Hidden Heir with His Housekeeper by Heidi Rice

Author:Heidi Rice
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin Enterprises ULC
Published: 2024-01-06T16:43:24+00:00

That?

Indignation barrelled through Bea’s body, overriding the cocktail of other emotions battering her—shock, panic, guilt, arousal—arousal, seriously?

Her hand cupped the place where her baby grew, instinctively protecting it from the emerald glare of the man not ten feet away from her—who she’d convinced herself she wouldn’t have to see again, until she was ready.

‘No, that isn’t yours, it’s mine,’ she said, her voice surprisingly calm given she had just been dropped into a waking nightmare.

What was Mason Foxx doing in Portofino, in the Presidential Suite of her hotel? Was he the Very Important Guest her manager, Fabrizio, had told her about half an hour ago?

Or was his presence in front of her an apparition? A terrible manifestation of her guilty conscience, which she’d been studiously ignoring for months. For four months and twenty-one days, to be precise, ever since the lovely Dr Rossi had confirmed she was pregnant. Had this illusion been sent by the Do-the-Right-Thing Fairy to force her to stop avoiding the inevitable and contact the father of her child?

But the tall, broad-shouldered man in worn jeans and a T-shirt, his jaw covered in beard scruff, his dark chestnut hair finger-combed into waves, his eyes stark with shock and his tanned features flushed with outrage, looked far too real and solid and forbidding to be a figment of her guilty conscience.

The searing emerald gaze narrowed dangerously.

‘Answer the question. Am I the father?’ he said, throwing out a hand to indicate her belly but not shifting his gaze from hers—as if the evidence of her pregnancy was like Medusa, and if he looked at it directly he would turn to stone.

The indignation protecting Bea from her shock at seeing him again—alive and well and as much of a judgemental bastard as she remembered—was joined by a healthy dose of disgust.

A part of her wanted to lie, to tell him no, this baby wasn’t his. Because he seemed less than pleased at the prospect. And her baby deserved the best of everything, including a father who wanted it to exist.

Discovering she was pregnant four and a half months ago had been an enormous shock, because she had totally convinced herself the early signs of her pregnancy were all phantom ones. That her tiredness, her one light period and her tender breasts were just a result of the shock to her once pampered system of having to get up before dawn and do manual labour for eight hours straight.

But the confirmation of her condition and the options available to her—delivered in Dr Rossi’s measured voice—had also been a massive wake-up call. Because, as she’d come to terms with her new reality and realised she didn’t want a termination, she had also realised that every single cowardly, self-serving, foolish, reckless, impulsive mistake she made from now on would have consequences. Not just for her, but also for her defenceless child.

She’d been determined, before that life-changing moment in Dr Rossi’s office, to prove she could make a life for herself here. But discovering she was going to have a child had nearly broken her resolve.

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