by Kate Hewitt
Mia walked towards him, still cradling their daughter. Ella. She came to stand in front of him, close enough that Alessandro was able to breathe in her achingly familiar scent of understated citrus. It assaulted his senses and made him remember far too many things.
‘Hold your arms out,’ Mia instructed, and Alessandro thrust both arms out stiffly in front of him. ‘Not like that,’ she said with a small smile, a surprising and strangely gratifying trace of laughter in her voice.
‘How?’ Alessandro demanded. ‘I don’t know what to do.’ This was a vulnerability he couldn’t hide. Knowledge he had never possessed.
‘Like this.’ Gently, holding Ella with one arm, she guided Alessandro’s own, manipulating his limbs as if he were a mannequin, until one arm was bent as if to cradle a football, the other arm to support it. ‘Now we just add the baby,’ she said softly, and before he knew what she was doing, she put Ella into his arms.
He cradled her to him instinctively, pressing her tiny body gently against his chest as she snuffled into his neck. He breathed in the sweet, milky warmth of her as his heart contracted, expanded, and contracted again. He felt. It hurt.
‘That’s the way,’ Mia encouraged him. ‘You’ve got the hang of it now.’
He felt like a complete novice, inexperienced, incapable, and if he were holding the most fragile and yet explosive thing possible—a cross between a stick of dynamite and a Ming vase.
‘I don’t want to hurt her,’ he confessed, undone by this child in his arms, this fragile, precious, impossible human being.
‘You aren’t hurting her,’ Mia assured him. Tears sparkled in her eyes and she blinked them back rapidly. ‘Trust me, she would let you know if you were.’
‘Does she cry? Is she…is she a good baby?’ He realised how much he wanted to know—all the details, all he’d missed. It didn’t matter now that he’d missed them or why he had, he just wanted to know.
‘She’s a wonderful baby, but she’s had her moments.’ The smile Mia gave him was weary, and he suddenly noticed how tired she looked. Realised how hard it must have been, to parent alone all these months…which was all the more reason for her to come to Tuscany with him, where she could have help, and comfort, and space.
‘You’ll come to Tuscany,’ he said, and it sounded like an order. Mia’s gentle, tired smile faltered as a familiar fire sparked in her eyes.
‘Alessandro, you can’t order me about…’
‘You’ll come,’ he insisted. ‘And Ella, too. You must.’ His voice was too strident, his manner too abrupt and autocratic. He knew that, and yet he couldn’t keep himself from it, because it was so very important. It was everything.
He saw the remoteness enter Mia’s eyes, felt her coolness as she took Ella out of his arms, pressing her against her shoulder as she half turned away from him.
‘She needs a feed,’ she murmured, but it felt like an excuse. She slipped past him and went back to the main living area, leaving Alessandro no choice but to follow.
When he came into the room, Mia was sitting back on the sofa, Ella brought to her breast, one tiny fist clutching a tendril of golden hair. Shock jolted through him at the sight of her feeding their daughter, the simple, pure rightness of it, followed by a rush of primal possessiveness that nearly felled him with its intensity, its sureness.
This was his family. The family he’d never had himself, the family he hadn’t even realised he wanted. And he was never letting them go.
CHAPTER EIGHT
MIA WATCHED THE streets of Los Angeles stream by in a colourful blur as the limousine Alessandro had called for her sped towards his luxury hotel in the downtown area of the city. After leaving abruptly the day before, when Mia had begun feeding Ella, he’d commanded she come to where he was staying to discuss their future arrangements…whatever those might be.
Mia had spent a sleepless night, wide-eyed and worried, trying to decide how she was going to respond to Alessandro’s suggestion that she move to Tuscany with Ella. Everything in her resisted that notion, and particularly the high-handed manner in which he’d delivered it, as if he expected her to fall in with his plans without so much as a whisper of dissent.
She did not want to be controlled by him, and yet she feared she had no choice. Just like with her father, Alessandro was calling the shots. Just like her father, he had all the power, all the money, all the cards. It had taken years from Mia to break free from her father. She desperately wanted to have the strength to break free from Alessandro now, even as she recognised that Alessandro was a different man from her father, and she’d sensed a kindness beneath his hard exterior that made her want to trust him.
Still, it wasn’t enough to move continents for, surely.
And yet… Ella. She couldn’t deny Alessandro the right to see his daughter. After witnessing him holding Ella, the obvious love in his eyes, surprising and powerful, she didn’t even want to. So where did that leave her? Them?
In the car seat next to her, Ella stirred, blinking wide blue-grey eyes at the world, her thumb finding its way to her mouth, a new discovery. Mia gazed down at her infant daughter, her heart squeezing painfully with love. She hadn’t realised just how strong that mother instinct would be, how that natural love would rush in, from the moment she’d felt Ella’s first kick. The need to provide, protect, and nurture felt like an unstoppable force. It would make her strong enough to fight this battle with Alessandro…and win. She couldn’t contemplate the alternative.
The limo pulled up to a tall, elegant skyscraper, and a white-gloved valet came to open her door. Mia unbuckled Ella’s car seat and heaved it out, straightening her tunic top that she’d paired with loose trousers. Three months postpartum, she was still working off the baby weight, something that made her feel self-conscious when she was in Alessandro’s hard, honed presence.
Inside the hotel’s large and opulent lobby, all marble and crystal, a staff member met her at the door, clearly watching and waiting for her.
‘Mr Costa is waiting for you in the penthouse suite,’ she informed her crisply, and Mia followed her into a glassed-in lift that soared upwards, her hands slippery on the car seat handle. She wished he hadn’t asked—or, rather, commanded—that she come here, to this glamorous place, clearly his turf. It put her at a disadvantage for the battle she knew was coming, and she suspected Alessandro had arranged it for exactly that reason. Still, she would do her best to stand her ground and make her case.
The lift doors opened directly into the penthouse suite, a soaring, open space with floor-to-ceiling windows on every side. As Mia stepped out onto the white marble floor, she felt as if she were flying—or falling. The sight of the city far below all around her made her feel dizzy.
‘Mia.’ Alessandro’s voice was a low, steady thrum as he stepped forward and took the car seat from her, smiling down at a now sleeping Ella. Mia relinquished it unthinkingly as she took a few steadying breaths to combat the sudden feeling of vertigo.
Alessandro looked devastatingly handsome, as usual, in a crisp grey suit with a cobalt-blue button-down shirt and a silver-grey tie. He smelled amazing, too, the same sandalwood aftershave that Mia remembered all too well assaulting her senses and reawakening her memories.
‘Would you like a drink?’ he asked politely. ‘Coffee? Tea? Juice?’
‘Just water, please.’ On shaky legs she walked to one of the white leather sofas scattered around and sat down. ‘This place is amazing.’ She glanced around the huge space, noting the king-sized bed, the sunken marble tub, the glittering kitchen with top-notch appliances, all of it open plan, the different areas separated by elegant shelving and tall potted plants.
‘The view sold me on it,’ Alessandro said as he fetched her a glass of water. ‘I wasn’t sure about the open plan, but the architect insisted it was the way to go.’ He handed her a glass, which Mia took with murmured thanks before sitting opposite her, one leg crossed ne
atly over the other as he sipped his coffee. Ella sat between them in her car seat, fast asleep.
‘So,’ Alessandro said, his opening gambit. ‘I’ve arranged a flight to Rome for this evening.’
‘What?’ Mia nearly dropped her glass, and her surprised squawk made Ella stir in her seat before she settled back to sleep.
‘Is that so surprising? I told you what I intended last night. Why should either of us linger? There’s nothing for you here, Mia.’
‘How would you even know that?’ she demanded. She’d known Alessandro would have a plan, and even that he would insist on it, but she hadn’t realised he would enact it so quickly, and without even telling her. It made her furious—and it also made her scared. He had so much more power and money than she did. His will felt like a force of nature. How could she fight it?
‘You more or less admitted it yesterday,’ he answered evenly. ‘You’ve only been here for a year, and you weren’t sure about coming here in the first place. Why stay?’
She’d stayed because it had been worth it financially, and she had no job waiting for her back in London or anywhere else. What friends she’d made in London she’d lost touch with over the last year, and none of them were in a position to help her as a single mother anyway.
She’d been stuck, and Alessandro was right when he said there was nothing keeping her in California, but…that didn’t mean she wanted to go to Tuscany with him.
‘I’m not committed to LA, it’s true,’ she said carefully. ‘Although I’ve enjoyed my job here, and I was—am—intending to return to it in a few months. But that doesn’t mean I want to live in Italy. I don’t even know the language, Alessandro.’
He shrugged, dismissive. ‘You’ll learn. And there’s no reason for you to return to work when I will be providing for you.’
‘I like working—’
‘Then perhaps you can return to it when Ella is a bit older.’
Although she greatly disliked his high-handed manner, Mia wasn’t willing to fight that particular battle along with all the others. The truth was, she’d rather stay with Ella when she was so little. But she still didn’t want to go to Italy.
‘I think we both need to compromise,’ Mia said, trying not to sound desperate. ‘What if I returned to London? You go there fairly often for business. You could see Ella regularly…’ She trailed off at the dark look developing on Alessandro’s face, like a storm front coming in, of towering black clouds.
‘That’s your compromise? I see my daughter once a month, if that?’
‘Surely you come to London more often than that,’ Mia protested. ‘To check on Dillard’s…’
‘Dillard’s has been assimilated into Costa International, as I told you it would be. I come to London once or twice a year at most.’
And for that he’d needed to put her on the other side of the world? It was not a point Mia could afford to make now. ‘But it’s not that far,’ she insisted, trying her best to hold on to the plan she’d come up with last night—her in London, living in familiar surroundings with some friends around, and Alessandro safely in Italy or wherever else he travelled, coming by once in a while. She could live with that. Just about.
‘Not far?’ Alessandro’s eyebrows rose in incredulity before drawing together in what could only be anger. Mia tried not to shrink back in her seat. ‘It’s a four-hour plane ride, Mia. How often do you think I want to see my daughter? How much do you think I wanted to be involved in her life?’
She shook her head slowly, afraid to hear his answer. ‘I… I don’t know.’
‘Then I’ll tell you. Completely. I want to see her every day. Morning and night and even afternoon. I will not have my child growing up without a father in her life. I know what that’s like and I will not allow it for Ella, especially when her father wants to be involved.’
He knew what that was like?
The terse statement made Mia realise there were depths of feeling and conviction to Alessandro’s stance that she hadn’t anticipated. Hadn’t remotely begun to guess. ‘So what exactly are you suggesting?’ she asked faintly.
‘You and Ella live at my villa in Tuscany. It is comfortable, in the country, the perfect place to raise a child. I will live there as well, and commute to Rome or wherever else as needed.’
‘So…we’d live together?’ She hadn’t expected that, somehow. She’d anticipated him tucking her away, controlling her as her father had her mother. But now it almost sounded as if he expected them to play at happy families, something she really could not envision, and she doubted Alessandro had thought it through entirely.
Alessandro’s frown deepened. ‘Of course we’d live together.’ He made it sound as if she’d asked something so obvious as to be absurd.
Mia shook her head slowly. ‘That’s not a given, Alessandro. I mean…we don’t even know each other.’
‘We have a baby together.’
‘Yes, but…we’re strangers.’ It hurt to say it, because she’d never, ever have wanted to bring a child into the world the way she had with Ella, and yet she didn’t regret her daughter for a single second.
‘Then we’ll get to know each other.’ Again he made it all sound glaringly obvious. ‘All the more reason for you to come to Tuscany, Mia.’
‘So you expect me to follow you to Italy, to live in your house, without even knowing you?’
‘You know enough, surely.’
‘What I know I don’t even like! You’re ruthless, Alessandro, completely ruthless when it comes to the companies you take over—’
‘That’s business, and in any case, I’m not as ruthless as you think.’ He almost sounded hurt. ‘I thought you realised that.’
Memories of that night flitted through her brain, the man she’d started to dream he was, as well as what she’d learned about Dillard’s former employees. No, he wasn’t as ruthless as all that. And yet…
‘Still, you’ve been incredibly overbearing since you blasted back into my life,’ she persisted, ‘demanding everything and making no compromises—’
‘Because I’m right.’
She rolled her eyes. ‘Of course you are.’
‘And because this is important to me.’ He lowered his voice, his hands clenched together, as he struggled with a depth of emotion Mia had never seen before. ‘I grew up without a father, Mia. He chose to walk away before I was born. All my life I’ve wondered…’ He paused, cleared his throat. ‘I cannot abide the thought of my daughter thinking I would do the same thing, even for a moment. I cannot countenance for a second that she might wonder why I don’t see her more often, or why I don’t live in the same country as she does. I cannot stand the prospect that she might think I don’t care.’
Tears, unexpected, unwanted, crowded Mia’s eyes. ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered. ‘I didn’t realise.’
He nodded jerkily. ‘Now you know.’
‘But surely you can still see how much you are asking of me.’
‘I am asking just as much of myself. Together we will be parents for Ella. We will put aside our own desires and needs for her sake. It is what any good parent would do.’
And how on earth could she argue with that? Mia felt cornered, and yet she could hardly blame Alessandro for it. She agreed with him…she just wished she didn’t. That there was another way, and yet there so clearly wasn’t.
‘So you want us to live together?’ she surmised hesitantly. ‘In the same house? What about…what about all your women?’
Alessandro looked at her as if she had sprouted horns. ‘I would not have women.’
‘At least a woman, then,’ Mia clarified impatiently. ‘I’ve seen the photos, Alessandro—’
‘The only woman I will have on my arm is you,’ Alessandro returned, his silver gaze snaring hers and pinning her in place. ‘As my wife.’
For a second Alessandro thought
Mia might faint. Her face drained of colour and she swayed where she sat, her lips bloodless as she parted them and tried to speak.
‘What…?’ The word was a scratchy whisper. She shook her head, looking as dazed as if she’d been hit on the head. ‘What…are you talking about?’
‘I thought it would be obvious.’ Although he realised now what had been set in stone in his own mind had not even crossed Mia’s. He’d been so sure of the way forward he might have skipped a few rather crucial steps in their conversation. Well, he would cover them now. ‘I thought I’d made it clear. For Ella’s sake, we will marry. You would live in Tuscany as my wife.’
‘Was that a proposal?’
Her scathing tone caught him on the raw. He’d just offered to marry her, and she was acting offended. ‘It was a fact,’ he stated rather shortly. ‘I accept that neither of us expected or even wished this, Mia, but surely we can put aside our personal preferences for Ella’s sake. It’s the right thing to do.’
‘But you’re talking about my whole life.’
‘And my whole life.’ He met her gaze steadily, refusing to be moved. Mia still looked as if she didn’t know what had hit her.
‘Alessandro, I can’t marry you.’
‘I’m not asking you to marry me this very minute.’ He tried to ignore the sharp needling of hurt he felt at her blunt refusal. ‘I understand we’ll want to get to know another before we say any vows, although the sooner we make this official, the better, as far as I am concerned. Again, for Ella’s sake.’
‘I… I can’t.’ She looked agonised, strangely torn. ‘Alessandro, I can’t.’
‘Why not?’ His voice sharpened. ‘Are you already married?’
‘No, of course not.’ She rose from the sofa, rubbing her arms as if she were cold. ‘I just can’t. I can’t be married. I can’t be married to a man like you.’
‘A man like me?’ His tone had turned icy. ‘What is that supposed to mean?’ A man of low birth? A bastard? He’d heard it all before, of course, but it still hurt coming from her.