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      About the Author

      MELANIE MILBURNE says: ‘I am married to a surgeon, Steve, and have two gorgeous sons, Paul and Phil. I live in Hobart, Tasmania, where I enjoy an active life as a long-distance runner and a nationally ranked top ten Master’s swimmer. I also have a Master’s Degree in Education, but my children totally turned me off the idea of teaching! When not running or swimming I write, and when I’m not doing all of the above I’m reading. And if someone could invent a way for me to read during a four-kilometre swim I’d be even happier!’

       Recent titles by the same author:

      SCANDAL: UNCLAIMED LOVE-CHILD^* THE MÉLENDEZ FORGOTTEN MARRIAGE CASTELLANO’S MISTRESS OF REVENGE BOUND BY THE MARCOLINI DIAMONDS

       Did you know that Melanie also writes for Mills & Boon® Medical™ Romance?

      Chapter One

      MAYA looked at the dipstick in shock. Her throat closed over as if a hand had locked around her neck as the two blue lines appeared.

       Positive.

      She sat on the edge of the bathtub, her legs shaking so much she had to clamp her knees together. Hope flickered brightly and then just as quickly waned.

      It couldn’t be true.

      She took a deep breath and looked at the stick again. She blinked once, twice, three times but the lines were the same as before.

      The doorbell suddenly rang with an incessant peal and she sprang to her feet, her heart knocking against her chest wall like a pendulum pushed by a madman. She quickly stashed the test kit in the nearest drawer beneath the twin basins and took a long slow breath to steady herself.

      Gonzo was already at the door, barking joyfully in greeting, but Maya didn’t need the dog’s behaviour to signal to her who was at the door. No one rang the doorbell quite the same way as her soon-to-be ex-husband Giorgio Sabbatini did. He always pressed it too hard and for too long. He was summoning her and he clearly would not be taking no for an answer.

      Maya fixed a deliberately cool expression on her face as she opened the door. ‘G…Giorgio,’ she said, hoping the catch in her voice wouldn’t betray her. ‘I thought you were sending one of your staff to pick up Gonzo. Isn’t that the arrangement we agreed on?’

      ‘I decided to come in person this time.’ He bent down to ruffle the ecstatic dog’s ears before he rose back to his full height, his tall frame towering over her. His dark brown eyes glittered with a sardonic light as they met hers. ‘I am quite surprised to find you at home,’ he said. ‘I thought you might be out with your new Englishman lover. What was his name again? Hugh? Herbert?’

      Maya bit the inside of her mouth, wishing, not for the first time, she hadn’t gone on that stupid blind date set up by a friend from her yoga class. ‘Howard,’ she said tightly. ‘And it wasn’t anything like the press reported it.’

      One of Giorgio’s brows lifted in a cynical arc. ‘So he didn’t rip your clothes off in the hallway of his apartment and have his wicked way with you?’

      Maya threw him a venomous look as she closed the door behind him with a snap. ‘No,’ she said. ‘That is more your style, is it not?’

      He gave her an indolent smile which made every hair on the back of her neck lift up in reaction. ‘You were with me all the way, cara,’ he said in a tone that was gravelly and rough and so deep she felt a guilty shiver of remembered pleasure cascade down her spine and bury itself in that hot secret place between her thighs.

      Maya turned on her heel rather than face him with her colour so high. She still cringed in shame at how she had behaved the night of his brother’s wedding. She still wasn’t exactly sure what had precipitated it. Had it been the champagne or the pain of finally letting go? Break up sex, that was what it was called. It didn’t mean anything, certainly not to him. He had probably bedded several women since they had separated. According to the latest press report, he was currently seeing a lingerie model based in London. Reading that had been like a dart to Maya’s heart but she would rather die than reveal that to him.

      She felt him come up behind her, her skin prickling all over and her nostrils flaring as she breathed in his citrus-based aftershave overlaid with his particular male smell. All her senses—the ones she had sworn would always be switched to neutral when he was around—turned to full throttle. She felt her heart give a stutter when his hands came to rest on the top of her shoulders, her breathing stopping altogether when his tall body brushed against hers from behind.

      ‘You smell nice,’ he said, bending his head so his mouth almost touched the side of her neck. ‘Is that a new perfume you are wearing?’

      Somehow she got her voice to work. ‘Get your hands off me, Giorgio,’ she said. Before I turn around and fall into your arms and make a complete and utter fool of myself all over again.

      His hands tightened for a fraction of a second, long enough for her heart rate to go up another notch. ‘Our divorce isn’t final until the last of the paperwork is sorted,’ he said, his breath lifting the hairs that had come loose from her makeshift ponytail. ‘Maybe we can make the most of the time before the ink dries, hmm?’

      Maya knew what this was about and it hurt much more than the lingerie model. It wasn’t their broken marriage he was fighting for, it was his fortune. The Sabbatini family was as good as Italian royalty. When she had married Giorgio five years ago there had been no prenuptial agreement prepared. It was an unwritten, unspoken law: their marriage was meant to last, as every other Sabbatini marriage had in the past. But Maya wondered if any other Sabbatini marriage had endured the heartache theirs had and survived.

      She very much doubted it.

      She turned to face him, her heart tightening all over again as she looked into his inscrutable dark-as-night eyes. ‘What do you want?’ she asked.

      His thumbs started to knead her knotted shoulders until she was sure she was going to melt into a pool at his feet. She fought the response, clamping her teeth together as she put her hands against his chest to push him away. ‘Will you stop touching me, for God’s sake?’ she railed at him.

      He captured her hands effortlessly, holding