by Lucy Gordon;Sarah Morgan;Robyn Donald;Lucy Monroe;Lee Wilkinson;Kate Walker
“I will?” She liked the sound of that.
“Sì.”
“All right.”
“I’ll pick you up in forty minutes.”
“What?” Now? He wanted her to get to know him now?
“For dinner.”
“You want to have dinner with me?”
He made an impatient, but amused sound. “What do you think I am saying here?”
“That you want to have dinner with me?”
She might have been born to one of the most notorious and glamorous stars in Hollywood, but she lived a very quiet life and did not play man-woman games. She’d seen too much from a very early age and vowed never to be like her mother or the sycophants who populated Shawna’s life. She would never cheapen intimacy as she’d seen it cheapened around her.
Only her lack of experience was making her sound like she was stupid. It would serve her right if he withdrew his dinner invitation, she thought in frustration.
“Sì. I want to have dinner with you and now you have thirty-five minutes in which to ready yourself.”
He arrived thirty minutes later.
She was ready.
He took her to an elegant restaurant, where the food and the wine were delicious. They danced after dinner.
He pulled her into his arms, his hold intimate, and she did not complain.
It felt too good.
Sensations she had never experienced overwhelmed her as he swayed with her to the music.
It was sexual desire as she’d never believed it could be. Instantaneous. Hot. Unstoppable.
Pressing her even closer, he said, “You feel good, dolcezza.”
“So do you.” Her voice was husky and low.
She’d never spoken that way in her life. It sounded sexy though.
“I am glad.”
She tipped her head back to look at him and encountered eyes so intense, they burned right through her to the very core of her feminine sexuality.
“Sweet.” His head lowered toward hers. “You are going to taste so sweet.”
The kiss shattered every sense of who she believed herself to be.
She went up like a roman candle, burning with a heat she’d never even dreamed existed.
Unconscious of her surroundings, she twisted her hips against him, seeking some unnamable thing, some sort of relief from the conflagration of her senses. The caress only made it worse and he groaned, his lips taking on a hard sensuality that gave no quarter.
She desired none and responded with all the latent sensuality in her being.
Tearing his mouth from hers, he said, “We’ve got to get out of here, or I’m going to make love to you and get us both arrested for indecent exposure.”
Shockingly she heard herself teasing him. “I’ve heard the police are quite understanding about that sort of thing.”
He shook his head. “Do not joke. I am in agony. I want a bed with you on it. Now.”
Suddenly she realized where all this passionate intensity was heading and she froze. Literally. Stopping his rapid progress to the table.
He turned to her, his eyes black with desire, his mouth set in a grim line that she found slightly frightening. “What is it?”
“You expect to go to bed? Right now?”
His glare singed the edges of her heart. “What kind of game are you playing? If that kiss wasn’t a prelude to bed, what the hell was it?”
She didn’t play games, but he didn’t know that. His accusation made her take quick stock, however. She couldn’t very well tell him she’d never kissed like that in her life so had no experience of what it was a prelude to. Instinct told her that admitting her lack of experience to Salvatore would turn him right off. He was used to dating the most sophisticated sort of women.
“This is our first date.”
“We did the mating dance for two solid weeks in Sicily. I would have taken you to bed then, but to do so while you were under your father’s roof would have been disrespectful to your family.”
“And you’re so sure I would have gone?” Passion was fading, to be replaced by anger.
How dare he assume she would just fall into his bed like some—?
“Wishing would make it so,” he said, interrupting her thoughts. “I wanted you, cara. I still do. Desperately. But if you are not ready, say it now. We will take it at your pace.”
Sincerity was reflected in the tone of his voice, the depths of his eyes, and she found herself falling right back under his spell.
“I want you too.”
His nostrils flared and his body went even tenser, if possible. “Then let us go.”
She nodded.
He took her to his home and it was then she learned that he lived a large portion of the year in Milan, overseeing his family’s company satellite holding there.
Milan meant big business and big business meant ultra hi-tech security and superbly trained operatives.
He kissed her again when they got inside and she lost the battle before it had ever begun. She woke up hours later, her body aching in ways it had never done before with all her gymnastics routines. He slept on beside her, the sound of his breathing in the stillness a shocking reminder that she had never once shared another human being’s bed.
Her hands stole to her cheeks. They felt hot in the darkness. She was blushing. No surprise that, not after what they’d done. He had thought she was experienced and the overwhelming passion he sparked in her had lent credence to that belief.
She edged out of the bed and tiptoed into the bathroom. She took a shower, washing a body that showed the signs of his loving. She closed her eyes against the evidence and finished cleansing herself. Stepping out of the shower, she saw herself in the full-length mirror opposite and went completely still.
The woman staring back at her was not the Elisa she had always known. This woman was a stranger. A sensual stranger. Her nipples were still hard and they ached slightly. There was a small mark on her breast. She remembered that kiss…He’d gone a little wild when she begged him to make the ache go away.
Those legs had wrapped themselves around a man with fierce urgency. Those hands had clung to his shoulders with all the strength of the supernatural, or so it had seemed. And that secret place between her thighs had experienced the most amazing pleasure she’d ever known, had welcomed him into her body with greedy need.
She felt different. As if she was connected to him on a spiritual level. Her emotions were engaged. Oh, yes, they were. She’d fallen in love so fast, she would doubt the reality of her feelings if they weren’t so strong.
But what did he feel?
He did have experience. He’d been to bed with countless women, she would bet. Could tonight have meant anything to him the way it had to her?
She was terrified of going out there to find out that it didn’t. Was he still asleep? He’d been sleeping soundly when she came into the bathroom. Maybe she should just get dressed and call a taxi, go back to her hotel. Avoid the whole morning-after awkward thing.
He’d said and done nothing to make her believe that the night was more than the temporary slaking of physical lust on his part. He couldn’t love her as she loved him. Not a man so special and sexy.
He had women crawling all over him. A night of lovemaking that meant everything to her would mean nothing to him. She couldn’t blame him. Despite years of avoiding casual sexual intimacy, she hadn’t asked for any promises. He’d given none. He hadn’t pretended to be in love, just in need.
Turning off the light before she opened the door, she let her eyes adjust to the darkness before stepping into the bedroom. She didn’t want to wake him.
Her clothes were scattered all over. She headed toward a pile of white she guessed was her panties.
“Cara, I missed you. Come back to bed.”
She stopped in the act of bending over to pick up that promising bit of fabric. “I…I think maybe I should go.”
“No.”
He moved so fast, she didn’t
see him coming, but between one breath and another he was out of the bed and beside her.
He swung her up into his arms. “You should stay.”
“But…”
“But what, cara?”
The feel of his hair-roughened chest against her side was already impacting on her ability to think. “You…I…”
“Sì. You and I. We are a couple and I do not like sleeping alone when my girlfriend is within reaching distance.”
His girlfriend?
It had meant something to him, was her last coherent thought as his sensually demanding mouth settled over hers.
She was so happy over the next four weeks, she was sick with it. She spent a few extra days in Milan. He called her every night and several times a day for the next four days before showing up to stay a long weekend with her. She took personal leave and went back to Milan for a few days. He took her with him on one of his business trips to New York.
It was a magical time, right up until she started losing her breakfast.
She wasn’t on the Pill, and the first time they made love he’d lost control and not remembered to use a condom. He’d never done so again and neither of them ever said anything about that single lapse, but it had consequences.
Consequences she frankly welcomed. The idea of having Salvatore’s baby enthralled her.
She made a special dinner for him in her apartment the night she planned to tell him. He was flying in from Milan with the intent of spending two nights with her and she couldn’t wait to see him again.
She had the door open before his hand could fall for the second knock.
His smile was lazy and tender. “You missed me, dolcezza.”
“Always.”
He dropped his bag and pulled her into his arms, kissing her, and dinner was forgotten.
They were snuggling in bed much later, limbs entwined, when she told him.
“Salvatore…”
“Sì.” He was lazily rubbing her hip, his voice that deep, satisfied tone she’d come to associate with after making love.
“We’ve never discussed children.”
His body tensed. “No, dolcezza, we have not.”
She tipped her head back to look into his eyes. “You like them, don’t you?”
His expression was unfathomable. “All Sicilian men like children.”
She smiled. “That’s nice.”
“Is that all?”
“Not quite.”
His hand stopped caressing her hip and his fingers pressed against her tightly, but he said nothing.
A little of the nerves she’d felt before his arrival came back to make her stomach flutter.
She settled her hand over it in an instinctive gesture. “I’m pregnant.”
Nothing. No words. His expression did not change. His breathing changed though.
“Salvatore?”
“When did you find out?” His voice sounded harsh, as she’d never heard it before.
“This week.”
A little of the tension in him drained away. “And you told me immediately.”
“Yes. Of course. I wouldn’t want to hide it from you.”
“That is admirable.” He didn’t sound admiring, however.
“I know it’s hard to come to grips with. I was pretty shocked myself.”
His mouth twisted in a grimace. “I imagine you were.”
“I mean I didn’t know you could get pregnant with just one lapse…the first time. It wasn’t even a good time in my cycle. It’s almost a miracle when you think about it.”
“A miracle?” He sounded as if he was choking. “You are pregnant with another man’s child and you call this a miracle?”
She sat up, shock reverberating through her. “What are you talking about? What other man?”
“Presumably whatever poor bastard was sharing your bed before you came to Milan.”
“You think I got pregnant by another man?” she practically shrieked.
“Do not,” he said so grimly that it scared her, “attempt to tell me this baby is mine.”
“But it is.” Her lungs didn’t want to work and there was a pain in her chest as if she was being squeezed in a vice. “You forgot the condom that first time, don’t you remember?”
He jumped out of the bed and stood towering over her, a fury unlike anything she’d ever seen glittering in his dark eyes. “And that was lucky for you, wasn’t it? What’s wrong?” He sliced the air with his hand. “Is the father of the baby not as rich as I am? Doesn’t he want you any more?”
The taunts hurt. He’d never hurt her before and she’d come to believe he never would. Not like this.
“There is no other man.” She tried to say it with conviction, but the words came out in a whisper. “There’s never been another man.”
His derisive laughter cut into her with the precision of a surgeon’s laser. “You had sex with me on our first date…Your chances aren’t good.”
“Whose idea was that?”
“Don’t play the innocent. In your circumstance, my impatience was like manna from heaven.”
“I’m not playing at anything. I was a virgin!” She hated having to say it like that, as if she was defending herself, which she was.
“Do not lie to me.”
“I’m not lying.”
“I am not taking responsibility for another man’s mistake and you can take that assurance to the bank.”
Both her arms crossed protectively over her stomach. “My baby is not a mistake!”
“Maybe not, but trying to convince me I am the father was. Who knows? I might have continued our affair and even helped you financially with the child if you had been honest.” Scorn laced every word as he started throwing his clothes back on.
“What are you doing?”
His eyes derided her for asking such a stupid question. “I’m leaving.”
She flew off the bed and across the room to him. It couldn’t be falling apart like this. She refused to let a misunderstanding tear apart the framework of her happiness.
She grabbed his forearm, frantic to make him listen. “Please, Salvatore, darling. The baby is yours. I swear it. I love you. I wouldn’t lie to you!”
He shook her off. “Stop this. You made your play. You lost. Accept it.”
“It’s not a play. I’m pregnant with your baby. Don’t you want to be a father?”
His face contorted and then he spun away from her.
She stood, frozen by a reaction she had never expected as he finished dressing. She followed him when he walked out to the living room. His gaze flicked to the specially set table and his eyelid twitched, his mouth going more taut, but he said nothing.
He stopped at the door and then turned his head until they were once again making eye contact.
It hurt. Horribly. His eyes spoke volumes about what he thought of her and it was all terrible. “I will not tell your father about this. It would kill him, but don’t try to convince him that baby is mine. I will not lie to protect you either.”
From somewhere deep inside, defiance emerged. How dare he try to boss her around when he denied her and their baby? “I’ll tell my father what I darned well please.” She glared at Salvatore, her pain a ball of fire in her chest ready to explode and burn her heart to cinders. “You’re the father and I won’t lie to protect you either.”
His lip curled in contempt. “Don’t try it.”
And the most painful realization she’d ever had burst upon her with the power of a nuclear explosion and with as much inner devastation. If he loved her anything like the way she loved him, he would believe her. Full stop.
“It was all just sex for you, wasn’t it?”
“What else would it be with a woman like you?”
She didn’t answer him. She couldn’t. Her heart was breaking and it was a physical pain so debilitating, she could barely stand.
He turned and left and she stumbled to her bathroom to be sick over the toilet.
Salvatore spraw
led on the suite’s sofa, his long legs stretched out in front of him, and sipped at the single malt Scotch he’d poured shortly after Elisa had gone to bed. She had made a beeline for her room the minute they returned from dinner, saying she was tired.
This he did not doubt.
She looked more than tired, she looked breakable.
A year on from the tragedy, she was nowhere near being over it. One look into her beautiful green eyes told him as much. Sorrow lurked there. Grief. And all of it his fault. He’d been brutal with her and she’d lost the baby.
His fault.
He rubbed at his eyes. Would he ever forget the image of Elisa lying on her bed in a pool of blood?
She had tried to call him after that fateful night, the one in which she had attempted to convince him the baby she carried was his. He had denied her calls. She had come to see him in Milan and again he had refused to see her.
But gradually he had cooled down enough to think, to consider the possibility the baby was his, however unlikely. He realized he had allowed that other situation, the one born of youthful stupidity, to color his reaction to Elisa. So what if she was a lot like her mother, as her father claimed?
She was different with him. She never acted promiscuously with other men, had in fact behaved as if she was barely alive unless she was with him. If he had not been assured by her own father that she was the sophisticated replica of her mother, Salvatore would have thought she was innocent.
As innocent as she had claimed that awful night.
A month without her had severely dented the pride that had kept him away from her. He missed her like a physical ache and no amount of work made it go away. He had not even tried dating other women, feeling too raw from Elisa’s betrayal.
Why had she tried to convince him the baby was his?
In the darkest hour of night, his conscience haunted him with the possibility that she had not been lying. Eventually he convinced himself that even if she was lying, he could understand why she had done it. She said she loved him and no doubt had been afraid of losing him.
Love wasn’t something he thought about. It was an emotion women used to justify their passions and gave strong men an excuse to act weak. But even so, he could believe she cared about him enough to be afraid of losing him. Maybe she had even been afraid of facing pregnancy on her own.
