There were so many emotions engulfing Beth that for a long time she couldn’t say anything.
She’d said all she needed to say. Apart from one last thing.
‘I love you.’ And she loved the way those emerald eyes pulsed as she said those words. Joy careering through her at such speed it made her dizzy, she said them again. ‘I love you.’
He gazed into her eyes for one more long, lingering moment before his mouth crushed hers and they expressed their love for each other with so much more than words.
EPILOGUE
‘ARE YOU SURE I look okay?’
Alessio looked up from the sleeve of his shirt where he was fastening a cufflink and stared with unadorned wonder at his wife.
In a long, red silk dress that skimmed her growing cleavage and hugged her swelling stomach, she looked ravishing.
‘You, bella, look good enough to eat.’
Her eyes gleamed at the suggestiveness of his tone.
He’d always thought the saying about pregnant women glowing was a myth. His wife had proved it true and in this, her second pregnancy, she had never looked more beautiful.
Their bedroom door was barged open and four-year-old Dom walked in carrying two-year-old Bruno under Bruno’s armpits.
‘Put him down,’ Beth scolded kindly. ‘He’s not a pet.’
Dom let go. Luckily there wasn’t far for Bruno to fall and he landed with a small flump on his bottom.
Immediately he held his arms up for his big brother to pick him up again.
Alessio saved him the bother, lifting them with one arm each and depositing them on the bed. ‘Where’s Miranda?’
‘Getting our milk. Can we come with you, Babbo?’
It never failed to make Alessio’s heart burst to hear Dom call him that: Daddy.
And he was his daddy, in every way possible. Two months after Beth had learned she was pregnant with Bruno, they’d legally adopted Dom. He was theirs. They loved him. They might not be his biological parents but they were his mummy and daddy.
He rubbed Dom’s hair. ‘Not tonight, topolina. Mummy’s hosting an important party at our facility in Lake Como.’
Their first select party had proven to be the best marketing event Palvetti had ever undertaken. Word in select circles had spread like wildfire and commissions had rocketed. It had unanimously been agreed to make it an annual event and unanimously agreed that Beth would run it. For three months a year she dedicated her time to organising the party. The rest of the time she did as she pleased, helping out on projects if anyone asked, but mostly enjoying her time with the children.
She would be able to enjoy her time with them for as long as she wanted. Dom’s name had been removed from the Quilton House waiting list. None of their children would go to boarding school.
Gathering his boys into his arms, he carried them to Beth so they could ruin her make-up with their sloppy kisses, then carried them back to the nursery.
* * *
If you enjoyed A Cinderella to Secure His Heir, the first instalment in the Cinderella Seductions duet, look out for Tabitha’s story, coming soon!
And why not explore these other Michelle Smart stories?
Billionaire’s Bride for Revenge
Marriage Made in Blackmail
Billionaire’s Baby of Redemption
The Sicilian’s Bought Cinderella
Available now!
Keep reading for an excerpt from The Italian’s Twin Consequences by Caitlin Crews.
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The Italian’s Twin Consequences
by Caitlin Crews
CHAPTER ONE
“I’M AWARE THE terms of these sessions were set out in writing and forwarded to you by your board of directors, Mr. Combe, but I think it’s useful to go over them again in person. While you and I will be doing the talking, I must stress that you are not my client. I will be presenting my findings to the board rather than exploring therapeutic solutions with you. Do you understand what that means?”
Matteo Combe stared at the woman seated across from him in the ancient library of the Venetian villa that had been in his mother’s family since the dawn of time, or thereabouts. The San Giacomos were aristocratic and noble, with blood so blue it sang its own aria. They could even claim a smattering of Italian princes, Matteo’s great-grandfather among them. That he had not passed along his title had been, as far as Matteo was aware, the greatest disappointment of his grandfather’s life.
It would be a spot of luck indeed if Matteo could concern himself with such disappointments. Instead, he had to handle more pressing concerns at the moment, such as the preservation of the family business that his father’s decidedly working-class forebears had built from nothing in the north of England during the Industrial Revolution. That he was choosing to handle that situation here in this self-congratulatory aristocratic villa was for his own private satisfaction.
And perhaps he’d thought he might cow the woman—the psychiatrist—sitting with him while he was at it.
Dr. Sarina Fellows was, by his reckoning, the first American to set foot on the premises. Ever. Matteo was vaguely surprised the whole of the villa hadn’t sunk into the Grand Canal in genteel protest the moment she’d set foot on the premises.
But then, villas in Venice were as renowned for their remarkable tenacity in the face of adverse conditions as he was.
Sarina looked as brisk and efficient as her words had been, which boded ill. She was dressed entirely in funereal black, but was saved from dourness by the quiet excellence of the pieces she wore. Matteo knew artisanal Italian design when he saw it. Her hair was a dark black silk, bound up in a crisp chignon at the nape of her neck. Her eyes were a complicated brown shot through with amber, the irises ringed in black. And her lips were pure perfection, begging for a man to taste them, for all that, she had left them bare of any color.
She looked like what she was, he supposed. The agent of his destruction, if his enemies had their way.
Matteo had no intention of allowing anything to destroy him. Not this woman. Not his parents’ unexpected deaths within weeks of each other, leaving nothing in their wake but the fallout of the secrets they’d kept—and Matteo as the unwilling executor of the things they’d hidden while they lived. Not even his younger sister’s unfortunate life choices, which had led Matteo straight here, where the chairman of Combe Industries’ board—his late father’s best friend—now wished to take control.
Nothing would destroy him. Matteo wouldn’t allow it.
But he had to tolerate this farcical exercise first.
Sarina aimed what he suspected was meant to be a sympathetic smile his way. It struck him as rather more challenging instead. And Matteo had never been one to back down from a challenge—especially when he really should have, to keep the peace.
Lord, but he detested this process already. And it had only just begun.
He recalled that she’d asked him a question. And he’d agreed, hadn’t he? He’d given his word. He would sit here and subject himself to this intrusion and he would, yes, answer her questions. Each and every one.
Through gritted teeth, if necessary.
“I’m perfectly aware of why you are here, Miss Fellows,” he managed to reply. What he did not manage to do was strip his voice of impatience. Frustration. And what his erstwhile personal assistant often dared to categorize, to his face, as sheer orneriness.
“Doctor.”
He didn’t follow. “Excuse me?”
Her smile was all sharp edges. “It’s Dr. Fellows, Mr. Combe. Not Miss Fellows. I hope that critical distinction assures you that these conversations, while perhaps difficult, are wholly professional.”
“I’m delighted to hear it,” he said, wondering if he’d done that deliberately. He’d always prided himself on being far less of a blunt instrument than his father, renowned far and wide for his bluster and the sucker punch to back it up. But then, he’d never been in a situation like this before. “I have not spent much time—or any time, if I am honest—in mandated therapy, but the professional nature of this experience was, of course, my foremost concern.”
The late spring storm beat against the windows outside, rushing in from the lagoon and threatening to flood the Piazza San Marco the way it did more commonly in fall and winter. The threat of high water reflected Matteo’s mood perfectly. But the woman across from him only aimed that same smile at him as the rain slapped against the glass, wholly undeterred.
“I understand that there is resistance to this kind of therapy. Or indeed, any kind of therapy. Perhaps it will be helpful to dive in straightaway.” She settled there in the high-backed, antique chair that he knew for a fact was excruciatingly uncomfortable as if it had been crafted to her precise ergonomic specifications. She made a show of checking her notes in the sleek leather folder she brandished before her like a weapon. “You are the president and CEO of Combe Industries, correct?”
Matteo had dressed casually for this interview. Or session, as the woman had insisted upon calling it. Now he wished he hadn’t. He would have greatly preferred the comfort of one of his bespoke suits, the better to remind himself that he wasn’t simply any old ruffian in off the street. He was Matteo Combe, raised to be the eldest son and reluctant heir to the San Giacomo fortune and the sprawling, multinational corporation that his father’s gritty, determined Combe ancestors had built from nothing long ago in the stark mill towns of northern England.
You need to humanize yourself, his assistant had insisted.
That was the trouble, of course. Matteo had never been very good at being human. With his family—his careless, scandalous mother and his bullish, jealous father and all their theatrics—he’d never had much practice.
He forced a smile now. Something else he didn’t have much practice with. “I was president of the corporation before my father’s death. He had been grooming me to take his place for some time.” Since birth, in fact, though he kept that to himself. “I became CEO after he passed.”
“And you chose to mark the occasion of his passing by descending into a physical altercation with one of the funeral guests. A prince, no less.”
The smile on his mouth felt strained. “I wasn’t concerned with what he was at the time. All I knew was that he was the one who impregnated and abandoned my sister.”
Sarina checked her notes again, rustling through her papers in an officious manner that put Matteo’s teeth on edge. Or more on edge.
“You’re referring to your sister, Pia, who is some years younger than you, but is, in point of fact, an adult woman. Capable of choosing to bear a child if she so wishes, presumably.”
Matteo eyed the woman sitting across from him in that draconian chair his grandfather had made him sit in when the old man felt Matteo needed to learn humility. He’d had a dossier prepared on her, of course. Sarina Fellows had been born and raised in San Francisco and had distinguished herself in one of the city’s foremost private academies. She’d gone on to Berkeley, then Stanford, and instead of going into private practice as a psychiatrist, had opened up her own consulting firm instead. Now she traveled the globe, working most closely with corporations on various projects where psychological profiles on executives were needed.
Matteo was simply her latest victim.
Because he hadn’t simply punched out the jackass prince who’d left Pia pregnant and alone, which he still wasn’t the least bit sorry about. His little sister was the only family member Matteo had ever had that he could say he adored unreservedly, if often from afar, as the heiress to two grand fortunes was something of a target. For unscrupulous fortune hunters as well as princes, apparently. He’d happily do it again, and worse. But he’d done it in full view of the paparazzi, who’d had a field day.
Chip off the old block, they’d called him in a frenzy of malicious glee. They’d dragged his late father’s many scandals and altercations back into the light of day, in case anyone had been tempted to forget who Eddie Combe had been, mere days after his death. It had taken a single snide news cycle for the vicious tabloids to start speculating about whether or not Matteo was the right person to run his own damned company.
He’d had no choice but to submit to the demands of his prissy, pearl-clutching board of directors, all of whom had fluttered about claiming they’d never seen such behavior in all their days. A bald-faced lie, since they’d all gotten their positions in the first place from Eddie, who’d been a brawler by nature and inclination.
But Eddie was dead, which Matteo still found difficult to believe. All that force and power and fury, gone. And Matteo had to get high marks from the good doctor after the way he’d channeled his father at the funeral, or risk a vote of no confidence.
Matteo could have quashed the motion outright. But he knew that the company was in a time of transition. If he wanted to lead—instead of what his father had done all this time, which was bully, threaten, lie and occasionally cheat—he had to start off on the right foot.
Especially when he knew exactly what other revelations awaited in his parents’ wills.
“My sister is naive and trusting,” Matteo said shortly. “She was raised to know very little of the world, much less the nature of men. I’m afraid I don’t take kindly to those who would take advantage of her better nature.”
Sarina shifted slightly in the seat opposite, staring at him as if he was some kind of science experiment.
It was not the way women normally looked at him and Matteo couldn’t say he liked it much. Especially when he couldn’t help but notice the doctor was not exactly hard on the eyes. Her legs were slim and toned, and it was entirely too tempting to picture them draped over his shoulders as he drove into her—
Focus, he ordered himself.
He knew too much about her to imagine she would take kindly to his line of thought. He knew that she had built her consulting business out of nothing and was ruthless, driven—qualities he possessed himself and usually appreciated in others. Though not, perhaps, in this particular scenario, when all of that knife-edged ferocity was directed at him.
“You look as if you’ve seen a ghost,” she said, almost idly. He knew better than to imagine anything about her was the least bit idle. “Have you?”
“There are ghosts everywhere in a house like this,” Matteo replied, unsettled despite himself. Not at the notion of
ghosts. But at the strange sensation that had washed over him at the suggestion of them—the idea that he’d met this woman before when he knew he hadn’t. He shoved the odd sense of recognition aside. “The halls are cluttered with my ancestors. I’m sure some of them enjoy a good haunting, but I can’t say they’ve ever bothered me. Feel free to sleep here tonight and see if you receive a ghostly visitation.”
“That would be something indeed, as I don’t believe in ghosts.” Her head tilted to one side. “Do you?”
“If I did, I’d be unlikely to mention it. I wouldn’t wish to fail your test.”
“This isn’t a test, Mr. Combe. These are conversations, nothing more. And surely you understand why your shareholders and directors take a dim view of the sort of violent, antisocial behavior you displayed at the funeral.”
He lifted a shoulder and then dropped it, affecting a carelessness he had never actually felt. “I was protecting my sister.”
“Walk me through your thought process, if you will.” Sarina propped one elbow on the arm of the chair, then tapped one of her long, elegant fingers against her jaw. He shouldn’t have been mesmerized by the motion. “Your sister is six months pregnant. And not, by all reports, incapacitated in any way. My research into Pia indicates she’s a well-educated, well-traveled, perfectly independent woman. Yet you felt some archaic need to leap to her defense. In a markedly brutal fashion.”
“I am distressingly archaic.” Matteo wasn’t sure why that word ignited like a flame in him. Or maybe that was just her fingers on her own jaw, making him wish it was his hand instead. “It’s a natural consequence of having been raised in a historic family, I suspect.”
A Cinderella To Secure His Heir (Cinderella Seductions Book 1) Page 17
