There was silence as the wistful tone of her words wrapped around them both, and then he spoke quietly, gently. “How did they die?”
She closed her eyes, blocking out the memories of that day. “In a car accident. On their way to see me.” The words were a blade, pressing into her belly. “I’d put them off for months and finally they said they’d come and visit, fill my freezer, reassure themselves I hadn’t joined a cult, you know, joke, joke, but it must have hurt my mum so much, how absent I was.” Elodie turned to face Fiero and the look of sympathy in his expression surprised her; she hadn’t expected to find that within him.
“Why do you say that?”
“Because we were close. And I just disappeared.” She ground her teeth together, regret a violent force inside her. “I loved them, I just didn’t have time for them.”
“You were young. Building your career. What you did is what every person does at some point in their life. I have no doubt they were proud of you.”
More surprise. He wasn’t the first person to say as much to her, but it filled her soul in a way she hadn’t known possible.
“Maybe.” She lifted her shoulders. “They died, and my world fell apart. Everything I’d cared about so much, so passionately, just didn’t seem to matter anymore. I went back to work and I tried to focus on the budget, on hitting the KPIs I used to live and die by, but it all felt so pointless. All I could think about was how much I’d lost, how stupid I’d been. How disloyal and ungrateful.” She shook her head angrily. “They sacrificed so much to send me to the best school in Sydney, they supported me and championed me all the time, and then I just picked up and moved, and pretty much forgot they existed.” She tilted her head backwards, her eyes focussing on the sky overhead.
He was silent, contemplative.
“After they died, I had to go and pack up their house. Our house. Dad had taken up pottery,” her smile was filled with sadness. “He’d never even mentioned it. There was so much about them I didn’t know, at the end. I should have spent more time with them. I should have made more effort.”
She felt his eyes skimming her face.
“So finding out I was pregnant was sort of like a second chance, in a weird kind of way. Jack was a gift.” She turned to look at him. “I’d lost so much and suddenly I had family again. My own little boy.” Unconsciously, her eyes roamed his face, picking out all the similarities their son bore to his father.
“And you chose to raise him on your own.”
She considered that a moment. “I chose to not break up a marriage,” she corrected firmly. “But I knew I could raise him on my own, yes. I was terrified, because having a baby is scary and strange and I had no experience whatsoever with children, but other people do it and I figured I’d work it out as I go along.”
Something shifted in his features, something she couldn’t quite comprehend. “He is a remarkable boy.” His voice was deep. “I imagine that’s a credit to you.”
It was unmistakable praise, but it was delivered as a statement of fact. An observation, rather than anything designed to warm her. Nonetheless, a smile touched her lips. “Thank you.”
Silence, except for the gentle lapping of the water.
“And you were able to manage financially? I presume you haven’t been working?”
She kicked her feet under the water a little, grateful for the grounding properties of something as elemental as water. “I’ve done some consulting.”
“Have you?”
Her eyes lifted to his. “Yeah. Does that surprise you?”
“A little.” His smile was just a flash, a rueful shift of his lips that did something funny to her tummy.
“Why?”
He lifted a single brow. “Our son is not exactly a restful child,” he grimaced. “In the six weeks you were in hospital, I found his energy…exhausting,” he laughed, and she found herself laughing too. “And that was with a nanny employed full-time.”
“He’s a dynamo,” she agreed. “Not for the first six months or so. He was born a month prematurely, so he took a while to ‘wake up’.”
“I didn’t know that.”
She nodded. “A complication. It’s why I made sure your details were available to the hospital. It was all very sudden. I had to have an emergency C-section. I was partly terrified I’d wake up and be handed the wrong baby. With no one there to watch him like a hawk and make sure they didn’t lose him.”
“You were on your own? No friend with you?”
“No. No one.” Her expression was tight, her eyes focussed on the bright lights of Rome in the distance, without really noticing the details. “He looked so much like you. Even at birth, there was no mistaking I’d been handed the right baby.” She lifted her slim shoulders and his eyes dropped to the gesture, lingering there as he ruminated on this.
“What was the complication?”
“A rare blood pressure problem. They were worried I was going to have a stroke.”
He looked to relax a little, despite the seriousness of this. “But he was fine?”
“Yeah. He could have stayed in there cooking another month but I probably would have died.”
He was quiet, as though he wanted to say something, but when he didn’t, she continued.
“Anyway, the first few months were actually pretty great. Exhausting in that way new-babies are, but he fed well, slept well, smiled often. He’s still got a great temperament. But he’s definitely ‘on the go’ all the time. All the time,” she laughed, shaking her head. “I hope you’re paying Emilia well.”
“Of course.” But he smiled, and when their eyes met, it felt like a bottle of champagne had been opened inside her tummy. Bubbles fizzed against her flesh. It was breath-taking and distracting and she couldn’t look away.
“I’m impressed you managed to work without any help with Jack.”
“I only took on the projects I could manage,” she demurred. “And I did have some help.”
“Oh? A nursery school?”
“No, Axel, my landlord. He’s the opposite to me – the oldest of eight siblings, he grew up holding babies and entertaining toddlers. I honestly don’t know if I would have been able to keep such a level head if he hadn’t been around.”
Silence.
The bubbles in her tummy stilled. Fiero’s face was thunderous all of a sudden, so that it was impossible to believe he’d been smiling a moment ago, looking at her with a hint of admiration for how she’d managed on her own for so long.
“It should never have rested on another man to raise my child.” He stood then, pulling himself away from her in every way – mentally and physically distancing himself.
She winced at her insensitivity; at the way she’d made it sound. Pulling her feet from the water with unconscious grace, she stood, placing a hand on his chest without thinking about the gesture. He stilled, his body like a rock. “He didn’t raise Jack. He helped me out from time to time, not often. He’s a friend – a good friend – but not a father-substitute.”
Fiero’s jaw tightened and he shifted his gaze away from her, fixing it on Rome.
“And if you’d told me, I would have helped you. I would have spent time with Jack so you could work. I would have made whatever you wanted possible.” He expelled a breath and it rushed across her temple, lifting her dark hair a little.
“I know that.” What else could she say? She acknowledged she’d made a mistake, but it didn’t mean she’d been wrong not to tell him about Jack. It was so much more complex than that.
“You talk about second chances, about what a gift Jack was. About the family you lost and now have, but did you ever think that I deserved the exact same second chance you did?” His eyes flashed back to hers. “Did you ever think I had also lost people I loved, that I deserved to know my son, to raise him, to have him in my life?”
“It wasn’t about punishing you, or with-holding anything from you,” she said, not for the first time. “I just couldn’t see how we would make it wor
k.”
“You should have given me a chance.”
Her eyes swept shut, because he was right. Her heart turned over in her chest, and she fought a wave of exhaustion, a wave of grief. “I know.” And she did. “I can’t stand here right now and say I would have made the same choice now that I did then. I can’t look you in the eye and say that I was right, I can’t defend my decision, I can only say that I didn’t make it out of malice or anger, or hurt or wounded pride. I acted on my instincts, on what I thought truly would be best for everyone.”
Silence.
He stared at her for several long seconds, and she stared back, and gradually, her hand on his chest began to feel different. Tingly and heavy, so she went to move it away but he lifted his own hand, capturing hers and holding it where it was, pressing it to his chest, his eyes boring down into hers.
“What you did…”
She held her breath.
“I will never understand it.” His eyes flashed with a darkness that chilled her to the bones. “And yet there is something about you that makes it impossible for me to hate you.” A muscle jerked in his jaw. “I want to. My brother Max thinks I should send you back to England and make you fight for any kind of place in Jack’s life. He thinks you should know what it feels like to be deprived of your own child.”
Her gasp reverberated around the terrace.
“I wish I could. I wish I could get you out of my life. Out of my house. Out of my damned head.”
She inhaled shakily. “What do you mean?”
“Even that night, there was something about you,” he shook his head angrily, and with his spare hand, he lifted it to her face, cupping her cheek in his palm. “It was as though I had been bewitched.”
Her stomach squeezed.
“I was married.”
She made a husky groaning sound.
“On the brink of divorce, but I took my vows seriously. Until the divorce was official, I had no intention of sleeping with anyone, Elodie. You were the first – and only – woman I was with during that time of my life.”
He stared at her but she felt like he was staring through her, looking at all the pieces that made up her whole, trying to fit them together in a way he could make sense of.
“Why?”
“I told you, I took my vows seriously.”
“I mean, why me?”
His expression darkened, but his lips twisted into a mocking smile. “I wish I knew.”
His eyes drilled into hers intently.
“I have been asking myself that for six weeks. Why you? What was it about you that made me ignore the black and white morality that had guided me all my life?” His eyes narrowed and he moved infinitesimally closer, so her hand was the only thing between them.
“What is it about you that makes me want to kiss you even when I am so angry with you, even when a part of me is filled with rage for what you’ve taken from me?”
Goosebumps lifted across her body. “I don’t know.” A whisper. A gravelled, pleading sound.
His thumb padded over her lower lip.
“How can I be driven crazy by thoughts of taking you to bed after what you’ve done to me?”
Her lips parted in silent invitation and he responded, his eyes dropping to her lips, his expression sombre.
“Do you remember what I said to you in the hospital?”
She frowned, unable to think clearly, far less remember something that had happened days earlier.
“It doesn’t mean anything.”
Her frown deepened, his words coming back to her with an unwelcome, roiling inevitability.
And you will know that if I kiss you, Elodie, it is because of the same chemistry that drove us together that night, and nothing more. You will know that I will never like you as a person, that I will never forgive you for your decisions.
“My wanting you is just biology. Nothing more.”
She felt as though she’d been punched in the gut.
“I –,”
He shook his head curtly.
“You told me not to kiss you once before. If you tell me not to now, I won’t. I won’t kiss you, I won’t touch you. I will walk away from you and hell, I’ll probably be grateful to you in the morning, grateful that you stopped me from doing something stupid and giving in to desire when there are a hundred reasons not to.”
She moaned softly, her body flushing with heat and need.
“But if you say nothing, I will lift you up and carry you to my bedroom, and I will make you cry my name again and again, until it is the only word you know, the only sound you can make.”
He lowered his head, so his lips were just a whisper from hers. “Well, Elodie? Are you going to tell me to stop? To push me away again?”
She said nothing.
“Are you going to bring us back from the brink of insanity?”
Silence.
And then, a guttural groan as he dropped his head the final distance, claiming her lips with an intensity that knocked all the breath out of her lungs.
Their bodies melded; they were one. And he was right. There was insanity in this, madness and despair, need and beautiful, breathtaking inevitability.
Chapter 7
EVERYTHING WAS THE SAME but different. Naked in his bed, she twisted as his hands ran over her flesh, lightly, hungrily, curiously, his body desperate for her, even when he was determined to go slowly, to draw this out. He remembered her body in incredible detail, but as he looked at her, touched her now, she was different. Her breasts were rounder, more full, her waist slim, with a scar from one side to the other, evidence of where their son had been plucked from her womb and into this world.
He kissed the edges of that fine, silvery line and she moaned, a noise he would never tire of hearing, a noise he had ached for, in the back of his mind, since he walked out of her flat three years earlier.
Her hands crept down, running over the flesh, so he kissed her fingertips. Even as he hated so much about her choice, even though he resented her for having made it, he couldn’t help but worship her body, the body that had grown and nourished their son, the body that had given Jack life.
He kissed his way across the scar and then pulled up on his elbows, his eyes meeting hers. Her cheeks were pink, flushed, her eyes fevered.
This was madness, utterly and completely, and yet he knew it was also essential. They had unfinished business, and until he’d got her out of his system, he wouldn’t be able to move forward.
Move forward?
And what exactly did that entail?
Fiero Montebello was a man of action, but he was also, always, a man of conviction. He had no idea what he wanted from Elodie.
Apologies?
To what end?
He dropped his mouth lower, his tongue brushing her sex so she bucked her hips, her hands moving lower on autopilot. He ignored them, running his tongue along her sensitive folds so she whimpered his name, just as he’d predicted she would.
Christo, he had no idea what he wanted, but suddenly making her beg for him to take her felt vitally important, as though forcing her to admit how much she wanted him would somehow atone for her sins, in a small way. Or maybe he was just petty. Maybe he wanted to punish her.
He ignored that thought.
It didn’t ultimately matter.
He wanted her. It made no sense. He wasn’t proud of it. But he had no intention of resisting her. Not this night, not now.
She must have fallen asleep. Her body felt heavy, languid. She stretched, and her back connected with something hard and warm, so she spun in the bed and startled, her eyes wide.
Fiero Montebello was beside her, watching her, his expression guarded, his features tense.
“What time is it?”
“Midnight.”
Her eyes swept shut. “I didn’t mean to sleep.”
His eyes roamed her face and she realised, belatedly, that she was naked.
Oh, God.
Memories of what they’d done flash
ed through her. His hands on her body, his body melded to hers in every way, her mouth shaping around his name, dragging over his flesh, crying for him, needing him.
“You were exhausted.”
She nodded slowly, pushing the sheet back a little self-conscious and standing. “Yeah.” She cleared her throat. “I have been, since the accident.” She lifted her shoulders. “The doctor said that would fade in time.”
He nodded, but she was distracted, disbelief at what they’d done, at the stupidity of giving into this primal, aching need, making her turn to face him even as she reached for her clothes. They’d been discarded in a hurry, hours earlier. She lifted the dress off the floor and jerked it over her head.
“This shouldn’t have happened.” She spoke without thinking, but as soon as she said the words, she knew two things. She was absolutely right. And she wouldn’t take what they’d done back, not for all the gold in all the world.
“Oh?”
Relief burst inside of her when he didn’t immediately echo her thoughts.
“It’s too complicated.”
He watched her without speaking, so her mouth felt dry. Her body was sensitive all over, her nipples tender from the way he’d tormented them – first between his fingertips and then with his mouth. Her eyes swept shut as that memory seared her soul.
“I disagree.” He shifted in the bed, so the sheet dropped to reveal even more of his toned abdomen and she had to fight herself to keep her gaze on his face. He pushed out of bed completely and she lost the battle, her eyes moving hungrily over his impressive body, her cheeks filling with heat at the sight of him, naked and desirable. “This,” he came to stand before her and wrapped his arms around her waist, pulling her body to his. “Is the only thing in this mess of a situation that is not complicated.”
She swallowed, trying not to see the logic of his statement.
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