by Heidi Rice
Nothing could have prepared me for the hard hit of grief as the big black machine drifted over the estate’s private beach and the landscaped gardens. The marble statues and elegant follies, the enchanting water features and ancient woods, the beds overflowing with shrubs and flowers, all morphed into pirate ships, cowboy forts and haunted hideouts in my mind’s eye as I imagined Remy and I running through them together as children and then teenagers.
As the helicopter flew over the fifteen-bedroomed Belle Époque mansion at the centre of the estate, and the small housekeeper’s cottage behind where I had lived with my mother, the villa’s swimming pool on the garden’s lower terrace came into view.
My already pounding heart jumped into my throat then sunk deep into my abdomen as another memory blazed through my body. The blast of heat made my thighs tremble and my nipples pebble into hard peaks.
I had known my mind and my body would play tricks on me, but as I stared at the marble pool below, the sunshine glinting off the crystal-blue water, the whirring blades making the palm trees ruffle and bend, I knew I hadn’t factored in the power of those recollections as they reared out of my subconscious and struck me like a bolt of lightning, searing and devastating...
My heartbeat accelerated as I imagined myself, aged nineteen in the green cocktail dress I had donned after I had spotted Alexi heading towards the pool terrace...and raced after him...
* * *
My heart rammed into my throat as I crept past the pool house, the sultry night air settling around me like a blanket. My gaze landed on the pool perched on the clifftop overlooking the sea. The underwater lighting gave the water a turquoise glow and illuminated the even more breathtaking figure of a man slicing through the pool in powerful, efficient strokes.
I stumbled back to shield myself, my eyes going so wide it was a wonder my eyeballs didn’t pop right out of my skull.
My heart swelled, beating so hard and fast it started to gag me.
Was Alexi naked? I wondered as I spotted a pile of clothes on one of the loungers. I studied his strong shoulders, powerful arms and tanned back ploughing through the water and tried to focus on what lay beneath the surface.
The butterflies in my stomach formed into a boulder. A hot, heavy boulder that got wedged between my thighs and made my sex beat with the same furious, erratic rhythm as my heart.
The figure powered to the end of the pool then executed a perfect backflip to thunder back towards me.
I spotted his boxer shorts clinging to the bunched muscles of his backside.
Not naked.
My galloping heartbeat slowed. A little. And my breath gushed out of constricted lungs.
But my relief was short lived when Alexi levered himself out of the pool only a few feet from where I stood.
I flattened myself against the wall, trying to be invisible as the water cascaded off his broad shoulders. He stood on the pool patio, the wet boxers clinging to the long muscles of his flanks as he scooped up a towel from the lounger. Water glistened on his tanned skin in the moonlight as he scrubbed his hair, making it stick up in tufts.
I should have left, given him his privacy. But I stood transfixed, trapped by the sensations rioting through my body as he slung the towel around his neck, slid his thumbs under the waist band of his wet shorts and bent to shove them down his legs. He kicked them off and straightened, rubbing the towel over his groin.
My heart hammered my ribs so hard it was a miracle I didn’t pass out.
Alexi Galanti naked was more beautiful than anything I could ever have imagined. And I’d imagined a lot.
He stood silhouetted against the pool glow and the twinkle of lights from Monte Carlo across the bay, spotlighted like Adonis against the night.
No, not Adonis.
Poseidon.
This was not a boy. This was a man. A god-like man.
He flung down the towel and reached for his jeans, leaving him standing completely naked in front of me. I could see absolutely everything now.
Oh. My. Good. God.
My breath released in a shattered gasp.
His head shot up and he pinned me with that searing blue gaze. Heat exploded in my cheeks like a volcano, the hot lava of mortification spreading over my face and flooding across my collarbone.
He held his clothing over his groin, his dark brows drawn in a sharp frown. But he didn’t look embarrassed, just annoyed.
‘Belle, what the hell do you think you’re doing? Go back to bed.’
My humiliation threatened to engulf me at the curt command—but, before I could mumble my way through an apology and flee, something Remy had said to me recently echoed in my skull.
Alexi wants you too. He’s just better at hiding it.
And suddenly I noticed the tension in his jaw and the flicker of something dangerous in those impossibly blue eyes.
Was I imagining Alexi’s response, thanks to years of adolescent fantasies and the massive sensory overload I had just endured? But, even if that was true, did it matter?
If I wanted Alexi to stop treating me like a child, I had to stop acting like one. I gathered every ounce of courage I had ever possessed and stepped out of the shadows and into the moonlight, close enough to smell the chlorine on his skin and see the ripple of tension make his pectoral muscles quiver.
‘No,’ I said, a little astonished by how clear my voice sounded when I was dying inside.
If he rejected me now, if he treated me like a child, if Remy had been wrong, I might never recover. But somehow I knew—just like Remy, when he pressed his foot to the floor and let the new Galanti prototype soar—that the possible reward was worth the risk.
‘What do you mean, no?’ Alexi replied, the dark frown arrowing down so sharply I could almost see thunderclouds forming above his head.
‘I’m not going to bed.’ I let my gaze glide over the planes and angles of his body, let the lava settle between my thighs. The scatter of scars from the many times his father had hurt him added to the deep well of compassion in my ragged breathing. ‘I want to be here, with you. I’m not a child any more, Alexi.’
He blinked slowly, his beautiful lips, the lips I’d yearned to feel on mine so many times, firming into a thin line. A new wave of heat raged through me.
But this wasn’t embarrassed heat any more. It was excited, exhilarated, triumphant heat.
For the first time ever, I’d left Alexi Galanti completely speechless. He didn’t have a snarky remark, an amused comeback. He had nothing.
His gaze glided over me in return. And I felt the burn go through me like wildfire.
‘So, you’re a woman, are you?’ I could hear the edge in his voice, but I could also see the arousal—adding a silver glint to the deep blue of his irises—and knew he was testing me. He wanted to scare me off as he had so many times before.
And suddenly I knew why he had treated me like a child long after I had become a woman. Remy was right—he wanted me. But that gallant streak which he had always pretended didn’t exist—the gallant streak which made him take his father’s fists to protect his brother—had prevented him from taking what he wanted. What we both wanted.
The revelation was like a balm to my soul. And a spur to my senses. It felt how I imagined taking the chequered flag in Bahrain or Melbourne or Barcelona two seconds ahead of the field would feel like. Breathtaking and wonderful, exhilarating and life-affirming all at once.
I’d taken an enormous risk and here was my reward.
‘Yes, I’m a woman,’ I said, my voice clearer and more certain now. ‘And I have been for a while. You’ve just pretended not to see it.’ But he saw it now, I realised, when he put on his jeans in front of me, almost daring me to drink my fill as he tugged them on and buttoned the fly. So of course I did.
He hadn’t said anything but, as he turned into the light, I noticed the bruising on
his jaw.
‘He hit you,’ I said, lifting my hand to soothe him.
His arm shot out and he clasped my wrist in an iron grip, preventing my fingers from reaching the skin.
‘Don’t,’ he said. The word was expelled on a tortured rasp and the subtle whiff of tequila on his breath—and my heart silently broke in two at the wary look on his face. ‘I don’t need your pity,’ he said, but I could hear the pain.
It was so real and vivid, it made my stomach ache.
His grip loosened and then he dropped my hand and looked down. The defeated stoop of his shoulders, the exhaustion in his stance, burned away my intense anger at his father until all that was left was the grief. And the longing.
I stepped closer and cradled his cheeks in my hands. He stiffened, but made no move to stop me this time.
I stared into those beautiful blue eyes, for once unguarded, and saw the sadness there, which made me want to weep. But I could also see the desire.
The love I had always had for him—this proud, stubborn, foolishly gallant man—flowed through me and I let every ounce of it shine in my eyes.
‘Damn it,’ he said as he covered my hands with his but didn’t move to pull them away from his jaw. ‘Don’t look at me like that, bella notte.’
The nickname sounded like an endearment as his voice came out on a husky rasp.
‘Like what?’ I asked.
‘Like you want me,’ he said. ‘Because I’m screwed up enough right now to take you up on the offer and to hell with the consequences.’
Excitement and yearning leapt in my heart and I told him the truth I’d locked inside me for far too long. ‘But I do want you, Alexi. I always have. And I don’t care about the consequences.’
* * *
The helicopter touched down on the helipad, jolting me out of my reverie.
Stop it. Stop thinking about that night. About the man you thought you knew.
I rubbed my hands over my face, then gripped my bag tightly enough to score the leather as the big black machine’s blades whirred to a stop.
This trip was going to be hard enough to negotiate without me reliving the painful past. I needed to control the memories and the desire that came with them.
A young man appeared from the back entrance of the house to greet me. I took careful breaths to steady my nerves and the inappropriate heat as he helped me down from the helicopter and took my bag.
‘Mademoiselle Simpson, I am Pierre Dupont, Monsieur Galanti’s assistant. I hope your journey was good?’
‘Yes, very, thanks,’ I replied, even though the memory of the journey was a blur now—the chauffeur-driven car to the airport, the flight on Team Galanti’s private jet, and the subsequent helicopter ride—my mind still anchored in the past.
I shook my head, trying to jog the memories loose.
‘Monsieur Galanti is awaiting your arrival with his legal team,’ Pierre said as he ushered me into the house. The familiar smell hit me—a mix of lemon polish, old wood and fresh flowers reminding me, not just of my childhood, but also my mother and her titanic efforts to make the imposing, ornate property a welcoming, homely place despite the anguish that had lurked inside.
I swallowed past the choking sensation in my throat.
Time to get a grip, Belle.
I’d indulged myself enough already. This wasn’t the home I’d once known. I was entering enemy territory. And Alexi wasn’t my lover any more—if he ever had been—he was my adversary.
Instead of leading me to Gustavo’s old office in the east wing of the house, a place where I knew Alexi had often been ‘disciplined’ by his father as a teenager, Pierre directed me up the stairs to a suite of bright, airy rooms on the first floor. I recognised the door leading to the sunlit terrace immediately, because no one had been allowed to enter this section of the house when I had lived in the villa’s grounds as a child.
Because these rooms had belonged to Gustavo’s wife, Amelie.
As Pierre opened the door to her former salon, sunshine glinted on the office’s modern furniture, but it was the silhouette of the man in the far corner staring through the salon’s terrace doors that got all my attention.
Dressed in an expertly tailored business suit which accentuated his tall, lean frame, Alexi had his back to me. He didn’t move but tension rippled across his shoulder blades as I was introduced to the four other men in suits who sat in front of his desk.
One of them, a distinguished man in his fifties, offered his hand with a friendly smile. ‘Mademoiselle Simpson, I am Etienne Severo, Monsieur Galanti’s lead attorney.’
I took his hand and introduced myself, but my gaze remained glued to Alexi as he finally turned.
The sun cast his face into shadow, making it impossible to gauge his reaction. Was he bitter, angry, as wary as I was about this meeting? My heart thudded in my chest, along with the brutal heat that refused to die.
He nodded his own greeting as he walked around his desk. But, as Etienne Severo suggested we sit down so he could outline Monsieur Galanti’s plans, Alexi interrupted him.
‘So you came?’ His voice was flat, but I didn’t sense anger in the tone so much as contempt. ‘I didn’t think you’d have the guts.’
I blinked, taken aback by his hostility even though I had expected it. ‘I want to try and make this right and help you form a relationship with your son.’
One sceptical eyebrow rose up Alexi’s forehead.
‘Do you really?’ Disdain and mistrust dripped from his lips. ‘And how exactly do you propose to do that when I have missed the formative years of his life through your actions?’
The edge of anger and judgement was rapier-sharp now. So the gloves were already off, if they had ever been on.
I could try to defend my silence or simply ignore the barb—his question after all was a rhetorical one—but this meeting was supposed to be about Cai, not me. And not our previous liaison. So I attempted to answer honestly.
‘By...’ I swallowed around my dry throat. ‘By answering any questions you have about him. And letting you know what an incredible child he is.’
‘So you’ve told him about me?’ he asked, but it was another cynical question, his voice tense with suspicion, the anger sparkling in his eyes.
I didn’t dislodge my gaze, even though I wanted to.
‘I’ve talked in generalities with him about you. He’s never asked about his father, but he’s curious now, and I think he’ll be ready to meet you soon.’ It had only been a week since our chance encounter, but I’d already begun to prepare the ground for Cai to meet Alexi. I wanted my son to be excited about meeting his father, but I also wanted to be sure Alexi wouldn’t take his anger with me out on our son.
‘How soon?’
‘I don’t know, when did you have in mind?’ I asked, struggling to be civil in the face of his enmity. He was baiting me. This wasn’t about Cai—this was about his anger with me.
‘How about I have him flown out here tomorrow?’ he asked, stepping closer, his big body rippling with barely concealed rage.
‘No!’ I said, forcing myself to stand my ground.
‘No?’ he said, his voice rising. ‘What gives you the right to keep my son from me a moment longer?’
‘Because I’m his mother.’
‘And I’m his father. A fact you chose to forget for five years.’
‘You’re also a stranger to him,’ I pointed out.
‘And who’s fault is that?’ he shouted, the anger unleashed.
‘It’s my fault,’ I admitted. ‘Mostly.’
I wasn’t the only one to blame—maybe if he hadn’t rejected me so thoroughly all those years ago, maybe if he hadn’t destroyed my confidence and my self-worth, I might not have been scared to contact him. Scared he would reject Cai the way he had rejected me.
‘Mostly?’
The word sliced into me, harsh and unyielding.
But before I could defend myself Severo cleared his throat loudly. ‘Perhaps we could sit down and outline your offer to Mademoiselle Simpson, Alexi?’
Alexi stared at him blankly for a moment, and I wondered if he had forgotten the legal team was in the room.
‘Actually, I wish to speak with Mademoiselle Simpson in private.’
The other men nodded and started to gather the papers strewn across Alexi’s desk, probably more than happy to leave us to it, but before any of them could leave Severo surprised me.
‘Is this acceptable to you, Mademoiselle Simpson?’ he asked. I had to give him credit for standing up to Alexi, his employer, on my behalf, especially as he had to sense the animosity between us.
Heat fired across my collarbone as Alexi waited for my answer, challenge as well as contempt in his expression. He was expecting me to refuse, possibly to run away again. The way I had five years ago.
And I couldn’t deny the urge to do so.
Being alone in a room with him felt perilous for a number of reasons, but I knew I wasn’t scared of him, or his anger. Not any more. I wasn’t the naïve, easily bruised nineteen-year-old he’d rejected so cruelly five years ago, and he wasn’t the grief-stricken man torn apart by guilt for his brother’s death. He was the father of my child. And that meant we had to find a way through this. Somehow.
So I nodded. ‘Yes, I’ll talk with Monsieur Galanti alone.’
Severo nodded back before he and the other lawyers left.
‘Sit down,’ Alexi said, indicating a large leather arm chair as he strode across the carpet to sit behind his desk. I wondered if he needed to create distance between us as much as I did. Were the memories of our one night together as hard for him to ignore as they were for me?
Whatever his motives, the endorphins making every one of my pulse points pound relaxed as he stepped away from me.
He propped his elbows on the desk, those pure blue eyes skewering me to the spot as he studied me.
I waited for him to speak first.
