Flora's Defiance (18 page)

Flora nodded unembarrassed affirmation. Curiosity motivated her more than any other reason, but she didn’t see why she should share that fact with Angelo. After all, what was it to him if she met up with her ex-fiancé for a friendly coffee and a chat? Hadn’t he enjoyed complete freedom to see other women for months on end? And difficult and painful though it had been to remain silent and not interfere in his life, Flora had not once weakened in her stance, or asked him a single nosy question.

The conversation over, she emerged from the limo outside the designated coffee shop and, uneasily aware of Angelo’s annoyance at the novel sensation of having his wishes utterly ignored, Flora gave him a warm reassuring smile. But his brilliant eyes remained grim and his handsome mouth and strong jaw line stayed rigid. Feeling like a ship in full sail in the blue maternity top she wore, Flora headed into the café.

Peter was already there waiting for her. Although she immediately recognised him, she also noticed that his hairline had begun to recede and he had put on weight. The instant he saw her he leapt to his feet and began telling her how sorry he had been to hear about what had happened to her sister.

‘I knew you would be very upset. You and Julie were so close,’ Peter declared. ‘And when I heard about it and found out you were living in Amsterdam, I just
had
to see you! The way we parted is still on my conscience.’

‘It’s a long time ago now,’ Flora commented mildly, relieved to discover that even the sight of a wedding ring on Peter’s rather podgy hand didn’t move her to regret the past in the slightest.

As Flora turned to choose her seat Peter’s attention dropped to her bump and he looked at her in flagrant surprise. ‘You’re pregnant? ‘

Flora could not help laughing at his expression. ‘Why not?’

‘You’re not married.’ Peter dropped his voice to make that comment as if afraid others might be embarrassed by that statement of fact.

‘And you are. We’ve both changed and moved on,’ Flora declared comfortably, pausing to order her coffee. ‘When did you get married?’

Peter turned brick-red. ‘A few months after we split up,’ he admitted. ‘Her name’s Sandy; we worked together.’

Flora smiled. ‘And yet you never mentioned her to me.’

‘I know. I felt very guilty about keeping quiet but what would have been the point of telling you?’

‘If I’d known there was someone else, I wouldn’t have felt our broken engagement was my fault,’ Flora responded with wry assurance. ‘I felt guilty about all the bad publicity my tribunal case had attracted and the effect it had on you and your family.’

Peter winced. ‘I was the one in the wrong, Flora. I’m sorry. I didn’t have the courage to tell you how I really felt and I used that tribunal fiasco as an excuse to break off the engagement. I’ll always be ashamed of that.’

‘Never mind,’ Flora said generously and she sipped tranquilly at her coffee.

‘I let you down and I’ll always regret that but we weren’t right together. I felt more like your brother than your boyfriend,’ Peter confided with a look of discomfiture. ‘Somewhere along the line we lost that essential spark and I handled it very clumsily.’

It was as though a little cloud had cleared away from Flora’s view of the past. She saw the truth of what he had just said. Their relationship had been based more on friendship than passion and, as time had gone on, the attraction between them had waned rather than deepened. Peter had first recognised the problem because he was attracted to Sandy, whom she also noted he had wasted little time in marrying. She wished he had been more honest because she did not think she would have felt quite as rejected had Peter simply admitted that he had fallen for another woman.

‘We weren’t suited,’ she told him, striving not to wonder if too much exposure to her was a turn-off for men in general. Was that what was amiss with Angelo?
Was he indifferent to her now? Had familiarity while she lived in the same household simply led to contempt?

‘You were always too headstrong and ambitious for me.’ Peter shook his head. ‘Sandy makes me feel good about myself—’

‘Let’s leave it there,’ Flora advised drily before he could make any more less than tactful comparisons.

Peter asked her about the father of her children and confided that he was already the father of a year-old son. She enjoyed his surprise when she mentioned her triplets and thirty or so minutes wound up pleasantly enough before they went their separate ways. She travelled back to Angelo’s mansion in a taxi and wondered why she had beaten herself up over Peter’s defection for so long. By the time they had left university they had outgrown each other and become more of a habit than a couple in love, but she had been so bound up in her challenging new job that she had failed to appreciate that truth.

The baby bag already sitting packed in the hall reminded Flora that it was the weekend and time to head to Huis van Zaal again. She hoped that Angelo was not expecting her to take to her bed that very day and stay on in Amsterdam because she loved the relaxing pace of the weekends. If Angelo was free to come down to his country house, business was never allowed to act as a distraction within those ancient walls. But sadness touched her too, for although the weather was still bright and sunny the cooler temperatures of autumn were already in the air and now Angelo was a less frequent visitor to his country home.

‘Where’s Angelo?’ she asked Anke in the nursery.

‘I think he went to see Katja so he shouldn’t be too long,’
the nanny informed her cheerfully as Mariska toddled over to Flora to show off the new dress she was wearing. A happy confident child, Flora’s niece seemed to have suffered no lasting harm from her less-than-ideal early months with her troubled parents.

And there and then, Flora almost asked Anke who Katja was, because she knew the young nanny would satisfy her curiosity without making a production out of it. But it also occurred to her that Bregitta had deliberately made a point of twice mentioning Katja, which very likely meant that there was nothing at all questionable in the relationship. Katja might well be ninety-five years old and perfectly respectable. Bregitta, after all, enjoyed making Flora feel insecure and would have been even happier to know that she had contrived to cause trouble between Angelo and the mother of his unborn children.

An hour later Flora was paying lip service to bed rest by lying on a padded lounger enjoying a glass of home-made lemonade while she basked in the early autumn sunshine. Mariska and Skipper were happily engaged in chasing the same ball tirelessly round the garden. Flora, however, was painstakingly counting her blessings. Angelo might not be in love with her, but he would be a very good father to their children and no doubt in time she would get over her constant wish and need for him to be something more than that. Four children, she thought, just a little daunted by the prospect as she registered the amount of noise that Mariska could make without any backup at all. When Anke asked if she could take the little girl to visit her parents’ farm
with her that afternoon, Flora agreed and let her weary eyes slide shut.

‘Flora … ?’

Flora lifted her lashes and focused dreamily on Angelo, her green eyes unusually soft. Tall, dark and gorgeous, he was poised only a few feet away, casually clad in well-cut trousers and a pale shirt that made a perfect frame for his bronzed skin and black-as-jet hair. She tilted her head to one side while she studied him, admiring the sleek planes of his high cheekbones, the classic patrician set of his nose and the beautifully modelled perfection of his wide masculine mouth.

‘You’re staring at me,’ Angelo said softly.

Her cheeks flared with colour and as she met those very blue eyes of his her mouth ran dry. Blinking rapidly, she began to sit up, a process that was as slow and difficult for her with her cumbersome body as standing up in a hurry. Within seconds, Angelo was by her side and rearranging her more comfortably.

‘How was Peter?’ Angelo enquired coolly.

‘He hadn’t changed much.’ Reluctant to run her former fiancé down or discuss what he had shared with her, Flora fell uncomfortably silent.

Angelo surveyed her with an odd intensity that she could almost feel like a touch on her skin. ‘I have a question to ask you,’ he imparted tautly.

‘Go ahead,’ Flora advised, hoping it didn’t relate to Peter and taking a sip at her lemonade in an effort to seem composed.

‘Will you do me the honour of becoming my wife? ‘ Angelo asked levelly.

Flora glanced up at him in shaken disbelief and
somehow contrived to choke on her drink, breaking down into a fit of coughing that led to him banging her on the back to aid her recovery. Eyes still streaming in the aftermath, she mopped them with a tissue and tried frantically to work out where the marriage proposal had come from. He was asking her to marry him!
He was actually asking her to marry him.
After weeks and weeks of sharing the same roof without the smallest intimate contact, he was suddenly asking her to be his wife and she could not credit it. Stunned, she focused on his heartbreakingly handsome and very serious features and registered that he was definitely not joking. ‘I … I … er …’

‘I appear to have taken you by surprise,’ Angelo breathed tensely.

‘You’ve really shocked me. I mean, I definitely didn’t see this coming over the horizon,’ she mumbled unevenly, scarcely knowing whether she was on her head or her heels.

Angelo dropped down on the chair beside hers and reached for her hand. Brilliant blue eyes sought out hers. ‘I would be proud to call you my wife.’

Flora tugged her fingers reluctantly free. ‘Even though you think I’m a gold-digger?’

‘Only a stupid man would get to know you as well as I know you now and still think you capable of such a motivation … I am
not
a stupid man,
tesora mia
.’

Flora was not so easily soothed. ‘It’s all very well saying now that you’ve changed your mind about that, but why has it taken you so long to tell me so?’

His lush black lashes semi-screened his gaze from her keen scrutiny. ‘I had made you so hostile that I
was reluctant to open the subject again in case I made matters worse. I’m not very good at eating humble pie either,’ he admitted with gritty reluctance.

‘You’re as stubborn as a rock,’ Flora pronounced without apology, studying the fierce tension etched into his hard masculine features.

‘I should have had that tribunal experience of yours checked out again. Unfortunately it wasn’t important enough to me when I first met you, but it was a mistake to accept what proved to be speculation as fact and to allow it to colour my judgement to such an extent.’

‘I was very upset when I realised that you had always had a low opinion of me and why,’ Flora admitted ruefully.

‘I did finally have further enquiries made,’ Angelo confided with gravity. ‘It may be a consolation for you to learn that eighteen months after your departure from that company where you worked, Marvin Henshall was sacked for gross misconduct. There were fresh allegations of sexual harassment laid against him by a new employee.’

Flora was disgusted to hear that her former boss had found yet another victim but relieved that allegations against him had finally been made to stick and that he had paid the price for his behaviour. ‘I’m glad that no other woman will have to go through what I went through again,’ she murmured with heartfelt sincerity.

‘I’m sorry that you had to suffer that way and that I took so long to admit what I believed I knew about you. You were right,’ Angelo declared, his lean, strong face serious as he made the admission. ‘It was unfair of me not to give you the chance to speak up in your
own defence. My only excuse is that our relationship was already tense and I was afraid to put it under more strain.’

‘You mean, I was pregnant,’ Flora translated heavily.

‘That only influenced me after I realised you were pregnant and unwell,’ Angelo countered levelly. ‘Prior to that point my only interest was in you and, right from the start, I didn’t want to accept that our stolen afternoon on the houseboat was the most we would ever share.’

Her lashes lifted, her interest ensnared by that declaration, and she studied him with questioning cool. ‘You wanted more?’

’Dios mio!
Didn’t I immediately ask you to spend the weekend with me here? Of course I wanted more. I lived my whole life through and I never once felt as alive as I did with you on that boat!’ Angelo delivered in an undertone raw with the strength of his conviction. ‘It was different; together
we
were different, even when we were arguing, and I’d never experienced a connection like that with a woman before.’

For the first time, Flora appreciated that she might have allowed the very fact that she was pregnant to get in the way of a closer understanding between them. In fact she too had been guilty of making far-reaching assumptions. ‘I thought you were only interested because I fell pregnant.’

‘How could I fake being interested and why would I do that anyway?’ Angelo dealt her a bewildered look as Skipper dropped his ball at his feet.

‘Because you felt it was the right thing to do when I was carrying your children.’

‘I would never have invited you to share my life if I hadn’t wanted you for yourself. To do otherwise would have involved us both in a relationship that could only have come to a painful conclusion.’

Pushing her hands down on the arms of the lounger, Flora got up and slid her feet back into her shoes to walk away a few steps. She had found it hard to believe that he truly wanted her and her pride had not allowed her to accept support from a man only offering it out of a sense of duty.

‘When I first fell pregnant I wouldn’t let you help me. I honestly thought that you only wanted to help because you felt you
had
to,’ Flora told him in a troubled admission.

‘I needed and wanted to help you but you made it so difficult. Sometimes it annoys me that you’re so proud and so determined to be independent,’ Angelo confided levelly.

‘I’m a freeloader who’s been living off you for months! ‘ Flora proclaimed with spirit. ‘Where’s the independence in that?’