Claiming His One-Night Baby

by Michelle Smart

  ‘No, you didn’t. You wanted to fix people who were maimed and disfigured. You never said anything about opening your own clinics. The skin cream you wanted to develop was to help your brother...’

  ‘My brother died,’ he said, drumming his fingers on the desk, the glint of danger in his eyes.

  ‘I know and I’m sorry.’ She knew that when Matteo was ten and his brother Roberto eight, Roberto had been seriously injured in a fire that had left him with horrific internal and external scarring. It was a miracle he’d survived to live another twenty years. When she’d heard of his death she’d known Matteo would be devastated.

  Poor Matteo. One minute he must have been on top of the world, qualifying as a surgeon after so many years of hard work, then only three months later, when he’d hardly had the time to taste his success, the brother he’d adored and had longed to make better had died.

  She had wanted so badly to reach out to him but had known her words of condolence would not be wanted. They wouldn’t be wanted now either.

  Adopting a softer tone, she said, ‘I just remember all the conversations we used to have. I remember the ideals you had back then.’

  ‘Those?’ he mocked. ‘They were a young doctor trying to impress a beautiful woman with his humanity.’

  Heat spread low inside her at the backhanded compliment. ‘So you are a liar, then.’

  His sensual lips pulled into a smile but the eyes didn’t change, holding hers with that dangerous yet somehow seductive glint. ‘Not lies. I merely chose to alter the path I was taking. That’s the beauty of life—it’s full of options, something I am sure you’re familiar with. After all, you chose to marry Pieta, heir to the Pellegrini estate, rich in his own right, when there would have been other options available to you. And now you’re a reasonably rich widow you will have a pool of men to choose from to make husband number two.’ The smile became cruel. ‘Or have you already got a man in mind, bella? A rich surgeon perhaps who can comfortably keep you in the lifestyle you’ve become accustomed to?’

  Even his endearment of bella sounded like a mockery.

  ‘I’ve already said I don’t want to marry you,’ she snapped. ‘I don’t want to marry anyone.’

  ‘But, bella, I don’t trust a word you say so why should I believe that? If you’re secretly hoping my invitation to live with me during the pregnancy means I have some latent feelings for you, you’re wrong. I admit that once I did have feelings but you killed them when you accepted Pieta’s proposal and I realised you’d been toying with both of us. If I ever marry I would need to trust my wife. I would require some form of loyalty and faithfulness and we both know you’re incapable of any of that.’

  Natasha’s stomach shredded under the weight of his malevolence but she refused to cower under it. ‘You haven’t lived my life; you know nothing about me. And how dare you speak of loyalty as if it’s an attribute you own when you bedded your best friend’s wife on the day of his funeral.’

  The mocking glint disappeared. Matteo rose to his feet, towering over her, his face dark and menacing. ‘That is something I will regret for the rest of my life. You’re a gold-digger. You chose Pieta over me because he had money and back then I had little—you see, bella, I do know you. I know you come from a greedy, grasping family who spent my cousin’s money as if it was going out of fashion and his death means the gravy train is over. You only inherit his personal wealth, substantial, I admit, but nothing compared to the income you enjoyed from the Pellegrini estate when he was alive. Was that why I came back in your favour now I’m so much more than an overworked doctor?’

  Matteo watched the colour drain from her face as he spoke but felt no guilt. He only spoke the truth. Pieta had mentioned a number of times about helping Natasha’s parents out. He’d described them as leeches.

  ‘You came to me,’ she hissed, rising too and leaning on the desk between them, blue eyes spitting brimstone. ‘You’re entitled to your opinions of me—I can’t change them, I know that—but you’re not entitled to your own facts. You turned up at my door, not the other way round. We were both there, we both know what happened just...happened. It wasn’t planned and I will not have you twist things round so that you can absolve yourself of any blame. Our child’s conception is on both of us so you can damn well stop putting it all on me.’

  Matteo threw his head back and clenched his jaw before looking at her.

  Dio, even in anger she was beautiful. All she wore was a pair of slim fitting jeans and a navy top that fell off the shoulder, and she still filled his loins with an inexplicable craving.

  He wished he had the power to eradicate their night together from his memories.

  It hadn’t even been a whole night. Barely an hour.

  The most explosive, fulfilling hour of his life.

  It had been an eruption of desire so intense and all-consuming it should have burnt itself out there and then, not remain simmering in his blood.

  Natasha had the potential to drive him out of his mind. She was a Pandora from mythology, beautiful, beguiling, radiating innocence but inside full of deceit. Natasha had the jar in her hand that when opened was going to unleash hell on his earth.

  But she was right that it wasn’t fair for him to put all the blame on her.

  Wasn’t that exactly what his father had been doing for twenty-five years, blaming Matteo for the fire rather than accepting his own responsibility for it?

  He would never be like his father.

  He had gone to her. It had been he who’d kept his finger on the buzzer until she’d opened the door. Even now, with a month’s distance from the event, he had no insight into his own motives. He still couldn’t understand what had compelled him to get out of the car and cross the street to the house.

  Whatever the underlying reason, it didn’t change the outcome. They were having a baby together.

  ‘You’re right,’ he said, sitting back down with a sigh. ‘The guilt belongs to us both. I shouldn’t put it all on you.’

  Her stony glare didn’t drop an inch.

  He rubbed his forehead, trying to ease the pressure building in it. ‘Look, the next seven, eight months are not going to be easy for either of us.’

  ‘No, they’re not,’ she agreed, her voice a fraction calmer.

  ‘Like it or not, our baby ties us together. I’ve seen first-hand how destructive warring parents can be. I saw it all the time during my residency, parents who could hardly stand to be in the same room as the other even when their child was seriously ill. I don’t want our child to suffer because of us. For our baby’s sake, I’m willing to try and look past what went on between us before and build some kind of relationship that isn’t based on loathing.’

  Her eyes flickered. ‘Really? You can stop throwing the past back in my face?’

  ‘I can try. I’m never going to trust you but for better or worse we’re now always going to be involved in each other’s lives. I’m prepared to try. What about you? Are you willing to try too?’

  Her gaze didn’t leave his but there was a discernible softening in her eyes, a slight crease forming in her brow as if she was thinking.

  She stayed like that for a long time.

  Then her lips pulled together and her throat moved before she nodded and whispered, ‘Yes. I’m willing to try.’

  He almost put out his hand to invite her to shake on their truce but stopped himself before his fingers had moved more than a fraction towards her.

  It wasn’t just his fingers that yearned towards her. It was all of him.

  He cleared his throat. ‘So now that’s settled, would you like me to order you some food?’

  She shook her head and looked away. All the fire that had spilled out of her just a short while ago had been dampened. Now she looked lost.

  ‘I’m not hungry. I think I’ll take you up on your earlier suggestion and get some rest.’

  ‘Whatever you wish.’

  She walked to his bedroom with a gait that was almost a shuf
fle. When she reached the door she looked at him again. Even with the distance now between them he could see the crease still in her brow and something that looked like pain in her eyes.

  ‘I know you won’t believe me but I never meant for any of it to happen. I never meant to hurt you. I...’ She swallowed and bit into her lip.

  Something reached out from his chest and clenched around his throat. Suddenly feeling that he could choke, he waved a dismissive hand. ‘You didn’t hurt me.’

  Natasha closed the door behind her and put one clammy palm to her chest, the other to her mouth and blinked back the hot tears that had filled her eyes.

  Despite his denial she knew she’d hurt him all those years ago.

  She’d hurt them both.

  Drained, her head pounding, she pulled the shades down, removed her shoes and lay on Matteo’s king-size bed.

  Soon these erratic feelings swirling inside her would subside and she’d be able to breathe.

  The soft sheets had a delicious freshly laundered scent to them she found comforting.

  Matteo had slept in this bed before. Many times.

  How many women had slept in it with him?

  She squeezed her eyes shut.

  She couldn’t afford to allow herself to care. Matteo was the father of her child but he could never be anything more. That ship had sailed. Even if it hadn’t, and even if she wasn’t determined to grab her freedom and live her life free from anybody else’s chains, Matteo would not be the one.

  If she’d thought marriage to Pieta had been hard she could only imagine the hell Matteo would have put her through.

  He thought a few months of celibacy was a sacrifice. God alone knew how many times he would have cheated on her if she’d married him. He went through women like most people went through their laundry.

  He wasn’t the man she’d believed him to be all those years ago. She’d thought him a man of integrity. She’d believed him when he’d said he wanted to be the world’s foremost reconstructive surgeon. The life he’d chosen, however, was the antithesis of those early dreams.

  No, he most definitely was not the man she’d believed him to be. And now she was fated to be tied to him for the rest of her life.

  * * *

  The first two weeks in Miami passed a lot more easily than Natasha expected. That she was given Matteo’s guesthouse at the back of his waterfront home helped. She’d expected to be physically living under the same roof as him but instead had her own place complete with her own private swimming pool. She’d yet to venture any further into his home than the utility and kitchen. They rarely saw each other but when they did they were at great pains to be polite to each other.

  So far, their entente cordiale was holding up.

  Matteo worked long hours. His headquarters and the clinic he personally practised from were only a mile from his home on Biscayne Bay but he made frequent trips across America to his other clinics.

  The only real time they had spent together had been a visit to an obstetrician friend of his, who had asked her a myriad of questions and examined her with such a gentle touch that she’d found herself reassured. Whether she had her baby here or in Pisa, she would be in excellent hands.

  Pisa...

  At some point in the near future they would return there. The plan was for Matteo to return to Caballeros with Daniele when the structure of the hospital was complete. They’d decided that would be the best time to confess the pregnancy.

  She was thinking all this as she sat with her legs in the guesthouse pool, soaking up the last of the day’s sun, soul music playing gently through the earphones, sipping on fresh orange juice brought to her unasked by a member of his friendly staff. So lost in her own world was she that she didn’t hear any sign of another’s presence until a shadow crossed over her.

  Turning her head, she found Matteo standing over her.

  She whipped the earphones out, sloshing juice over her hand in the process.

  ‘Sorry if I frightened you,’ he said wryly.

  ‘I wasn’t expecting you back yet.’

  ‘I finished sooner than expected.’ He’d gone to Los Angeles the day before, preparing to open a new store that would sell his magic creams; the two he already had there were bursting at the seams with clients desperate to hand their money over for the miracle of reducing their crow’s feet.

  She could still hardly believe that the topical lotion he’d been intent on developing all those years ago to reduce his brother’s burn scars had turned into such a phenomenon.

  Two years after she’d become engaged to Pieta, Matteo had finally qualified as a surgeon. At some point in those two years he’d found the successful formula because he’d launched the lotion as a skin moisturiser six months after qualifying, only months after Roberto’s death. It hadn’t just helped reduce burn scars but acne scars and wrinkles too. It had been a word-of-mouth sensation that had gone viral on social media within days. Initially selling online, he’d since cannily resisted the pleas from department stores worldwide to stock it, instead selling it from the medical clinics he’d opened at an alarmingly fast rate and then opening his own dedicated stores.

  While she admired the drive and dedication it must have taken to make such a success of himself in such a relatively short time, she’d never forgotten the humble doctor he’d been who’d wanted only to help his brother and be the best surgeon he could be. In all their long talks he’d never once said anything about money being a motivating factor in his life’s choices. Of all the choices he’d made since his brother’s death—and it was obvious to her that Roberto’s death had been the trigger behind the new life Matteo had pursued—this was the one she found the saddest.

  From his jacket pocket he produced a paper napkin from a well-known coffee shop chain. Crouching at her side, he took the hand covered with spilt juice and wiped it.

  Taken aback at the gesture, Natasha didn’t have time to resist.

  Her cheeks flaming, both at his unexpected touch and the realisation she was sitting before him in nothing but a one-piece swimsuit, she muttered, ‘Thank you.’

  ‘How have you been?’ he asked, removing his shoes and rolling his trousers up to sit next to her, dipping his large feet in the warm water.

  ‘Good, thanks.’

  ‘No more dizzy spells?’

  ‘None.’

  He nodded. ‘Sleeping okay?’

  ‘Yes.’ Surprisingly well.

  ‘That’s good. You will let me know if you have any concerns or worries?’

  ‘I’ve already promised that at least ten times.’ This had been something else she hadn’t anticipated, that Matteo would take such an active interest in the pregnancy. Although they had seen little of each other, he messaged her frequently to check that she was feeling all right and had his staff check on her regularly. The guesthouse was connected to the main house by an enclosed glass walkway and there were intercoms in every room that connected straight to his head of housekeeping, who lived in the staff house. Natasha had her privacy but in her time here she’d never felt lonely or abandoned. And that was something else that surprised her. In Pisa, she’d hated living with staff. She didn’t find it at all intrusive coming from Matteo’s staff, who were a lot more relaxed and upbeat than those Pieta had employed.

  ‘I’m just reinforcing the message.’

  ‘Consider it reinforced.’

  Their eyes met, a brief moment of humour flickering between them before she turned her face away to stare at their feet in the water. She never doubted his concern was all for the health of their growing baby.

  ‘The foundations for the hospital have been completed,’ he said.

  ‘Already? That was quick.’

  ‘Bureaucracy doesn’t exist in Caballeros. The San Pedro Governor is behind the project so it’s all systems go. Daniele’s been out there again. He’s paying his staff triple time to work through the night.’ Natasha remembered the agreement that had been made that Pieta’s foundation would
pay for the site and that Daniele would pay the construction costs and for his own staff to build it. It would be costing him a fortune.

  ‘You’ve spoken to him?’

  ‘A number of times. He expects the shell of the building to be done within a month. He wants me to go back with him then, before they start the finishing process and it’s too late to make any changes I think are needed from a medical standpoint.’

  Matteo leaned back on his arms and breathed in the air, trying to unknot the tension that had become a permanent thing in him and always tightened whenever they spoke of Daniele or the other members of his family.

  ‘Has anything been said? About us?’ she asked quietly.

  ‘He asked how you were doing. Said Vanessa was missing you.’

  She bowed her head and hunched her shoulders.

  ‘She keeps messaging me,’ she whispered then swallowed. A tear rolled down her cheek. She wiped it away with the back of her hand. ‘I don’t know how to respond. It’s the same with Francesca. She’s called me three times. I try and keep things light and non-specific but I feel so guilty. They’ve been so good to me and it’s killing me to know I’m going to break their hearts.’

  He dug his fingers into the grass, resisting the compulsion to put an arm around her. Natasha evoked feelings in him he couldn’t begin to understand. She always had.

  He had no control over his body’s responses to her; even now he was having to fight his own head to tune out that she was wearing nothing but a pretty striped swimsuit and that before she’d hunched herself over he’d seen a glimpse of breasts that had swollen since he’d last seen her only three days before.

  It was the need to resist temptation that had seen him travelling more than normal these past few weeks and working the hundred-hour weeks he’d not done since his residency days. Being with her was too much, a constant battle that veered between wanting to shout and shake her, and wanting to pull her close and make love to her again.

  He’d promised to try and put the past behind them but, damn it, it was hard.