'I—I— uh, yes. And it seems like a good idea to talk in private,' she said, her huge eyes studiously avoiding his. 'If you'll follow me, my home is around the back. Over there, the west wing, actually.'
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHARLIE heaved a sigh of relief when they finally reached the safety of her sitting room without encountering anyone. 'Would you like a drink? Tea or coffee?' She headed for the kitchen, and turned. 'Or something stronger,' she suggested politely. Jake was standing in the middle of the room, big, dark and threatening.
'No, thank you. I've had a stomach full of your English tea.' By the grim glance he gave her, he'd had enough of her as well.
Charlie ran clammy hands down her shorts, hovering in the kitchen doorway, uncertain what to do next. Her shock and delight at his arrival had quickly changed to fury and finally embarrassment. She should never have made that phone call. "I—I take it you got my message,' she said, swallowing nervously, her heart beating like a drum in her chest.
'Yes.' His dark eyes didn't leave her face as he moved to stop a few inches in front of her. 'Interesting, Charlotte: your knowledge of Italian has improved enough to tell my housekeeper you are pregnant, and I am going to be a papa. Not something I appreciated,' he said through gritted teeth. 'Nor having to disturb my pilot on a Sunday and fly halfway across Europe to discover the truth.'
She had never seen him so angry. It was in every line of his big taut body, intimidating in its intensity. 'You could have just phoned,' Charlie murmured when he continued to stand and stare grimly at her, and she lowered her eyes, unable to meet the hard censure in his.
The call had been foolish, she knew, but then she had been hurting badly. She had told him she loved him, laid her heart on the line in the hope he cared, and yet he had not called her for a month—and to see a picture of him in a magazine with another woman... She had flipped. Her hunger for him was an ever-present ache; the longing to see his rare brilliant smile, to hear his voice, to touch him, haunted her dreams.
'No, I could not,' he said. 'A phone call wouldn't do for me. I want to be looking into your eyes when you tell me I am going to be a father.' His dark eyes narrowed to angry slits, and he caught her chin with a thumb and finger and forced her to look at him. 'Are you pregnant, Charlotte?'
'Yes, I am,' she said bluntly. She was thrilled and excited at the prospect, but also frightened, and she wanted nothing more than for Jake to take her in his arms and tell her it would be all right. But by the look on his face she doubted he would.
'And just when did you fall pregnant?' he demanded roughly.
'Seven weeks ago.' She still had not got over the shock that she had got pregnant the first or second time she had made love. 'How unlucky is that?' Charlie didn't realize she had spoken her thought out loud until his hand fell abruptly from her chin and he stepped back and looked at her as if she were contaminated. She saw the humourless smile that twisted his firm lips and flinched at the venom in it.
'Unlucky?' His dark eyes held tightly leashed rage. 'For me, maybe, but damned convenient for you. Amazingly, it is exactly how long we have known each other.'
Jake was madder than hell. It was so obvious: she had put him squarely in the frame as the father...but was he? No woman had enraged and inflamed him as comprehensively as Charlotte. He had tried to put her out of his mind, but his body would not let him, a galling admission to make, but not one he intended to act on. His dark eyes raked assessingly over her. The tiny white shorts hugged her hips like a second skin, and her stomach still appeared flat, but perhaps her breasts were a little fuller... No! He didn't want to go there. Yes, he did. But he had no intention of being conned by a blue-eyed little gold digger, however desirable, his hard eyes sweeping back up to her lovely face.
Isn’t it rather early to have a pregnancy confirmed?' he queried with biting cynicism. 'Unless the woman in question is eager to get pregnant.'
'Not if you are as sick as a chip every day for three weeks,' she flashed, looking up at him, and stopped. 'You don't believe me,' she said slowly. She could see it in his eyes, in the cynical curl of his lips. She shook her head, and, turning away from him, she crossed to the sofa and collapsed onto it, folding her arms around her waist, suddenly cold. It had never occurred to her Jake wouldn't believe her.
'I never said that,' he pointed out, following her.
'You didn't need to,' she flared back at him. She could see the anger in every tense line of his body, hear it in every word he spoke. The Jake she loved, the Jake she thought she knew, was not this furious stranger towering over her.
'Can you blame me? You would not be the first woman to try and trap a wealthy husband with a mythical pregnancy. I want proof.'