But he had made that promise and he knew that however hard it was for him, she would be suffering more. She was carrying their child.
Keeping a distance between them might be good for his state of mind but she was under a huge amount of stress. It might suit him better to cast her as an unfeeling cow but that was far from the truth. His clinics in Los Angeles had seen him cross paths with many actresses, good and bad. He could spot a phoney a mile off. Natasha’s distress about the Pellegrinis’ reaction to the pregnancy was genuine. He’d brought her to Miami in part to support her through this pregnancy. It was time he started holding up his side of their bargain.
‘When was the last time you left this place?’
Startled blue eyes found his. ‘What do you mean?’
‘According to my staff you rarely go out.’
She managed a weak smile. ‘Have you got them spying on me?’
‘Not spying, more keeping an eye on you. You’ve got too much thinking time on your hands and it’s making you worry about something neither of us has any control over. You need to keep busy, bella. We can start by going out for dinner. Have you any favourite foods you like?’ As he asked the question he remembered a long ago conversation about her love for spicy food. He blinked the memory he hadn’t thought of in nearly eight years away.
‘I’ll eat anything.’
He pulled his feet out of the water and stood up. ‘I’ll have a think about a decent restaurant. Come over to the main house when you’re ready.’
Then he picked up his shoes and walked barefoot into his home.
CHAPTER SIX
NERVES CHEWED NATASHA’S stomach as she walked up the marble steps and into Matteo’s vast house. It was the first time she’d gone further than the room she knew was used as a utility but which looked like an art gallery, and one of the kitchens, which had the same feel to it. If one didn’t know its purpose you could assume it was anything. The first time she’d gone in it the chef had casually mentioned it was the smallest of the kitchens. Turned out Matteo had three of them.
A member of staff appeared and with a smile took her through the house. As they walked, she gazed around in astonishment at the uniqueness and beauty of it all. The exterior was a work of sleek art in itself, with masses of glass and white stucco, but the interior... Everything flowed, the many staircases gave the illusion of floating...it was incredible, a work of art come to life. No wonder Daniele, the architectural brain behind it, had won awards for it. At the time of completion, a year ago, it had been valued as the most expensive property in the whole of Miami.
She was taken through to a vast room, the ceiling at least two storeys high and with an abundance of cream sofas and armchairs, easily enough to seat two dozen people with space to spare.
Left to her own devices, Natasha looked out at the spectacular view of the bay, the sky shades of pink under the setting sun. The room seemed to jut out and touch the bay itself.
She turned round and stared up at what appeared to be a floating balcony but which she quickly understood was a walkway that was part of the second floor. What new delights were there to discover up there?
A glass wall that reached all the way up to this strange yet beautiful indoor balcony soon revealed itself to be a cabinet but it was the huge canvas print beside it that really caught her attention and she walked over to examine it in more detail.
The print was a photograph of two beaming young boys, the elder no more than ten, the smaller one only a couple of years younger. They were sitting on a bench, arms wrapped around each other, their cheeks pressed together, identical curly black hair almost fused into one mass.
‘Sorry to keep you waiting.’ Matteo’s rich tones vibrated through the room.
Natasha looked around but couldn’t see him.
‘Up here.’
Craning her neck, she found him peering down at her from the floating balcony. A wry smile of amusement on his face, he walked the length of the balcony then disappeared from view, reappearing moments later on the other side of the room.
He must have travelled down a staircase hidden from view.
He’d changed into a pair of crisp navy trousers and a light grey open-necked shirt, his tall elegant frame carrying it off with a panache that made her think of Christmas perfume adverts that always featured suave, gorgeous men and lithe beautiful women. It was the swirls of exposed hair coming through the shirt that had her heart pounding so hard. She remembered so vividly running her fingers through that hair...
Swallowing hard as he strode towards her, she turned her attention back to the print and pointed a trembling finger at the older child. ‘Is that you?’
He stood beside her and looked at it.
Fresh cologne filled her senses.
‘Yes. I was nine when that was taken.’
‘And is the other boy your brother?’ It was a silly question really as other than the size difference they could have passed for twins.
‘Yes.’
There was a long stretch of silence between them.
‘I really was very sorry to hear Roberto died,’ she said quietly. ‘I know how much you loved him.’
They’d briefly mentioned Roberto’s death on Matteo’s jet over, but the conversation had turned into a spew of bitterness from him that had stopped her saying anything more about it.
If Matteo had been nine in this picture, then the fire that had torn their lives apart must have happened within a year of it being taken.
She blinked back hot tears as she looked at the happy faces of a life gone by.
Many stories had swirled in the aftermath of Roberto’s funeral, gossip and whispers between the family members about a spectacular row between Matteo and his father. Natasha knew the two men’s relationship had been strained since the fire, knew Matteo thought his father blamed him for the fire, something that had always made her heart wrench and her blood boil.
She’d never learned what the row at the funeral had been about but it had been serious enough for Matteo to legally change his surname within weeks. It could only have been intended as a snub to his parents—Manaserro was Vanessa Pellegrini’s maiden name. He’d chosen the family name of his uncle’s wife. As far as she was aware, Matteo and his parents hadn’t spoken since.
As Matteo stood looking at the last happy picture ever taken of his brother, he knew Natasha was thinking of the fire. He’d told her about it himself during one of their many marathon phone calls. He’d told her everything, how he’d been only ten years old when his parents had gone out for lunch leaving him in charge of eight-year-old Roberto, how Roberto had stolen a box of matches from the kitchen and taken them to the barn at the back of their house without Matteo even noticing he’d left the house, and how Roberto had lit those matches one by one, seeing how long he could keep each flame going. It had been a hot day after a period of hot weeks without any rain. The barn had been a tinder box and Roberto had been lucky to escape with his life.
Matteo had escaped with nothing more than the nightmares of his brother’s screams, which had sounded as if they’d been dredged from the bowels of hell itself, and his own screams when he’d heard his brother’s and had raced out of the house to find him. The image of his brother’s small body engulfed in flames haunted him. If the gardener hadn’t acted so quickly to douse the flames, Roberto would have died right before his eyes.
Natasha was the only person he’d shared this with. He’d never even told Pieta the sheer horror of what Roberto had been through and what he’d seen.
He hadn’t held anything back from her, not his father’s complete withdrawal of affection towards him, his belief that his parents blamed him for the fire, the increasing arguments and cold hostility that had culminated in him leaving the family home at thirteen to live with his uncle’s family, not the visits back home to see his brother that had only been undertaken when his father had been out, not the many surgical procedures Roberto had endured throughout the rest of his life and for which
Matteo had always sat in a separate waiting room from his parents.
He’d trusted her. He’d trusted her with everything.
The worst of it was she’d consoled him. He’d thought she believed in him. Her soft voice had given him comfort.
Then she’d taken his trust and ripped it to shreds.
They stood before the picture for a few more moments in silence before Matteo sighed deeply. It had all happened such a long time ago but sometimes, like now, it might have happened only yesterday.
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Let’s go and eat.’
He led her out to the secure docking bay at the side of his mansion where a gleaming yacht awaited them.
‘Is this yours?’ she asked with an inflection of surprise.
He nodded and waved a hand to greet the captain awaiting them on deck.
‘I’ve never noticed it before.’
‘Have you been round this side of the house?’ he said drily.
‘No,’ she admitted.
‘There’s your answer.’
‘Where are we going?’
He pointed to the island floating in the bay some distance before them. ‘Key Biscayne. It’s quicker and more pleasurable to sail there rather than drive. How are your sea legs?’
‘I guess we’re about to find out.’
Within minutes they were standing at the front of the yacht, leaning over the railing as they cut through the water, her blonde hair whipping behind her.
‘You like it?’ he asked.
She nodded, a wide grin forming, the first real flare of joy he’d seen on her beautiful face in such a long time that it pierced his chest to see it now.
He turned his gaze from her to look at the approaching Key Biscayne. ‘Why haven’t you explored any of Miami since you’ve been here?’
‘I don’t know my way around.’
‘I told you when we got here that you only had to ask and a member of staff would be happy to drive you or accompany you anywhere you wanted to go. You’re not my prisoner, bella.’
‘I know I’m not.’
‘Then why stay in all the time? Miami is one of the most vibrant cities in the world.’
She shrugged and put a hand to her face to shield herself from locks of thick hair falling into it. ‘Where would I go?’
‘I don’t know. The beach? A café? One of the museums? Jungle Island? An art gallery? A nightclub—there’s plenty of those.’
She gave a wry smile. ‘I can just see pregnant old me dancing the night away in a sweaty nightclub.’
So could he. Vividly. That long honey-blonde hair swaying, that lithe body in the slim-fitting off-the-shoulder blue-and-white-striped dress she was wearing, moving to the music, wrapped around his...
He blinked the image away and took a breath to drive away the burst of heat in his loins.
‘You’re pregnant, not dead. There’s plenty of exclusive clubs here you can go to that aren’t the sweaty places you’re thinking of.’
‘On my own?’
‘I’m not speaking literally. I’m just saying you should be making the most of being fit and able to do things while you can. In a few months you’ll be waddling like a duck with a watermelon for a belly.’
‘You make it sound so delightful. I look forward to waddling like a duck.’
He grinned at her dryness. He didn’t think for a minute that Natasha would ever waddle. She had too much elegance.
It struck him then that he would be there to see the changes in her. He would watch her belly ripen and her breasts grow.
He would be there for all of it. Nothing on this earth would make him miss any of it.
He wondered what changes had already happened that weren’t yet visible to his eye, what physical shifts Natasha could feel within her.
‘Do you really want to spend the pregnancy stuck in my little patch of the earth?’ he said in a teasing tone that belied the depth of his thoughts and the emotions shooting through him.
‘It’s hardly little.’
‘You know what I mean.’
She sighed. ‘Yes, I do know. There’s lots of reasons but the main one is because I’m trying to save money.’
‘You’re short of cash?’
‘If I spend it frivolously I will be. I have no job. I’m pregnant with no employment history so there’s no realistic prospect of me getting one in the foreseeable future.’
‘I know you won’t inherit the castello and the rest of the family estate but you’re going to inherit Pieta’s personal wealth.’
‘I don’t want it. It wouldn’t be right.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous. You were his wife. It’s yours by right.’
‘I could accept that if I’d contributed to it in any way but I didn’t. Everything he earned was his and it was all earned without any help from me.’
‘You provided a home for him.’
She shook her head, her hair swishing gently around her shoulders. ‘The house was his. The staff were his. The furnishings were his and to his taste. Everything was his.’
There was an undertone to her words that raised his antennae.
‘You were together for seven years,’ he said slowly, trying to figure out what that undertone could mean or why something in his gut told him to listen to it.
‘But only married for one. We didn’t live together until we married. I cannot in all good conscience take that money, especially not now that I’m having your baby. I could never live with myself.’
His incredulity deepened.
She’d married Pieta for his money. And now she was planning to walk away from it?
A dozen more questions formed but they’d arrived at the dock by the quayside restaurant he’d booked them into so had to wait until they were at their table before he could ask them and the next dozen that formed in quick succession.
They were shown to a table overlooking the waterfront, the distant Miami skyline lighting up like a silhouette under the rapidly darkening night sky.
‘This place is so glamorous,’ Natasha said when they were seated, her eyes too busy darting around the eclectic restaurant to bother looking at the menu she’d been given. ‘Have you eaten here before?’
‘I brought my Miami staff here for our Christmas party.’
‘Lucky staff. The last time I ate out was at a stuffy ambassador’s residence.’
‘Not glamorous?’
‘If you like old-fashioned glamour.’
‘You don’t?’ He thought of her house in Pisa. Pieta had been a collector of antiques, his tastes shining through every item on display. Now he thought about it properly, there had been nothing of the Natasha he had known all those years ago in that house. It was as if her personality had been subsumed by her husband’s.
She hesitated before answering. ‘Not particularly. I’m more of a modern girl. What do you recommend to eat?’
‘The lobster’s good.’
She pulled a face. ‘Lobster’s boring.’
‘Really?’
‘Too sweet.’ She peered at the menu and pulled another face. ‘What the heck are Peruvian potatoes?’
‘Potatoes from Peru?’ he suggested drily.
She met his eye and sniggered. ‘Maybe they come wrapped in a llama.’
He grinned. ‘You should try them.’
‘I will. Seed-crusted halibut, Peruvian potatoes, wild mushrooms, sea beans and red pepper coulis. Perfect.’
Their food ordered, drinks set before them, Matteo settled back and watched Natasha continue her unabashed admiring of the restaurant’s decor.
‘You know what I don’t understand?’ he said.
‘What?’
‘Why you gave up your plans to be an interior designer.’
The amusement that had flared between them faded, to be replaced by wariness. ‘It just never happened.’
‘Why not? You still did the degree you wanted in it, didn’t you?’
He could tell by the look in her eyes she was remembering how
seriously she’d been considering moving to America to do her degree at the Art Institute of Tampa. She’d sent him the prospectus. He’d looked at places to live that were commutable for them both.
She gave a slight nod. ‘I ended up doing a BA in Interior Architecture and Design.’
‘In England?’
Matteo had tried never to discuss Natasha with anyone over the years and he’d limited his trips back to Europe as much as he could, but it had been impossible not to hear chatter about her. By accepting Pieta’s proposal she’d been embraced into the bosom of the Pellegrini family. It had been natural for them to pass on information about Pieta’s fiancée to him. They’d assumed he would be as interested as they were. Everyone had assumed that once she’d graduated, they would marry. It had taken another three years for that to happen, although Pieta had bought an apartment for her in Pisa, close to his sister’s apartment.
Tales of her had rarely come from Pieta himself. If he ever had spoken of her it had usually been in practical terms, never romantic.
She nodded again.
‘Why didn’t you take it any further once you graduated? Didn’t you enjoy it?’
She gave a wistful smile. ‘I loved it. I like to think I was good at it.’
‘So what stopped you pursuing a career? You were engaged to a well-known man with contacts all over the world. It would have been easy for you to build a client list.’
‘I know.’
‘So what stopped you?’ he repeated. ‘Was it just that you preferred being a lady of leisure?’
Something flickered in her eyes before they flitted away from his gaze.
‘I’m not picking a fight here, I’m just trying to understand.’ He tried to keep his voice reasonable but as he asked the question he could feel the old anger swelling inside.
This was an extension of their earlier conversation and Natasha’s insistence that she wouldn’t accept her rightful inheritance. She’d spoken with such sincerity that he had to remind himself to tread carefully. It would be too easy to take her words at face value.
He must not allow himself to forget how he’d fallen for her sincerity before.
Claiming His One-Night Baby Page 7
