by Tara Pammi
Only Alexis began to act strange. The more her parents and even her friend Emma realized his true intentions and supported him, the more withdrawn she became. A betrayed look dawned in her gaze. Now, when he was finally doing the right thing.
And the worst thing was that her mistrust was taking a toll on him. The more she dismissed him, the more stringent became his need to make her acknowledge him, and his right to be in her life.
Not just his right over Isabella. But he wanted Alexis, too.
There it was...the knot that he hadn’t been able to unravel in the past week.
Look at how he had held her just now. At how violently and instantly his body had reacted to the mere graze of her slender curves against his. At how insanely powerful the urge was to touch her, to taste her, to bury his nose in the crook of her neck and breathe in the scent of her skin.
His desire for her was already out of control, threatening his plan.
When her friend Justin had visited and embraced her, all he’d wanted to do was pull her away from the young, blond, insufferably amiable giant and tuck her away behind him.
To declare like a Neanderthal that Alexis wasn’t available.
When they had laughed together over some childhood story, when he’d seen how familiar Justin was with Alexis and everything regarding her...he’d felt the most absurd sense of jealousy.
He hadn’t felt possessive even about a toy in his childhood.
Teeth clenched, eyes closed, he counted to ten.
The scent of her, skin and sweat and undeniably her, it filled his lungs, his blood, unlocking every rebellious, insidiously craven indulgence his body wanted with her.
Dio, how he wanted her. Even after everything. Even today.
She would be his wife, his to possess, his to protect.
She would be in his bed, his room, his life. He could have her whenever, wherever, however he wanted, until this madness in his blood was defeated. Until every irrationally possessive clawing was satisfied. Until he was inured to this feverish desire he felt for her.
Until he could look at her and feel nothing but satisfaction that he’d done the right thing.
Beneath this war she was waging with him, Alexis was like him. At such a young age, she’d been forced into being a mother and yet it was clear that she exceled at it. She cared for everyone around her, to the detriment of her own well-being.
Now, he would look after her. Just as he had done Rosa.
She would see how good of a father he could be and would want for nothing.
They could have a marriage without drama, without the messiness of emotions. By the time the attraction between them fizzled out, they would have more children. And then they would be bound as parents who cared about their children.
Hadn’t that been his only condition when Antonio had found Rosa for him? That his new bride be someone who would love their children and devote herself to being a calm, supportive wife?
Alexis needed his strength, just as Rosa had done, only in a different way. She needed to be protected from her stubborn self first.
Only with that promise did the clamoring hunger in his blood subside.
“Alexis,” he said in a composed tone, “explain to me how offering help is calling you incompetent. How trying to reassure your parents that I mean well for Isabella is,” he held himself back, just, from sounding possessive about her, knowing that it would only alienate her, “...wrong.”
“That’s exactly the problem.” Chin tilted up, her gaze flashed fire at him. Her thin T-shirt hugged the round globes of her breasts. His hands itched to touch her, trace those lush curves, to mold them. Blood hummed with a thrum as he imagined baring her to his gaze.
“You’ve been here barely two weeks and they worship you. They love everything you do.” A choked whimper escaped her, her mouth trembling. “It’s almost as if everything I’ve tried to do for more than a decade counts for nothing.” She threw the pad in her hand against the wall, her lithe form shaking. “It’s almost as if I... I count for nothing.”
The sheen of moisture in her eyes punched through him, tying his insides into a knot.
Tenderness like he’d never known assailed him, releasing the fist-like tension that had been driving him this past week. He’d always been protective of those around him. It was in his nature, in his blood. And yet, nothing unmanned him as much as Alexis’s tears did.
The very defiance of her meeting his gaze even as those brown eyes welled up...it was a breath-stealing sight. He wished he could capture it on paper, or in a song, like Luca would have. He wished he had words to describe how magnificently beautiful she was.
Instead, he did the one thing he’d always exceled at.
His large hands on her slender shoulders, he pulled her to him and wrapped his arms around her. Even stiff and unbending as she was, she still came. That she took the comfort he offered told him how upset she was.
“Alexis.” He had never tried so hard to sound understanding, never felt such raw impatience tearing at him to fix her grief. “Tell me what bothers you and I’ll fix it.”
Forehead resting against his chest, she let out a slow exhale. “For once, I can’t hate your arrogance, Leandro. I’d give anything if you could fix it.”
Smiling, he stroked her temples. “You don’t know what I can do until you try me, cara. You haven’t been sleeping again, have you?”
“I miss him.” Teary and choked, she sounded unlike the Alexis he knew. “I miss him so much.”
Such unparalleled love reverberated in her tone that everything within him stilled. “Who are you taking about?”
“You’ll think me the most horrible person ever.”
“When have you cared about my opinion, Alexis?” he shot back, hating the thread of disquiet that coursed through him.
Just as he expected, her spine straightened. That fighting spirit returned to her eyes. “I don’t. I just... It’s my brother, Adrian.”
Relief was a palpable thing within him. A lover would have caused problems for him. That was the only reason for it. “I didn’t know you had a brother.”
“He died when I was seventeen, just before he was about to start college. Oh you’d have liked him so much. He was charming, brilliant, handsome, kind...exceled at his studies, sports. God, there was nothing that Adrian wasn’t good at.
“I could have hated him for being their favorite, if he hadn’t loved me so much. You see, unlike Adrian, I didn’t excel at anything. I barely got through my classes. Mom and Dad and I never really connected... Adrian was always the buffer. When he passed away suddenly...” She wiped her eyes with the heels of her hands, much like Isabella did. “Not only were we shattered, but it felt like there was nothing connecting me to them. There were days when I wished I had died instead of him.”
“Dio, Alexis!” The very thought unnerved Leandro on so many levels. “I’m sure your parents didn’t wish that.”
“No, probably not.” She stepped away from him. “I have tried my level best to be a good daughter. But I... I’m not him. Seeing how happy and elated they are with everything you do, how easy you make it all, I’m sure it reminds them of him. Of how different and how better life would’ve been if he were alive.
“And I can’t be angry with them for thinking that because it’s true. I drove a very fiscally wise store toward ruin with my ideas, got pregnant at twenty and...now, I brought a myriad of problems on us with this accident.”
Cristo, didn’t anyone tell her that all those were not her fault? That she was braver and stronger than any woman in the same situation? Didn’t she realize it was her parents’ fault in measuring her against a son who was long gone?
Leandro wanted to shake her and somehow show her the image he had of her.
But finally, he understood her behavior of the pa
st week.
Alexis was used to taking care of everyone around her, of putting everyone else’s needs first. In just a week, he’d seen her handle ten different things for her mother, Isabella and even her friend Emma.
It was time for someone to remove such weight from her shoulders. And he would do it. Even if he had to manipulate that very weakness of hers.
“A small business that you think you ruined in a hard, economic climate, accolades at university you think you lack, ambition you think you don’t possess.” He had heard all those insidious remarks from her mother, the regretful but equally hurting statements from her father, only the awareness that he would take her away from it all had stopped him from peeling their hide. “How do they measure up against the strong, happy little girl you’ve been raising all these years, Alexis? Against swallowing your anger for me and coming to me when you worried about Isabella’s future? I would have given anything to see my mother champion for us like you do her.”
Her stunned gaze, her mouth falling open soundlessly—her shock at his words was a tangible thing in the air. Something in his chest ached at how desperate she had been to hear a compliment. To be told that she wasn’t a failure.
Her disbelief slowly ebbed out of her eyes. “I...don’t know what to say.”
“Learn to accept my help.”
She swiped at her eyes with the back of her hand and glared at him. “So nothing I just told you got through to your head?”
“Whatever I’m doing, it’s so that you can breathe easy when you come to Italy with me. So that you don’t worry about the store or them. They deserve better than to worry about your health and Izzie’s security and about what you’ll do when they’re gone. They deserve that holiday they’ve been planning for ages.”
“How do you know about their trip to Australia?”
“Your mother showed me the brochure.”
That same inadequacy swirled through Alex. How had she missed how disappointed they must be? It was something they had saved up for for so long. And because of her bills, everything had been pushed back.
She leaned her forehead against the cupboard door.
This was how she had felt when Adrian had died.
Useless, incompetent, of no good to anyone.
And now, she had bigger responsibilities and yet was worse off.
Tears scratched at her throat. “I don’t know what to do. I’ve been trying so hard to keep everything together. I just...”
“So make it easier on yourself and them. Let me help. You’ve handled everything single-handedly all this while. But you don’t need to anymore.
“Isn’t that why you set this whole thing in motion?”
“So you want me to take your handouts and be happy about it?”
“No, I want you to get the rest you deserve so that Izzie doesn’t worry about you.”
“You should’ve talked to me first before you campaigned my parents to your side. How about if you ask instead of deciding we’re coming with you?”
Autocratic wasn’t enough to describe the man’s attitude.
“Is this a war of wills then, Alexis? I’m proposing this so that Isabella can spend time with my family and you can recover easier, too. It won’t be long before the stress you’re under translates to Isabella. I could not leave everything here as is, knowing the situation.”
“Stop speaking as if her very life is unstable,” she protested, a lump in her throat. That sense of failure was a lead weight in her chest.
“Not unstable, no. But it is clear that the accident has made everything harder.”
Which was exactly the conclusion she had come to. Yet hearing it from his mouth scraped her pride.
Of all the things, what was this compulsion to prove herself to him? Why did his opinion matter this much? Why did his concern, which she was slowly realizing was a huge part of what made Leandro, feel so personal?
“What about your wedding?”
His gaze instantly shuttered. “What about it?”
“Luca told me that your fiancée’s father is pushing for a summer wedding.”
If she didn’t have absolute belief in his prized self-control, Alex would have thought he was close to violence. Such fury blazed in his eyes at the mention of Luca. “You have been talking to Luca?”
“He called to say hello to Izzie and yes, we chatted, a couple of times. I don’t think us being there before your wedding is a good idea. The last thing I want is for your new bride or her family to treat Izzie like I was treated.”
“They won’t.”
“What about me?”
When had he swallowed up the distance she’d put between them? Her heart raced as he gently pushed a lock of hair behind her ear. “No one will hurt you, cara.”
“I can see the headlines now.” She kept her tone casual through sheer effort, loath to betray how the idea of his wedding haunted her. The thought of him with his new bride, those hands of his caressing some unknown figure, of laying those lips on another woman, of that inscrutable gray gaze widening with desire...her lack of sleep had gotten worse since she’d seen him again.
He’d laid every concern of hers to rest and yet made her restless to her very bones.
“Leandro Conti’s Love Child’s Trashy Single Mom a Distinguished Guest at His Wedding to an Heiress...”
A smile broke through the austerity of his face, transforming his face into breathtaking beauty. Even white teeth flashed at her, one edge of his mouth turning up crooked. Breath catching in her throat, Alex swallowed hard. “Reading Italian tabloids?”
Heat poured through her cheeks. She had given in and scoured for news on him. The lurid headlines and gossip that seemed to always swirl around his family explained Antonio’s vulgar words to her. But what had amazed her was Leandro’s lack of the same.
And she’d faced the hard truth—that he had trusted her without proof. Even before he’d seen Izzie’s pictures.
That he was honorable made it so much harder for her to hate him.
“I assure you I will protect you, Alexis.”
“Thanks but no thanks. I saw how you sprang to my defense when Antonio was—”
“I was in shock and you shut him up promptly. Like no one has ever done. No one will say a word to you, I promise you that.”
“How can you guarantee that? There’ll probably be a million guests at your wedding and they’ll surely wonder who I am and I can’t stand to be the object of such gossip. Not to mention being a fourth wheel between your new bride and you and your family and her family and—”
One tapered finger landed on her mouth, burning the soft flesh of her lower lip. “Will you send Izzie by herself with me then?”
She swatted his hand away. “No! I...she’s a baby, Leandro and a week doesn’t make you anything less than a stranger.”
Her answer seemed to please him. “Then what I suggest is the only solution we have. I would like to spend time with Isabella.”
“But I—”
“Dio, Alexis!” Impatience made his tone staccato, harsh. “No one will say anything because there will not be a wedding.”
CHAPTER SIX
THERE WASN’T GOING to be a wedding.
Alex couldn’t understand how the small, brusquely delivered fact could have such hold over her, even after four days.
Four days in which, somehow, she had let Leandro and her family persuade her that spending the summer with the Contis at their Lake Como villa was a good idea all around.
No sooner than she, only in possession of half her faculties, had admitted that Izzie would love to see more of him than Leandro had seen to and settled a hundred things that needed to be done.
A new manager had been hired for as long as was needed for the store. Her parents had been dispatched o
n a holiday to Australia as they had initially planned before Alex’s accident, with no necessity overlooked. The traitors they were, they’d been more than happy to be on their way and more importantly, out of Leandro’s way.
All of her insurance matters had been assigned to a lawyer hired by Leandro for the express purpose of seeing to them. Even the mortgage on her parents’ house had been refinanced and the monthly payments taken care of, aided in no small financial way by him. And her and Isabella’s visas to Italy taken care of with an expediency that reeked not only of the Contis’ wealth but the sheer reach of their power.
It had left Alex gasping for breath one afternoon, wondering what she had invited into her life.
Tucked away in Izzie’s bedroom under the guise of packing, she had buried her head between her knees. Sought escape from the feeling of her life being taken over.
Leandro had gone far and beyond anything she’d expected of him when she’d gone to him for reassurance that Izzie would be taken care of. And yet, a small thread of anxiety persisted at the speed with which he’d had their trip arranged.
Apparently, when Leandro had decided that he was very much interested in spending the summer with his daughter, he had meant it quite seriously.
If only she could get a firm grasp on herself and her reaction to his broken engagement... But he had told her nothing about his reason.
That marriage will not suit me anymore, he’d told her with a chillingly heartless calculation. Engulfed by a barrage of unwanted emotions that had hit her, she hadn’t asked him any of the questions that pestered her.
For all that her worries about Izzie and her future were calmed, at least temporarily, she still wasn’t sleeping well. Much as she had fought it for four days, the crux of it haunted her thoughts.
That Leandro was unattached was what made her anxious, and restless and a thousand other things she was ashamed to admit, even to herself.
It was as if a dam that held all her less than right thoughts at bay was suddenly broken and every insidiously hungry thought and desire was free to roam now.
He was everything that had attracted her back then, a thousand times more now.
