He hadn’t thought twice about breaking off his conversation with the resort manager and following her to the pool.
She’d already settled herself on the lounger and, when he’d approached her, she’d given him a cool look from over the top of her book.
It hadn’t remained cool for long.
Electricity had crackled in the air as their eyes had met and an hour later he’d been in her villa, his suit on the floor along with her bikini.
He’d had her against the wall that first time, fast and hard, no time for niceties. There had only been desperation for them both. She’d gasped as he’d pushed inside her, and she’d felt so hot and tight, her silky thighs wrapped around his waist. Incredible. Her eyes had gone dark as they’d met his, and there had been no fear in them whatsoever. Only wonder. As if she’d never seen anything like him before in her entire life. Nothing had ever turned him on more. And then that wonder had fractured into pleasure as he’d begun to move inside her, driving her against the wall, driving them both into insanity...
Two days they’d had. Two days when he’d touched and tasted every inch of her, when he’d held her in his arms and shared things he’d never shared with another person before; had given her pieces of his soul that he’d never shared with anyone else.
And he’d thought that maybe he’d been mistaken when he’d thought home could be a place. That, maybe, home could be a person too.
Until she’d left him without a word.
No, it shouldn’t matter. She shouldn’t matter.
‘Matilda?’ St George finally ended his conversation with the woman to whom he’d been talking, his craggy face turning puzzled. ‘Is there anything wrong?’
And the redhead—his Summer—finally tore her gaze from his to look at St George. ‘N-no,’ she said in that familiar smoky voice, the one that had turned husky when he’d been deep inside her. Or when his mouth had been between her thighs. Or when his hands had cupped her breasts, her skin silky against his palms. ‘Simon woke up and got out of bed.’ She bent and scooped the little boy up into her arms. ‘I think he wandered in here by mistake.’
Matilda. Her name was Matilda. And she was St George’s wife.
Enzo stood there, frozen, as St George came over to her and bent to the boy in her arms, murmuring something to him. The child turned his head to his father, but for a second looked over St George’s shoulder, his bright golden gaze meeting Enzo’s.
And realisation hit Enzo like a skyscraper falling.
Matilda St George was Summer, the island fling whose ghost had haunted him for four long, lonely years.
And really, even apart from the timing, there was only one way a child could have eyes that colour.
Enzo’s fist tightened on his tumbler and a crack ran down the side of the glass.
That boy wasn’t St George’s.
That boy was his.
Matilda held Simon tightly as Henry murmured to him, her heart beating so fast and so loud she couldn’t hear anything else.
She’d made a mistake. She’d made a terrible mistake.
She’d thought she’d been so clever, making sure she’d avoided him the whole weekend—going on a couple of day trips and then in the evenings keeping both Simon and herself to the upper levels of the house away from the guests.
There had only been tonight to get through and she’d been congratulating herself on how well that had worked out, Simon in bed early and herself curled up in bed too, watching a movie and eating ice-cream.
Forgetting all about the one guest she must avoid at all costs.
And then Simon had woken up and, because he liked people very much, the sounds coming from the drawing room had been irresistible.
Too concerned with finding her son, Matilda hadn’t noticed the man in the corner at first. She’d given the room a quick scan, spotted nothing and had taken a step further into it before she’d recognised the crackle of electricity that had suddenly hummed over her skin.
A horribly familiar electricity.
So she’d stopped. And she’d looked. And there he’d been, standing near the sofa. So impossible to miss, she wondered how she hadn’t seen him the first time.
Impossibly tall, impossibly broad. Radiating the same fierce, kinetic energy she remembered from years ago, all impatience, restlessness and heat.
He was dressed in a perfectly tailored suit of dark charcoal and his ink-black hair was cut ruthlessly short, highlighting those aristocratic cheekbones and the strong, sharp line of his jaw, the long blade of his nose and the carved sensuality of his mouth. A beautiful face, intensely compelling. Predatory, fierce and utterly unforgettable.
But it was his eyes that had caught her, held her. Making her freeze in place right where she’d stood.
Bright, burning gold. Like the tropical sun on an island years ago and full of the same searing heat.
Now a shudder coursed through her, a fire inside her that had long been cold suddenly bursting into flame. And, helplessly, she found herself glancing at him again, just to be sure it was actually him. As if the instant response of her body hadn’t been enough.
But his attention wasn’t on her this time. He was looking at Simon. And she had one second to think that perhaps he wouldn’t notice the colour of her son’s eyes, then his gaze lifted to hers once more.
And the weight of his fury descended on her.
He knows.
Henry was still talking but Matilda had long since ceased to listen. The fight or flight response had kicked in and all she could think about was getting out of the drawing room and away from the man she could still feel staring at her.
The man with whom she’d spent two intoxicating days.
The man from whom she’d run without even a goodbye.
The man who’d fathered the boy she held in her arms.
She felt strangely hot and cold at the same time, a bit sick too, and it was all she could do not to jerk away from Henry and run from the room there and then. But he wasn’t one for public fusses so she stayed until he’d soothed Simon. Then, before he could do anything else, such as introduce her to his guests, she took her son and fled.
Back upstairs, Matilda tried to calm her frantically beating heart and attempted not to think about the man and the fury in his golden eyes. About how he’d taken a step towards her and how he’d stopped dead as Simon had run to her.
And most especially she tried not to think about that flare of heat deep inside her the moment his gaze had met hers, or the ache that had gripped her, an ache she’d tried all these years to forget in an attempt to put it behind her.
A futile attempt, as it turned out.
She put Simon back into his bed and tucked him in, singing him one of the lullabies he used to like as a baby. Then she stroked his back until he drifted off.
After making sure he was definitely asleep this time, Matilda moved out of his room and shut the door gently. Then she leaned her back against the wall in the hallway outside, put her shaking hands over her face and quietly allowed herself to freak out.
She’d seen the guest list, obviously, had noticed his name, and she’d idly asked Henry why he’d invited some Italian billionaire to the party. Because the man wanted to buy some island that Henry owned, or something to that effect. Matilda hadn’t really been listening.
She’d still been struggling with her shock at seeing his name on the list.
Enzo Cardinali. Billionaire property developer and heir to a kingdom that no longer existed. A cold, ruthless, driven businessman who, along with his brother Dante, had taken Cardinal Construction, a small construction start-up, and turned it into Cardinal Enterprises, a huge multi-national that had expanded beyond building houses and into property development as well as various other industries. Hotels. Real estate. Manufacturing. Technology.
He was well known in the kind of Fortune 500 circles Henry also moved in, and had a reputation for being an icy force of nature, both feared and respected for the ruthless way he did business. He was a shark, a cold-blooded predator through and through—or at least, that was what the articles she’d read about him all said.
Not that she’d read a lot of articles. But she did like to keep up with what he was doing every now and then. It always paid to know the direction from which any potential threats might come.
Except he hadn’t been a threat four years ago on that island. And he’d been neither cold-blooded or ruthless.
He’d burned like the sun and she, utterly defenceless against a man like him, had burned along with him.
She gave a little moan, the wall pressing hard against her back, the urge simply to slide down it and sit on the expensive Turkish runner that covered the floor almost overwhelming.
Why had she thought it wouldn’t be a problem? Why had she believed that she could easily avoid him? Why hadn’t she taken Simon and gone away to visit her aunt and uncle for the weekend? Or gone to London, or basically gone anywhere else?
But there wasn’t any point thinking about the whys and what ifs. She hadn’t gone anywhere. She’d stayed and he’d seen her. And, worse, he’d seen Simon.
He knows.
Of course he did. There was no disguising the colour of her son’s eyes. So different. So unique. So beautiful.
A family trait, or so Enzo had told her one night as they’d lain curled up on the beach in each other’s arms looking at the stars, and he’d told her about the island kingdom to which he’d once been heir.
There had been a warmth to him that, after living with her emotionally distant aunt and uncle, had felt like walking into summer after long years of winter. It had been irresistible to her, so intensely attractive, she’d given herself to him without thought.
She’d been on that island for one last holiday before her official engagement, a gift from Henry, who’d known all along that she hadn’t wanted to marry him but who’d been trying to make it easier for her. Not that she’d known it at the time. All she’d understood was that, if she didn’t marry Henry, her aunt and uncle would lose their beautiful stately home deep in the Devonshire countryside.
It had been a very English, almost mediaeval arrangement.
After the death of her parents when she’d been seven, she’d been taken in by her childless uncle and aunt, and although they’d distantly been kind to her she’d never managed to get rid of the feeling that she was only there on sufferance. That they’d been forced to take her.
So she’d tried to make herself useful. Tried to be no bother. Her uncle didn’t like fusses or distractions, so she’d kept herself quiet and tried to behave herself, not put a foot out of line. She hadn’t wanted them to get rid of her or regret giving her a home.
And it had all worked very well.
So well that, when her aunt and uncle had been refused more money by the bank for the upkeep of their house and their family friend Henry St George had stepped in, offering money in return for marriage to Matilda, they’d naturally assumed she’d agree.
And she had. Because they’d taken her in, had given her a home and sacrificed the later years of their lives bringing her up. Marrying Henry St George so they could keep their house had seemed a small sacrifice to make in return.
That she actually hadn’t wanted to marry Henry, she’d kept quiet about. He was her aunt and uncle’s age and, even though he was a nice enough man, she hadn’t been in love with him. She hadn’t been even attracted to him. He’d told her that he didn’t require sex in the marriage, that all he wanted was companionship in his later years, yet Matilda had still been apprehensive about it.
So when Henry had offered her a holiday by herself at a Caribbean resort before the engagement—a kind of last hurrah as a single woman—she’d decided to take it as a treat for herself.
And that was when she’d met him.
Enzo.
He’d been talking to the resort manager as she’d been on her way to the pool, dressed—rather improbably, given the fact that they were on a tropical island—in a three-piece suit.
He should have looked ridiculous, standing there in the hot sun dressed in layers of fine Italian wool. But he hadn’t. He’d looked dark, commanding and fierce. And utterly, devastatingly, gorgeous.
She’d never bothered much with men, preferring to stick to her studies at school, and then her English degree at university, but Enzo Cardinali had been a man completely outside her experience.
She hadn’t been able to take her eyes off him.
And then he’d looked at her, that intense, amber gaze slamming into hers, stealing her breath, stealing her thought.
She’d led a fairly sheltered life since she’d gone to live with her aunt and uncle, keeping to the straight and narrow, never having put a foot wrong. But there was something about this man that had reached right down inside her and woken a part of herself that she’d put on ice the day her parents had died.
An angry, hot, rebellious part.
He’d looked furious, standing there in the sun, and in the heated gold of his eyes she’d seen a challenge. So she’d answered it.
She’d smiled and arched an eyebrow, met him stare for stare as she’d walked past, every cell of her being suddenly alive and aware, thrilled at her own daring.
It had been like poking a tiger in a cage, safe in the knowledge that she wouldn’t get eaten because of the bars, yet still having the wild adrenaline rush of baiting such a dangerous creature.
But she hadn’t thought he’d bother following her until he’d suddenly appeared in the pool area. Every eye in the place had been drawn to his electric presence as he’d strode towards her lounger. But he’d ignored them all.
His focus had been entirely on her.
And the good girl she’d been since her parents’ death had burned to ash right there and then.
Back at the villa, he’d kissed her as soon as the door had closed, his mouth hot, demanding and desperate. She’d been overwhelmed. The only kisses she’d ever had had been from one shy boy back in school at a dance and they’d been nothing—nothing—compared to the hard mastery of Enzo’s mouth.
He’d pushed her against the wall and she’d let him, her heartbeat like a drum in her head, hoping like hell he wouldn’t notice her inexperience and leave, because more than anything she didn’t want him to go.
But he’d given no sign of noticing anything but the chemistry burning out of control between them.
He’d ripped the bikini from her body, leaving her no time for shyness or nerves. No time for second guessing. And then his large, warm hands had been on her, cupping her bare breasts, teasing her nipples with his thumbs...
Matilda gave another soft groan, pressing her hands harder against her closed lids, the memory in her head replaying no matter how much she didn’t want it to.
All she’d been able to hear was her own frantic breathing and the soft gasp that had escaped her as his hand had slid lower, down between her thighs to where she’d been aching and wet. His fingers had glided over her slick flesh, sending sharp, electric bolts of pleasure through her, making her shudder and arch against the wall.
No one had ever touched her there before, not in her entire life, and she hadn’t been able to believe she was letting a man she’d only just met do it then. But she had. And it had felt illicit, thrilling and so unbelievably good...
She let out a sharp breath, forcing the memories away and ignoring the subtle throb between her thighs.
No, she couldn’t think of that. The woman she’d been on that island wasn’t her any more, and she didn’t want to be that woman anyway. Not these days. Not now she was a mother with responsibilities.
When she’d returned to England, she’d worked hard to fit herself back into the good-girl box. She’d married Henry like she’d promised she would and put her studies on hold so she could care for Simon. It hadn’t been so bad.
She hadn’t found out she’d was pregnant until four months into her marriage, but luckily by then she’d realised that Henry truly had meant it when he’d said that he only wanted friendship. He’d been good to her, drying her tears when she’d confessed about her pregnancy, and deciding to save them both a scandal by claiming Simon as his own. He’d never asked for the name of Simon’s father and she’d never volunteered it.
He’d been a good man and a kind husband.
But she really, really wished that he hadn’t invited Enzo Cardinali to his stupid house party.
She swallowed and let some of the tension bleed out of her. God, what a mess. Still, it wasn’t all bad. The party ended tonight and tomorrow everyone would be gone, including Enzo, with any luck.
She’d never have to see or think about him again.
You really think he’s going to let Simon go now he knows?
Dread rose inside her because she knew the answer to that.
Of course he wouldn’t.
The quality of the silence changed abruptly in the hallway, and all the hairs on the back of her neck rose.
Slowly, carefully, her heartbeat going double-time, Matilda lowered her hands from her face.
And found Enzo Cardinali standing right in front of her.
‘Buono notte, Mrs St George,’ he said in that deep voice she knew so well, the one that had once been full of heat and yet now was so cold. ‘I think you and I need to have a little chat.’
