‘You want us to lie?’
‘No, I do not want us to lie. I despise dishonesty but what’s the alternative? Do you want to return to your parents in England and—’
‘No.’ Her rebuttal was emphatic.
‘Then coming with me is the only answer. If you stay in Pisa, and Vanessa and the others think there is even a chance you are carrying Pieta’s...’ To build their hopes up only to cut them away would be too cruel. ‘We need to show a united front starting from now.’
‘So you do accept the baby’s yours?’
‘Yes. I accept it’s mine and I will acknowledge it as mine. Come with me and I will protect you both, and we will have a small chance of making the pain of what’s to come a little less in the family who have shown both of us nothing but love and acceptance. They have suffered enough.’
She rested her head against the window and closed her eyes. He hated that even looking as if she hadn’t slept in a month she was still the most beautiful woman he’d ever laid eyes on.
Eventually she nodded. ‘Okay,’ she said in her soft, clear English voice. ‘I’ll come to Miami with you. But only for a while. We can fake a burgeoning relationship, I can get pregnant, and then we can split up.’
‘We stay together until it’s born.’
Her eyes flew open to stare at him with incredulity. ‘That’s seven and a half months away.’
‘This is your first pregnancy. You need my support.’ He remembered his early hospital rotation in the ER when he’d been a junior resident. He’d dealt with numerous pregnant women admitted with complications, knew first-hand that pregnancy was unpredictable.
‘Support? You were talking about a DNA test only a few minutes ago. If that’s your idea of support, I’d much rather go it alone.’
‘Damn it, Natasha, I’d convinced myself there was no way the child could be mine! I wanted it to be Pieta’s, I didn’t want it to be mine. I wanted to be able to wash my hands of the situation but I can’t. I do accept it’s my baby you’re carrying but this isn’t going to be easy. Not for either of us. I am not going to let you go through the pregnancy alone, so get that idea out of your head.’
‘What happens when it’s born?’ she demanded to know. ‘How much involvement will you want?’
‘I don’t know!’ He thumped the steering wheel in his anger.
This could not be happening. Natasha was having his child. It was going to destroy everything and everyone. But he would not let it destroy his child.
He was going to be a father. He could feel the magnitude of it building inside him.
It had been many years since he’d even considered fatherhood. He’d wanted a wife and a family once, a long time ago when he’d met a woman who’d stolen the breath from his lungs with one look. Until that point he’d been so focused on his surgical career that relationships had passed him by, his affairs with the opposite sex short and on occasion sweet, but never interfering with his focus.
The Rawlings were old friends of his aunt and uncle but the first time he’d personally met them had been during the Christmas period when he’d been in the third year of his residency in a Florida hospital. He’d left Italy at eighteen to study medicine there because it was one of the best medical schools in the world, but had still travelled back to Pisa whenever he could.
He’d arrived late on Christmas Eve, the annual party Vanessa and Fabio threw in their sprawling Pisa villa already well under way. He’d taken one look at the sophisticated, beautiful woman chatting in a group by the enormous Christmas tree and had been instantly enamoured. But then he’d learned that she was only seventeen and had backed right off.
Seventeen? He’d thought she must be at least in her midtwenties.
Being under the same roof meant he’d got to know her a little. What he’d learned had made him want to learn more. Shy on the surface, a little probing had revealed a keen intelligence, a dry sense of humour and a maturity well beyond her years.
He’d returned to America days later, unable to stop thinking about her.
When he’d returned to Italy for Easter, the Rawlings had again been in residence. This time the chemistry between them had been tangible. He’d left with her phone number and the memory of her making him promise to call as soon as he arrived back in Florida so she wouldn’t worry about him arriving safely.
No one had ever worried about him arriving anywhere safely before and it had touched him deeply.
He made the call. It became the first of many. Soon it became a habit to call as soon as his shifts at the hospital were over. They emailed. They wrote. They texted. They lived in different continents but it was only a physical separation. He told her things about himself he’d never shared with anyone. He opened himself up and laid himself bare as he’d never done before.
He was content for them to build a relationship from afar, knowing it wouldn’t be long until she came of age and they could be together properly. It was the same for her too, going as far as Natasha looking into universities stateside so they could be together.
Spending over a decade studying and working to achieve his goal of being a surgeon had taught him that nothing worthwhile came easily or could be rushed. To him, Natasha was worth waiting for. It was more than desire, it was a meeting of hearts and minds he could never have explained to anyone because he couldn’t explain it to himself. She’d tapped into something in him that he hadn’t known existed, a need to create a family of his own. And she’d seen something in him no one else had either. Something good. She knew about the childhood fire that had left his brother so severely disfigured that Roberto had become a recluse, yet had never judged him for his part in it. She’d defended him from himself.
Matteo had always known he would never operate on Roberto himself, even when he qualified as a reconstructive plastic surgeon. Never mind it being unethical, he’d barely coped in the waiting room whenever Roberto had endured the many surgeries and skin grafts he’d needed over the years. To be effective, surgeons needed detachment. He could never have been detached operating on his brother. So he’d researched new techniques and the best surgeons performing them while at the same time researching proven topical remedies for burn scars, determined to come up with something practical that would help his brother. Natasha had had no medical knowledge but had listened and encouraged him.
Discovering that he’d opened his heart and laid himself bare to a lie and that she’d been playing with him had hit him right in the gut. But he’d got over it. He’d hardened his heart against her and had soon considered himself to have had a lucky escape. Since then he’d been far too busy, first finishing his residency and qualifying as a surgeon and then building his businesses, to waste his time thinking about her. Thoughts of a family had been put on the back burner. Life was short and he intended to enjoy it and to hell with the woman who’d played him for a fool.
He didn’t deny it had given him satisfaction to imagine her reading the media tales of his self-made wealth and know she would be kicking herself for choosing the wrong cousin.
The irony that she would be the mother of his child after all would be laughable if the situation itself wasn’t so tragic.
Taking another long breath, he controlled his tone to say, ‘No, I do know. I’m going to want full involvement. This is our child and we will raise it together.’
‘Together?’ Her blue eyes flashed. ‘I’m happy for us to raise it as some kind of team but only because I know it’s best for the baby, but don’t get any ideas about me living with you after it’s born or marriage or anything like that because I won’t.’
‘You have no worries on that score,’ he shot back. ‘You are the last woman I’d ever consider marrying.’
‘Good,’ she spat, ‘because it will never happen.’
He sucked in a breath, trying to keep a lid on his temper. ‘We will work out maintenance and custody arrangements that suit us both and works for our child, but that’s a long way off. Right now the priority is for
you and I to pretend to be a couple falling in love.’
Her disbelief turned into a bark of bitter laughter. ‘You? In love? As if anyone in their right mind would believe that. You’re pictured with a different woman every week.’
‘I will do whatever is necessary to protect my family and if that means being celibate while we fake a relationship then that’s a sacrifice I’m prepared to make. We have to make this convincing.’
His uncle and aunt had taken him in when he’d been at his lowest, when the tension between himself and his father had become a poisonous living being. Fabio and Vanessa had loved him and cared for him as if he’d been a child of their loins. He wouldn’t be able to protect Vanessa from the horror of Natasha’s pregnancy but he could at least spare her and his cousins the truth of its conception and spare their hopes from flaring that a part of Pieta still lived on through her.
‘I’m prepared to make some sacrifices but what about you?’ he asked, turning it back on her. ‘Can you make people believe the grieving widow is capable of finding love again so soon after burying her beloved husband?’
Instead of displaying the vehement outrage he was sure would come at him, Natasha covered her forehead with her hand. ‘Trust me, I am an expert at faking things.’
* * *
Natasha sat in the living room waiting for the doorbell to ring. Her bags were packed, her affairs in order, passport at the ready, everything done to uproot her life for the foreseeable future.
Matteo’s solution, as much as it troubled her to think of living under his roof, was the best way forward. Really, it was the only way. Francesca’s unexpected visit just fifteen minutes after Matteo had dropped her home after the scan had proved that.
Francesca had come to tell her in person that she was getting married. Even with her own troubles and the guilty ache in her heart evoked just by being with her sister-in-law, Natasha had been taken aback by the news. Francesca had had a life plan in which getting married had been relegated to occur at least a decade from now. She hadn’t planned on falling in love, though, and although she’d tried to mute her happiness, her radiance shone as brightly as the enormous rock on her wedding finger.
Her understandable self-absorption had stopped Francesca scrutinising Natasha with her usual zeal and she had left without asking if she’d had any publicity ideas yet for the hospital in Caballeros or even checking her out for signs of physical change, for which Natasha had been thankful.
For the first time in her life she’d developed a decent pair of breasts. If these changes were already showing, what would come next? Francesca was training to be a lawyer; inquisitiveness came as naturally to her as breathing. Next time those prying eyes would notice.
Leaving Pisa was the best way forward. She couldn’t go home to England. That was unthinkable. She dreaded her parents’ reaction when they learned of the pregnancy and the identity of the father as much as she dreaded her in-laws’ reactions.
Her parents had forced this marriage on her. They hadn’t cared that she’d had feelings for another man, hopes and dreams for a future with him. They hadn’t cared when Pieta had dragged their engagement out over six long years. They’d never asked if their marriage was a happy one. If she’d told them the truth about it, they wouldn’t have cared. They wouldn’t have cared that she’d been trapped with no way out and no means to leave him. There would have been no help from them.
When she’d called her father to inform him of Pieta’s death, his first question once the platitudes had been done with was to ask if she could be pregnant. Her mother had asked the same thing at the funeral.
Not even her mother-in-law had been so insensitive to ask that and it was her son who’d died.
Her parents’ hopes for a pregnancy had nothing to do with any longing for a grandchild. For them it was all about the money.
So, yes, Matteo’s option was the only sensible one.
Sensible and right. Right for her baby.
For all his hostility and for all the fallout he would endure, he wasn’t shirking his responsibility. After what had seemed like hopeful beginnings for them, they’d been on the fringes of each other’s lives for almost eight years and had spent one incredible night together. They both bitterly regretted that night. They didn’t know each other. They didn’t trust each other. They needed to use this time to form some kind of relationship that would allow them to raise their child in the spirit of togetherness and not as enemies.
All of this felt rational. Sensible. She needed to put her best foot forward and do her best, as her mother always liked to say, as if she were the leader of some Girl Guide group taking charge on an exciting expedition rather than a mother doing what was best for her child.
Her parents had never done what was best for her; they had always done what was best for them.
She could not live like that any more.
She’d lived her entire life as a pawn to be used, first by her parents and then by her husband, never good enough as she was, never being enough as she was, just a sad sap of a girl with a desperation to please.
When her baby was born she would think and do only what was best for it and she would do it on her terms, no one else’s. But until then...
Best foot forward and do her best, and don’t think about what it would do to her emotionally living with Matteo under his roof. That should be the least of her worries, but when her pulses surged to hear the doorbell ring, she knew it had the potential to be the greatest of all the dangers.
CHAPTER FIVE
MATTEO’S JET, WITH Manaserro emblazoned in bold red lettering on its sides, was ready for boarding as soon as they’d been whisked through security. Take-off occurred within minutes.
After showing Natasha all the facilities, including the bedroom, which he said was for her use during the long flight, Matteo settled himself at his desk and turned his tablet on.
He raised his brows when she took the seat opposite. ‘Don’t you want to get some rest? You look tired.’
That she could not deny. The pregnancy hormones were making her exhausted but she’d been so wound up over the guilt of their plans and all the other things weighing on her conscience that she couldn’t switch her brain off to sleep.
‘Maybe later. Tell me how it went in Caballeros.’
He shrugged and put his tablet down. ‘I can honestly say I’ve never been to such a dire country in my life.’
‘That bad, was it?’
‘Worse. Francesca’s fiancé—’ He suddenly interrupted himself. ‘Did I tell you she spent one week there and fell for her bodyguard? They’re getting married.’
Natasha nodded. ‘Francesca told me.’
‘Her fiancé is not a man to be messed with and the hospital site itself is secure. He’s got men permanently posted there for the duration of the construction process but the Caballeron government is corruption itself.’
That came as no surprise. Caballeros was infamous. Ranked the sixth most dangerous country in the world, drugs and crime were rife. Daniele had insisted Francesca, who’d been hell-bent on getting the hospital site approved as a memorial to Pieta, only travel there with heavy protection.
Thinking of Daniele made Natasha chew her bottom lip, the weight of her conscience pressing down extra hard.
‘Did you tell Daniele about us?’ she asked in a small voice.
He grimaced again and sighed heavily. ‘I set the seed and told him you were going to fly out to Miami for a break. He didn’t seem to be bothered by it.’ Suddenly he slammed his fist down on the desk, real anger on his face. ‘How do you do it?’ he demanded.
‘Do what?’
‘Lie. Daniele trusts me. It didn’t occur to him that I was feeding him a steaming pile of manure. How does it come so naturally to you?’
‘It doesn’t,’ she said, stung. ‘I hate lying. It’s deceitful.’
‘Stop the pretence. Lying comes as naturally to you as breathing—you told me yourself that you’re a pro at faking things.
’
She clenched her teeth together knowing she deserved that comeback. She had told him that. He couldn’t know she’d been referring to her marriage and the mountain of lies it had been built on.
‘It was your idea for us to play it like this,’ she reminded him icily, ‘and you can’t tell me you haven’t told a bagful of lies in your time.’
‘Not in my personal life.’
‘You lie in your professional life?’
‘There isn’t a physician alive who hasn’t told a white lie.’
‘And what do your lies consist of? Yes, your nose is huge, let me shrink it for you and charge you a vast amount for it?’ she taunted. ‘Although from what I’ve heard you’re too busy swanning around the world building your empire to bother with the nitty-gritty of surgery itself.’
His green eyes turned icy cold. ‘I don’t swan around, whatever that means. I employ the best surgeons from the top medical schools in my clinics and we operate under a strict code of ethics. A doctor’s first duty is to do no harm and I am insulted you would imply otherwise. I have never lied to a patient but in my residency days I did on occasion lie to a relative at the patient’s request, like with the mother who wanted to spare her child from knowing the prognosis of the cancer eating at her brain until she thought the child was in the right place to handle it. Those lies were told to prevent further suffering.’
She stared at his tight, angry face. For the first time in seven years she saw a glimpse of the man he’d been before, the man who’d been passionate and driven about his work, a man she’d thought no longer existed.
‘Why did you turn your back on it?’ she asked, unable to hide her bewilderment.
‘I didn’t. I became an entrepreneur alongside it.’
‘You were going to be a reconstructive surgeon. You took the most direct routes to it that you could find...’
‘And I am a reconstructive surgeon. I perform enough to keep my skills sharp, but the surgeons in my employ fix people who are unhappy with how they look. That’s what I always set out to do.’
Claiming His One-Night Baby Page 5
