The Shock Cassano Baby. Andie Brock
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any difference if he had? Their brief relationship had been so sudden, so wildly all-consuming, it had knocked all the normal rules out of the park. The attraction between them had been powerful and overwhelming and impossible to resist. And it had been the same for both of them. Or so he’d thought.
Screwing up his eyes, Orlando let the image of those sultry nights play over in his mind. Yes, Isobel had wanted him—he was sure about that. He remembered them tearing each other’s clothes off, remembered the look of pure sexual longing in Isobel’s eyes as she had reached out to him that first time, arching her naked body against his. But now he also remembered the sharp intake of breath when he had entered her...the fat tears that had leaked from the corners of her eyes when they had finally fallen back against the pillows, gasping for breath.
At the time he had thought nothing of it—or, worse still, had maybe revelled in his potent masculinity, his ability to stir such passion in a beautiful young woman.
Now the thought of what he’d done made him feel sick. But the deed was done—and with the most dramatic of consequences.
Somehow he had to get his head around this. He was going to be a father. The one thing he had always sworn would never, ever happen. Because Orlando had seen first-hand the brutal destruction that came with so-called family life. His own childhood was a chilling testament to that—completely chaotic from the start.
As a young boy he had been shunted from one foster family to the next, whenever his mother’s fragile mental health had left her unable to cope or plunged her into a depression so black that Orlando had been deemed at risk of neglect. He had been twelve years old when she had died, unable to care for herself any better than she had her precious, skinny, vulnerable son.
Too old to be adopted, and too difficult, challenging and downright angry with the world to be suitable for short-term fostering any more, Orlando had been placed in a children’s home. And that forbidding, prison-like building had been his home for more than four years.
It had been during his last few months there that he had made the disastrous decision to track down his father—the man who had had a brief affair with his mother, then abandoned her before he was born. The man who had triggered the mental health issues that had eventually led to his mother’s death. The man who had very nearly destroyed Orlando too.
But all that had been a long time ago—almost half a lifetime, in fact. At just seventeen years old Orlando had bought a one-way ticket to New York and left his wretched past firmly behind him. And the years since then had been good—remarkable, even—with determination, dedication and sheer hard work seeing Orlando rise rapidly from absolutely nothing to be one of the world’s most successful businessmen. A massive achievement in anyone’s book.
Yes, Orlando Cassano was at the top of his game. He’d got his life exactly where he wanted it.
Or so he’d thought.
Now not only had his past come back to haunt him, but his future was being catapulted into the unknown. He was going to have a child. He had no idea exactly what that would mean, but he did know that he would be there for his son or daughter—come what may, whatever it took. No way would he replicate the despicable behaviour of his own father.
And that meant the course of his life was about to change for ever.
* * *
‘I’ll be right down.’
Replacing the intercom receiver, Isobel reached for her coat and slung it over her arm. After checking her reflection in the mirror she hurried out, locking the door behind her before running down the several flights of stairs. She didn’t want to give Orlando the chance to invite himself up.
Not that she was ashamed of her flat—far from it. It might be tiny, but the rent was reasonable and it was nice and central—only a few stops on the underground to the headquarters of Spicer Shoes. However, it was hardly on a par with the sort of grandeur that Orlando Cassano was accustomed to.
He was studying the view when Isobel joined him, taking in the car park, the bike racks and the group of youths sitting on the wall that housed the dustbins. Her dash down the stairs had left her out of breath, and Orlando turned to look at her, coolly objective.
Isobel fought to suppress the familiar lurch in her stomach at the sight of him. He looked ridiculously out of place, standing there in his dark grey cashmere coat, the collar pulled up against the chilly breeze. All urbane, confident authority, he seemed the very antithesis of the crudely graffitied walls of this inner-city tower block.
‘How long have you lived here?’
Having performed a perfunctory kiss on both cheeks, Orlando took a couple of steps back and craned his head to look up, scanning the soulless concrete facade, the uniform rows of windows. Isobel watched his Adam’s apple move beneath the smooth olive skin.
‘A couple of years.’ She focussed on buttoning up her coat. ‘And, before you start, there is nothing wrong with it. We can’t all live on Caribbean islands or in Long Island mansions.’
‘Did I say that?’
‘Well, no, but...’
‘In that case I’ll thank you not to make accusatory assumptions.’ His mouth flattened into a tight line, his eyes narrowing with warning.
Isobel scowled back—this was not a good start. She knew she was being horribly prickly, but her nerves were shot to pieces, her head all over the place. Being in Orlando’s company again was pure torture, and not just because of the pregnancy, nor the fact that he obviously had no intention of letting her raise the child alone, although that was bad enough. Far worse was the realisation that for these past few weeks she had been fooling herself.
Somehow, while they had been apart, Isobel had managed to convince herself that what had happened on Jacamar—the way she had fallen head over heels for Orlando—had been the result of some sort of Caribbean magic...a spell that would be easily broken when she returned to the UK.
But that theory had vanished like an icicle in a furnace the second their eyes had met in the boardroom this morning, when the attraction Isobel had felt for him had been so powerful, so immediate, it had slammed right into her chest. And that wretched kiss hadn’t helped, opening her up to all sorts of forbidden desires. She could feel them now, stubbornly pumping through her body under the grey skies of London, without a coconut or a palm tree in sight.
‘My car is over here.’
He hardly needed to point it out. If Orlando seemed out of place then his gleaming car looked as if it had been dropped down from another planet. Sleek, black and low, it had certainly caught the eye of the local residents, several of whom had sauntered over to inspect it, peering in through the windows and running their hands over the immaculate paintwork.
Isobel felt familiar panic creep through her veins. Not because of the circling hooded youngsters—she’d lived here long enough to know that they wouldn’t bother her—but because cars, fast cars in particular, terrified her.
She had been seventeen when a horrific car crash had all but decimated her family, killing her father and leaving her mother in a wheelchair. Isobel had received only minor injuries, but the course of her life had changed for ever.
Giving up any idea of going to university, she had determined there and then that she would honour her father by taking on the family business and dedicating herself to making Spicer Shoes a success. She’d hoped the hard work would be cathartic and that a thriving business would mean security for the loyal Spicer employees and for her mother, whose continuing care in a residential home was eye-wateringly expensive.
More than that, she’d hoped to be able to make her mother see that the world hadn’t stopped the day of the accident. That she still had her daughter—alive and well and desperate to have a loving relationship with her, desperate to make amends.
But in the seven years that had passed, even though the business was now poised on the brink of massive success, Isobel’s relationship with her mother had become more strained than ever—something