A Deal To Carry The Italian's Heir (Mills & Boon Modern) (The Scandalous Brunetti Brothers, Book 2)
Page 18
She came into his arms like lightning and took his mouth in a hot, possessive kiss that got his blood thrumming. “I’ll always choose you, darling. Always.”
EPILOGUE
Three years later
NEHA PULLED THE fresh batch of cinnamon rolls out of the monstrous oven that she still hadn’t gotten used to, and placed them with great care onto a ceramic plate. It was a waste of time and effort, she knew, but she still liked seeing her handiwork beautifully arranged, even for a few seconds.
Even if her audience hadn’t developed an aesthetic sense along with a palate.
She poured cold milk into the glass carafe and carried the whole thing out into the backyard, which had a view of beautiful Lake Como.
She’d barely put the tray down when two pairs of grubby hands reached for the rolls and her carefully crafted tower was demolished into a blob. When she’d have run after the screeching toddlers with a roll in one hand and a plastic shovel in the other, strong arms gripped her from the back and held her arrested in a cocoon of heat and hardness she couldn’t resist to this day.
Maybe never.
“Let them be,” Leo whispered at her ear, and then buried his face in the crook of her neck. The press of his warm mouth at her pulse sent shivers spewing over her skin. “Your mum will watch them.”
“My mum’s a fragile, delicate thing and those children of yours are two monsters. Maya, somehow, you can still reason with. But Matteo... God, Leo, he’s already a little terror the way you let him do whatever he wants.”
“He’s two, cara mia. I don’t have the heart to tell him to stop digging for treasure or tell Maya she’s responsible for her brother. He’ll learn when it’s time how to behave. Let them be children. For as long as possible.”
Neha sighed and swept her arms around his neck, sank her fingers into his hair, knowing that her husband was a marshmallow when it came to their children. And a natural at it, too. “Fine. Don’t come to me when he’s a moody, spoiled teenager.”
Leo’s hands pushed up her blouse until his roughened hands reached the skin beneath. He stroked her skin, the fingertips reaching up and up until she heard her breath hitch. “Maybe what they need is company. You wouldn’t be up for another set, would you?”
“Another set of what?” Neha demanded, even as she pressed herself shamelessly into the hardness nestled between her buttocks.
“Twins, cara mia. We’ll ask Massimo and Nat to babysit, go on a proper honeymoon this time and get to working on that. Sì?”
“Sì,” Neha whispered before turning her mouth for his voracious kiss. “Sì to anything you suggest, darling,” she whispered, and he laughed, those blue eyes shining with love. And Neha knew that even thirty years later she’d still be shaking at the knees when he looked at her like that. loz
“Ti amo, tesoro,” he whispered before he claimed her mouth with his.
Coming next month
SECRETS OF HIS FORBIDDEN CINDERELLA
Caitlin Crews
She hadn’t seen him clearly that night in September. That had been the point. She had been bold and daring, and he had responded with that brooding, overwhelming passion that had literally swept her off her feet. Into his arms, against a wall. And then, in a private salon, still dressed in their finery, with fabric pushed aside in haste and need.
Too much haste and need, it turned out.
Even though she had watched him roll on protection.
But now, he wore nothing to cover his face. And he wasn’t smiling slightly, the way he had then. Those dark eyes of his weren’t lit up with that particular knowing gleam that had turned her molten and soft.
On the contrary, his look was frigid. Stern and disapproving.
It made her remember—too late, always too late—that he wasn’t simply a man. He was all the men who had come before him, too. He was the Duke, and the weight of that made him…colossal.
A decade ago, on the very rare occasions that he had looked at her at all, he had looked at her like this.
But it felt a lot worse now.
“This is a surprise,” Teo said, with no preamble. “Not a pleasant one.”
One of his inky brows rose, a gesture that he must have inherited from the royal branch of his family tree, because it made Amelia want to genuflect. She did not.
“Hi, Teo,” she replied.
Foolishly.
“You will have to remind me of your name,” he said, and there was a gleam in his eyes now. It made her feel quivery in a completely different way. And she didn’t believe for a second that he didn’t know who she was. “I’m afraid that I did not retain the particulars of my father’s regrettable romantic choices.”
“I understand. I had to block out a whole lot of my mother’s marriages, too.”
A muscle worked in his lean, perfect jaw. “Allow me to offer a warning now, before this goes any further. If you have come here in some misguided attempt to extort money from me based upon an association I forgot before it ended, you will be disappointed. And as I cannot think of any other reason why you should intrude upon my privacy, I will have to ask you to leave.”
Amelia considered him. “You could have had the butler say that, surely.”
“I will admit to a morbid sense of curiosity.” His gaze swept over her. “And it is satisfied.” He didn’t wave a languid hand like a sulky monarch and still, he dismissed her. “You may go.”
Amelia ordered the part of her that wanted to obey him, automatically, to settle down. “You don’t want to hear why I’ve come?”
“I am certain I do not.”
“That will make it fast, then.”
Amelia could admit she felt…too much. Perhaps a touch of shame for having to come to him like this—especially after the last time she’d shown up here, uninvited. Her pulse kicked at her, making her feel…fluttery. And she was, embarrassingly, as molten and soft as if he’d smiled at her the way he had in September. dpg!
When he hadn’t ventured anywhere near a smile.
“Never draw out the ugly things,” Marie had always told her. “The quicker you get them over with, the more you can think about the good parts instead.”
Just do it, be done with it and go, she ordered herself.
And who cared if her throat was dry enough to start its own fire?
“I’m pregnant,” she announced into the intimidatingly, exultantly blue-blooded room. To a man who was all of that and more. “You’re the father.’
Continue reading
SECRETS OF HIS FORBIDDEN CINDERELLA
Caitlin Crews
Available next month
Copyright ©2019 by Caitlin Crews
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