The Bride’s Baby Of Shame

His fingers stung and he released them, unaware he’d clenched his hands into fists at his sides.

At first he thought it was just a shadow, moving rapidly down the hill from one of England’s grand old houses in the distance. The directions she’d sent had been explicit. This country lane to that little byway, skirting around the edges of stately manors and rolling fields lined in hedgerows. But the more he watched, his eyes adjusting to the inky dark, the more he recognized the figure approaching him as Sophie.

Sophie, who’d given Renzo her innocence without thinking to warn him.

Sophie, who had called herself Elizabeth on that long, hot, and impossibly carnal night in Monaco.

Sophie, who had lied to him. To him.

Sophie, who had sneaked away while he slept, leaving him with nothing—not even her real name—until she’d chosen to reveal it in the most humiliating way possible, in a hastily mailed newspaper clipping.

Of Sophie Elizabeth Carmichael-Jones, daughter of a wealthy and titled British family, who was engaged to marry an earl.

Sophie, his Sophie, who would be another man’s wife in the morning.

Renzo’s jaw ached. He forced himself to unclench his teeth, and his fists again, while he was at it. He was a man known far and wide for the boneless, lazy manner with which he conducted both his business and his pleasure. It was his trademark.

It was a mask he had carefully cultivated to hide the truth—that he was a true Sicilian in every sense of the term, especially when it came to the volcanic temper he’d spent his life learning to keep under strict control.

This woman made him a stranger to himself.

She skidded a bit on the wet grass at the bottom of the hill, then righted herself. And her swift, indrawn breath as she started toward him seemed to crack through him like thunder.

There were no lights out here, lost somewhere in England’s greenest hills, for his sins—but Renzo could see her perfectly. He’d meant what he’d told her in Monte Carlo.

He would know her if he was blind.

Her stride. Her scent. The particular way she held her head. The little sound of erotic distress she made in the back of her throat when he—

But this was not the time for such things. Not when there was so much to discuss, and her with the wedding of the year in the morning.

She was wearing a simple pair of leggings tucked into high boots and what looked like long-sleeved shirts, layered one on top of the other. Her clothes molded themselves to her trim figure and showed off the sleek, sweet curve of her behind and those long, long legs he’d had wrapped around his shoulders while he’d thrust deep inside her and made them both groan. Her dark chestnut hair fell down all around her, looking like a soft black curtain in the darkness.

She stopped before him, and for a moment, all he could think about was that night. She’d been sitting naked in his bed, laughing at something he’d said while she’d piled her hair on the top of her head and had tied it in a knot.

So simple. So unconsciously alluring. Then, and now when he knew better.

So devious, he reminded himself harshly.

But what he remembered most was that he’d had her three times by then.

It was a hunger he couldn’t contain, couldn’t reason away, couldn’t even douse afterward when he’d wanted to think of other things. It had been weeks and yet here it was again, as voracious and as greedy as it had been that night in Monaco.

Worse, perhaps, because he had tasted her. Because he knew exactly what he was missing.

Renzo thought he likely vibrated with his need for her, only now it made him as darkly furious as it did hard.

“Renzo...”

She said his name quietly, tipping her head back so she could look him in the eye.

And if her eyes were sad, or resigned, or anything else at all, he told himself he didn’t care.

“How nice to see you again, Sophie,” he said in English, a language they had never spoken to each other.

He saw her shudder at the sound, but he forged on, unwilling to permit himself to do anything but what he’d come here to do.

Which was make her pay.

“Please accept my deepest congratulations on your upcoming wedding. I read all about it in the papers,” he drawled, flint and rage and no mask to hide it. “Tomorrow, is it not?”

* * *

Sophie felt sick.

She wanted to blame it on the shocking news she’d gotten two days ago at her doctor’s office, but she knew better.

It wasn’t the mistake she’d made or the person she now had to accept she was because of it.

It wasn’t the miraculous little accident that was growing inside her, whether she believed it or not. The accident that was proof that those stolen hours in Monaco hadn’t been a dream, after all—that what had happened between her and this startlingly handsome stranger had been real. It was something she could cling to no matter how much of a mess she found herself in now.

But that wasn’t what had her stomach in knots tonight.

No. It was the way Renzo was looking at her.

As if he hated her.

Which was fair enough. Sophie wasn’t too fond of herself at the moment, now she knew the truth about the headaches she’d been having the past week or so, and that oddly thick sensation that wasn’t quite nausea—

But Sophie wasn’t sure she could bear it. Not from him.

Her distant father, more calculator than human, was one thing. Her even more remote and disinterested fiancé another.

But Renzo was the only thing in her life that had never been a part of this grim little march toward fulfilling the sacred duty that she’d been told was her responsibility since her birth. Every single part of her life had been orchestrated to lead directly and triumphantly toward her wedding tomorrow. She had been raised on dire warnings about the perils of shirking her obligations to her family and endless stories about the many ancestors who would rise from their vaults in protest should any hint of a scandal taint their name.

There had never been any light. Or hope. Or anything like heat.

Sophie was so cold. Always and forever frozen solid, no matter the weather.

Because she’d been aware since she was very small that the sorts of things that warmed a body—strong spirits, wild passion, scandalously revealing garments of any kind—were not permitted for the Carmichael-Jones heiress.

She was to be without stain. Virginal and pure until she handed herself over to her husband, a man chosen by her father before she could walk.

Because the world kept turning ever closer to a marvelous future, but Sophie had been raised in the past. The deep, dark past, where her father didn’t condescend to ignore her wishes—Sophie had been raised to know better than to express one. Even to herself.

Everything had been ice, always.

So Sophie had made herself its queen.