by Tara Pammi
“In all these years, I haven’t been able to figure out how to save my relationship with her, and walk away from his toxic presence. Mario rules my life—my day, my social life, my vision, my work, even how I dress and what I say outside the walls of the office...”
She rubbed her fingers over her temple, even talking about it bringing on a pounding behind her eyes. That powerlessness gave birth to anxiety that could choke her breath.
Hand on her tummy, she forced herself to breathe deeply, to anchor herself on one point in the room to focus on. To fight the wave that could overwhelm her so easily.
His hands as they poured a glass of water for her...she focused on them. Large, square tipped, and yet she knew, if he touched her, they’d be gentle.
And just like that, the encroaching darkness got pushed back. Knowing that she could control it, knowing what triggered it, made it less scary than that terrifying first time.
Knowing that she was taking the right steps to wrest her life back under her control, knowing that she was building a future she wanted helped.
“This last year...it’s become imperative that I have to prioritize what’s important to me.
“The pace that Mario sets for me, I can’t continue and be sane. The entire board is in his pocket, even though I’m the CEO. Even though I own the IP to that first line of products that launched So Sweet.
“If I have a child with an anonymous donor, not only am I leaving myself more vulnerable to Mario’s passive-aggressive tactics, but my child becomes a new weapon to manipulate me.
“Because, believe me—” a hysterical laugh left her mouth as she imagined the aftermath of the bomb she was going to drop on Mario soon “—he’s going to try and come at me with everything he’s got over the next few months. I refuse to let my child become a pawn.”
“Are you sure you’re not overestimating the threat he might pose?”
“Said every man who claims he’s a friend to a woman in distress.” The bitter words rushed out of her on a wave.
Leo raised his brows and waited.
Neha flushed at the infinite patience reflected in his gaze. “I’m sorry. That was uncalled for.”
Leo waved it away. “I shouldn’t have doubted you. You would not concoct fantastic scenarios.”
His fingers landed on her shoulder and squeezed, concern expressed in an ephemeral second and then gone. As if he couldn’t let the contact deepen. As if he couldn’t linger even for a moment.
“There is more, sì?”
She nodded, not surprised at the depth of his perception. “I plan to retire soon. I have a legal team going over a million little things so that it can be a painless process. I plan to make a public announcement in a week or two.”
“What?” He sat forward in his seat. “That soon? Don’t make an emotional decision.”
“I’m not.”
“If this is about being a good mother—” admiration glinted in his eyes “—I have no doubt you can do both, Neha. And well.”
Her entire being warmed at his words. It felt immensely good to hear another person talk about her future with a child in it as a real possibility. “Thank you for the vote of confidence. I want to be a hands-on mum. But this pace I’ve been working at for the last decade, I can’t continue like that. Not if I want to have a healthy life, be a happy, strong mum to my child.
“Not if I don’t want to end up...” She swallowed away the darkest of her fears. “If the child is yours, Mario won’t dare to cast his shadow near him or her.
“So what I need is for you to create an illusion of standing beside me while I build the life I want.
“Can you do that, Leo? For me?”
* * *
Neha’s laughter—loud, full-bodied—hit Leo like a sound specifically created to awaken every nerve ending he possessed. His hand stilled with his coffee cup halfway to his mouth. He had convinced her to stay at his family’s villa by Lake Como for the weekend because he’d wanted to keep an eye on her.
It was a familiar sound—a glimpse into the funny, witty woman beneath the elegant facade. But so out of context here, in his home, where he had never invited a woman. Silvio’s multiple affairs, paraded shamelessly in front of Massimo’s mother, had been enough drama to last a lifetime.
He hadn’t sought her out in the two days she’d been here, leaving her in Nat’s capable and kind hands.
Ignoring his nonna’s complaints about the upcoming celebrations for her eightieth birthday in two weeks, he stood up and walked across the vast balcony.
A weak November sun cast a soft, golden glow around the gardens surrounding the villa that were his pride and joy. The villa had been a stalwart presence in his life when he’d been devastated as a young boy—confused, distraught and lost. The centuries-old legacy, the Brunetti name, thousands of people who’d always depended on the finance giant BFI for their livelihood, the tens of thousands of people who’d put their hard-earned income into the Brunettis’ hands for safekeeping, an anchor that had kept him going straight.
But it was the gardens that had given him a sense of belonging.
He’d always been able to will the most reluctant, the most stubborn, flower into full bloom with his hands. For a long time, he’d believed this was his contribution to the Brunetti legacy. Well, this and the fact that BFI had flourished under his leadership for the last two decades.
Vaguely, he remembered following a fragile, delicately built woman around the same gardens with a plastic pail and spade in hand. With a sense of delight that hovered at the edge of his subconscious mind. Soft laughter, sweet words...a memory buried in the recesses of his mind.
Another laugh from Neha pulled his thoughts from murky, unreliable memories. More than relieved to leave the past behind, he studied the woman who continued to intrigue him. The same woman who’d rendered him sleepless for the two days that she’d spent under his roof. Roused protective instincts he’d never even known before.
Neha stood on the sloping path that led to Massimo’s custom-built lab. Peach-colored trousers hugged her hips and buttocks, the fitted white shirt displaying the outline of her breasts perfectly. Hair high up in a ponytail that swung playfully as she walked, her smile glorious amid the riotous colors of the gardens.
I want you to father my child.
Even now, the fierceness of her expression when she spoke of a child that hadn’t even been conceived amazed him. Then there was the very existence of another image in his head—unbidden—of a boy or a girl he’d try to guide and protect while Neha nurtured with unconditional love.
“She looks much happier just after two days of being here,” said Massimo, joining him.
“You think so?” Leo had noticed something off with her but had put it down to the strangeness of her request. It wasn’t every day she walked up to a man and asked him to father her child.
“You didn’t notice?” Massimo wasn’t being facetious for once.
“Tell me what you noticed,” Leo invited him.
Massimo cast Leo a curious look but obliged. “She has such dark circles under her eyes her makeup can’t hide it. I haven’t seen her in...eighteen months, but she’s clearly lost weight. I know these ridiculous magazines call her fat and plump—”
“Her brand is successful because, like her products, she’s authentic, real. She eats like a real person and has curves like a real woman.” Leo heard the vehemence in his voice only after the words were out.
Massimo raised a brow. “It isn’t just her physical appearance, though. She doesn’t have that glow that lights her up from the inside, that genuine quality of hers. Instead, there’s a fragility I’ve never associated with her.” Massimo’s tone became softer, gilded with worry. “I remember Mama like that, before she left. As if she were at the end of her rope.”
Success is a yoke that can stifle every other joy.
“But the two days here seem to have made a world of difference,” Massimo added.
Again, true. Each hour Neha spent here in the villa seemed to restore a little bit of sparkle to her eyes. That innate joy.
“She wants to have a child. With me.” The words came easy because somewhere in the last two days he’d come to a decision.
Massimo’s sharp inhale jarred alongside his own steady breathing. “I didn’t know you two were involved.”
“We aren’t. Until now.”
“You’re considering this,” Massimo said, astonishment ringing his tone.
Leo’s smile dimmed, his chest tightening with an ache that was years old, that he wanted to shove aside as he’d always done. But today, he couldn’t. As much as he wanted to leave it there to rot, the past had a way of shaping the future. He couldn’t make a decision without making sure no innocent, and there could be two if he agreed, got hurt.
“Go ahead, play the devil’s advocate,” he said, inviting his brother’s opinion on a matter he didn’t discuss with anyone.
Massimo turned around and leaned against the balcony. Studied Leo for long moments. “You’re considering having a child with a woman who’s the one constant in your life, a woman you respect and admire, a woman who’s the real thing. I think it’s fantastico.”
Leo tried to swallow the shock that filled his throat.
“Shades of Silvio’s ruthlessness and abusive mentality could be in both of us. That does not mean we’ll prey on innocents,” said Massimo, who preferred computers to people, perceptive when it came to this.
“You had a mother to teach you right and wrong,” Leo whispered, the words coming from a dark place he’d shoved deep inside himself. From a hurt so deep he’d tried his damnedest to bury it. “A mother who taught you that it wasn’t weak to...feel.”
What he’d had instead was a father who had filled his formative years with poison against the woman who had walked out on both of them. Greta wasn’t cruel but she hadn’t ever been comforting to her grandsons, either. At least, not until she had married her second husband, Carlo, the first person who’d tried his best to teach them what it meant to be a good man.
But Leo had already grown up by then. Had been filled to the brim with bitterness against a woman whose face he didn’t even remember.
“But I almost lost Nat with my own hang-ups, sì?” Massimo’s gaze gentled. “You reached out to me when you discovered what a brute Silvio was, even though he taught you nothing of what makes family. You made him back off, you encouraged me to follow my passion. You believed in me and brought millions in seed capital when I’d have sold those designs for peanuts. There’s a reason a smart, levelheaded woman like Neha picked you.”
Leo had no words to express the gratitude and the indefinable emotion that pressed down on his chest. He hadn’t needed Massimo’s reassurance, but it felt immensely good to have it all the same.
“The only thing I would worry about in this whole scenario is...how the both of you will make it work.” Massimo grinned. “Nat and I will watch from the sidelines, popcorn in hands. She’s going to love seeing Neha bring you down a notch.”
Leo smiled. His sister-in-law was determined to see him defeated. In something, anything. “All Neha literally wants is to put me to stud, Massimo.”
Massimo burst out laughing, then sobered up when he realized Leo was serious. “What?”
“She wants the child because if I’m the father, Mario will think twice before he comes near the child. He’s got her all twisted inside out. She doesn’t want a coparent. Much less a relationship.”
“You’re okay with that?”
Leo didn’t answer, his gaze caught on the beautiful woman who had turned his life upside down with a simple request.
He was going to be a father, yes, but he wasn’t going to do it all by her rules.
Neither was he going to be tempted into a relationship with a woman he’d share a child with, with his history of relationships. Agreeing to Neha’s request meant he could never satisfy the deep hunger she evoked in him.
CHAPTER THREE
NEHA KNOCKED ON the thick wooden door. When there was no answer, she turned the gleaming metal handle and stepped into Leonardo’s bedroom. Uninvited.
The suite was twice the size of hers. Hers was thoroughly feminine with soft pink walls and bedspreads; this was a thoroughly masculine domain.
A dark oak desk sat in one corner of the room with a large monitor and papers neatly filed while comfy sofas and a recliner made up a cozy sitting area around a giant fireplace. Original, priceless artwork hung on the cream walls, a casual display of the Brunetti wealth—an overarching theme over the entire villa.
Dusk hadn’t fallen completely yet and the high windows filled the room with an orange glow. One portrait hung on the wall—Silvio sitting in a vintage armchair while Leo, no more than six or seven, stood next to his father, dressed in a matching three-piece dark gray suit, his thick curly hair slicked back, his baby-blue gaze full of grief and an ache he hadn’t learned to hide yet.
A jarring contrast to the powerful, impenetrable man he was today. Neha traced her finger over the little boy’s face, a host of emotions running through her.
She called out Leo’s name a couple of times and heard nothing back. Drawing a deep breath, she ventured farther in. There wasn’t so much sunlight in the bedroom and there was a coolness to the room, the air filled with that masculine tone she associated with him. The walls were a light gray with light blocking shades on the windows while a massive king bed sat against a high-ceilinged wall.
A huge upholstered headboard and pristine white sheets made the bed look like an ocean of welcoming comfort and warmth.
She could picture Leonardo sprawled in the middle of that bed, taut muscles relaxing after a long day, languid mouth stretched into an inviting smile, waiting for her. Her breaths came shallow, her fingers reaching out as if she could...
Leo walked in through a large door she hadn’t noticed, rows and rows of expensive, tailored clothes behind him.
Any sense she did possess before, any air left in her lungs, rushed out.
His magnificent chest was bare, tailored black trousers hung low on his hips. His jet-black hair, thick and wavy, was damp from the shower.
Neha couldn’t even pretend to look away. Every inch of him was chiseled to perfection like one of the life-size statues littered throughout the estate. She knew he worked out with that same ruthless discipline he applied to everything else in life, but dear God, she could spend hours just looking at his body, imagining all the things she would love to do to it.
Miles and miles of tautly stretched skin beckoned her touch. The broad sweep of his shoulders, the jut of his collarbones, the solid musculature of his chest, the slab of rock-hard abdomen...he was intensely male, an utter contrast to her soft curves.
His chest was liberally sprinkled with hair, and she imagined the sensation of that rough hair abrading her silky skin, over her sensitive nipples... An ache filled her breasts, narrowing down into her lower belly.
Every inch of him was defined and all she wanted to do was test the give of all that toned muscle with her teeth.
A single drop of water plunked onto his chest from his wet hair and she followed its trail from one neatly defined pectoral to the dip, through the tight planes of his abdomen and into the line of hair below his navel and into the band of his trousers.
“Should I wait a little longer before I put on the shirt?”
His voice—ringing with a husky wickedness—jerked Neha out of her greedy feasting. Heat rushed up her neck and into her cheeks.
Blue eyes danced with a roguish glint she’d never seen in him before. His sculpted mouth was turned up at the corners, his smile—a rare, genuine flash of teeth digging a groove in one cheek—a beautiful thing that could pull her out of the dar
kest of pits any day.
She looked away and then back, utterly incapable of coming up with a reply that wasn’t a yes, please. He was flirting with her and how she wanted to retort in kind. But it could lead everywhere and nowhere...
“Massimo said you’re leaving for Milan again. That you’re off to Paris from there. I didn’t want to miss seeing you,” she babbled, trying to gather a little sense. “We hadn’t talked again and I thought I should...”
He waited silently. And that bubble of intimacy pulled her, deeper and deeper.
“I’ll wait outside. Can we talk while you walk to the helicopter?”
He leaned against the big bed, his shirt thrown casually onto it. His glorious chest still bare. “I wasn’t going to leave without talking to you.”
“Oh, okay,” she said, suddenly feeling superconscious of her own attire. The see-through cover-up she’d pulled on in a hurry stuck to her damp skin while barely skimming the tops of her thighs. She pulled the sheer fabric away from her skin and his attention, arrested on every breath and movement of hers, made her shaky all over.
“I just wanted to reiterate that—”
“I have made a decision.”
She swayed, her knees refusing to prop her up. He reached for her immediately, his long fingers grasping her elbow in a firm grip.
“I’m fine,” she said, snatching back her arm. Forcing herself to breathe in long, deep gulps. “I’ll let you finish dressing.” She’d barged into his room and now she couldn’t wait to escape. If he said no...
“I’d prefer to talk here,” he said, pushing off from the bed. “And I’ll put on the shirt if it makes you uncomfortable.”
“Not uncomfortable, no. After all, it’s your bedroom. Just distracting,” she said in a half-snorting, high voice, panic letting her thoughts out in a rush.
His laughter was delicious, sexy, rubbing against her skin, winding her up. Heat washed over every inch of her, the very idea of licking up that hard chest sending a rush of desire through her.
“As you wish,” he said with a devilish smile, and reached for his white shirt.
