Flora's Defiance (10 page)

Her mother’s experience had taught Flora the lesson that it very often was women who took the greatest responsibility for their children and made the biggest sacrifices. Her childhood had been deeply scarred by her quarrelling, ill-suited parents. Although being a single parent was not the lifestyle she had foreseen for herself, she soon convinced herself that she had made the
right
choice in opting to pretty much go it alone with her pregnancy.

A
NGELO
slid lithely out of his limousine and studied the ivy-clad prettiness of Flora’s detached village home. There were three cars parked in the driveway. He frowned, wondering how many guests she had staying and how she was coping.

But then, such matters were none of his business according to Flora, he reflected with a grim light clouding his vivid blue eyes. Over the past two months it had become increasingly plain to him that Flora intended to keep him at a distance where he could neither interfere nor offer his assistance. His phone calls had met with stilted impersonal responses from her that told him virtually nothing. His attempt to pay her a monthly allowance to enable her to take life a little easier had been roundly rejected as well.

Angelo was bewildered by her attitude. Nothing about Flora Bennett added up and Angelo hated mysteries. If the private investigator’s report he had received on Flora and her sister two years ago had been on target, cold hard cash should have paved an easy path to Flora’s heart. She should have been eager to fit in with his plans and reap the generous rewards of pleasing him. That she was not eager or even willing told him that either
the report had got her wrong or she was playing a much more clever game of deception than he had so far had cause to suspect. Yet would a materialistic woman turn down the opportunity to move in with a billionaire and live in the lap of luxury? And why would she refuse his financial help? Or was that a ruse to come back later through the offices of a court of law and sue him for a final settlement amounting to many, many thousands of pounds? That was perfectly possible, he acknowledged grimly.

His suspicions about Flora’s motives did not make it any easier for him to handle the mother of his future child. Furthermore, for the first time in his adult life, Angelo was dealing with a tricky relationship with a woman instead of turning his back and walking away, deeming her too much trouble to be worthy of his time and patience. He was not enjoying the process either, for her every rebuff infuriated him.

Indeed the problems created by Flora’s continuing hostility were matched by the widespread disruption of Angelo’s once regimented and perfectly composed mind. Angelo was uneasy with the unfamiliar feelings of frustration and anger regularly assailing him. His concentration was no longer what it was, nor was his famously single-minded focus zeroed in on business goals alone. All of a sudden, he was suffering from moments of abstraction. He was also noticing every pregnant woman and every redhead in his vicinity. He was even more disturbed by the fact that he had not slept with a single woman since Flora. Celibacy agreed with Angelo even less than mental turmoil. Sex had always been his foolproof means of unwinding from
his demanding schedule. Sex had never been any more complicated for him than a good workout at the gym. But Angelo had recently become worryingly impervious to the sexually sophisticated women who had once entertained him most effectively outside working hours. His highly active libido had taken a hike and he had no idea why or what to do about it.

He hit Flora’s doorbell, knowing in advance that his uninvited visit would be as welcome as a snow shower in summer. In an unusually disorganised and last minute decision the night before, Angelo had reached the end of his patience and he had flown over to England too late at night even to call Flora. The door of her home was opened by a stranger and the hall was confusingly awash with more strangers. He counted three middleaged couples, presumably Flora’s current boarders.

‘Where’s Flora? ‘ he asked.

‘Upstairs in the bathroom … she’s not well,’ one of the women informed him. ‘We’re getting ready to leave.’

’Without
our breakfast,’ a disgruntled older man pronounced.

‘If you’ll give me a few minutes to check on Flora, I’ll sort that out for you,’ Angelo declared, his concern at the news that Flora was unwell prompting him to take the stairs two at a time. It took him a minute or two to establish which door led to the bathroom.

That achieved, he rapped loudly on the solid wood. ‘Flora? It’s Angelo. Are you all right?’ he asked urgently.

Flora was very far from being all right. White and shaking, she clung to the edge of the sink to steady her wobbly lower limbs. She felt like death warmed up and
her brain was woozy, thoughts coming only slowly. Why on earth had Angelo come to see her again? She felt too sick to protest as she usually would have done. Sickness had a way of making one concentrate only on the immediate. In any case, Angelo was so determined that protest would have been a waste of time and energy. Like a steamroller chugging unstoppably downhill Angelo just kept on rolling no matter what she said or did.

Flora opened the door a crack and clung to the handle for support. Angelo pressed the door wider open and she stepped back awkwardly. She was so much more colourful and somehow
real
than other women, he thought helplessly, immediately admiring the flame colour of her bright hair against her creamy skin and the sheer leggy elegance of her tall, slender figure. And his libido, which had steadfastly refused to react to a single one of the nubile models whose numbers were stored in his mobile phone, suddenly took high-voltage flight. That surge of intense sexual arousal froze Angelo in place and the source of it so much took him aback that he then viewed Flora with instantly cooler and more critical eyes. Just as quickly he saw the change in her and consternation took hold of him instead.

‘I’m fine … I’m just suffering from nausea,’ she told him wryly. ‘Welcome to the reality of being pregnant.’

But Angelo was shocked by her shadowed eyes and pallor and he recognised from the sharpness of her cheekbones and the loose fit of her clothing that she had lost a good deal of weight since he had last seen her.
’Dios mio,
you look terrible,’ he breathed, backtracking from his opinion a mere sixty seconds earlier when just
a welcome glimpse of her warm familiar colouring had instantly convinced him that she looked terrific.

Pain pierced Flora as she still secretly cherished the memory of him calling her beautiful. This revised opinion hit her hard, even though she was aware that she looked less than her best in jeans and a shirt with not even a dash of make-up to brighten her up. Angelo, on the other hand, looked absolutely effortlessly gorgeous. The breeze had tousled his thick black cropped hair and scored colour along the splendid line of his high cheekbones, accentuating his superb bone structure. Even this early in the day his golden skin was beginning to shadow with dark stubble across his stubborn jaw line and round his wide sensual mouth. He was more casually dressed than she was accustomed to seeing him in jeans and a fine expensive sweater worn with a very masculine jacket. Her mouth running dry, she was quite overpowered by his magnetic presence for a couple of minutes.

‘You should lie down for a while,’ Angelo instructed.

‘I can’t,’ Flora groaned. ‘I have guests waiting for their breakfast downstairs …’ And she was dreading the prospect, having already learned that certain cooking smells could make her feel horribly nauseous.

‘I will deal with them. Go to your bed,’ Angelo urged with impressive assurance.

Flora had never seen Angelo as a guy likely to be handy in the kitchen and she hovered uncertainly.
’But …:

‘Go and lie down,’ he said again, stepping to one side to thrust open the door to the room he had already identified as hers.

The sight of her comfortable bed was all the pressure Flora needed at that moment and she crossed the corridor to gratefully collapse in a heap on top of the duvet. Her weary limbs were heavy as iron. She was so tired, indeed she was convinced that she had never been so tired in her whole life. The bouts of constant sickness that seized hold of her at all times of day and the exhaustion of continually feeling unwell had conquered her stubborn spirit as nothing else could have done.

Angelo closed the door on her and rang the country hotel he had checked into late the night before. Within minutes he was ushering Flora’s paying guests out to his limousine and instructing his driver to take them to the hotel for their breakfast. Everybody more than happy with that new arrangement, he returned to Flora and explained what he had done.

Flora studied him with thoughtful green eyes, reluctantly impressed by his adroit handling of the situation. She would have enjoyed seeing him wielding a frying pan in her kitchen, but the shrewd organisational and negotiating skills he had just displayed were in all probability basic van Zaal business traits.

‘I appreciate that I know very little about pregnant women,’ Angelo said with enormous tact, keeping quiet about his current bedside reading, which would in fact have proved that he knew much more about being pregnant than Flora did. ‘And naturally I’ve heard of morning sickness, but I really don’t think it’s normal for you to be feeling this ill. You should see a doctor.’

‘I already have,’ Flora sighed wearily, turning over and tucking her hand below her cheek as she made herself as comfortable as possible. ‘My GP says that some
women suffer like this and that hopefully it will slacken off soon.’

‘I would still like you to agree to see Natalie again,’ Angelo imparted.

Already drifting off to sleep, Flora gave him a rare nod of assent, pathetically willing to consult anyone who might have the power to make her condition a little more bearable. Right at that moment, she felt as though her pregnancy had taken over her entire life, sapping the energy and confidence that she had always taken for granted.

His big powerful frame alive with brooding tension, Angelo watched her sleep, his lean dark features set in tough lines and his jaw at an aggressive angle. He lifted a throw lying folded on a chair and shook it out to cover her up. Then he stepped out again to contact Natalie on his mobile phone and share his concerns. Nothing his friend said soothed his apprehension on Flora’s behalf.

Flora wakened when Angelo touched her shoulder and gazed straight up into azure-blue eyes surrounded by swirling ebony lashes. Her heart skipped a whole beat inside her chest. ‘How long have I been asleep?’

‘About two hours. I’m only waking you now because Natalie wants to see you this afternoon,’ he explained.

‘Have I got time for a shower?’ Flora sat up very slowly, too well aware that sudden movements were likely to bring on dizziness and nausea.

Freshening up with a shower lifted Flora’s spirits. As she got dressed she reflected that, although she had lost weight in recent weeks, her shape had changed and not for the better. With her trousers already refusing
to button at her waist, she donned recent purchases, a skirt with a partially elasticated waist and a top in a larger size than she usually wore. Even though it was early in her pregnancy, her breasts had already swelled by a couple of cup sizes and her waist seemed to be vanishing even faster. Reflecting on those unwelcome alterations to her body, Flora grimaced, deciding that what attraction she had possessed was now very much on the wane. Praying that the sickness would remain at bay, she joined Angelo in the limousine.

‘Why were you trying to cater to so many people without help?’ Angelo asked her then.

A few weeks earlier, Sharon Martin, Flora’s parttime employee, had been diagnosed with cancer and the older woman was currently undergoing treatment. Flora had not managed to find a replacement for Sharon and, reluctant to cancel bookings at short notice, she had contrived as best she could to manage alone.

‘It’s been a struggle,’ she admitted reluctantly.

‘Yet you still found the time to spend several days in Amsterdam with Mariska,’ Angelo remarked.

‘She’s so young. If I don’t make the effort to see Mariska regularly, she’ll forget who I am,’ Flora pointed out ruefully.

Angelo answered a phone call and while he was talking Flora kicked off her shoes and curled up into a comfortable position, resting her cheek down on the cool leather back of the passenger seat. A blink of an eye later she was fast asleep again and he had to shake her awake at the end of their journey.

‘Sorry,’ Flora framed, politely shielding a yawn before finger combing her tumbled coppery hair back
from her brow in some embarrassment. ‘I’ve a lot of sleep to catch up on.’

In the waiting room she watched Angelo, only to redden uncomfortably when she realised that he was watching her. On their previous visit to Dr Ellwood’s surgery, Angelo had very effectively tuned out of the proceedings and done as much business as if he were still at the office. Now his obvious disquiet touched her and stirred her conscience because she knew she had made things difficult when he had tried to stay in touch with her. If he had asked her why she would not have had a ready answer for him, because even she did not fully understand her often hostile attitude to him. What she did know was that when she focused on Angelo van Zaal’s darkly handsome features she felt intensely vulnerable and scared and that was more than sufficient to ensure she stayed away from him and avoided his influence.

Natalie called Flora into her surgery and discussed her symptoms before giving her an examination and a blood test. After that the nurse showed Flora into the small room where the ultrasound scanning machine was kept and helped her get up onto the couch in readiness.

‘Angelo wants to know if he can join us,’ Natalie told her, popping her head round the door.

Startled by that request, Flora started to sit up. ‘Er …’

But Angelo appeared in the brunette’s wake, and to object struck Flora as petty, particularly when she was about to receive her very first view of the baby in whom Angelo appeared to have an equal interest. She lay back down again while Angelo stationed his tall,
powerful frame in a discreet location by the wall, his keen gaze welded to the screen while Natalie talked about what they could hope to see at this stage of Flora’s pregnancy.