Protecting His Defiant Innocent

by Michelle Smart

  Daniele hadn’t sounded surprised at the question. ‘She’s doing okay on the surface. Getting ready for her move to Rome...’

  ‘Rome?’

  ‘Didn’t you know?’ He’d sounded surprised that Felipe wasn’t privy to all Francesca’s private doings. ‘She’s transferring her traineeship to a firm there. She starts in January.’

  A spark of pride had flickered in his numb chest. She was doing it.

  Daniele continued speaking. ‘But to be honest with you, I’m worried about her. I don’t think she’s sleeping and I’m sure she’s not eating properly, which is not like her at all. I’m taking her out to lunch in an hour to try and get some food into her.’

  ‘She’s grieving,’ Felipe had said automatically. ‘You all are.’

  ‘I hope that’s all it is.’

  And Felipe hoped that’s all it was too.

  At least Francesca had her family watching her, ready to catch her if she should fall too far.

  He rubbed the back of his neck with both hands.

  Dios, he was tired. Like Francesca, he was having trouble sleeping.

  He had no appetite either. All the food he’d consumed recently had been for the purposes of fuel.

  He felt like he’d spent the past two weeks in a form of limbo, going through the motions of his life but with no real animation.

  There was an emptiness inside him he’d never known before.

  * * *

  ‘I am eating,’ Francesca hissed. She speared a gnocchi and popped it in her mouth, making a big deal of chewing and swallowing it. ‘See?’

  Daniele did not look impressed. ‘Eat another one.’

  She complied moodily. It was as tasteless as the first.

  ‘I spoke to Felipe Lorenzi earlier,’ he said casually.

  Hearing the name spoken was as painful as climbing into her empty bed.

  ‘That’s nice,’ she managed after a pause that went on long enough for Daniele’s eyebrows to rise.

  ‘He asked after you.’

  ‘Did he?’

  Oh, God, her pathetic heart was battering her ribs again.

  ‘What happened between you two?’

  ‘Nothing.’ Her lie was automatic. She couldn’t talk about Felipe to anyone. Somehow she knew that if she started to talk about it she would start to cry and if she started to cry there was a danger she would never stop. Desperate to divert his attention, she said, ‘Have you received the hotel bill yet?’

  Her diversion worked.

  ‘What hotel bill?’

  ‘From when I was in Aguadilla. I hope you scrutinised it. I made sure to have all the most expensive items off the menus.’ It was a struggle to keep her voice light to the end of her sentence.

  Aguadilla and Caballeros would always be bound in her mind with Felipe.

  ‘I didn’t pick up the tab,’ he said, looking confused. ‘I had nothing to do with it.’

  ‘Then who...?’

  But as she asked the question she realised she knew who’d paid.

  ‘Daniele, did you pay the bribe?’ She’d gone through the foundation’s accounts. The site bill had been paid but there was no evidence of the bribe money leaving the accounts. Alberto had taken leave again and wasn’t answering her calls so she hadn’t been able to check with him where the money had come from.

  ‘What bribe?’ His face darkened. ‘What have you done?’

  ‘Nothing,’ she said hastily. ‘I nearly did but Felipe stopped me. He sorted it.’

  And he hadn’t told her family.

  Felipe hadn’t only saved her from killing her career before it had even started but had saved her from the humiliation of her family’s disappointment in her.

  He must have paid the bribe from his own money.

  ‘Francesca, what’s wrong?’

  With a start she realised she was crying, tears pouring out of her so thickly her brother’s face blurred before her.

  She’d been right to fear them because now they’d started she couldn’t stop them.

  She’d lost him. Her big, strong, arrogant protector, who had done everything in his power to save her from herself, had comforted her, shouted at her, laughed with her and made love to her.

  She’d lost him and there was nothing she could do about it. He would never love her.

  * * *

  He couldn’t stop thinking about her.

  The call with Daniele had made it worse.

  Now he couldn’t stop himself worrying that she was eating.

  When he retired to bed that night in another opulent but generic hotel room, this one in Dubai, he closed his eyes and thought of her.

  Was she thinking of him?

  Could he be the reason she couldn’t sleep? Or was that just the arrogance she’d often accused him of coming out? Or wishful thinking?

  He pulled a faded photo from his wallet. Him and Sergio in their army gear, shades on, arms slung around each other’s shoulders, wide grins on their faces.

  Sergio had had an infectious zest for life. He’d thrown himself into every part of it, his enormous smile never far from his face. In that respect he’d been similar to Francesca, who never committed to anything half-heartedly. With Francesca it was all or nothing.

  He sat up straighter and dug his fingers into his skull.

  All these years he’d been on his own...

  It suddenly dawned on him that if Sergio could see him now he would slap him round the head.

  James had been right that they put their bodies on the line every day, for people they didn’t know as well as for each other. It had been the same in army. They’d all known the risks from the moment they’d signed on. Sergio had known it, his other fallen comrades had known it.

  Sergio’s wife had moved on. She’d remarried and had another child. Sergio would have wanted that for her.

  So what was stopping him from moving on too? Why had he retreated to the familiar childhood loneliness he’d joined the army to escape?

  He’d kept to himself all these years because the loss of Sergio and the family he’d found in his army career had been so great it had been safer for him. No attachments meant he couldn’t be hurt again. But how was this any safer, sitting in a room sick to his guts missing the only woman in the world who could make him laugh and drive him to fury in the space of one conversation?

  When he’d made his offer of the house to her he’d believed he was offering the most he could give but now, twisting it round, he could see he hadn’t offered her anything, not of himself.

  He’d been alone for the greatest part of his life but only now, without Francesca in his life, did he truly feel lost.

  * * *

  If her brother didn’t take his finger off the intercom Francesca was going to throw something at him.

  Couldn’t he take the hint? She didn’t want to see him.

  She’d cried in the restaurant for a good fifteen minutes. Luckily her back had been turned on most of the other diners so no one other than Daniele had seen the silent waterfall pouring down her cheeks. He’d wanted to take her to their mother’s house but she’d dug her heels in and insisted he take her home.

  She’d needed to be alone. She’d told him that. She’d thought he’d respected that.

  Fine, he wanted to check on her, but at six o’clock in the morning? So what if she hadn’t been to sleep yet.

  He wasn’t giving up. He must have decided to just leave his finger on the buzzer until she gave in.

  Throwing the bedcovers off, she stomped to the intercom. She picked up the receiver and yelled, ‘Come in then!’, pressed the button to admit him, and then flung her front door open.

  She might as well make a coffee now that she was up. If Daniele was lucky, she might
not throw it in his face.

  But the man who entered her apartment wasn’t her brother.

  She stared from the kitchen door in disbelief, unable to speak, unable to move, unable to even breathe.

  It was him. Felipe. There. Here. In her apartment.

  Blood rushing to her head, she had to grind her bare toes into the floor stop herself from swaying or running to him, had to blink frantically to stop the tears that had welled in her eyes like a tap being turned on from falling.

  He closed the door behind him and gazed at her with an expression she didn’t recognise, his throat moving but no words coming from his mouth.

  ‘Why are you here?’ she whispered, breaking the silence.

  His shoulders rose, a huge sigh escaping him. ‘I’m sorry to turn up like this.’

  ‘What’s wrong?’ He looked so haggard, something terrible must have happened.

  ‘Nothing’s wrong. No...’ He cleared his throat. ‘Everything’s wrong. I can’t go on like this. I’ve been a fool. The biggest fool. I’m lost without you. I’m here to say sorry. I’m here to ask you... No, to beg you to forgive me.’

  Her heart pounding, head spinning, Francesca stared in disbelief at the face she had missed with a desperation she hadn’t thought possible.

  ‘You were right. Everything you said. What I offered was an insult to everything we’d been together. I thought I was meant to be alone, I’ve spent so long telling myself that I had come to believe it as fact. I thought it was the way nature had made me but it wasn’t. I was just protecting myself from being hurt again but you slipped into my heart without me realising and I can’t bear to be without you a minute longer. I want to be with you. I know I don’t deserve it but I am begging you, please, give me the chance to make things right. I love you, querida.’

  His words filled her head with a dazed amazement.

  He loved her?

  Was she dreaming? Had the sleep that had been so impossible to find these past few weeks finally enveloped her and given her what she yearned for?

  ‘Please, querida...’ His voice broke. ‘Say something. Shout at me. Hit me if you must. Whatever you need. I deserve it. If it’s too late for us then tell me and I’ll leave but if you can find it in yourself to forgive me I swear I will give all of myself to you. Whatever you decide, know that I will always be yours and my heart will always belong to you.’

  She continued to stare, taking this all in, slowly starting to believe that this was really happening, and then her feet ungrounded themselves and her legs moved for her, towards him, running the steps needed to throw herself into his arms.

  He caught her and held her tightly, close enough for her to feel the beating of his heart through the hardness of his chest and feel his breath in her hair, so solidly real, and she buried her face into the open collar of his neck and inhaled his scent and warmth.

  She wasn’t dreaming. He was here.

  And he loved her.

  Felipe closed his eyes tightly as he breathed her in and nuzzled into the soft cheek he had thought he would never feel again.

  He hadn’t known what reception he would receive and this...it was more than he had dared hope for.

  Once he’d acknowledged to himself just how deeply his feelings for her ran, madness had taken its grip. All he could think was that he needed to get to her, no cares for the people he’d had to wake to get him there. He would have dragged a thousand people out of bed to get to her.

  After the longest time he shifted so he could take her face in his hands and examine her closely. His heart lurched. Her beautiful face had a haunted quality to it, her eyes hollow with dark circles running under them. ‘Querida, are you ill?’

  ‘I’ve been... I’ve not had an illness. I’ve...’ A solitary tear fell down her cheek and she closed her eyes.

  ‘Look at me, querida,’ he commanded gently.

  When she opened them he wiped another falling tear with his thumb before taking her hand and pressing it to his thundering heart.

  ‘Do you feel that? It hasn’t beaten the same since I met you. It’s yours.’

  ‘Oh, Felipe,’ she whispered. ‘I’ve been so unhappy without you. I go through the motions but I can’t sleep. I’m struggling to concentrate. I have to make myself eat. I never knew what it meant to be heartsick but that’s how it’s been, like my heart’s been broken.’

  Something so strong filled him, threatening to burst out of his chest.

  Her hand found his cheek and rubbed the bristles of his jaw lovingly then the widest, most beautiful smile lit her face. ‘I love you, Felipe.’

  Even though her feelings shone out of her eyes he still didn’t dare believe it. ‘You do?’

  She nodded, her hand still stroking his face. ‘I don’t want to be without you and if you mean what you say and if there’s a chance we can make it work then I want to take it because being here with you right now... I can breathe again.’

  Hearing those words was like being handed a gift-wrapped box of happiness.

  ‘Oh, my love,’ he breathed, and finally allowed himself to kiss her. ‘Marry me.’

  ‘Marry you?’

  ‘Marry me. No half-measures. I want everything with you. The full commitment. A marriage of equals. If you say no then I will accept that without—’

  ‘Yes,’ she interrupted.

  ‘You don’t want to think about it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No, what?’

  ‘No, I don’t want to think about it. I want to marry you.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ He searched anxiously into her eyes, which were bright again with tears. ‘You look as if you’re about to cry.’

  ‘Yes! And I’m about to cry because you’ve just made me the happiest woman alive!’

  ‘I have?’

  ‘You have a lot to learn about women.’ And with that she pulled his head down to smother his mouth and face with kisses.

  It was only when he lifted her to carry her into the bedroom that he noticed what she was wearing.

  ‘Is that my T-shirt?’

  She beamed. ‘It was your T-shirt.’

  ‘You sleep in it?’

  ‘Every night. It was the only thing of yours I had left.’

  That one thing convinced him more than anything else that Francesca Pellegrini loved him as much as he loved her.

  He carried her to the bedroom, reflecting that he was the luckiest man who had ever lived.

  EPILOGUE

  TWO YEARS LATER, Francesca Lorenzi waddled through the front door of her beautiful house in Rome holding onto her huge belly and hoping her husband had beaten her home. She hadn’t seen him for two days and had missed him dreadfully. With their first child due in four weeks, they were both clearing their desks—Felipe metaphorically—so they could spend some time together alone to prepare.

  Instead of finding a quiet home, she walked in to find her entire family there, mother, mother-in-law, siblings, cousins, aunts, uncles and, of course, her husband standing there with an indulgent expression on his handsome face.

  ‘Surprise!’

  ‘I haven’t had the baby yet,’ she said, laughing, allowing herself to be engulfed in a wave of careful hugs and wet kisses.

  ‘This is to celebrate you qualifying for the bar,’ her mother explained.

  ‘I tried to stop them,’ Felipe said.

  ‘Liar.’

  ‘He is a liar, it was his idea,’ Aunt Rachele said.

  Felipe pulled her into an embrace and whispered, ‘You’ve worked so hard for this. We all wanted to show you how proud we were.’

  ‘I couldn’t have done it without you,’ she whispered back before kissing him.

  He’d been her ro
ck.

  After that dream morning when he’d turned up at her apartment declaring his love for her, he’d set about putting into motion all the changes needed for them to be together properly. The first thing he’d done was hire a PA for himself. The second thing had been to promote Seb to Chief Executive of all operations.

  He’d opened a base in Rome on the same street as the human rights law firm she’d joined, and restructured the way things were run so he could be home at night with her the vast majority of the time. Seb now ran all the operations with James as his deputy. The two men were here now, and she greeted them warmly while keeping a tight hold of her husband’s hand. She always kept a tight hold of it.

  Felipe sometimes felt he should pinch himself to make sure he hadn’t slipped into a dream.

  He’d never had any doubts that stepping back from the operational side of the business was the best thing for him and Francesca. He’d expected to miss the adrenaline and excitement that had come with it, but...nothing. He hadn’t missed it at all. His passionate, open-hearted wife was all the excitement he needed.

  Finally, he had the family he’d always craved but had stepped away from seeking. Her family had embraced him so deeply as one of their own that often he thought he should have been the one to take her surname rather than the other way round. Francesca had been the one to encourage him to get closer to his own mother, surprising him by inviting her to stay with them for a long weekend. Loving Francesca had given him a greater understanding of the love his mother had for him. She’d sacrificed everything for him, just as he would gladly sacrifice everything, his wealth, his business, his life, for Francesca. Slowly they were building towards a proper mother-son relationship and now he felt the love for her in his heart like a pulse. She adored her daughter-in-law.

  As he led the toast to his wife and all her amazing accomplishments, he marvelled for the thousandth time that he was indeed the luckiest man to have ever walked the earth.

  * * *

  Two weeks later, Sergio Pieta Lorenzi was born, weighing seven pounds and one ounce.

  Everyone said he had his father’s looks and his mother’s temper.