Alessia could face anything; Nicolo was with her.
As it turned out, her mother was at her best. She knew Alessia, smiled and offered Nicolo her hand when Alessia introduced him.
Nick raised her hand to his lips. “Now I know where your daughter gets her beauty, principessa,” he said with a smile.
They didn’t stay long. Her mother’s private duty nurse appeared and said it was time for her nap.
“Alessia,” the princess said, “you must bring your handsome fiancé to see me again.”
“Oh, no, Mama. Nicolo isn’t—”
“I’ll see to it that she does,” Nick said, squeezing Alessia’s hand.
So what if Alessia’s mother believed he was engaged to her daughter? Nick thought as they drove back to the villa on the hilltop. From what Alessia had said, she probably wouldn’t remember meeting him. Why not let her be happy, if only for today?
Besides, the real happiness would be that of the lucky guy who could someday truly make that claim.
Nick felt a strange constriction in his throat. He looked at his lover. Then he reached for her hand and wove his fingers through hers.
Time passed with startling speed.
Nick had previously phoned his PA, arranged for her to shift meetings and appointments. He’d lucked out with the Chicago deal—the banker he was to meet with had to cancel. The same with the Beijing appointment; the Chinese associate had called to ask if they could postpone their meeting for a few weeks.
On a sunny morning, he and Alessia drove to Florence. It turned out that what he’d packed in his carry-on was only enough to take him just so far.
“Man cannot live by one suit, jeans, running shorts and a tux alone,” he’d intoned solemnly that morning, to the sweet sound of her laughter, and she, female to the marrow of her bones, had happily dragged him from shop to shop while he acquired new clothes.
It was her turn, he said after lunch. Over her protests, he stepped inside a shop that bore an elegant name and instructed the beaming sales clerk to outfit his lady from head to toe.
Alone while Alessia tried on dresses and trousers and anything and everything the clerk brought out for his approval, Nick took out his cell phone and did what he’d been putting off doing. He phoned his brothers, a three-way call, Dante and Rafe and him, because Falco was still off on his honeymoon.
“Hey,” Rafe said, “where the heck are you, man?”
“In Florence. I’m, ah, I’m on business for the old man.”
He could almost see his brothers roll their eyes.
“Yeah,” Dante said, “we figured he finally trapped you. How’s it going?”
Alessia stepped onto the round platform in front of him and twirled in a circle. The blues, greens and violets of a very short, very strapless dress swirled around her thighs.
“Nick? How’s it going?”
Nick cleared his throat. “Fine. Just fine.”
“What’s he got you doing, anyway?”
Alessia raised her eyebrows. Nick grinned, gave the dress a thumbs-up.
“Oh, this and that,” he said casually. “You know.”
In New York, sitting across from each other at a desk, Dante and Rafe looked meaningfully at each other.
Uh-oh, Dante mouthed, and Rafe nodded in agreement.
“Listen, man,” Rafe said, “if we can help…”
Alessia was back again, this time in a short red dress that clung to every curve.
“Nick? I said, if we can help—”
“No,” Nick said quickly. “No. Thanks, but I don’t need any help. Really, things are going great. I just—I might not be home for a while.”
Silence. Then Dante said, “Okay, let me be blunt. This thing the old man sent you to do… Does it involve some woman?”
“No,” Nick said blithely.
“Because, the thing is, if it does—”
“Whoa. Sorry, guys. The call’s breaking up,” Nick said, and snapped shut the phone.
He hadn’t lied, he told himself as the clerk showed him a handful of silk thongs, not at all. Because this thing, for lack of a better phrase, this thing didn’t involve “some” woman.
It involved one woman. Only one. And when that one woman came out of the dressing room, cheeks rosy with indignation, and told him that the clerk said that the gentleman was paying for everything, for each and every item she’d tried on, and that if he thought she would ever permit him to do that he was crazy—
“I am crazy,” Nick said softly, gathering her into his arms. “Crazy for you.”
Alessia held Nicolo’s hand as they strolled across the Ponte Vecchio, the beautiful antique gold heart he’d just bought at a goldsmith’s shop warm in the hollow of her throat.
She was happy. No. That was too small a word for what she felt. Her heart was full of joy. Of love.
Of what she had discovered about her lover.
That he was good and kind. Generous and compassionate. That he was perfect.
Of course she’d fallen in love with him. What woman wouldn’t? What woman wouldn’t want to be his forever—and yes, she knew she was thinking much, much too far ahead but how could she not imagine that he might love her, too? That he might ask her to be his wife, to bear his—to bear his—
Dio mio!
She could almost feel the blood drain from her head. Her footsteps faltered; she came to a dead stop, heart thumping so loudly she thought it might leap from her breast.
No, she told herself, no! It was impossible!
She should have had her period five days ago.
And she hadn’t. She hadn’t! And she was always, always regular….
“Princess?”
Alessia looked up at her lover. “I—I just realized…” Stop it, she told herself furiously. Stay calm. Somehow, she managed to smile. “I have to stop at a pharmacy.”
He said he would help her find one. She said she knew of a shop nearby. When he started to walk into the place with her, she stopped him.
“I must purchase something—something personal.”
He flashed that devastating grin. Teased her. Said he was old enough not to be shocked at seeing a woman buy personal things. She knew he thought she meant she had to buy tampons. Dio, if only that were so!
Somehow, she made herself smile in return.
“This is Italy,” she said in a teasing tone. “You might not be shocked, signore, but others would be.”
It was a lie, but he could not know it. He rolled his eyes, said okay, he’d wait outside, and then he hauled her to her toes and kissed her on her mouth and she wanted to clutch his shoulders and tell him that she was terrified.
Instead, she went into the pharmacy and bought half a dozen early pregnancy test kits.
At the villa, she told him she needed privacy to try on the things he’d bought her and choose one outfit for dinner on the terrace. He kissed her again, said she could make him a supremely happy man if she let him watch and she clucked her tongue, told him to go away and he rolled his eyes again, kissed her…
Finally, Alessia was alone.
Her hands shook as she opened the kits.
She took the tests, one after another, drinking as much water as she could between them, but the results were all the same.
She was pregnant. Pregnant! How could it have happened?
She was on the pill. She’d been on it for almost a year, ever since her gynecologist had told her it might help ease the crippling pain she suffered every month. Nicolo had asked her if she used birth control, and even though it wasn’t birth control, not for her, she’d assured him that she was….
Alessia stared at herself in the mirror, hands braced for support on the bathroom sink as the world began to turn gray.
But she had not been. Not that night. She always took her pill at bedtime but she had not taken it that night; she had left the little packet in her room at her father’s villa and in the excitement of making love, such incredible love with Nicolo, she had forgotten ev
erything but him.
When had she finally taken another pill?
She sank to the cool marble floor. A sob rose in her throat. She put her hand to her lips, bit down on her thumb to muffle the sound.
Not until two days—and two nights—later, when they’d returned to Villa Antoninni so they could retrieve their things.
She had missed three of the pills. Three! How could she have been so stupid? She had messed up and now she was pregnant. Nicolo’s baby was in her womb, tiny and helpless.
And unplanned. Unplanned and surely unwanted by its father…
“Alessia? Sweetheart, I’ve been waiting downstairs for you. Are you okay?”
Her heart pounded. She shot to her feet and swept all the EPT boxes and sticks into the wastebasket.
“Alessia. Answer me. Are you ill?”
“No,” she said in a high voice that bore no resemblance to her own. “I mean, yes, sì, I am. I—I have my period and—and—”
“Baby. Open the door.”
“No! Nicolo, per favore, I told you, this is a female thing.”
Nick narrowed his eyes. He knew about “female things.” When you grew up in a house with two sisters, the mystery wasn’t all that mysterious. His sister Isabella waltzed through her monthly cycle. Anna, on the other hand, crept around clutching a heating pad to her belly.
But he’d never heard Anna or any other woman sobbing and, dammit, Alessia had been sobbing.
Female thing or not, no way was his princess going to endure any kind of pain without him doing whatever he could to help.
“I’m coming in,” he said in a tone that said he wasn’t going to tolerate any nonsense. “No, Nicolo—”
Nick swung the door open. Alessia was sitting on the edge of the marble tub, eyes red and swollen, face shiny with tears.
His heart melted. “Ah, sweetheart…”
“Nicolo,” she said brokenly, and went straight into his arms.
Nick swept her off her feet and carried her into the bedroom. He sat down in a velvet armchair, drew her head against his chest and crooned to her, rocked her gently as he held her close. Long moments went by. Her sobs eased; her tears stopped. He waited a few seconds. Then he drew back and looked at her tearstained face. This was more than pain from her period. Every instinct told him so.
“Princess.” Gently, he smoothed her hair back from her damp cheeks. “What is it?”
Alessia looked at Nicolo. His eyes were filled with concern. His arms were a bulwark against the woes of the world. He was a good, kind man. He had not signed on for this.
She could lie to him. Tell him she wept because her period was agony. Tell him almost anything. He would believe her, if she told the lie well enough.
“Alessia. Talk to me.” He took her hands, brought them to his lips. “Tell me why you’re crying.”
It was just as the poets said. Time did stand still. She took a steadying breath.
“Nicolo,” she whispered, “Nicolo—I am pregnant.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
PREGNANT.
The word echoed in Nick’s head. Alessia was pregnant.
He felt a sheen of cold sweat break out on his forehead. If there was one word a man never wanted to hear from a woman with whom he was having an affair, that was it.
Over the years, he’d grown accustomed to hearing women say things that were upsetting. Like I love you. Like I know you said you weren’t interested in a serious relationship but… And on one memorable occasion, But what will my friends say if we break up?
Women said those things in different ways, never mind that he always made it clear, right up front, he wasn’t looking for forever. For all he knew, “forever” didn’t really exist.
So, yes, he’d heard women say a lot of things but he’d never had one claim she was…
“Pregnant?” The word came out sounding rusty. Nick cleared his throat. “Are you certain?”
“Sì.”
“How do you know?”
“I took a test. Many tests.” Her hands, still enclosed by his, were trembling. “That was what I was doing in the bathroom.”
“Have you missed your period?”
She blushed. And wasn’t that ridiculous? he thought, as coldness seeped into his blood. Her body had no secrets from him, not anymore, and she was telling him she was knocked up…but asking her about her menstrual cycle made her blush.
“I should have had it last week. I—I did not realize that it had not—”
Carefully, he let go of her hands. “You said you were on the pill.”
“I was. I am.” Her eyes met his. “But I did not have my pills with me that first night, Nicolo, and we made—we made love so many times before we went back to my father’s villa and I collected my things…”
“So, you weren’t on the pill. Not really, even though you said you were.”
She winced. Okay. He knew the question was coldly phrased, maybe even unfairly phrased but, dammit, she had said—
Nick eased Alessia off his lap, got to his feet and paced across the room before swinging around to face her.
“How could this have happened?”
She felt everything within her collapse. She knew his real question was, how could she have let this happen? It didn’t surprise her. In a world that talked about the equality of women, nothing was equal when it came to sex. She had always known that. At university, men who had a lot of lovers were sexy; women who took equal numbers of men were sluts.
As for getting pregnant outside of wedlock… Perhaps it was fine for Hollywood movie stars but it was far from fine in her world. Getting pregnant when you shouldn’t was invariably the woman’s fault, just as it was the woman’s responsibility to deal with.
Nicolo had not said any of those things. He didn’t have to. The way he felt was in his tone, his face, the very tension radiating from him.
“I told you,” she said, trying to stay calm. “I forgot—”
“Are you sure,” he said, his tone as brutal as it was flat, “are you absolutely sure I’m the man who made you pregnant?”
She had expected the question. Still, she hated him for asking it. She wanted to scream. To hurl herself at him and beat her fists against his chest.
How could he even think he was not the man whose seed had joined with her egg?
And yet—and yet, she thought on a dizzying rush of despair, she knew how he could think it.
She had gone into his arms after knowing him for a couple of hours, slept with him a day later. She had given herself to him fully, nothing held back. She had done things with him she had never imagined she would ever do.
But he could know nothing of that.
She knew he’d had many women; a man like him would. He moved in a world where people tumbled into bed casually, without regrets. She didn’t—or maybe it was more truthful to say such things did happen in her world.
But not to her.
He couldn’t possibly know that her friends teased her about her pathetic sex life. He couldn’t know she hadn’t been with a man in almost four years. So, no, she couldn’t blame him for asking if the life growing within her womb was his.
She could blame only herself for being foolish enough to have thought, even fleetingly, that what they’d found was not just sex but love.
“I asked you a question. Are you sure I’m the man who—”
Alessia’s despair gave way to anger. It was a safer emotion. How dare he accuse her of lying about such a thing or, at the very least, of having gone from someone else’s arms to his?
“No,” she said coldly, “no, I’m not. It might have been the butcher. Or the man from the cleaning service. And then there’s the concierge at my apartment building in Rome and the headwaiter at a restaurant where I had dinner last week, and if not him, the drummer from a punk rock band whose publicity I have handled or—”
Nicolo covered the distance between them in four strides and grasped her by the shoulders.
“You think this
is funny?”
“I think I was stupid even to tell you about this.” Her eyes flashed fire. “Forget that I said anything, signore. This is not your problem, it is mine.”
“Hey. I never said—”
“I am accustomed to taking care of myself. I do not require your help or anyone else’s.” Angrily, she shrugged free of his hands. “I would not have told you anything if you had not intruded on my privacy.”
His dark eyebrows rose. “Excuse me?”
“The bathroom door was closed. I asked you not to open it but you did. And you found me at the worst possible moment. I was—I was surprised by what I had just learned.” It was the understatement of the century, but he didn’t have to know that. Alessia lifted her chin. “So, if you had not intruded—”
Nick cursed. His hands bit into her flesh as he hoisted her to her toes.
“That’s rubbish and you damned well know it!” he said, his voice rough with anger. “You’re pregnant. I got you that way. That makes this my problem as much as yours.”
His words should have warmed her. They didn’t. The pregnancy was, indeed, a problem—but she didn’t like hearing him call it that. Stupid, she knew, but that was how she felt. Her mother had been her father’s “problem” all his life, or so he claimed. There wasn’t a way in the world she was going to be seen as a “problem” by Nicolo Orsini or any other man.
“Let go of me,” she said with icy calm.
“Don’t talk to me about intruding on your privacy, not when that so-called ‘privacy’ involves something that’s bound to change both our lives forever.”
“I do not take orders from you, Mr. Orsini!”
Sweet Mary, Nick thought, what kind of nonsense was this?
First, she dropped a bomb of nuclear proportions in his lap. Then she all but told him what he could do with his help. Okay, maybe he’d left something out, the part where he’d demanded to know how in hell this could have happened and was she sure the kid was his—if you could call a two-week-old clump of cells a kid—but, dammit, what man wouldn’t ask?
The lady had more attitude than any woman he’d ever known. It made him want to shake some sense into her…or maybe kiss some sense into her. One or the other and it didn’t much matter which because sense was what she needed.
Nicolo: The Powerful Sicilian Page 13
