Claiming His One-Night Baby

by Michelle Smart

  And then the line went dead.

  Scrambling through her phone, a quick search found the pictures Matteo must have been talking about. The headline would have made her laugh if she didn’t think she was going to be sick. ‘Dr Dishy Serves Icy Treat to New Love.’

  Her name wasn’t mentioned, which was one small mercy, and her face was mostly hidden. But anyone who knew her well would recognise her. Her family. Pieta’s family. They would all know it was her smiling mouth Matteo was wiping the ice cream from and her lips he was kissing.

  She’d known that telling Pieta’s family would be difficult, especially the part about the pregnancy. She’d known it would be even more difficult for them to hear it. The last thing she’d wanted them to think was that she and Matteo had embarked on a carefree affair with no consideration for the man they’d just buried. These pictures... It could only be worse if they’d been pictured dancing on Pieta’s grave.

  If there had ever been any hope of forgiveness these pictures had ended it.

  Natasha had bitten her nails as a child, a habit finally broken by her mother smearing strong mustard over them. If she had still been biting them then by the time her plane landed she was certain there would be nothing left of them.

  They landed in the early morning, the sun only just waking in the frigid cloudless sky.

  Coming from the balmy heat of Miami, the dramatic change in temperature was a shock to her system and she was glad of Matteo’s reminder to take something warm to change into for her arrival.

  Once she’d cleared security she found a seat with a good view of all arrivals and waited.

  An hour later he appeared.

  Covering her mouth in horror, she got to her feet.

  Impeccably dressed as always, in a dark grey suit covered with a lamb’s wool overcoat, it didn’t detract from his red cheekbone and puffy eye.

  She went straight into his arms and held him tightly before tilting her head to look at him more closely. ‘What happened?’

  ‘Daniele.’

  She closed her eyes and buried her head in his chest, felt his own arms wrap around her and hold her just as tight. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she whispered.

  ‘So am I.’ He rested his mouth on the top of her head, his warm breath swirling through her hair. ‘Did you see the pictures?’

  ‘Yes. I had no idea they were being taken.’

  ‘Neither did I.’

  ‘Your poor face.’

  Unwrapping his arms from her, he took her face in his hands. ‘It looks worse than it is. I think I’ve broken his nose.’

  She turned her cheek to kiss his palm. ‘Is he okay?’

  ‘He will be.’

  ‘What do we do now?’

  ‘Now we go back to your house and get some sleep.’ That had always been the plan. Natasha needed to pack the last of her stuff and deal with lawyers and all the other things needed to make a clean break.

  ‘Shall we still go and see them later?’

  His face tightened. ‘Francesca messaged me. They don’t want to see us.’

  Her message had been emphatic, Matteo recalled, his lungs tightening.

  He’d known from the second Natasha had appeared white-faced at the door with the pregnancy test in his hand that he was going to lose his family but he hadn’t known how deeply the wound would cut...

  He blinked, surprised at his own thoughts.

  How had he known that when he’d managed to convince himself for two weeks that the chances of him being the father were negligible?

  But you did know. You knew in your heart that you were the father.

  Kissing her mouth, he rubbed his nose to hers. ‘We’re both exhausted. Things will seem better once we’ve slept.’

  Just having Natasha back in his arms already soothed a little of the pain.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  THE HOUSE HAD A COLD, unlived-in feeling that Matteo felt as soon as he closed the front door behind them.

  Past the reception room, they went into the day room. The antique bureau in the corner was piled high with post.

  ‘Are you okay?’ he asked, rubbing Natasha’s back. There had been visible apprehension on her face when they’d pulled up outside the house and now she seemed to have withdrawn into herself.

  She looked at him and nodded, her smile rueful. ‘It feels strange being back here.’

  ‘Not what you expected?’

  She rubbed her arms. ‘It feels like I never lived here.’ Then she blinked and seemingly snapped herself out of the melancholy. ‘I’m going to make a hot chocolate before we go to bed. Do you want one?’

  ‘Hot chocolate sounds good to me.’

  She disappeared into the kitchen, leaving him to look around the gleamingly magnificent room. He recalled her saying once that everything here was Pieta’s, remembered his own impression of the house that it had all seemed to match Pieta’s personality.

  There was nothing here of Natasha. His own house in Miami...it was like she’d imprinted herself into the walls. She fitted.

  She didn’t fit here. She didn’t belong here.

  This house was like a museum for antiquities.

  He brushed his fingers over the surface of the bureau and as he wondered what century it was from, the postmark of the top envelope in the pile of post caught his eye.

  Taking hold of it, he looked more closely, trying to comprehend why there should be a letter addressed to Mr and Mrs Pellegrini from Paris’s leading fertility clinic. It was postmarked two days before Pieta’s death, and from all the marks and stamps on it had been forwarded in recent weeks from Pieta’s apartment in Paris.

  ‘I hope you didn’t want sugar added to yours,’ she said, coming back into the room.

  He spun round to find her carrying two steaming mugs, which she carefully placed on coasters on the antique coffee table.

  ‘What’s this?’ he said.

  ‘What’s what?’ She took the envelope from him, her hands stilling when she too noticed the postmark and the name of the clinic it had been sent from.

  ‘Aren’t you going to open it?’

  She looked up at him, the colour draining from her face. There was definite apprehension in her eyes.

  ‘Open the letter,’ he commanded.

  Still she didn’t move, the apprehension now replaced with a hint of fear.

  Snatching it from her hand, Matteo ripped the envelope open. Inside were two sheets of paper. He gave one sharp shake to unfurl them, and began to read.

  He had to read them three times and even then it still didn’t make sense.

  ‘You were going to have fertility treatment?’

  Her throat moved and her lips parted but no sound came out.

  He held the first sheet up for her to see. ‘This is a letter confirming an appointment in the New Year for you to begin fertility treatment and this...’ he held the second sheet up ‘...is the confirmed price list. The letter also confirms that Pieta’s sperm test results came back as normal.’

  And still she didn’t say anything, her eyes huge with an expression he recognised.

  It had been the look she’d given him all that time ago when he’d asked the last time she and Pieta had been intimate together. It was the look she gave when she was trying to think of an answer when the truth should simply fall from her tongue.

  He rubbed his hand over his head, trying to dull the thuds pounding in it. ‘Why were you going the IVF route to conceive a child? This letter confirms Pieta’s fertility and we both know you’re fertile. You were only married for a year. Pieta himself told me you two only started trying after your wedding—that’s too short a time to start thinking you might have fertility issues...’

  He checked himself and blew a puff of air out. None of this made sense. None of it.

  ‘Natasha, I need you to be honest with me. Why would a young married couple without any fertility issues like you and Pieta put yourselves through the quagmire that is IVF?’

  Her features had clenched
so tightly she looked as if she could snap.

  ‘I can’t tell you,’ she whispered, her head shaking with increasing violence.

  If she had simply turned around and said they had both been too impatient to try any longer without intervention he could have possibly accepted that. But she hadn’t and her answer made his stomach lurch to his feet.

  ‘If I mean anything to you, if our child means anything to you, then you must. I deserve to know the truth.’

  The colour that had faded from her came back with a vengeance, staining her cheeks, but there was also a sudden calmness about her as if she’d decided to stop fighting the demons and confront them instead.

  ‘If I tell you, you can’t tell anyone.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘This is important. You have to promise me.’

  A big warning light was flashing, telling him to drop it, telling him it wasn’t too late to just stop this conversation and go to bed, that whatever had happened in her marriage to his cousin was none of his business.

  But he couldn’t listen to it. The nagging feeling about their marriage had become as loud as the siren playing and now, with the door to it prised open, all he needed was to push and the truth would be revealed.

  ‘If that’s what it takes to get the truth from you then, yes, I give you my word.’

  She raised her chin and looked him square in the eyes. Then she cleared her throat and said, ‘Pieta was gay.’

  Matteo’s first instinct was to laugh. It ripped out of him, echoing off the walls, and then soaked into the silence.

  As if Pieta had been gay. It wasn’t possible. He’d known him all his life, for thirty-five years. They’d been best friends, cousins, brothers... If Pieta had been gay then the moon really was made of cheese.

  Natasha hadn’t moved. There wasn’t the hint of a smile on her face.

  His laughter died as abruptly as it had begun.

  ‘You’re lying.’

  ‘No,’ she said softly, compassion in her eyes and in her voice. ‘I’m not. I’m sorry but he lied. To all of you. He was gay.’

  ‘I don’t believe you,’ he said flatly. ‘I don’t know why you would tell such lies but it’s—’

  ‘I’m not lying,’ she cut in. ‘We couldn’t conceive naturally. He couldn’t do it with me.’

  It was the way her voice caught when she said, he couldn’t do it with me and the bleakness in her eyes that made him wonder...

  No. She couldn’t be telling the truth. He would have known.

  Feeling his legs could collapse beneath him, he sank onto the nearest armchair and rubbed again at his head. ‘If—and I’m not saying I believe you—but if Pieta was gay, why didn’t he tell anyone? Why the charade of pretending to be something he’s not?’

  While Matteo could feel the fabric of his life crumbling around him, Natasha seemed to grow stronger, compassion almost glowing out of her skin.

  ‘Because he knew from before he could talk that he had to marry. It was drilled into him his entire life. It was in the terms of the trust for the Pellegrini estate. You know what it says and it’s been the same for hundreds of years—the eldest son inherits but only if he’s married. He could never admit who he was. He didn’t admit it to himself until he was in his early twenties. He’d been groomed since birth to be the heir and it was a responsibility he took very seriously.’

  ‘And you knew this?’

  She shook her head and slumped onto the armchair close to his. ‘Not until we got married. He wanted to wait until our wedding before we became physical with each other. I thought he was old-fashioned...’

  ‘Wait, you had no intimacy until you were married? You were engaged for six years.’

  ‘We kissed but nothing more.’

  ‘And that didn’t set alarm bells ringing?’

  ‘It should have done but, to be honest, it was a relief.’ She grimaced. ‘He was a gorgeous man but I never felt proper attraction to him, not like I always felt for you. I always hoped that when it came to it, something would switch on inside me. Maybe it would have. I don’t know. I was a virgin. I didn’t know what I should be feeling...well, I had an idea, of course I did, but... In the end it didn’t matter. He couldn’t do it.’ She inhaled and looked at the ceiling. ‘It was painful and embarrassing for both of us but more so for him. I was the first failure in his life.’

  Not once in the past seven years had Matteo allowed himself to imagine them in bed together. Now he felt he could easily vomit.

  His cousin, his best friend, had lied to him for ever.

  And she had lied too.

  Dio, after everything they had been through, she’d been lying to him when she knew how important honesty was to him, when she knew how hard it had been for him to trust her again.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ he asked roughly.

  Her eyes found his, her expression unwavering. ‘I was protecting you.’

  Anger bubbled like lava so strongly in his veins that he couldn’t even speak.

  She’d been protecting him? That was the excuse she was going to use to negate her lies?

  She took a cushion and pressed it protectively to her belly, as if trying to muffle their voices from their developing child’s ears. ‘I had to keep the truth about him to myself. I knew it would devastate you. You, his mother, his siblings...you all loved him. Francesca idolised him. How do you think they would feel if they knew the truth?’

  ‘What, that he was nothing but a liar?’

  ‘Exactly that, yes. He kept the most fundamental part of himself a secret. If they learned that now...can you imagine it? If they learned he had never trusted them enough to tell them the truth about himself? When I learned the truth it almost destroyed me. I gave everything up for him. You. A career. Even my own thoughts. Everything I’d believed about him, all my hopes for the future...all destroyed. How could I put them through that? How could I put you through that?’

  Matteo concentrated on breathing, refusing to look at her deceitful face a moment longer.

  How did that old saying go? Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.

  Well, Natasha had fooled him twice. The first time he could forgive himself for.

  This time he should have known better.

  ‘Answer me this,’ he said, keeping his voice under control by a hair’s breadth. ‘If Pieta destroyed you, why didn’t you leave him?’

  ‘Where would I have gone? Back to my parents who’d manipulated me into the mess? I had nowhere to go, no money, no job. He’d seen to that. He’d even sold my apartment so I couldn’t go back there. I’d been in Pieta’s power and at his beck and call for so long that I couldn’t see a way out.’

  Natasha closed her eyes. The pain and anger vibrating from Matteo tore at her heart. To learn the man he’d regarded as a brother had been a manipulative bastard and a liar could not be an easy thing to accept. This was everything she’d been trying to protect him from.

  ‘Why the hell did you agree to have a baby with him? Why agree to embark on something as physically painful as IVF for a man you hate?’

  ‘He offered me a child in exchange for my freedom...’

  ‘What? And you agreed to that?’

  She could almost taste the disgust in his voice.

  ‘No! Please, Matteo, I know you’re upset...’

  ‘Right now I am feeling many things but upset is not one of them.’

  ‘I understand, I really do—I’ve been there. Why do you think I chose to keep it a secret? I didn’t want to destroy your memories of him, especially when he’s not here to justify or defend himself, but please, let me finish.’

  ‘Go ahead. Finish your justification of how you would even think of bringing a baby into a relationship like that.’

  ‘It took him months to make me even consider it. He made me many promises; that he would divorce me when the law allowed, that I would have primary custody, that he would buy a house for me and our baby to live in and put it in my name, all
sorts of promises.’

  ‘And you believed that after all the lies he’d already told you?’ he sneered.

  ‘Things changed between us. The truth being out in the open meant there was nothing left to hide. I knew I would never have another relationship—after what he’d done to me, how could I trust another man?—and I still wanted a baby, very much, so in the end I decided there could be no harm in going to the fertility clinic to discuss what it entailed. That was a week before he died.’

  ‘So you had decided to go ahead with it.’

  ‘No.’ A wave of sadness flooded through her veins. ‘When we got back to Pisa, he was so smug about it all. He took it to be a foregone conclusion that I’d agreed. I realised then that nothing had changed. He still thought he could manipulate me. I could never have trusted his promises.’

  ‘How did he take it when you told him?’

  ‘I never got the chance. The hurricane in Caballeros struck and he went into full-blown humanitarian mode, which for Pieta meant working around the clock with his foundation.’ She looked at him, wishing he would meet her eyes. ‘And I’m glad of it. I’m glad he died thinking we would have a baby together. I’m glad he died happy.’

  With a sigh that could have been a groan, Matteo put his head back and closed his eyes, breathing heavily.

  Sliding off the armchair, she knelt by him and put her hands on his thighs. His only reaction was to clench his jaw.

  It hurt more than she could decipher to see the pain on his face.

  Gently, wanting to take as much of the sting away as she could, she said, ‘I know none of this is easy but he kept only one part of himself from you, nothing else. He was still a brilliant lawyer and humanitarian. He was still the man you played late-night poker with over a bottle of bourbon. He was still the man who supported you and was there for you when things became so intolerable in your home that you moved in with his family. Please, don’t forget that. None of that was a lie.’

  ‘Do not defend him to me.’

  ‘I’m not.’ She covered his hand that had clenched in a fist. ‘He was a manipulative bastard but that doesn’t take away the good things about him. It’s not black and white. He was still human. In the end I came to feel sorry for him.’