Brazilian's Nine Months' Notice Read Online Free Page B

treat him like any other guest. After their night in London he’d expected more.
    Giving him the chance to turn her down?
    Okay. Yes. His pride was bruised. He had never been wrong-footed by a woman before. Had Emma forgotten that he’d made her scream with pleasure in his arms? Or was that why she was keeping her distance from him? Couldn’t she trust herself around him?
    He liked that version best, and smiled as he waited for the valet to bring his car round. There was no basis for his obsession with Emma. Full lips, full breasts and shapely legs—all great, but he wasn’t about to fall at the feet of a flame-haired temptress simply because she was dressed in a severely cut uniform that demanded it be ripped off her. Tipping the valet, he got into his car.
    All that day he lectured himself on steering clear of a woman who affected him so badly he couldn’t concentrate. Hadn’t he vowed never to become plagued by a woman again? He’d kept that pledge up to now—apart from that one slip in London with Emma. When he’d woken that morning he’d been almost glad she’d gone—until he’d started missing her. Hadn’t he learned that caring destroyed lives, or that hunger for a woman could so easily become an obsession? He wasn’t going down that blind alley ever again.
    So why was he still thinking about Emma Fane?
    Because she was making herself unavailable to him, and that was a situation he would not allow to continue.
    With the last appointment of the day done and dusted, he gunned the engine and released the handbrake. Thanks to Emma, he was aching with frustration. If he couldn’t get her out of his head he would continue to be distracted. And that wasn’t going to happen. He had to do something about Emma Fane. And soon.

CHAPTER THREE
    L UC M ARCELOS . S EX GOD . Damaged hero, according to the press, though whatever that meant had been carefully hushed up, Emma reflected as she hurried about her final tasks of the day.
    That was another advantage of being as rich as Croesus. If people wanted to feed at his trough, they had to kowtow to Senhor Marcelos. Yes, there’d been talk about his past—nothing specific, a few high-profile affairs and some mammoth business deals. He let certain gossip get through on purpose, she suspected, so that the things he really cared about remained hidden. She could see something swirling behind his eyes and knew she wasn’t imagining it, because she had the same hurt and shadows in her own stare. They were both private people who relied on themselves and no one else, but she couldn’t pretend that Luc’s shadows didn’t intrigue her, or that she wouldn’t like to know more about him, what made him tick.
    Must she always go looking for trouble?
    Apparently, yes, or she would have found some excuse not to service his room. One of the other chambermaids at the hotel would have jumped at the chance to take over from her.
    Why didn’t she ask them?
    Not a chance.
    It didn’t matter how dangerous Luc might be—while he was here she couldn’t stay away from him. There was a good reason for that. She had to find the right moment to tell him about the baby, and at some point he would leave Scotland for destinations unknown. Luc had homes all over the world, and could go to any one of them. Before he left she had to talk to him. He was hardly going to leave her a forwarding address.
    When her shift was over she ran up the back stairs to her room. Her thoughts were still just as confused. Her main aim was to be a good parent, and to be as honest as she always had been, which meant coming clean with Luc, but each time she saw him her head reeled and her thoughts scrambled. How was she supposed to form a sound judgement about a man she only knew by reputation?
    It didn’t help that Luc seemed to think she was still that girl he knew from London, the girl who would go to bed with him at the drop of a hat. He couldn’t know that things had changed radically for her since then.