If you like this online read you'll enjoy Alison Roberts's books!

St Piran's: The Brooding Heart Surgeon
 £1.29
 £1.29

The Baby Gift
 £1.99
 £1.99

The Italian Surgeon's Christmas Miracle
 £2.54
 £2.99

Belinda couldn’t believe what she’d just done. But the evidence was right in front of her eyes in the deepening red mark on Mario’s cheek.

And then she remembered why she had done it.

“You’re a bastard, Mario,” she told him. “And what’s more, you’re a stupid one. If I had wanted to trap you by getting pregnant, don’t you think I would have found a way of tracking you down?”

His frown suggested that he could see the truth in this but he wasn’t prepared to accept it. He shrugged it off. “Perhaps you were biding your time. Waiting to find out if I was wealthy enough?”

Belinda gasped. First he’d suggested she might have been sleeping with someone else at the time she’d spent the night with him and now he was branding her a gold digger. Her strength was ebbing and—to her horror—she knew tears were not far away.

“I don’t believe this.” Her inward breath was shaky and Belinda gave up a fight she had no hope of winning. “Do you really want to know why I didn’t make much of an effort to find you, Mario?” She didn’t wait for a response. “I was stupid enough to have fallen in love with you, that’s why.”

He’d said the same thing, hadn’t he? He hadn’t meant it, though. You wouldn’t say such cruel things to someone you loved.

“I didn’t want you to think less of me—the way you did of Juliana, or think that I was low enough to use an innocent baby to get what I wanted from a man.”

She saw that he recognized his own words being thrown back at him. His frown suggested confusion rather than anger this time but still Belinda didn’t give him an opportunity to speak.

“I actually wanted to give you the chance to be happy,” she continued, her anger resurfacing as she realized what a waste her sacrifice had been. “I took full responsibility for raising our children by myself. To love them with all my heart.”

An incredulous huff of laughter escaped. “This holiday...do you know why I brought the children here? Because they know that their ‘lost’ father is Italian. That part of their heritage is in this country and that...”

Belinda’s words trailed into a peculiar silence that made the hairs on the back of her neck prickle.

Mario was staring over her shoulder through the library window into the central courtyard of the palazzo. She could hear frantic barking that had to be coming from Bruno.

Turning, she saw Stefano climbing over the low stone wall surrounding the pool. She could see the fear on his small face and hear the desperate quality of the dog’s barking. And Gemma was nowhere to be seen.

“Christo!” Mario breathed.

Belinda followed him as he ran into the courtyard. Bruno was in the pool, nudging the tiny body that floated face down. Belinda grabbed Stefano as Mario leaped into the water and scooped up Gemma. She held her son as close as she could, hiding his face in her shoulder but unable to look away herself as Mario crouched in the stone courtyard, the limp body of his daughter in his arms.




chapter: 1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  10  11  12  13  14  15  16  17  18  19  20