Claiming The Virgin's Baby (Mills & Boon Modern) Read online

  She’s never been touched

  But she’s carrying his heir!

  Seven months pregnant, innocent surrogate Rosalie realizes she can’t bear to give away the child she’s carrying for a childless Italian couple. She flies to Venice to beg forgiveness, only to discover brooding Alex Falconeri is a widower...and he has no idea she is expecting his baby!

  Alex can’t throw away this chance to know his surprise heir. But Rosalie is torturously sweet temptation... After his cold, loveless marriage, Alex has sworn he will not marry again. But he’s starting to think he’ll do anything to make Rosalie his!

  USA TODAY bestselling author JENNIE LUCAS’s parents owned a bookstore, so she grew up surrounded by books, dreaming about faraway lands. A fourth-generation Westerner, she went east at sixteen to boarding school on a scholarship, wandered the world, got married, then finally worked her way through college before happily returning to her hometown. A 2010 RITA® Award finalist and 2005 Golden Heart® Award winner, she lives in Idaho with her husband and children.

  Also by Jennie Lucas

  Nine Months to Redeem Him

  A Ring for Vincenzo’s Heir

  Baby of His Revenge

  The Consequence of His Vengeance

  Carrying the Spaniard’s Child

  Claiming His Nine-Month Consequence

  Chosen as the Sheikh’s Royal Bride

  Christmas Baby for the Greek

  Her Boss’s One-Night Baby

  Secret Heirs and Scandalous Brides miniseries

  The Secret the Italian Claims

  The Heir the Prince Secures

  The Baby the Billionaire Demands

  Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk.

  Claiming the Virgin’s Baby

  Jennie Lucas

  www.millsandboon.co.uk

  ISBN: 978-1-474-09816-8

  CLAIMING THE VIRGIN’S BABY

  © 2020 Jennie Lucas

  Published in Great Britain 2020

  by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

  All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

  By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.

  ® and ™ are trademarks owned and used by the trademark owner and/or its licensee. Trademarks marked with ® are registered with the United Kingdom Patent Office and/or the Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market and in other countries.

  www.millsandboon.co.uk

  Note to Readers

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  To Julie Sonveau and all my fellow travelers to Mont St. Michel. You know who you are. ;)

  Contents

  Cover

  Back Cover Text

  About the Author

  Booklist

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Note to Readers

  Dedication

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Extract

  About the Publisher

  CHAPTER ONE

  PANIC. FEAR. BITTER REGRET.

  Those were the things that Rosalie Brown felt as she looked down at her seven-months’-pregnant belly.

  She took a deep breath. She’d thought she could do this—be a surrogate mother for a childless married couple. She’d convinced herself that at the end of her pregnancy she’d be able to joyfully give the baby into the arms of his true, loving family.

  She’d been a fool.

  Burning tears lifted to Rosalie’s eyes. Wrapping her hands over the wrinkled cotton of her sundress, she cradled her baby bump, her heart in her throat.

  For the last seven months, as this baby had grown inside her, she’d felt him kick and move. She’d gone to ultrasounds and gotten in the habit of talking to him out loud as she took long walks along the edge of San Francisco Bay, morning and evening, rain and shine. As the winter fog rolled in, as the spring sunshine sparkled on the water, she’d come to love this baby.

  Secretly.

  Stupidly.

  Rosalie blinked fast. When she’d seen the fertility clinic’s ad looking for surrogates, she’d been in a bad place, grief stricken, newly unemployed and unable to ever go home again. When she’d seen the ad, she’d thought it was a miracle: a way not just to help pay her rent for a few months, but to truly do something good in the world. The best way—the only way—to get past her own blinding guilt and pain.

  So she’d met the prospective mother, a beautiful, chic Italian woman who’d had tears in her eyes as she spoke of her husband’s desire for a child. “Please,” the woman had whispered in huskily accented English, “you’re the only one who can help us.” For the first time in months, Rosalie had felt something other than despair. She’d signed the surrogacy contract that very day.

  It was only a few weeks later, when she’d first started to surface from the fog of grief, that she’d had second thoughts. She’d realized she’d be giving up her own baby, not just carried by her body, but even related to her biologically. Yes, she would conceive the baby in a medical clinic, and she’d yet to meet the biological father, but would that make the child any less hers?

  After just one artificial insemination attempt, Rosalie had realized it was a horrible mistake. She’d known she couldn’t be a surrogate after all. She’d decided to tell them to forget it.

  But it was already too late.

  She was pregnant. Pregnant on the first try. With a child that, by her own signed contract, she’d be forced to give away at birth.

  For the last seven months, Rosalie had tried to convince herself the baby wasn’t really hers. She’d told herself the baby belonged to Chiara Falconeri and her husband, Alex. This was their baby. Not hers.

  But every part of Rosalie—heart and body and soul—violently disagreed. Until finally, she could bear it no longer. Last week, she’d gotten a passport for the first time in her life. She’d booked an international flight.

  And she’d flown here today, to Venice, in an act that could only be described as pure lunacy. For how would Rosalie ever convince the Italian couple to tear up the contract and let her keep her baby?

  “Signora?”

  She looked up at the smiling young Italian man in the striped shirt, holding his hand to help her out of the vaporetto, which had shuttled them across the lagoon from the Marco Polo airport. A hot gust of wind hit her yellow sundress, already wrinkled from being crammed into a middle seat in the airplane’s back row for a fourteen-hour flight. The small ferry rocked beneath her, or maybe she was just dizzy from stress and lack of sleep.

  “Help with bag?” the young man asked politely.

  “No,” she said, clinging to her small overnight bag on her shoulder. “Grazie.” It was the only word in Italian she knew, other than food words like spaghetti or gelato.

  “Ciao, bella.” She felt the young man’s eyes follow her as she went up the gangplank, and she felt self-conscious of her hugely pregnant shape. She obviously wasn’t actually beautiful. Italian men must call every woman bella, she decided, as a mark of warmth and respect. She liked the country already.

  At least she would, if she could just convince the Italian couple to let her keep her baby. How hard could that be?

  Yeah, right. Rosalie had a hollow feeling in her chest as she followed the crowd of tourists off the vaporetto and into the city, past charming outdoor cafés and shops selling brightly colored glass and Venetian masks. For a moment, she looked up at the city—Venice, city of dreams, La Serenissima.

  She’d grown up on a small Northern California farm, until she’d moved to nearby San Francisco for a job. She’d never imagined she might someday travel to the other side of the world. She was dazzled by the fairy-tale Renaissance buildings, the romantic Juliet balconies, the canals sparkling like diamonds beneath the hot Italian sun.

  Narrowing her eyes, she shook her head with a sigh. Who cared about exotic locales or fairy-tale dreams? She was here for one reason: to try to keep her baby.

  She had to convince them. She had to. Fiercely, Rosalie focused on the map on her phone. She left the crowds pushing south to Saint Mark’s Square, turning instead onto a quiet narrow street, then another. She followed the directions to the address from the contract, crossing a narrow bridge, far beyond the tourist hordes to the quiet Piazza di Falconeri.

  With every step, she felt sweatier and more wrinkled. She’d only met Chiara Falconeri once at the clinic in California, and she’d never met the husband at all. But she knew there was no way that Alex Falconeri would call her bella as the other Italian man had. Not after Rosalie asked to take his son.

  She stopped in front of a wrought-iron gate within a tall stone wall. Behind it, she could see a leafy green courtyard filled with plants and trees, and behind that, a discreet palazzo. This was it. For a second, her knees went weak beneath her. Then she thought of her desperation. Tugging her bag more firmly on her shoulder, she pressed the bell.

  A cold voice came over the intercom. “Sì?”

  Feeling awkward speaking to a stone wall, she said, “Um... I’d like to see—to speak to Mr. and Mrs. Falconeri, please.”

  “Mr. Falconeri?” The man’s voice sounded scandalized, with an accent that reminded her of the English butler in Downton Abbey. “Do you have an appointment?”

  “No, but they’ll wish to see me.” She hoped.

  A sniff. “And who are you?”

  “I’m—I’m Rosalie Brown. I’m their surrogate. I’m having their baby.”

  Dead silence on the other end of the intercom.

  “Hello?” she ventured finally. “Is anyone there?” Still no answer. “Please, I’ve come all the way from California. If you could just ask Mrs. Falconeri, she can explain—”

  There was a buzzing sound, and the gate suddenly snapped open. With a gulp, she pushed inside.

  The courtyard was shadowy, quiet and green, and seemed a world away from the rest of crowded, treeless Venice. She heard birdsong as she went through the small garden to an elaborate door. But even as she reached up to knock, the door opened in front of her hand. A supercilious white-haired man, who was bent over and looked as if he had to be at least a hundred and fifty years old, looked up at her.

  “You may come in.” She recognized the quivery British voice. Beneath bushy white eyebrows, his gaze fell to her pregnant belly with a frown.

  “Um... Thanks.” Nervously, Rosalie entered the foyer and felt the welcome relief of air-conditioning cooling her overheated skin. She bit her lip, then said hesitantly, “Are you Mr. Falconeri?”

  “I?” The elderly man coughed. “I am Collins, the butler. The conte is my employer.”

  “Conte?” she repeated, confused.

  “Alexander Falconeri is the Conte di Rialto,” he replied pointedly. “Strange you do not know who he is, if you are having his baby.” His voice indicated how doubtful he was of that claim.

  “Oh.” Great. So her baby’s father was apparently royalty of some kind. Like she needed to feel more insecure than she already did. Tilting back her head, Rosalie looked up at painted frescos of angels above the antique crystal chandelier soaring high overhead.

  “This way, Miss Brown.” The butler led her past a sweeping staircase and down a wide hallway, then through double doors, ten feet high, into a gilded salon. She gaped, looking around her at the Louis XIV furniture, an oil portrait over the marble fireplace and large windows overlooking a canal. “Wait here, if you please.”

  After he left, Rosalie paced nervously in the salon, uncertain where to stand or sit or look. A palace like this was totally foreign to her experience, nothing like the tiny apartment in San Francisco she’d shared with three other girls, or before that, her family’s farm in Northern California, with its hundred-year-old farmhouse, crammed to the gills with mismatched furniture.

  All very flammable, as it turned out...

  She felt queasiness rise inside her and pushed the thought away. She forced herself to focus only on the room around her. This furniture, too, looked as if it had been handed down through generations, but very differently than how her loving, lived-in family home had been. Every chair in here, every table, looked priceless, almost untouchable—she eyeballed a gilded antique settee—and very uncomfortable.

  With a sigh, she looked up at the portrait above the marble fireplace. The man in the painting, no doubt some long-ago Falconeri ancestor, looked down at her even more scornfully than the butler had. You don’t belong here, the bewigged man’s sneer seemed to say to her. And shivering, she agreed with him. No. She didn’t. And neither did her baby.

  There was no way she could allow her child to be raised in a museum like this. Rosalie gripped the leather strap of her bag. She’d recently discovered that surrogacy was illegal in Italy. A fact which Chiara and Alex Falconeri had obviously known when they’d decided to hire a surrogacy clinic in more lenient California.

  But the thought of trying to use that to her advantage made her knees shake. No. She couldn’t. Could she? Absolutely not. She’d never threatened anyone in her life.

  But to keep her baby—?

  “Who are you and what do you want?”

  Hearing the low growl behind her, Rosalie whirled to face the man who’d just entered the salon door.

  He was tall, powerfully built, with broad shoulders and a muscular shape. His hair was dark and mussed. His eyes were black and they burned right through her. Rosalie gripped the edge of the marble fireplace mantel for support as her knees trembled beneath her.

  “You are—Alex Falconeri?” she croaked.

  His dark eyes narrowed as he stalked into the roo m, then stopped directly in front of her. He was dressed all in black, a button-down shirt, perfectly tailored trousers, and leather shoes with a dull shine. His stark clothing seemed perfect for a palace like this—and totally wrong for real life, for the hot, sunny Italian weather outside, on the last day in May.

  “You didn’t answer my question.” The man’s gaze was a weapon, freezing her in place as he slowly looked her over. “Who are you? What is this ridiculous story you told my butler?”

  How many different surrogates did they have that he didn’t immediately know who she was? Frowning, she blinked in bewilderment. “I’m Rosalie. Rosalie B-Brown.”

  “Well. Rosalie, Rosalie Brown,” he mocked, “Is this some kind of joke? Are you truly claiming to be pregnant with my baby?”

  Claiming? She frowned, bewildered. “You know I am.”

  “And how could that be?” he said scornfully, folding his powerful arms. “I never cheated on my wife, not in three years of marriage, not once, not even when she—”

  He cut himself off, his jaw clenching.

  Rosalie gaped at him. “I saw your signature on the surrogacy contract!”

  “Contract?” he growled. “What are you talking about?”

  Was it possible—he didn’t know?

  “Your wife—Mrs. Falconeri—I mean, the countess or whatever she’s called, hired me through the surrogacy clinic in San Francisco last November. She told me you were—” she hesitated “—um, too busy to leave Italy. But she said you were happily married, and all you needed was a child to make your happiness complete.”

  “Happy?” He looked at her incredulously. “You cannot have actually met my wife. She would never have said that.”

  “Well—she said that once I had the baby, you’d be happy, because a baby was all you wanted. And she said once I gave birth, she could finally be happy too.”

  Alex Falconeri stared at her coldly.

  She licked her lips. “Just ask her,” she said weakly. “She’s the one who arranged everything. She—”