Demanding His Hidden Heir (Mills & Boon Modern) (Secret Heirs of Billionaires, Book 26) Read online

  A sizzling weekend...

  Changes the Italian’s life—forever

  Enzo Cardinali had never known a passion like the one he shared with Matilda St George during their red-hot Caribbean fling. Beautiful, irresistible Matilda made brooding Enzo crave something more for the first time. But when she left abruptly, he vowed to forget her, rebuilding the walls around his damaged heart. Now Matilda has reappeared—with his son! Enzo demands his heir, but will he claim vibrant Matilda, too?

  Feel the heat in this tantalizing tale—with a hidden heir twist!

  JACKIE ASHENDEN writes dark, emotional stories with alpha heroes who’ve just got the world to their liking only to have it blown wide apart by their kick-ass heroines. She lives in Auckland, New Zealand, with her husband, the inimitable Dr Jax, two kids and two rats. When she’s not torturing alpha males and their gutsy heroines she can be found drinking chocolate martinis, reading anything she can lay her hands on, wasting time on social media or being forced to go mountain biking with her husband. To keep up to date with Jackie’s new releases and other news, sign up to her newsletter at jackieashenden.com.

  Demanding His Hidden Heir

  is Jackie Ashenden’s debut title

  for Mills & Boon Modern

  Look out for more from Jackie Ashenden

  Coming soon!

  Also by Jackie Ashenden in

  Mills & Boon DARE

  The Knights of Ruin miniseries

  Ruined

  Destroyed

  Kings of Sydney miniseries

  King’s Price

  King’s Rule

  King’s Ransom

  Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk.

  Demanding His Hidden Heir

  Jackie Ashenden

  www.millsandboon.co.uk

  ISBN: 978-1-474-08798-8

  DEMANDING HIS HIDDEN HEIR

  © 2019 Jackie Ashenden

  Published in Great Britain 2019

  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 discussions about fairytales

  that can lead to all sorts of good things…

  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

  EPILOGUE

  Extract

  About the Publisher

  CHAPTER ONE

  ENZO CARDINALI WAS not a man who appreciated parties. They were, in his opinion, nothing more than an excuse for people to waste time talking about trivialities while drinking themselves insensible and generally behaving badly.

  He was not a fan of trivialities or bad behaviour either.

  He stood in the corner of Henry St George’s lavishly appointed drawing room, watching all the gorgeously attired people in it laugh and bray and talk nonsense to each other, nursing the same tumbler of Scotch he’d been holding for the past hour, impatient and not a little irritable.

  The house party he’d been invited to had gone on for what seemed like an eternity and he was done with it. He’d been done with it the moment he’d arrived. His usual state of being, in other words.

  He had no tolerance for waiting and, since other people didn’t move at the speed he did, it felt as if waiting was all he did. Which made him constantly irritable.

  Dante, his brother, had often told him he needed to cultivate a little patience, but Enzo didn’t see why he should. He hadn’t been put on this earth to make other people comfortable and, if they couldn’t keep up with him, that was their problem. Of course, that then made it his problem and that was the part he didn’t like.

  He should have had Dante handle the particular bit of business he was in England for, but at the last minute he’d decided it was too important to let his laid-back brother handle it and so here he was. At a weekend-long house party at St George’s extensive stately home deep in the Cotswolds.

  St George was a rich industrialist with deep pockets and a taste for old-fashioned parties, during which he conducted most of his business. A state of affairs with which Enzo was not particularly happy. However, he was putting up with it because St George also owned an island just off the coast of Naples that Enzo was desperate to get his hands on.

  So far the party had been useful, in that he was halfway to convincing the old man to sell the island to him, and now all he needed was to close the deal.

  Except St George was baulking—for what reason, Enzo didn’t know, nor did he care. What he cared about was having to exert himself and make nice, something that didn’t come easy to him, in order to close the deal this weekend.

  Across the room St George’s white head bent as he leaned down to listen to a woman at his elbow. He was apparently a popular host and many of London’s business elite jockeyed to get invites to his house parties.

  Enzo shifted restlessly on his feet. Dio, this was interminable. He’d been waiting for an opportune moment to corner S
t George and present him with a final offer, but the man was constantly surrounded by people.

  Dante had warned Enzo to be polite about it, but maybe his brother could go to hell.

  Enzo wanted that island, Isola Sacra. It was the closest thing to Monte Santa Maria he’d come across, the tiny island kingdom in the Adriatic that had once been his home before his father, the king, had made one petty power play too many and parliament had decided it had had enough of royalty, declaring itself a republic and politely inviting the royal family to leave. For good.

  The Cardinalis had found a place for themselves on mainland Italy, in Milan, but it had never felt like home to Enzo. He’d been fifteen when they’d left Monte Santa Maria and he’d felt rootless ever since.

  Once, he’d been heir to a kingdom. Now, he had nothing.

  Well, nothing except a multi-billion-dollar property development company, but that wasn’t quite the same.

  It was a home he wanted. And, since he could never go back to the one he’d had, he needed to find himself another somewhere else.

  The guests in the drawing room swirled, the laughter and noise putting him on edge, making him feel even more restless.

  St George was still talking to that woman and Enzo decided that, if he hadn’t finished talking to her in another couple of minutes, he was going to go over there and make St George an offer regardless of politeness. His brother’s advice be damned.

  He wasn’t a stateless fifteen-year-old boy cowering in an apartment in Milan any more. He was the CEO of a billion-dollar company with offices in cities around the globe.

  He might not have a country, but as far as the business world was concerned he was still a king.

  Across the room the door opened suddenly, the movement catching Enzo’s attention, and a small child peered round it, scanning the room with wide eyes.

  Enzo frowned. What was a child doing up at this time of night? It was nearly eleven p.m.

  The child—a small boy—took a step into the room, looking around uncertainly. He wore blue pyjamas and his black hair was spiked up. There was something familiar about him. Something that Enzo couldn’t quite put his finger on.

  The boy had to be St George’s young son—a surprise late-in-life baby, since St George was in his early sixties. He’d married a woman around half his age four years ago and her subsequent pregnancy so soon after the wedding had caused a minor sensation.

  Not that Enzo had ever been particularly interested in gossip, and why he remembered it now was anyone’s guess.

  But still. There was something about that boy.

  The child took another few steps into the room, his eyes wide. They were an unusual colour. Gold. Like new-minted coins.

  The familiarity tugged harder at Enzo. There weren’t many people with eyes that colour, not so clear and startling. In fact, he only knew of two: his father and himself. Golden eyes were a Cardinali family trait and in Monte Santa Maria they’d traditionally been a sign of royalty.

  Strange that this child should have them too, though obviously a coincidence.

  There was another movement by the door and it opened wider this time, another figure standing in the doorway. A woman.

  She wasn’t dressed in high-end couture like the other guests, just a simple pair of jeans and a loose dark blue T-shirt. Her hair was piled up on top of her head in a messy bun, and it was as red as a fire against a twilight sky.

  The tug of familiarity became a pull, deep and hard.

  Her hair lying soft across his chest, a silken rope between his fingers as he’d pulled her towards him. Red as that hot mouth he’d kissed...

  The woman scanned the room, giving him a good look at her face. High forehead and a sharp nose, a pointed, determined little chin. Freckles across her equally sharp cheekbones. Freckles that she’d fussed about in the tropical sun. Freckles scattered like gold dust across the luscious curves of her breasts, and he’d kissed every single one...

  No. It couldn’t be.

  She gave the room another scan and then, as inevitably as the sun rising, her gaze met his and he found himself staring into eyes the colour of storm clouds and ice, a pure, clear grey that belied the passion that burned inside her.

  A passion he’d tasted for more hours than he cared to count.

  A passion he’d never felt before or since.

  A passion that had gone as cold as ashes the morning he’d woken up in the villa to find she’d gone.

  Four years ago, on an island in the Caribbean, at his brother’s new resort, he’d met a woman.

  A woman with red hair and freckles who’d turned him inside out. Who’d made him so hungry he hadn’t been able to think straight.

  Who’d made him forget, just for a couple of days, the constant ache in his heart for what he’d lost.

  And who’d left him without even a goodbye.

  Her gaze went wide as it met his, blanking with shock, and he knew instantly that, yes, it was her. The red-headed, passionate woman he’d had a two-day fling with four years ago.

  He’d tried to forget her. Dio, he’d even convinced himself that he had.

  But as she stared at him with those wide grey eyes, and he felt the burn of a sudden physical hunger, he knew that he’d been lying to himself.

  He hadn’t forgotten. Not the passion that had consumed them or the sense of homecoming that had come over him when she’d put her arms around him.

  Or the fury when he’d woken up two days later, alone. His bed empty. His sheets cold.

  The fury hit him again now, a hard punch to his gut, twisting with the hunger to become something so intense and volatile he could hardly breathe through it.

  Four years, he’d dreamed of her. Four years, he’d woken up hard and aching, wanting something that all the money in the world couldn’t buy him.

  Something that only she had been able to give him.

  He hadn’t gone looking for her; he’d been too proud, telling himself that one woman would do as well as any other, but that was a lie and he knew it.

  And now here she was, years later and thousands of miles from their island, standing in the doorway of an Englishman’s drawing room and staring at him as if what was happening to him was happening to her too.

  What was she doing here? Where had she been?

  He’d taken one unconscious step towards her when the child turned around suddenly and said, ‘Mummy.’ And launched himself towards the doorway, running to her and wrapping his arms around her legs.

  Enzo stopped dead as another punch of shock hit him.

  Mummy.

  The woman—Summer, she’d told him her name was—put her hand on the boy’s head, but that smoky-grey gaze remained pinned to Enzo’s. As if she couldn’t look away.

  That was St George’s child wrapping his arms around her legs. St George’s child, calling her ‘Mummy’. Which meant...

  She’s St George’s wife.

  The shock got wider, deeper, spreading out inside him.

  It shouldn’t matter who she was. It shouldn’t mean a thing. He shouldn’t care, not after all this time.

  He hadn’t wanted to visit Dante’s resort anyway. He’d just lost his first attempt at buying Isola Sacra after someone had bought it from under him, and the very last thing he’d felt like doing was checking up on a potential management issue on Dante’s behalf.

  But his brother hadn’t been able to do it himself because of various commitments and Enzo was control-freak enough not to want to leave it to someone else.

  He’d hated it the moment he’d got off the plane. There had been something about the dense tropical air and the brilliant blue of the sea that had crawled beneath his skin and unsettled him. Made him remember the land he’d come from and the home he hadn’t been able to forget.

  He’d stood underneath the palms, listening to the re
sort manager catalogue the problems the resort had been having, sweating in his custom-made suit, his hand-made leather shoes full of sand, restless and impatient to be home.

  And then he’d seen her, a pale, curvy woman in a bright-red bikini that somehow matched her hair. She was on her way to the pool, a towel around her shoulders and a book in one hand, and she’d glanced at him as she’d walked past. She’d had the body of a fifties pin-up and a mouth made for sin, and it had curved as her gaze had met his. And that in itself had caught him by the throat.

  Because people didn’t look him in the eye—they were too afraid of him. But she had. In fact, there had even been a certain amusement in her gaze, as if she hadn’t seen the icy, powerful CEO that everyone else saw. The ruthless king of business he’d turned himself into.

  It was as if she’d seen the man he was underneath instead.

  It had suddenly made his trousers feel two sizes too tight.

  He hadn’t thought twice about breaking off his conversation with the resort manager and following her to the pool.

  She’d already settled herself on the lounger and, when he’d approached her, she’d given him a cool look from over the top of her book.

  It hadn’t remained cool for long.

  Electricity had crackled in the air as their eyes had met and an hour later he’d been in her villa, his suit on the floor along with her bikini.

  He’d had her against the wall that first time, fast and hard, no time for niceties. There had only been desperation for them both. She’d gasped as he’d pushed inside her, and she’d felt so hot and tight, her silky thighs wrapped around his waist. Incredible. Her eyes had gone dark as they’d met his, and there had been no fear in them whatsoever. Only wonder. As if she’d never seen anything like him before in her entire life. Nothing had ever turned him on more. And then that wonder had fractured into pleasure as he’d begun to move inside her, driving her against the wall, driving them both into insanity...

  Two days they’d had. Two days when he’d touched and tasted every inch of her, when he’d held her in his arms and shared things he’d never shared with another person before; had given her pieces of his soul that he’d never shared with anyone else.

 
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