He rolled on top of her, his erection pressed right at the apex of her thighs, and gazed deep into her eyes. ‘Whatever changes the pregnancy makes will only make you more beautiful. Do you know why?’
She shook her head.
‘Because every stretch mark and all the other things that come with it will be visible proof of the life you’ve nurtured. And I’ll tell you something else...’ He slid inside her and with a groan said into her ear, ‘You’ll still be the most beautiful woman in my eyes.’
CHAPTER TEN
NATASHA’S PHONE RANG and she dived into her bag, which she’d laid by her feet, glad of the distraction.
In twenty minutes Matteo would be leaving to fly to Caballeros. She read the message and bit her lip.
‘Who’s that from?’ he asked, leaning over and helping himself to a slice of toast from the spread that had been laid out for their breakfast.
‘My mother. She wants to know if I’ve heard from Pieta’s lawyers.’ She fired a quick message back.
‘Is she after money?’
‘Probably. They’re going to have a fit when I tell them I’m not taking any of it.’
‘Are you still set on that?’
‘More than ever. I spoke to the lawyer in charge and told him I want it to go to the foundation.’
‘When was that?’
‘Yesterday when you were at work.’ He’d gone to New York for a day-long business meeting. Instead of staying in his Manhattan apartment he’d flown the six-hour round trip to be home in time for bed. ‘Sorry, it was an impulsive thing. I never got the chance to mention it to you.’
He shrugged. ‘I’m not your keeper, bella. So you want all the inheritance to go to the foundation?’
‘Every penny. When I think how much work it’s been this week for us to drum up press interest and change your staff’s minds about working there for a month it brings home how important a healthy bank balance is for the foundation.’
The day after they’d become lovers, Matteo had come home from work with a printout of all his media contacts. Natasha had snatched at it, delighted to have something she could get stuck into for the long periods of time she was alone.
As he’d promised, Matteo set her up in his office so she could work. He even gave her the password for his computer. At first she’d sat in the office feeling like an intruder, her mind fleeing back to the day she’d returned from her brief honeymoon, already knowing she’d made the biggest mistake of her life. Her new husband had turned to her and said his study was his private space and off limits to her. She’d known throughout their long engagement that Pieta craved his privacy but to be excluded from a room of the house she was now supposed to call a home had been yet another kick in the teeth. She hadn’t suspected then that the worst kick was still to come.
Matteo never made her feel like a nuisance. He never made her feel that she was intruding in his space. Living with him felt natural.
With increasing confidence, she’d made the calls. As Matteo had suspected, a memorial hospital being built in one of the most dangerous countries in the world was not something that interested his glamorous contacts in the media. However, they’d been generous enough to point her in the direction of editors at the more highbrow end of the media and they had been receptive to the idea of covering the story, expressing enough of an interest that Matteo had been able to send a memo to his clinical staff worldwide telling them of the media presence that would be in Caballeros. As a result, over two dozen surgeons and nurses had signed up to spend a month there when the hospital opened. It wasn’t as large a number as they’d hoped for, but it would be enough.
It felt good to know that whatever happened between them and the Pellegrinis, they would have played their part in the memorial for Pieta.
‘You knew that already surely?’
‘The only involvement I had with the foundation was attending the fundraisers and press events with Pieta.’ She’d offered to become more involved. If she couldn’t work then she’d wanted to be able to do something useful but Pieta had always resisted. His reluctance for her to work had extended to his foundation and she’d had to wait until they’d married to discover why he’d been so loath for her to have any involvement in the running of it other than as an adornment on his arm when he required.
She dropped her phone back in her bag and looked at Matteo. For the first time in her life she lived with someone who made no demands on her or tried to bend her to his will. For the first time in her life she lived with someone who treated her as an equal and a person in her own right. For the first time she lived with someone who wanted to please her.
That didn’t stop her heart thumping as she braced herself to say, ‘I wanted to ask you a favour.’
‘Sure.’
‘You don’t even know what it is yet,’ she chided.
‘I don’t need to know.’ He stood behind her chair and put his arms around her waist. She leaned back into him, thinking how right this felt. How right they felt.
‘Your guesthouse, can I do it up?’
He stilled. Clearly it was the last thing he’d expected her to ask.
‘Please? It’s a brilliant space but it’s crying out for the interior to be pulled up to the same high standard as in here.’
‘And you want to do that?’
‘Yes. If you’ll let me.’
‘How much do you want me to pay you?’
‘Nothing. But if you like the end result, you can recommend me to your friends.’
He moved away to take the seat next to her and poured himself a black coffee. ‘You want to work?’
‘Yes. I want to do what I always said I would do and build my own interior design business.’
‘What’s brought this on?’
‘You sound surprised.’
He looked bemused. ‘As far as I’m aware, you’ve never worked. I thought you liked being free.’
‘Well, I don’t.’ She knew where that idea had come from. Pieta. It’s what he’d always said to justify keeping her shackled to him financially. And she, stupidly desperate to please, had let him. ‘I always wanted to earn my own money but it was never an option for me. Our baby’s due in six months. That gives me time to make a decent go of things. If it turns out that I’m not any good at it then so be it, at least I will have tried.’
‘Why was working never an option for you?’
‘Pieta wanted me to be available whenever he needed me. A career wasn’t compatible with that.’
The bemusement fell from his face, his eyes fixed on hers with that look that always made her feel he was trying to read her mind. Which he probably was.
Eventually, his lips pursed together, he nodded. ‘You are sure about this? You’re ready to start building a career for yourself now?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then you have my support. Go ahead. Do the guesthouse up as you want.’
‘That’s it? No questions about what I want to do or if it fits in with your own vision for it?’
He shrugged. ‘I got Daniele to design a guesthouse so I could have my privacy if I had guests stay. Other than that, I’ve no interest in it. I’ll make you a signatory on one of my accounts so you can spend whatever you need on it and hire whatever tradespeople you need. Pay yourself a wage too. I’ve been thinking about setting you up with an allowance anyway...’
‘I told you, I don’t want to be paid for it and I certainly don’t want an allowance from you.’
‘Pieta gave you an allowance.’
‘And it made me feel like a child being given pocket money in exchange for good behaviour.’
The longer she and Matteo were together, the closer they were becoming. There were times she simply ached to confide the truth to him. Matteo demanded honesty above everything else and knowing she was keeping something so fundamental about Pieta from him had settled like a permanent weight in her stomach. She had to keep reminding herself why it had to be like this when the doubts crowding in her hea
d became too much. All she had to do was remember the devastation she’d felt when she’d learned the truth to stiffen her spine against confiding in him. However bad it had been for her, the truth would feel a thousand times worse for Matteo. He’d loved Pieta. They’d been as close as siblings.
But all this didn’t mean she couldn’t be honest about the rest of her marriage. Matteo deserved that much from her.
‘Before we married I lived in an apartment bought in his name that was never mine. I’m sick of feeling that I’m living on handouts. I’m living under your roof and eating your food—I haven’t contributed a penny to anything since I’ve been here. Doing up the guesthouse for you is one small way that I can contribute and it also gives me the chance to cut my teeth on a project and see if the potential I was told I had at university is really there in me.’
Matteo swallowed back a boulder that had lodged in his throat.
Pieta hadn’t wanted her to work. He’d given her an allowance that had made her feel like a child...
Pieta had been his cousin and his best friend but Matteo hadn’t been blind to his faults. He’d been arrogant and aloof with an air of superiority born from being the eldest son of an old and noble family and knowing from the moment he could speak that one day it would all be his. But for all that, Matteo had always assumed Pieta would treat the woman he fell in love with like a princess.
He’d always been convinced Natasha’s feelings for his cousin had been less than genuine, that it had been the money she’d been attracted to and not the man. It had made him furious to think of her playing with Pieta’s emotions to her own advantage but had always assured himself that Pieta was a grown man. If Natasha didn’t make his cousin happy he wouldn’t be with her.
Now Matteo could see he’d got it all the wrong way round.
The question he should have been asking himself was whether Pieta had ever made her happy. Had he ever made Natasha feel like a princess?
It stabbed at his chest to suspect that the answer was no.
* * *
Matteo got out of the car and gazed at the shell of the hospital, astounded at the difference since his last visit there.
Daniele stood beside him and grinned. ‘What do you think?’
He shook his head. When he’d last been here the site had been cleared and ground workers had been digging the foundations. Now there stood a sprawling building, unmistakably a hospital, complete with roof and windows. ‘Has Francesca seen it?’
‘Not in the flesh. I’ve been sending her updates and pictures of every stage.’
As Daniele spoke a tall, handsome man built like a brick wall strode towards them. Felipe Lorenzi, the security specialist originally hired to keep Francesca safe in this mostly lawless country and now designated the task of keeping Daniele’s construction workers and soon Matteo’s medical staff safe. He was also the man who’d captured Francesca’s heart and would shortly be marrying into the family.
With a pang, Matteo wondered if he would be invited to the wedding. Or would he be cast out of their lives as his parents had cast him out of theirs.
He looked at his watch. Natasha would be boarding her flight to Pisa. In a few hours he would get back on his jet and meet her there. Daniele was taking his own jet back to Pisa too and had already offered a bet over whose pilot could get them there first. His cousin was oblivious to the destruction that was going to be rained down on them all the next day.
But now was not the time to be thinking of that. He had the shell of a hospital to inspect and related issues to discuss. He’d stolen Pieta’s wife. He would not ruin his memorial too.
* * *
Francesca Pellegrini yawned widely and shoved the box she’d been packing to one side. In two days she would be moving from Pisa to Rome, into the beautiful house her fiancé had bought for them to live in.
He didn’t waste time, she thought with a smile. When Felipe wanted something to happen, he was prepared to move mountains to achieve it.
Deciding to take a break before packing anything else, she made herself a coffee and unlocked her phone. One of her guilty pleasures was reading online gossip sites. Unbeknownst to Daniele and Matteo, it was how she’d been able to keep track of their love lives over the years. She preferred for them to think she was all-knowing.
The top stories were about the latest Hollywood divorce, which, being a huge film buff, interested her greatly. Before she could tap on it for more salacious details, a story lower down the page caught her eye.
Her finger hovered over the link for a moment before she took a deep breath and clicked it.
There wasn’t much in the way of text, the story mostly comprising photos. The subjects were at a beachside café eating ice cream. The man’s face was directly in the frame and unmistakably Matteo. He was leaning forward to wipe ice cream from the mouth of the woman he was with, whose face was mostly hidden from the camera’s lens. The second picture showed him leaning in to kiss the part he’d just wiped.
Her blood chilling, she enlarged the first picture, trying to see the woman more clearly, even though her thumping heart already knew who she was. She would recognise that honey-blonde hair anywhere.
The teardrop diamond earring twinkling under the bright Miami sun was the clincher. Natasha had worn those very same earrings at Pieta’s funeral.
After staring at the pictures for so long her eyes began to sting and blur, Francesca snapped into action.
‘Daniele?’ she said when he answered his phone. ‘I’m sending you a link. Prepare yourself. You’re not going to like what you see.’
* * *
Only when Matteo was certain they’d inspected everything that could be inspected and discussed everything that could be discussed did he say they should call it a day.
As they were walking out of the hospital into the blazing Caballeron sun, Daniele paused to answer his phone.
‘What?’ he said, then took the phone from his ear and stared at it with a bemused expression. He looked at Felipe. ‘Your fiancée is a complete drama queen.’
‘Francesca?’ Felipe asked, concern knotting his forehead.
‘Do you have another fiancée?’ Daniele jested. ‘Oh, here’s the mysterious link she thinks I need to prepare myself to look at.’
Watching Daniele open the link, a powerful sense of foreboding settled in Matteo’s gut.
When he saw his cousin’s eyes crease and dart to his face and then dart back to the screen in his hand, that foreboding deepened.
He just had time to register the darkest, ugliest expression he’d ever seen on Daniele’s face before he was slammed into the wall.
Matteo had never been in a fight before but he kept himself fit and had reflexes that could put a boxer to shame. Pure survival instinct had him wrenching himself out of Daniele’s stranglehold but the moment he was free, a flying fist connected with his cheek. He punched back, heard and felt the sound of crunching bone, pulled his elbow back to throw another but something as hard as granite attached itself like a vice to his wrist, rendering it immobile.
It was Felipe’s hand.
Anyone else and Matteo would have been able to throw them off but Felipe was ex–Special Forces and knew how to use his body as both a weapon and a shield.
‘What the hell are you two playing at?’ he blazed before saying over his shoulder, ‘If you take another step, Daniele, I will knock you out myself.’
But Daniele was already dusting himself down, staring at Matteo with pure loathing, seemingly oblivious to the blood pouring from his nose.
Breathing heavily, trying to get air into his winded lungs, Matteo stared back at the man who’d treated him like a brother, and heard himself say, ‘She’s having my baby.’
Daniele took a step back, his face contorted, then raised his hand. ‘Don’t say another word. Don’t ever speak to me again. You are no cousin of mine. You’re dead to me.’
In silence, Matteo and Felipe, who’d released his hold on him, watched Daniele stagg
er away and into the car that was supposed to take them all back to airport.
After too long a time had passed, Felipe said quietly, ‘I’ll get one of my men to collect us.’
‘Thank you,’ he muttered. ‘You should go back to Pisa too. Francesca will need you.’
A meaty hand slapped him on the back in what he guessed was supposed to be a gesture of comfort before Felipe walked away to make the call.
Matteo knew he deserved no comfort and with another twist in his gut he remembered that at that moment Natasha was on a flight to Pisa, ignorant that the explosions they’d expected to deal with tomorrow had already detonated.
* * *
The jet Matteo had chartered for Natasha lacked the personal touch of his private jet but was still beautifully apportioned and the cabin crew were all brilliant people who couldn’t do enough for her.
So soothing did she find the flight that after a good lunch shortly after take-off, she found her eyes getting heavy and went to sleep. After a four-hour nap she woke to find a dozen missed calls from Matteo but no message.
Cold dread coiled in her belly.
She called him back but reached his own voicemail and had to wait for an hour in nerve-shredding silence before her phone rang again.
‘What’s wrong?’ she asked as soon as the phone was to her ear.
‘They know about us.’
The line was terrible, the crackle of interference making it hard to hear. She put a finger to her other ear to try and drown out the background noise of her own flight. ‘What?’
‘They know. The paparazzi took a shot of us when we went for lunch at Miami Beach.’
She whistled lowly and rocked forward, coldness filling her head.
They couldn’t know. Not like this. Oh, this was awful.
‘Natasha?’
‘I’m still here.’ A loud burst of interference crackled over the line. ‘Matteo?’
‘Listen to me,’ he said, his voice raised, his tone clipped. ‘Wait for me at the airport. Don’t go anywhere. I’ll be landing soon after you. Just wait.’
Claiming His One-Night Baby Page 12
