The Heir From Nowhere (2 page)

She squeezed her eyes shut as her fingers curled into the denim of her shorts. Poor baby, to end up with her of all people, the woman who never really wanted a child in the first place, the woman who’d only agreed in order to save her marriage.

What a joke!

‘I’m sorry, baby. But we’ll meet your dad soon. Maybe even your mum too. They’ll want you, I’m sure.’

And if they didn’t?

A solitary tear slid down her cheek as she thought back to the phone call, remembering the deep and damning tones of the man’s voice, as if she’d been to blame for visiting upon him some momentous disaster. Then again, it probably felt like some momentous disaster to him right now. She’d gone through the same stages herself. The shock. The disbelief. The sheer bewilderment that came with discovering that a mistake so fundamental could have occurred in a medical facility, a place that was supposed to specialize in making dreams come true, not in creating nightmares.

And then she’d borne the full brunt of Shayne’s reactions. He’d gone from shock to fury in the space of a heartbeat. Fury that the baby he’d been bragging about to family and friends for a month wasn’t his at all. Fury with the clinic for messing with his plans. Fury that had changed direction and headed straight for her when she’d refused point-blank to have the abortion the clinic had offered and that he’d demanded.

Oh, yes, she understood full well how shell-shocked Mr Pirelli would be feeling right now. But for all his aggravation, for all his strident accusation, he could have hung up on her. He could have simply denied the child was his.

But he had taken her call and he had agreed to meet her tomorrow. And right now that was the best she could bequeath to the tiny baby growing deep inside her—the chance for it to be with its real parents, the people who had gone through hell and back to create it, the people who had first rights to this child.

A car slowed outside. She glanced up at the clock on the wall above her head, saw that it was almost six and for just a moment imagined it must be Shayne home from the foundry, and for just a moment panicked that she hadn’t started dinner yet.

Before a pain still jagged and raw ripped through her as she remembered.

Shayne wasn’t coming home any more.

She was alone.

The Darling Harbour boardwalk was crowded and congested with holidaymakers taking videos and eating ice creams, vying for space with performers busking for spare change. Seagulls squawked both overhead and underfoot, fighting each other for crumbs, while a reproduction sailing ship spewed a hundred excited tourists back onto the wharf.

Dominic sighed, feeling out of place as he and Simone waited near the designated meeting spot and half wishing his PA had chosen somewhere less public and more private for this meeting, but then the crowds were apparently half the attraction. Keep it informal, Simone had suggested. On neutral territory. Away from his lawyer’s offices, which might give the impression he was ready to broker some kind of deal. Away from the Pirelli building where his wealth was obvious as soon as you stepped into the stunning marble lobby. This Mrs Cameron might have pretended to be making some kind of altruistic gesture, but he had no proof of that. There was no point putting temptation right in front of her.

Simone had a point, he’d conceded, catching a whiff of her expensive perfume amidst the salt and popcorntinged air. It was her favourite, he recognised, the one he’d given her a bottle of last Christmas. It suited her.
Sleek and no-nonsense, feminine without being flowery. Exactly, in fact, like she was and exactly what he needed in a PA.

Come to think of it, Simone had been right about this place, he revised, peeling off his jacket and hooking it over his shoulder. He could be anonymous here, no longer Dominic Pirelli, billionaire investor and market strategist, but just one more suit escaping his office for an hour.

Except that this suit was waiting to meet the woman who was carrying his child.

Anticipation coiled in his gut. He glanced down at the platinum Tag Heuer at his wrist, saw that she was already late.

‘Do you think she’ll turn up?’ Simone looked over her shoulder, putting voice to his greatest fear, her asymmetrical black bob swinging around her head. ‘What if she changes her mind? She didn’t leave a contact number.’

‘She’ll turn up,’ he said, willing the woman to show. After the way he’d spoken to her yesterday, he’d be the last to be surprised she was having second thoughts, but it didn’t matter if she had changed her mind. He had her name. She had his baby. And there was no way she was escaping him now. ‘She’ll turn up.’

Angie’s eyes felt heavy and scratchy as she hurried along the pedestrian bridge linking the hurly-burly of Sydney CBD streets to the tourist precinct of Darling Harbour, and she didn’t need to see her reflection to know how red they appeared to the outside world. She could tell that from the inside.

Screams had driven her from sleep and dreams filled with snarling dogs snapping and tugging at her clothes and body. One had taken Shayne’s face while it circled,
barking out his taunts, telling her she would never be a real woman. Another had soothed her with words of comfort while trying to snatch her baby at the same time. And yet another had taken his place, larger and more powerful than all the rest, growling with teeth bared, moving closer, ready to savage.

And she’d woken in fear to her own screams, panting and desperate, the sheets knotted around her, her body damp with perspiration and her lonely bed more empty than ever. But safe, she’d realised, blessedly safe from the nightmare.

After that it had been impossible to sleep, the images the night had spun leaving her shaken and afraid, the night sounds of Sherwill—the barking dogs, the squeal of tyres as the hoons did burn-outs around the streets, the neighbours yelling—all keeping her company while a hundred scenarios for how today’s meeting would unfold spun their way through her mind. No wonder she hadn’t slept.

And now the light summer breeze whipped at her hair, carrying with it a combination of diesel fumes from the highway below and greasy doughnuts from a nearby stall and Angie’s stomach roiled anew. She protested at the unfairness. There was nothing left in her stomach, and yet still she wanted to heave.

Please God, she thought, swallowing back on the urge. Not now. Not here. Not when she was rushing to get to this meeting. She’d lost breakfast—one piece of dry toast and a cup of tea—ten minutes after she’d pointlessly forced it down, and that had been hours ago. An hour on a jostling, crowded train hadn’t helped, nor had the man who had lurched against her from behind as she’d left the train and almost sent her sprawling to the platform. He’d disappeared into the crowds without
a word of apology, while she’d had to sit down for ten minutes to see out the cold sweat and wait for her heartbeat and temperature to get back under control.

Ten minutes she hadn’t had.

So much for being relaxed and composed before she met the father of the child growing inside her.

Damn.

She blinked against the lunch-time sun, pushing her sunglasses higher on her nose as she descended the last few steps to the crowded boardwalk, suddenly wishing she’d worn something lighter. She’d wanted to cover herself up but it was much too hot for jeans and her old cardigan and she felt tatty and dated. Families strolled by as she hesitated on the last step, speaking in languages she didn’t recognise, the children laughing with painted faces and hanging on to fat balloons that bounced against the air as they ran. Couples walked hand in hand, sharing secrets, oblivious to everything and everyone. Lunch-time joggers darted between them all, all lean limbed and firm skinned under Lycra and nylon and wired for sound.

Angie pulled her thin discount department store cardigan tighter around her shoulders as she made her way through the crowds, half wishing she’d never agreed to a meeting here. Darling Harbour had sounded both cosmopolitan and exotic when she’d heard Mr Pirelli’s secretary suggest it as the meeting location and she’d made out she knew exactly where she was supposed to be, too embarrassed to admit she hadn’t been here for years.

Besides, she’d been so relieved that he’d agreed to meet her at all, she wasn’t about to argue about the location.

It was a good sign, wasn’t it, that he wanted to meet
her? And if he met with her, surely that meant he would want the child? She held that hope close to her heart, nurtured it. It was all she wanted, for this child to be with its rightful parents, to be cherished by them.

And if they decided they didn’t want it?

She sucked in a mouthful of the salt-tinged air. Well, there were other options, other couples unable to have children who would adore a tiny baby as their own. This baby would make someone happy, she was sure of it.

She pulled a crumpled note from her pocket, checked again for the details of where she was supposed to meet and scanned the surroundings, feeling a sizzle of apprehension when she recognised the green arch of the Harbourside Shopping Centre the PA had told her to wait outside. Her steps slowed as she approached. She was close now but, with the shifting crowd milling around the water’s edge, it was impossible to pick out individuals. What if he hadn’t waited? What if he’d given up and left?

Then, as she drew closer, she saw a couple sitting at a table holding hands, their heads bowed, the mood intense. She hesitated, her heart thudding hard in her chest. Could they be them? Could this be the parents of the child growing inside her?

Even as she watched, she saw the woman swipe tears from the corners of her eyes. Angie felt those tears like a tug against her womb. Surely it must be them? This was the right place and she was late. Was that why she was crying—because she feared Angie wasn’t going to show?

Yet still she wavered, unwilling to intrude on this private moment. She looked around, shifting from one foot to the other, searching for any other more likely looking couple. There was a party of Japanese students
lining the edge of the boardwalk, and an Italian family seated at a nearby table enjoying gelati and then there was a man in a white shirt with his jacket slung over his shoulder standing with his back to her.

Her eyes almost skated over him.

Almost.

All too soon they skated back. He stood tall and dark and somehow compelling, even from this angle, and when he turned his head to talk to the slim woman Angie had missed standing beside him, his profile only added to his appeal. A strong nose and jaw, and a dark slash of brows atop eyes that seemed focused on the woman beside him.

Another couple, she surmised, and way too unlikely. The woman looked cool and collected and nowhere near anxious enough to be meeting the woman inadvertently carrying her child, while surely he was too perfect, too virile-looking. For even while she knew fertility had nothing to do with looks, somehow the prospect that this man needed help seemed too far-fetched. Her eyes slipped away. And then she heard a cry of anguish and turned in time to see the woman on the bench jump up, the man reaching for her hand to stop her.

Guilt consumed her. She shouldn’t have been so late. She should never have hesitated and added to her distress. She dragged in air, desperate to find a way through the sudden tangle her nerves had become, forcing herself to take the few tentative steps towards the couple.

‘Over there. Could that be them?’

Dominic’s eyes followed in the direction Simone indicated, settling on a couple sitting at a table not far away. He sucked in air. Could this be the woman who’d called? Was the man sitting alongside her husband? They were
clearly not tourists, not the way they were dressed, and the woman’s expression, her tightly drawn features and reddened eyes signalled that something was definitely not right between them.

Could it be because she was carrying someone else’s child? Carrying his?

Breath whooshed from his lungs as every organ inside him contracted. Was the child Carla had so desperately and futilely wanted somehow growing inside this woman instead?

He studied the couple while he willed his breathing back to normal, studying them between the holidaymakers and honeymooners and strollers tied with balloons. The woman was blonde and slim, not unattractive under her sad eyes. The man was older, he noticed, whereas she looked around thirty-five—the age, he guessed, where she might be starting to panic about never having children. Had the child she’d longed for turned out to be someone else’s?

His eyes flicked over their clothes. Both of them had the kind of grooming that took money. Maybe she’d been honest about not wanting his—it looked as if they had plenty of their own to go around. Of course, he rationalised, at the rates the Carmichael Clinic charged, they would have to have money.

It all seemed to fit.

‘What do you think?’ Simone prompted.

‘Must be,’ he mused, his eyes leaving the couple for a moment to scan the crowd. There were families and tourists and a gaunt-looking woman who looked as if she was lost in the crowd. No, there was nobody else it could be. He nodded, feeling a strange tightening in his chest as he contemplated this next step, twenty-four hours’ notice strangely nowhere near enough to prepare
himself to meet the woman carrying his child. ‘Let’s go find out.’ He’d barely got the words out when the woman suddenly cried out and jumped to her feet.

The man followed, trying to placate her. Dominic cut a swathe through the pedestrian traffic. Did the woman think he wasn’t going to show? He shouldn’t have hesitated. Who else could it be? She was arguing through her sobs, her head turned back to the man holding her hand when he reached them.

‘Mrs Cameron?’

‘Mr and Mrs Pirelli?’

The couple looked around, both of them stunned for a moment, but Dominic’s attention had already been snagged by the woman who’d arrived from left field, the woman with his name on her lips.

‘Who are you?’ he demanded.

S
HE
was shabby and pale, a ghost of a woman dressed in drab clothes and with hair the colour of dishwater pulled into an unkempt ponytail. Even as he took her in she seemed to shrink before him, her focus over his shoulder on the couple behind. ‘I thought … I thought that was Mr and Mrs Pirelli.’