The Sicilian's Unexpected Duty by Michelle Smart Read Free Book Online

Closing her eyes, she slowly expelled a lungful of air. They had been so busy arguing she’d barely noticed the jet increase in speed. Suddenly her stomach lurched and she was leaning back.
    The jet became airborne.
    She took another deep breath. ‘If I contact my housemates and ask them to get all my stuff together, can you send someone to collect it?’
    ‘Of course.’
    ‘Can they get it to me for tomorrow morning?’
    ‘Why so soon?’
    ‘Because I have nothing on me apart from my handbag and a stick of mascara. I need my stuff.’
    ‘I’ve already made arrangements for new clothing to be delivered to the house first thing for you.’
    Of course he had. For such a languid person Pepe was proving surprisingly efficient.
    ‘I want my stuff.’
    ‘And you will have it. Soon.’
    ‘How soon?’
    ‘Soon. And I will ensure your housemates get adequate compensation from your missed rent.’
    ‘Good.’ She would not say thank you.
    Her stomach rolled again and she breathed in deeply through her nose.
    ‘Are you okay?’
    She did not want to hear any concern from him. ‘I’m pregnant. My child’s father is refusing to acknowledge paternity without a blood test yet still thinks it’s acceptable to make me give up my job—a job I love—and leave my housemates in the doodle to follow him around the world like some sort of concubine. Plus I have no clothing or toiletries on me. So, yes. Everything is dandy.’
    His gorgeous blue eyes darkened further and crinkled with amusement. ‘My concubine, eh? Do you know what a concubine is?’
    She felt her cheeks go scarlet. ‘It was a statement of my unhappiness not a statement of fact.’
    ‘A concubine is, in essence, a man’s mistress.’
    ‘I’m well aware of that.’
    ‘A man pays for all his concubine’s bills, buys property for her—’
    ‘Basically a concubine is there for a man’s pleasure when he’s bored of his wife’s company,’ she interrupted. ‘But seeing as you have no wife, I can’t be your concubine.’
    A gleam came into his eyes. ‘Ah, so as I have no wife, does that mean you are going to be the main source of my pleasure?’
    ‘I’d rather eat worms.’
    ‘I’m sure I can think of something better for you to e—’
    ‘Don’t go there. I feel sick enough as it is.’
    He laughed. ‘That’s not how I remember things.’
    ‘Watch it or I will vomit.’ But not through the memories of their night together.
    Those memories moved her in wholly different ways.
    Nope, the queasiness in her belly was solely due to motion sickness. She scrunched her eyes closed and took a long deep breath.
    Pepe twisted onto his side to stare at her. Cara really was incredibly sexy, even with her face contorted into a grimace.
    But he would not go there again. Flirting with her was just asking for trouble. They had enough problems to get through.
    She opened one eye. ‘What?’
    ‘Sorry?’
    ‘You’re staring at me.’
    ‘Can’t a man stare at a gorgeous woman?’ Okay, so flirting was asking for trouble, but Cara really did look beautiful when she was angry, as clichéd as he knew that was.
    ‘I’m pregnant,’ she spat.
    ‘You’re also incredibly sexy. A man would have to be dead from the waist down not to desire you. But have no fear—I’m not going to make any unwanted passes at you.’ All the same, he felt a tightening in his groin and almost groaned aloud at the incongruity of it all.
    Cara despised him. No matter how much he might still desire her and, he suspected, she still desired him, he preferred his women to not loathe the very sound of his name.
    And sex between them...nothing good could come of it. It had got him into enough trouble as it was, just as he’d always suspected sex with Cara would—why else had he kept such a distance from her sexually before?
    In the world in which he mixed, sex was freely given with no real commitment assumed by anyone. Pepe liked it that way. It saved messy entanglements and even messier