Flora's Defiance (17 page)

Unlike her, Angelo was still fully dressed, although he now sported a pair of faded jeans with his ruffled
white dress shirt and had removed his jacket and tie. Her cheeks reddened because she knew her hair was as tousled as a bird’s nest. She indicated the salad sandwich she was in the midst of putting together. ‘I should have had supper,’ she admitted wryly.

‘I know better than to say, “I told you so”,’ Angelo drawled, lounging back against the massive scrubbed pine kitchen table with his lean powerful thighs spread in a relaxed attitude.

‘That doesn’t always stop people saying it. Are you hungry?’

‘Thanks, but I ate earlier. I stayed up to do some work.’

‘Sometimes the babies move around so much they wake me up. I don’t sleep very well,’ Flora admitted, sinking down into Therese’s rocking chair by the stove to eat her sandwich. ‘I’ve been thinking too.’

‘What about? ‘ Angelo prompted.

Flora made herself withstand the appeal of the sandwich for another moment and breathed in. ‘I think it’s time I told you about that tribunal case.’

Watching her eat, Angelo frowned, a wary light in his bright blue eyes that immediately put Flora on the defensive. ‘You can believe or disbelieve me—that’s your choice,’ she added with more than a hint of challenge.

‘Naturally I would like to hear your side of the story.’

A little of her discomfiture ebbed and she began to tell him about the wonderfully well-paid job she had won within weeks of gaining her business degree from a top university.

‘But why didn’t you complain the instant your boss
began harassing you?’ Angelo was quick to enquire with a frown.

‘At first I was worried that I was being over-sensitive and misinterpreting his signals. I think a lot of women feel like that in an all-male work environment when there’s a lot of pressure not to make a fuss about anything,’ she confided tautly. ‘I was trying very hard to fit in and I didn’t want to get a name for being difficult. When Henshall’s approaches became more blatant I started worrying about how a complaint about him sexually harassing me—and he was
very
highly thought of in the company—would affect my career.’

Angelo was frowning. ‘That is not how you should have felt.’

‘I’m not talking ideals here … I’m talking about what it was like on the ground. Many of the people I was at university with hadn’t even found jobs. I knew I’d been given a terrific opportunity and I was desperate not to screw it up.’

‘It was your boss who was screwing it up, not you. If what you’re telling me is true, how on earth did you lose the case?’

Flora grimaced. ‘Two things ensured that I lost that tribunal case. The other woman making a complaint with me against Henshall got cold feet and withdrew it, so I was left without supporting evidence. The second was Henshall’s claim that I’d been having an affair with him and it had turned sour because he’d stayed with his wife and refused to give me that bonus.’ Flora’s oval face was pale and strained. ‘That provided the sleaze angle that attracted the attention of the tabloid newspapers and resulted in some very nasty headlines on my account.
Many people chose to believe Henshall’s story, because nobody could believe that a married man would own up to an affair when there hadn’t been one—’

‘Why do you think he pretended that you and he had had an affair?’ Angelo asked levelly.

‘Because he was afraid he would lose his job if I was able to prove that he was a sex-pest. He earned a huge salary, so lying and striving to discredit me by blackening my reputation made sense from his point of view. His wife supported his appearances at the tribunal every day for the same reasons. He’d had at least half a dozen work affairs and she must have known what he was like.’

‘Your engagement broke up around the same time,’ Angelo recalled.

‘After the newspapers got involved, Peter and his family felt that being associated with me was too much of an embarrassment. But I did get that wretched bonus in the end,’ she completed ruefully.

Angelo could not hide his surprise on that score. ‘You
did?’

‘I had earned it fair and square on performance and the company knew it and paid up, but only after the publicity had died down. I still have it in the bank. untouched,’ Flora admitted.

‘Not much of a consolation in the circumstances, I imagine,’ Angelo remarked, helping her upright as she began to rise slowly from the chair.

‘It wasn’t,’ she agreed.

‘I’ll see you up to bed,’ Angelo murmured.

Flora buttoned her lips on an immediate urge to tell him that she would manage fine on her own. Fiery
independence was all very well but keeping Angelo at arm’s length was no longer what she wanted. As he drew close a whiff of the exclusive citrus-based cologne he used wafted over her and unleashed an intimate tide of images. She remembered the hot passion of that wide sensual mouth on hers, the sure tantalising touch of those lean brown hands, and a knot of pure sexual tension tightened between her legs. Distracted by her embarrassing thoughts, she tripped over her feet in her haste to enter her bedroom and Angelo closed his arms round her from behind to steady her.

‘Take your time,’ he urged softly.

But there was hardly any time left for them to be together, she thought painfully. She knew that her obstetrician was wavering on the brink of instructing her to take bed rest for the remainder of her pregnancy. Once the freedom to move around was taken from her, she would be even more isolated and separate from Angelo than she already was.

Angelo slid her robe off her shoulders with an ease that reminded her just how at home he was with a woman in a bedroom and her cheeks burned. As jumpy as the proverbial cat on hot bricks, she lay down on the bed and as he began to move away she found herself reaching for his hand in a movement that took her as much by surprise as it appeared to take him. He swung back, his dark lashed gaze positively welded to the sight of her hand on his, the tension in his lean sculpted features palpable. ‘Don’t go.’ she framed without even being aware that the plea was brimming on her lips. ‘Yet,’ she threw in stilted addition.

Angelo glanced at her. His brilliant blue eyes had a
crystalline glitter behind his lashes and he settled his long powerful body down on the edge of the bed. ‘Are you feeling all right?’

Her teeth gritted. She had that familiar feeling of inadequacy she often got in his radius of late: a near overpowering urge to sob and scream in frustration. She asked him to stay with her and the only reason he could come up with was that she might be ill or in the grip of her nerves. Of course, she was hardly a beguilingly sexy proposition just at present, she reasoned ruefully, striving to be fair to him.

‘I’m all … r-right,’ she started to say, only a kick from one of the babies stole her breath and made her stammer. ‘Just a kick,’ she explained, pressing the heel of her hand against her stomach.

‘Would you mind?’ His interest clearly caught, Angelo rested his palm down very close to hers, evidently in the hope of feeling one of the babies move again.

‘Of course I don’t mind,’ Flora lied because, in truth, she was now even closer to sobbing in frustration. Lying very still, she stared down at the rising mound of her stomach and wondered what on earth she had been playing at in even dreaming of acting the temptress. Once again the triplets had effortlessly contrived to take centre stage.

As Angelo felt a baby kick a look of wonderment transformed his lean, darkly handsome features. She saw his pleasure and felt mean for minding that she was simply a human incubator for the babies Angelo could hardly wait for her to have. Had she tried, she could not have found a keener father-to-be. It was a wonder he
hadn’t got married years ago and already fathered a little tribe of offspring, she thought ruefully. Of course, no doubt he had learned the lesson of being cautious when his father had got badly burned in his rushed second marriage. Furthermore, there was no denying the fact that Angelo valued his freedom and had fought to preserve it from the outset of their acquaintance. Had he felt differently about the mysterious Katja, whom Bregitta liked to hold up as an unassailable rival? Flora only wished that she had not chosen to overlook his love of his freedom at the outset of their relationship, for caution might have saved her from heartbreak.

‘You’re amazing,’ Angelo murmured in a tone of husky admiration, looking right down into her eyes with those dazzlingly blue eyes that made her mouth run dry and her shameless heart thunder in her ears.

She wanted so badly to touch him that she had to curl her fingers into her palm to stop herself from stretching out her fingers. Her breathing grew shallower and more audible, her breasts swelling until the tender tips were prominent while heat and moisture pooled in her pelvis. He held her gaze and the atmosphere buzzed with electric tension. For several taut moments she was unable to reason because she was wholly in the control of her rebellious hormones and the hunger he could ignite.

Angelo removed his hand from her stomach and tugged up the linen sheet to cover her. ‘It’s late. I mustn’t keep you awake,’ he said with precision, his voice deep and rough-edged, and he straightened and switched out the bedside light. ‘Don’t forget that you have an appointment with the obstetrician tomorrow afternoon.’

Moonlight was spilling welcome clarity round the
edges of the curtains. Her heart in her mouth, Flora watched Angelo walk to the door and her sense of mortification was so intense she could think of nothing to say in return. What had she thought or even hoped? That he might kiss her? Show some hint of sexual interest or even regret at the distance between them? What a foolish dream that was to cherish when she was about as fanciable as a stuffed turkey!

Tears stung Flora’s wide open eyes in a hot burning surge and inched slowly down her cheeks. She blinked furiously and one of the babies kicked and she just burst out crying then, pushing her face into the pillow to muffle the noise that she was making while reflecting that she would look even worse in the morning with reddened swollen eyes.

When she awoke late the following morning after a restless night, it was to the beep and flash of a text on her phone and she stretched out a drowsy hand to lift it from the bedside table. Once she realised with astonishment that the text was actually from her former fiancé, Peter Davies, she sat up in surprise and curiosity to read it immediately. Having bumped into a mutual friend, Peter texted that he was shocked at the news that Julie had died and that Flora was currently living in Amsterdam with her niece. Flora was equally taken aback to learn, when she responded, that Peter now worked for a Rotterdam-based shipping company in London, was currently in the Netherlands at a conference and was keen to meet up with her before he returned home.

Consumed by curiosity over why he should have chosen to contact her after so long, Flora discovered
that Peter would be heading back to London that very evening and she agreed to meet him for coffee before he left for the airport.

A
NGELO
accompanied Flora to her appointment with the obstetrician. Her face fell when the doctor told her that he thought she would benefit from bed rest for what remained of her pregnancy.

‘You’re doing very well but, at this stage, every extra day that your triplets remain unborn is another day for them to develop into bigger and healthier babies,’ Mr Wintershoven pointed out with sympathy. ‘I would have advised you to come into hospital now, but with the care Mr van Zaal is able to provide you can safely remain at home.’

‘It’ll be so boring lying there,’ Flora sighed as she and Angelo left the exclusive hospital where Mr Wintershoven had his consulting rooms. She felt guilty for even voicing that complaint because she knew that the obstetrician’s advice was sensible for a woman in her condition.

Angelo looked down at her, blue eyes bright as sapphires in his lean bronzed face. ‘I will keep you entertained. We’ll go from here straight to your favourite bookshop and we’ll buy films as well.’

‘I can’t—I meant to tell you earlier but I forgot to mention it.
I’m meeting someone this afternoon,’ Flora told him.

‘Who?’ Angelo enquired baldly.

Slight colour tinged her cheeks. ‘Peter texted me. Apparently he was attending a conference in Rotterdam this week and we’re going to meet for coffee before he travels home.’

’Peter?
‘ Angelo repeated in a startled undertone that made her glance up at him and notice the tautness of his strong jaw line. ‘Peter Davies? Your ex-fiancé? He was in Rotterdam this week?’

Flora smiled. ‘Yes, he’s an accountant with a shipping company that has its head office based there. Isn’t that an amazing coincidence?’

‘It is. I wasn’t aware that you were still in contact with him.’

‘I wasn’t. Once I left London we lost touch with each other. He texted me right out of the blue after running into a mutual friend who told him about Julie’s death,’ Flora told him with a grimace.

Angelo was standing very still by the limousine. ‘Of course, he would have known your sister.’

‘Yes, but to be truthful they never got on that well,’ Flora recalled wryly; Peter had resented the time and attention she gave her sister.

Angelo watched her climb into the car and smooth her trousers over her knees. ‘I’ll come with you.’

Flora gave him a startled look. ‘Why would you do that?’

Angelo compressed his handsome mouth into a line, a tiny muscle tugging at the corner of his perfectly moulded masculine lips. ‘I don’t like you going
anywhere alone at present. I would be happier if I went with you.’

‘That’s ridiculous. All I’ll be doing is walking into a coffee shop to sit down and then coming back out again when I’m finished,’ Flora pointed out drily.

‘I’d still prefer to accompany you,’ Angelo told her stubbornly, evidently impervious to gentle courteous hints.

‘Well, you
can’t
come! You won’t be welcome,’ Flora told him bluntly. ‘Peter and I couldn’t discuss anything personal if we wanted to with you present.’

Clearly far from reassured by that statement, Angelo stared broodingly down into her resolute face. ‘You really do want to meet up with him, don’t you? ‘