Page 23 of The Housekeeper's One-Night Baby
Sothiswas Donna! His ‘friend’—with all the possible permutations which that word carried. Lizzie gulped. She was so gorgeous, and so thin. And calling him Nic sounded incredibly intimate, didn’t it? As if she knew him really well. She probably did. After all,Lizziewas the only person in the room who knew practically nothing about him, despite the fact that she was carrying his baby. Why hadn’t she bothered to interrogate him and discover a few facts about the father of her child before they ventured out like this in public? It could be an emotional minefield if she was interrogated by any of the guests and betrayed how little she knew about him. She tried her best not to feel intimidated but it wasn’t easy because Donna was everything she wasn’t. Classy and rich and confident. And nice. Really nice. This is the sort of woman Niccolò should be with, not me, she thought desperately. Until she reminded herself that he wasn’t actuallywithher, either. Oh, why had she come?
‘Pleased to meet you,’ she said stiltedly.
‘Oh, Iloveyour accent!’ purred Donna. ‘And the colour of your hair is adorable! What will you have to drink, Lizzie?’
‘Erm—’
‘How about some soda?’ prompted Niccolò.
‘I’ll have someone bring some over.’ Donna smiled, a quick flick of her fingers bringing a handsome waiter gliding towards them. ‘By the way—Jackson Black is here, Nic, but not for long. There’s a big vote coming up and I know he’s desperate to speak to you before he goes back to Washington.’
‘Yeah.’ Niccolò turned to scan the room before redirecting his gaze towards Lizzie. ‘Would you mind? I need to talk a little shop. I won’t be long.’
‘No. I don’t mind,’ Lizzie ventured gamely, wondering if his departing squeeze of her arm was entirely necessary as he moved away. Because all it did was to remind her how little he’d touched her since he had reappeared in her life. She sighed. With him it had definitely been a case of feast or famine. She didn’t think there was a centimetre of her skin he hadn’t explored on the night she’d conceived his child—and since then nothing other than his dramatic intervention in the park.
And wasn’t it insane how such a fleeting contact could make her react like this—making her dissolve from the outside in? Didn’t it make her think about his hard body, next to hers? In hers. The way she’d husked out her satisfaction as he had been pulsing out his seed.
Her breath dried in her throat.Why was she having such x-rated thoughts in the middle of this civilised social setting?
With an effort, she tore her eyes away from his rugged profile to discover Donna regarding her with thoughtful eyes and she cobbled together a smile, aware that her cheeks had grown very pink.
‘So, how are you finding New York, Lizzie?’
‘I love it. It’s so buzzy, and the service is great. Of course, it’s still all very new to me,’ she answered politely. ‘I haven’t been here long.’
‘And this is your first trip, I believe?’
Lizzie nodded.Say something. Don’t just stand there like a lemon.‘I was supposed to come here on a road trip,’ she said truthfully. ‘But then I split up with my boyfriend and it got cancelled.’
Donna nodded, her cool blue gaze directed towards her bump—and perhaps it was Lizzie’s disclosure about her past which made her come out with a confidence of her own.
‘I have to tell you, we were all pretty surprised when we heard about you, and the baby.’ The glamorous blonde gave a soft laugh. ‘So if you hear the sound of shattering—it’s just the sound of a million female hearts being broken all over the city! Oh, please don’t look like that, dear. Most of us are very happy that Nic has found somebody at last, we really are. He’s been on his own for a long time, though not from the want of women trying to pin him down.’ She slanted a complicit smile. ‘Anyways, I mustn’t keep you all to myself. Come and meet Matt, my husband.’
A completely inappropriate sense of relief washed over Lizzie, which briefly eclipsed her confusion that Donna seemed to be labouring under the illusion that she and Niccolò were a couple. ‘Your...husband?’ she managed, trying to distract herself, because now was not the time to fret about her hostess’s words.
‘Sure. We’ve been married nearly seven years now. Nic was our best man, actually.’ Donna’s eyes twinkled. ‘His speech was outrageous.’
‘Hmm. Somehow I don’t find that difficult to believe,’ said Lizzie, and this time her smile was genuine.
‘Come on over and say hello,’ said Donna. ‘There are lots of folk here who want to meet you.’
Lizzie followed her hostess through the vast, bleached room as Donna introduced her to a blur of guests, including her handsome husband, Matt—who it turned out had been to college with Niccolò, in Massachusetts. In a way she was grateful it was a cocktail party and the common language was mostly small talk. If a select bunch of them had been gathered around a dinner table she might have had a tougher time of it, mostly because she was aware of being an imposter—especially since Donna wasn’t the only one who made the assumption that she and Niccolò were an item. How shocked they would be to discover the truth, she thought ruefully. To realise that he hadn’t asked her a single question about the baby he had never wanted.
But now wasn’t the time to enlighten every person she spoke to and risk embarrassing them both. She just concentrated on asking lots of questions, because people liked nothing better than to talk about themselves. She was deep in conversation with a professor of archaeology, who was showing her a photo of his dachshund, when Niccolò returned. His shadow seemed to consume her as he moved to her side, as if he were determined to dominate all her senses with his presence, leaving no room for anyone else. And he was succeeding, because nobody else in the room seemed to have any real substance any more. Suddenly it was all about him.
His raw, masculine scent.
The power of his muscular body.
Those carved, patrician features.
That mocking smile.
The breath died in her throat. No matter how much she tried to convince herself that it was over between them, that didn’t stop her wanting him and right now, the feeling was as powerful as it had ever been. Did he notice the instinctive shiver rippling over her skin and realise what had caused it? Was that why his black eyes grew hard and a sudden tension seemed to have crept into the atmosphere?
‘Let’s go,’ he said softly.
‘Isn’t it a little early?’
