by Heidi Rice
It was sex—only sex.
The chemistry had always been phenomenal between us and it seemed that had not changed.
It was five years, though, since I’d felt this exhausted, this limp from a simple orgasm. And I knew it was pointless trying to deny it any longer.
Where Belle was concerned there had always been more between us than just chemistry.
It would be good if this time we could feed the desire without guilt, but as I rolled off her, covering my face with my forearm, struggling to catch my breath before I spoke, I felt her stiffen beside me and knew we could not.
Because now, instead of Remy between us, there was the boy.
She’d come here to find out what my intentions were towards the child and perhaps it was time I admitted my misgivings about fatherhood.
She shifted, ready to run again, and I gathered enough of my energy to grasp her wrist before she could escape.
‘I should leave,’ she whispered, her naked body shivering. ‘I need to get back to Cai.’
The room was warm, the night air sultry as it flowed in through the open doors of the terrace, the terrace on which I’d stood, thinking of her every night I’d been back to the villa since seeing her again, since that damn kiss.
‘Not yet. We need to talk about the boy,’ I managed to say around the sickening regret in my throat.
‘I can’t...’ Her voice broke as she twisted her wrist free of my grasp. ‘I can’t talk about him now, let’s talk about it tomorrow.’
She scrambled off the bed, her fear almost palpable as she gathered the clothes she had taken off with such artless seduction moments before. The moon glowed on her pale skin and I became momentarily mesmerised again. As I watched her slip on her panties, hook her bra with shaking fingers, the heat swelled my shaft again.
I forced myself to climb off the bed, walk to the chest of drawers and pull out a pair of sweat pants.
The chemistry was still there, and more volatile than ever, but I was through trying to avoid it. Trying to avoid her.
Once she had shimmied back into the simple summer dress that looked more sophisticated to me than a courtesan’s ball gown, she hunted around for her sandals.
I scooped them off the floor, but as she reached for them I whisked them out of her grasp.
The moonlight shone on her face as she stared at me. I could see the beginnings of beard burn on her cheeks where I had devoured her mouth before devouring so much else. The taste of her—sweet and musky, wet with need—taunted me still.
‘Please, Alexi, I have to go,’ she said desperately, but I could hear her struggle to keep the fear out of her voice. ‘I can’t...’ A guilty flush burned her neck. ‘This shouldn’t have happened—it’s not why I came here.’
We both knew on some level that was a lie. Maybe her decision hadn’t been conscious, any more than mine had been to avoid the boy simply so I could avoid her too, but that cat was out of the bag now, and there would be no shoving it back in again. Even so, I needed to be careful with her.
She looked freaked out. I wondered again at her experience. How could she still seem like that young, artless girl when she was the mother of a child, my child?
‘Maybe, but you did come here, so perhaps it is best we discuss the reason why. Do you want me to have more contact with the boy?’ I asked.
‘It’s okay,’ she said. ‘I understand now why you’ve been avoiding us. I should have—’
‘No, you don’t,’ I interrupted.
She’d apologised before, but she hadn’t been wrong about my reasons for avoiding contact, not entirely. Perhaps it was time I took some share of the blame for my son’s fatherless existence.
‘Yes, I do,’ she said. ‘You wanted to avoid...’ She gesticulated with her hands between us, in an entirely inadequate expression of the explosion of hormones and pheromones, wants and needs held in a pressure cooker for five years, that had just occurred. ‘You wanted to avoid this happening again. After that kiss, I should have realised we couldn’t be in the same space again without a chaperone, and yet I came up here anyway to...’
‘Shh, Belle.’ I pressed a thumb to her lips to silence the words and the anguish and guilt behind them. ‘What happened was inevitable,’ I said. ‘Avoiding you and my responsibilities to the boy was never going to stop that.’
‘Of course it wasn’t inevitable,’ she said, her face alight with panic and indignation. ‘We had a choice and we took the wrong one. Again.’
I had to stifle a harsh laugh at her naivety, even though I found it strangely endearing. Surely she could not have slept with many men since me, if she didn’t know how rare was the chemistry we shared?
‘It wasn’t the wrong choice then,’ I said. ‘Because it gave us our son.’
And as far as I was concerned it wasn’t the wrong choice now either. I wanted her, I had wanted her for five years, and I was through trying to avoid it. Especially as I could suddenly see my avoidance had as much to do with my fear of fatherhood as it did with my fear of losing control with her.
I could see I had struck her dumb, so I continued.
‘I was scared,’ I said, forcing the words out past the lump of denial in my throat. I hated to admit a weakness, hated to admit I’d ever been afraid, but for once it made sense to let her see this was much more of a struggle than I had let on. ‘Scared of being a father. That’s the other reason I avoided contacting you.’
She didn’t say anything, her eyes going wide and making her look even more delicious.
My erection throbbed under the loose sweats but I ignored it. We would not have a repeat performance tonight, not until she had come to terms with the idea.
If I wanted to have Belle again—and I now knew I did—I needed to get past my fear of fatherhood.
‘I never intended to have a child and I’m fairly sure, given my past record, I will be incredibly bad at it.’
‘Your...’ She swallowed, her eyes shadowed with a grief I didn’t understand. ‘Your past record? You mean you have other children?’
‘Dio, no!’ I barked out a strained laugh. ‘You are the only woman I have failed to protect so spectacularly,’ I murmured.
You are also the only woman who has made me forget everything but the driving need to be inside you.
I bit off the admission. That would not continue to be the case once we had fed this hunger. Nothing ever lasted, especially not physical desire—it was transient, fleeting—but for us, I suspected, the intensity was increased by all the other commitments we shared, to the dead and to the living, to the past and the future.
There was no way to disentangle ourselves unless we faced the truth instead of running from it. We’d both done our fair share of that—she’d had a child and refused to tell me of his existence for five years, but I had also refused to see the truth about my own brother and refused to meet my son.
We had both been cowards about so much. The only way forward now was to be brave. And, if that meant admitting weaknesses I did not wish to admit so I could work past them, so be it.
Facing those realities meant I would be able to feed this hunger instead of trying to deny it, which was one hell of an incentive to stop running.
‘Then what past record are you talking about?’ she asked.
‘I failed my brother. I failed you,’ I said, forcing the words past the guilt which I had deflected and denied for so long. ‘I do not wish to fail the boy too...’
CHAPTER NINE
Belle
I STARED AT Alexi and blinked furiously to hold back the sting of tears at his honesty—and the hopelessness I suspected lay behind it.
Did he really believe he would be a bad father? He hadn’t failed Remy, and he hadn’t really failed me. He’d been cruel to me that day, but he’d been grief-stricken at the time—we both had.
But, as the emoti
on closed my throat, I knew I couldn’t have this discussion now. My sex was still tender, my face alight with shame and shock and my pulse had accelerated to a mile a minute.
I needed to get away from him, from here, to take stock, to make sure I didn’t fall into his arms again—and unleash all those destructive emotions that had tripped me up before.
I was terrified of my feelings for him—confused as they were. They felt too strong to be merely echoes of my former childish adoration.
I couldn’t afford to fall in love with him again. Alexi had always been a hard man to love. I hadn’t realised it as a girl, blinded by all the qualities I adored—his protectiveness, his dominance, his determination. But I could see now how destructive those qualities could be for me, as well as how attractive.
I’d never known my own father, who had died soon after I was born, and as a result I’d spent my childhood looking for male approval. The more unattainable Alexi had become, the more I’d wanted him. He was just as unattainable now. I needed to figure out how to handle discovering my body was still enthralled by him, and only him.
And I needed to figure it out quickly, before I told Cai who Alexi was.
And before I started my new job in his organisation.
We would always have a connection now, but I couldn’t let it become a sexual one. I had thought I was invulnerable to his charms. I had just discovered that I was not. Managing our emotional commitments was going to be hard enough already, but adding this explosive sexual connection would turn them into a minefield.
‘Being a parent isn’t something you’re instinctively good or bad at,’ I managed at last. ‘It’s something you have to learn. I was terrified I’d fail Cai as soon as he was born. Even before he was born,’ I admitted. ‘And I still make mistakes now. In fact, I’ve made some humdingers. Not telling his father he existed being the most obvious one.’
‘Perhaps it is time you stopped beating yourself up about that.’ He shoved his fists into the pockets of his sweat pants. They hung low on his hips, only making me more aware of the muscular expanse of his bare chest.
I looked away, something releasing inside me at the offhand demand.
‘Thank you for not hating me,’ I said.
‘You were very young,’ he murmured. ‘And I behaved badly towards you.’
His knuckle touched my chin, forcing my gaze to meet his.
‘If you were so terrified of becoming a mother, why did you decide to keep the child?’ he asked.
Because I loved you so much, too much.
The words echoed in my head. But I couldn’t say them because they would make me even more vulnerable than I was already. That he would never have suspected the truth seemed to damn those feelings even more. And made me realise how futile they had always been.
‘I guess I wasn’t thinking much. I’m not even sure I made a conscious decision. I was too confused. Too heartsick after Remy’s death and...’ And being banished by you, I thought but didn’t add. ‘And having to leave Monaco and my life here. And then, once I’d seen his tiny form on the first scan, there was only one choice that felt right for me.’
It wasn’t the whole truth, but it was enough of the truth to satisfy him, because he nodded and tucked his hands back into his pockets.
‘But I’m sorry I took the choice away from you,’ I said, even though I wasn’t sorry, because I could never be sorry for having Cai. ‘Of whether or not to become a father.’ I sucked in a lungful of air. I really needed to go now—this was getting awkward and too much. ‘I think we should take time out. There’s no pressure for you to meet Cai. It’s a big adjustment for him coming to Nice and it’ll take a while for him to settle. And it’s obviously a big adjustment for you too. I want you both to be ready.’
It was a lie. Cai was a remarkably adaptable child and I already knew he would make himself right at home in our new palace. But I couldn’t face Alexi again for a while. I needed time, space and distance. The hunger still hummed in my sex, and I couldn’t seem to get any of this into perspective.
I picked my sandals off the top of the dresser where he’d placed them and slipped them on. He was still staring at me, and I had the weirdest sensation he could see right through my show of maturity to the panicked girl beneath.
‘Why don’t I give you a call once Cai’s properly settled, in a couple of weeks, and we can arrange some visitation—if that works for you?’
He frowned. ‘A couple of weeks?’
‘Well, yes,’ I mumbled. ‘Pierre said you’re headed to the UK tomorrow to prep for the Primo Grande,’ I said, suddenly desperately thankful for that piece of fortuitous timing. The British super race was several weeks away. It would give me time to get over this insistent, dangerous hunger. ‘It would be much better if, when you meet him for the first time, you don’t then have to then disappear for weeks.’ I carried on talking as I walked backwards towards the door, scared he would try to stop me again. And even more scared that I wanted him to. ‘A week to a four-year-old is an eternity. So why don’t we leave it until you get back?’
He didn’t answer, but I took his silence as his consent.
‘Great,’ I said and left.
I ran down the stairs, out the back door and climbed into the convertible. But, as the powerful car purred to life, I couldn’t resist glancing over my shoulder.
My breath caught as I spotted him, standing on the veranda of his bedroom, watching me.
I accelerated into the night, swallowing down the burst of heat—and fear.
CHAPTER TEN
Alexi
AFTER RINGING THE bell the following morning at the door of the villa I had purchased for Belle and my son, I pushed my hands into my pockets and waited for her to answer.
My heart galloped into my throat and heat settled at the base of my spine as I heard footsteps inside the house and a female voice.
‘Just a minute.’
The door swung open, but the tension in my gut relaxed. The woman in front of me wasn’t Belle. She looked vaguely familiar, though. She had the same heart-shaped face as Belle, her hair a deep chestnut instead of the rich vibrant red of Belle’s. Pretty, but not stunning. I decided the woman must be the second cousin I had met briefly in Barcelona when my life had changed for ever.
‘Hi,’ she said, looking surprised and then gifting me with a brilliant smile that made her look surprisingly pleased to see me and turned her pretty features into something more.
I tensed, instantly suspicious.
I had been prepared for a frosty reception from Belle and her cousin this morning, and possibly my son too. They were not expecting me, but as I’d watched the lights on Belle’s car disappearing into the darkness yesterday I’d made a few important decisions. As a result, I’d spent two hours this morning rearranging my schedule for the next three weeks so I could remain most of the time in Monaco.
I was here not just to face up to my responsibilities concerning the boy but also to apprise Belle of one important fact. She could no longer keep me out of his life, or hers. I’d seen the panic in her expressive eyes the night before, and had realised her suggestion that I wait weeks more to introduce myself to my son had nothing to do with the child’s welfare and everything to do with the events in my bedroom.
‘It’s Mr Galanti, isn’t it?’ the woman said, offering her hand as I stepped inside. ‘My name’s Jessie Burton. I’m Belle’s cousin—we met in Barcelona but I doubt you’ll remember me,’ she added as she shook my hand in a firm grip. ‘You had eyes only for Belle that day, and Cai.’ She continued to beam, apparently not upset I had ignored her. ‘Come through to the terrace,’ she said, as she let go of my hand and led me into the house. ‘Belle and Cai are having breakfast.’
As I stepped into the main living area, I spotted Belle and my son seated at the table on the terrazza. The panoramic view of Nice behind them was quite
spectacular, and one of the reasons I had insisted on this house for them, but it wasn’t the view that had the air clogging my lungs. The cousin, whose name I’d already forgotten, was still chatting about something but her words faded, my heartbeat pounding in my eardrums. I hesitated as the blast of longing blindsided me the way it had the night before....and so many other nights before that.
Spotlighted in the morning sun, Belle wore a simple pair of summer shorts and a T-shirt, her wild hair tied back in a tidy ponytail. But even in the simple, tomboyish attire she looked exquisite as she chuckled at something the boy had said.
And so young—not old enough to have a child. Not old enough to have made love to me with such unbridled passion last night.
‘Belle, we have a surprise guest for breakfast,’ the cousin called out as she approached the table.
The little boy’s dark head whipped round and his eyes, so like Remy’s, locked on mine. ‘Who is he?’ he said bluntly.
But it was his mother’s reaction which made the heat pulse low in my abdomen.
She stiffened, clearly shocked by my appearance, and then the colour on her cheeks—devoid of make up this morning which made the sprinkle of freckles look all the more delicious—flared.
‘Alexi?’ she murmured, clearly not as pleased to see me as her cousin.
The boy, who had scrambled down from his chair, ran towards me.
‘Who are you?’ he asked as he reached me.
He stood with his small fists perched on his hips and his chin thrust out.
Wearing a pair of pyjamas, decorated with a cartoon sports car with a smiling face, the child should have looked cute but instead he looked fierce, his compact body rigid with tension, his expression wary and his stance oddly confrontational. Clearly, he didn’t remember meeting me all those weeks ago.
‘Why are you here?’ the child demanded.
A smile creased my lips despite the tension in my own belly.