Rosa nodded, pulling a white plush robe from the wardrobe and laying it on the bed. ‘I’ll run it for you and then bring you a cup of tea. We have ginger and green tea, unless you’d prefer something else?’

‘That would be perfect,’ Angie said, thanking her, wondering what guardian angel had deposited her here, into Rosa’s warm and welcoming care. Not Dominic, she knew. He might want to guard her for the next six months, but if he was an angel, he was definitely of the dark variety, complex and—she searched for a word to describe him—dangerous.

It fitted, she thought, trembling just a little as she changed into the robe. Definitely dangerous. Maybe not physically threatening, in spite of his size and presence. More the kind of danger that operated on another level.

For his danger came in dark eyes that could unnerve and unsettle, look at her with undisguised disdain or, in the very next look, send heat spiralling through her. His danger was that dark longing that left her weak and breathless.

And when he touched her…

She shivered. Forget about Dominic and guardian angels and touching, she told herself, the perfumed steam coming from the bathroom beckoning with the scent of rosemary and orange and maybe even a hint of vanilla. Maybe, for just once in her life, something was going right. Maybe these next six months would be the perfect opportunity to work out what she wanted to do with the rest of her life.

After all, she was single now. No ties. She could make a fresh start. Maybe do some study? Make something of herself.

And as for this baby? She curled a hand over her tummy, her heart aching for the mother who would never know her child, and for the child who would never know its mother. She’d so wanted everything to be perfect for this baby! But still she’d made the right choice, she knew. This baby would have a home. The baby was wanted. What more could she really ask?

She put a toe in the bath and sighed, slipping off her robe as she slid into the depths and adjusting the spa jets to a slow pulsing massage that sent tremors under her skin, tremors that triggered her senses and echoed another’s electric touch, a watery assault to her senses that had her almost imagining the touch of his fingers, the slide of his hands…

She snapped her eyes open, hit the button that turned the spa jets off, appalled at where her thoughts were taking her.

No! For he was the biological father of the child she was carrying, the husband of the biological mother who was dead. A man who detested her for who and what she was.

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What the hell was wrong with her?

She dunked her head under the water to clear her wayward thoughts. No way would she fantasize about him!

An hour later, wrapped in the fluffy robe, Angie felt blissfully relaxed as she padded through the house, looking for the kitchen, every bone and muscle in her body purring after the scented soaking, so relaxed that not even the cup and saucer rattled in her hand. She’d imagined the kitchen wouldn’t be hard to find but then she’d forgotten the sheer scale of the place. On their way to the suite she’d only encountered passages and hallways and that amazing sweep of ballroom lining the front of the house. But surely the kitchen couldn’t be too far away?

She paused in a wide hallway she was suddenly sure she’d never passed before because of the wide staircase leading upwards to another floor, and turned full circle, wondering where she’d taken a wrong turn. How big was this place that she could get lost within its walls?

And then she glanced upstairs and saw it.

The portrait stretched along the landing wall—a painting of a woman reclining along an ivory chaise longue, her long hair dark and sleek and tumbling over satin-skinned shoulders, her face beautiful, dark exotic eyes enticing, carmine lips turned up in invitation, her body draped in a gown the colour of deepest amethyst.

The face and body of a seductress.

Angie climbed up a step. And then another.

She was beautiful.

And realisation came dressed in a sharp, short stab of envy. This was Carla. This was the real mother of her unborn child.

Was it any surprise Dominic had been so appalled when he’d met her? Was it any surprise he’d been angry? This glamorous creature was the woman supposed to be carrying their child, not some scarecrow from the wrong end of town.




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