Protecting His Defiant Innocent

by Michelle Smart

  She yanked her napkin and dabbed at her eyes, laughing morosely. ‘Look, Felipe, you don’t have to eat with me. I know you’re just being polite. If you want to find another table, I won’t care.’

  ‘No.’ Feeling like a complete ass, he ran his fingers through his hair and stared at her until she met his gaze. ‘I’m sorry for the way I spoke to you.’

  That surprised her. She took another drink of her cocktail, the light of the candle flickering off her eyes.

  Eventually she said in a small voice, ‘Have you spoken to Daniele about what happened yesterday with the Governor?’

  ‘No.’ He’d thought long and hard about it but had come to the conclusion that while she’d acted rashly, his condemnation had been too harsh. Francesca had been appalled when he’d pointed out the danger she’d put her career and the foundation in but it seemed she was far angrier with herself than he could be. She deserved the chance to see it through.

  She closed her eyes. ‘Thank you. I think I was overwrought yesterday. It’s not an excuse but I’ve not been sleeping well since Pieta died and all that’s been keeping me going is the thought of getting this hospital built. I promise I’ll be considered in my approach from now on.’

  ‘Why don’t we draw a line through yesterday?’ he suggested gently. ‘Forget any cross words and start again?’

  ‘I would like that,’ she whispered. Reaching again for her napkin, she dabbed some more at her eyes then rolled her neck, took a deep breath, straightened and flashed him a smile that made his heart turn over. ‘What are you going to eat? Seeing as Daniele’s footing the bill, I’m going to select the most expensive items on the menu.’

  Before he could correct her assumption, as he should have done the day before, she said, ‘Have you met him?’

  ‘Daniele?’

  She nodded.

  ‘I met him a few years ago in Paris with his girlfriend. Pieta introduced us.’

  The bleak veil cloaking her since he’d joined her lifted in its entirety.

  ‘Girlfriend? Daniele?’ She leant forward, eyes alight. ‘He’s never had a girlfriend. Lots of scandalous flings, though.’

  He shrugged. ‘She was with him. I assumed she was his girlfriend. They acted like a couple.’

  ‘Daniele with a girlfriend? That’s amazing. Pieta knew they were together?’

  ‘I assumed so.’

  The waiter returned with Felipe’s beer so they ordered their food and Francesca quickly finished her cocktail and ordered another.

  ‘What were you all doing in Paris?’ she asked when they were alone again.

  ‘Attending a party at the US Embassy.’

  ‘What did you think of Daniele?’

  ‘Very different from Pieta.’ He looked at her shrewdly. ‘I would say you’re more like him.’

  ‘More like Daniele?’

  ‘Pieta was intense and thoughtful.’ At her darkening colour he added, ‘You’ve an energy about you. You’re impulsive and, I think, competitive. Daniele struck me as the same.’

  She nodded slowly, her pupils moving fast as she thought. ‘Yes. Daniele’s highly competitive. He has to be first with everything and he hates losing.’

  ‘And you? Am I right that you’re also competitive?’

  She grinned. ‘I grew up wanting to be better than my brothers in everything.’

  ‘Have you ever beaten them?’

  ‘My aim throughout my education was to smash all their exam results.’ She gave a mischievous smile. ‘Which I achieved. It was very fulfilling. I even skipped a year. I like to tell people I’m the clever one of the family.’

  Not so clever when it came to negotiating and agreeing bribes, he thought but didn’t say. For the first time since they’d met they’d found relative harmony and he wasn’t ready to break it.

  ‘But when it comes to true competitiveness, Daniele’s worse,’ she continued. ‘He’s ferocious.’

  ‘Has he always been like that?’

  ‘As long as I’ve been alive. He grew up knowing the family wealth would pass on to Pieta—’

  ‘Only to Pieta?’

  ‘The oldest inherits the estate. It’s always been like that, for centuries. Pieta inherited when our father died.’

  ‘What about your mother?’

  ‘She has rights to the income during her lifetime but the physical assets transferred directly to Pieta.’

  ‘Will it go to Daniele now?’

  ‘Everything that’s family wealth will so long as Natasha isn’t pregnant.’

  ‘Do you think she could be?’

  ‘I don’t know and none of us can bear to ask her. It would be cruel. We’ll have to wait and see.’

  ‘So if she is pregnant...?’

  ‘Then we have the first in the next generation of Pellegrinis.’ A sad smile played on her lips. ‘If it’s a boy he will inherit, if it’s a girl then Daniele will inherit.’

  ‘That doesn’t sound fair.’

  ‘Natasha will inherit Pieta’s personal wealth whether she’s pregnant or not. She will have enough to provide for a child and we will all love and cherish it whatever its gender.’

  ‘And what do you get from your family estate?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘That’s not right either.’

  ‘Right or not, that’s how it is.’

  ‘Doesn’t it make you angry?’ He didn’t know why he was asking. Francesca’s personal life was none of his concern.

  Her second cocktail was brought to the table and she took it with a grateful smile and immediately sucked half of it up her straw. Done, she put the glass on the table. ‘It’s not just the wealth that’s inherited, it’s the responsibility. I was glad not to have it as it meant I could do whatever I wanted with my life without having to consider anyone else and, believe me, the life I’ve chosen is very different to the one expected for me.’

  ‘In what way?’

  She pulled a rueful face. ‘I was expected to marry young and have babies, like all the women in my family have done for generations. It isn’t supposed to matter that us weak females don’t inherit anything because we’re supposed to be provided for by our husbands.’

  ‘You didn’t want that?’

  ‘I wanted to provide for myself and have a career, like my brothers.’ The thought of being a kept woman filled Francesca with horror. Her mother had inherited money but had blithely given it to her husband to invest for her, believing herself too stupid to manage it herself.

  She remembered being a small child and her mother casually asking her father for money to buy some new shoes. It had been a nothing incident, her father going straight into his wallet and handing the money over, but it had crystallised in Francesca’s mind as the years passed. What if he’d said no? What would her mother have done then? Why should her mother not manage her own money? And why should she, Francesca, not be expected to go out and make a living of her own just because she was born a girl? Why could she not be like her brothers?

  ‘I’ve no idea how Daniele will handle having the future of the Pellegrini family on his shoulders if it comes to it,’ she carried on, shrugging off the old memories. ‘He was so competitive with Pieta that he drove himself to make a fortune that was twice what Pieta would have inherited just to show that he could, but was able to live his life as he wanted without the responsibilities Pieta had. If he does inherit he’ll have to marry so he’ll say goodbye to his freedom too.’

  Francesca’s chest tightened, all this talk of her family reminding her of her mother stumbling at Pieta’s funeral. She’d spoken to her briefly the night before, letting her know she’d arrived in the Caribbean safely. Her mother had been too used to Francesca’s stubbornness to try and talk her out of going but had made her swear she wouldn’t put herself in any un
necessary danger.

  ‘Forget your brothers, I’m curious about you. Do you even have a trust fund?’

  ‘No, but all my education was paid for and I never wanted for anything when I was growing up. That’s enough for me. I want to forge my own life.’ One where she didn’t have to ask for money to buy essentials.

  ‘By following in Pieta’s footsteps?’ he said with obvious scepticism.

  She paused, considering. ‘There are—were—no better footsteps for me to follow in but don’t think I wanted to make myself into his female clone. I saw the good Pieta was doing with his law degree and wanted to do it too.’

  ‘Corporate law?’

  She grimaced. ‘No. I meant how he used it for the benefit of his philanthropy. Corporate law was a means to an end for him and that’s what it is for me while I complete my traineeship.’

  ‘What will you do when you’re fully qualified?’

  ‘I’m going to specialise in human rights.’ She looked back up at him, straining to stifle the lump pressing in her chest. ‘Can we stop talking about me and my family now? Just talk about nonsense? Otherwise I’m going to embarrass both of us by crying.’

  * * *

  A couple of hours later, Francesca’s belly was full and her melancholy gone. The quick meal she’d intended to have before retiring to the unwelcome solitude of her suite had extended over three courses.

  As time had passed, her animosity towards Felipe had melted, which she thought the handful of cocktails she’d consumed might have helped with.

  A jazz band was playing on the stage, thankfully uplifting tunes, and there was a buzzing atmosphere she’d enthusiastically embraced. After the trauma of the past week it felt good to be letting her hair down. The gorgeous company helped.

  Felipe was proving to be not quite the dictator she’d painted in her mind. But still arrogant, although not in the entitled way most men she’d come across in her life were. Felipe’s arrogance came with an authority earned and built over an adulthood of having orders obeyed without question.

  His apology had shocked her. She’d never known a man to apologise before, was quite sure the word ‘sorry’ didn’t exist in any of the male Pellegrinis’ vocabulary. Or her own, she had to admit.

  She thought the more of him for it. A man who could hold his hands up when he was in the wrong without emasculating himself only soared in her estimation.

  Francesca knew she could be pig-headed. It wasn’t a part of her character she liked and, while in her head she would want to be saying sorry for whatever mishap or argument she’d caused or contributed to, her tongue would stubbornly resist.

  Idly she wondered if Felipe’s authority extended to the bedroom. What sort of lover would he be? She’d seen hints of fire beneath the calm, authoritative exterior—that fire had been aimed firmly at herself—and imagining those strong hands touching her made her skin tingle. What would it be like to have those intense dark eyes staring into hers in the height of passion...? Her lower belly clenched just to imagine it, the intensity of it shocking her.

  She’d never had thoughts like these before.

  Once their desserts were cleared away she ordered them Irish coffees.

  She laughed at his arched eyebrow. ‘It’s not that late,’ she defended.

  ‘I’m more concerned about your head in the morning.’

  She waved a hand airily. ‘My head will be fine. I’ve not drunk that much.’

  He fixed her with a stare that made her laugh when it should have quelled her.

  ‘I might have drunk a little more than is good for me but I’m not drunk. And you’ve had as many as me.’

  ‘I’m twice your size and have a much greater tolerance.’

  ‘You are huge,’ she agreed, leaning over to put a hand on his bare forearm. ‘I bet you work out a lot.’

  ‘Whenever I can.’

  The dark hairs resting under her fingers were much finer than she’d expected, his skin smooth and warm.

  ‘Are you married?’ she asked impulsively.

  ‘No.’ Felipe moved his arm away from her touch and drained the last of his beer.

  Her touch had felt too good for comfort.

  ‘Have you ever been married?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Ever come close to getting married?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you have a girlfriend?’

  He sighed. His love life was not a discussion he wanted with Francesca.

  He should have gone to bed a long time ago.

  ‘No. There’s no room in my life for a relationship.’

  ‘No room in your life? What a strange thing to say.’

  Their Irish coffees were laid before them. Francesca popped two sugar cubes into hers and gave it a vigorous stir.

  ‘That spoils it,’ he reproached. ‘See? You’ve mixed the cream into it.’

  ‘I need the sweetness.’

  She would taste sweet. His weak-willed imagination that couldn’t stop picturing her in that damned bikini was certain of it.

  ‘Why is there no room for you to have a relationship? Do you need a bigger house?’

  He almost laughed at the wink she finished her question with. As the evening had progressed she’d relaxed, her antagonism towards him now but a memory. Francesca had proven to be fun company, far removed from the spoilt brat he’d assumed her to be.

  He had to keep reminding himself that she was his client—a grieving, vulnerable client—and that he needed to keep his guard up. This wasn’t a date. It wouldn’t end with a nightcap in one of their suites followed by...

  He refused to allow his mind to wander any further.

  ‘It’s my life as a whole. When my job with you is over I’m going back to the Middle East and then on to Russia. I run a business with three hundred employees. It takes a lot of management.’

  ‘Why does that stop you having a relationship?’

  ‘I doubt there’s a woman out there who would be happy with a man she went months at a time without seeing and weeks without any communication at all.’

  ‘Natasha and Pieta often went months without seeing each other,’ she pointed out. ‘It didn’t do them any harm and they were together for years.’

  That’s what she thought.

  But Felipe wouldn’t say anything negative about her brother when his coffin had only just been lowered into the ground. One day the truth he suspected—and he had no proof, only a gut instinct—about her brother would come out as the truth always did. He just hoped she was in the right mental space to cope with it when it did.

  ‘Pieta was a very different man to me and when I disappear it’s usually into danger. My business comes first. It has to. My men are deployed to the world’s most dangerous hotspots where situations are fluid. Every eventuality has to be catered for. A call can come in at any time for an evacuation.’

  ‘What if something were to go wrong with one of the jobs while you’re here dining with me?’ she asked reasonably.

  He held his phone up. ‘This is a satellite phone. It’s standard military issue. All my men have one. They allow us to communicate with each other wherever we are in the world and the encryption means no one can hack them.’

  ‘So if one of your clients or men were to get into trouble right now, you’d sort it all out sitting here with me?’

  ‘My headquarters are manned twenty-four seven. There are protocols in place for every eventuality. But if anything untoward were to happen I’d be kept informed throughout.’ Situations happened all the time. It was the nature of the job. People needed his protection for very good reasons and they hired his firm because they were guaranteed the best. In the ten years since he’d formed the firm, no client had ever come to harm.

  ‘But if anything were to happen r
ight now, you wouldn’t personally be involved with solving it,’ she persisted. ‘So if you have the staff in place to keep everything running during your absences, there’s nothing to stop you having a relationship.’

  ‘I’m only ever absent from headquarters when I’m on a job. Being the boss means having all the responsibility if anything goes wrong.’ He would not allow anything to go wrong.

  Her eyes narrowed then began to dance. ‘You sound like a man making excuses. Has a woman broken your heart?’

  ‘No woman has ever got close.’ And no woman ever would. During his army career he’d been happy to play the field—many women loved a man in uniform. He’d watched friends and colleagues settle down and seen the pressure starting families had had on them, how it could affect their focus and priorities, and had decided to wait until he left the forces before finding someone to settle down with. Then his unit had been flown in to handle a hostage situation, his life had gone to hell and thoughts of a family destroyed with it. He was better off on his own. Solitude was what he’d grown up with, what he was used to. Safer.

  He thought of Sergio. He thought of Sergio’s wife and unborn child. He thought about the hostages they’d been trying to save, half of whom hadn’t made it out alive. Sergio hadn’t made it out alive either, a memory that still had the power to sear him. His child was now a healthy nine-year-old growing up with a father he would only see in photographs.

  Francesca didn’t say anything, just stared at him with those beguiling light brown eyes that seemed to drink him in...

  Without warning, she got to her feet, her face breaking into a beaming smile. ‘I love this song! Let’s dance.’

  The jazz band had finished their set and now a DJ was playing to the full crowd.

  ‘I don’t dance.’

  ‘Then I shall dance on my own.’ And with that she finished her coffee and glided to the dance floor, her shoulders and hips swaying to the music he vaguely recognised, her long ebony hair shimmering in the lights.

  Without an ounce of self-consciousness, Francesca threw her arms in the air and began to dance. The joy on her face must have been infectious because a couple of women hurried onto the floor to join her, the three of them immediately dancing and singing together as if they’d known each other for years.