Max ran his hand along his jawline as he considered her question. She squirmed in her seat to hear his skin pull against his bristle, imagining what it would feel like to have it pressed against her own skin...on her belly, on her breasts, between her legs.
Max’s mouth tightened. Heat blasted in her chest. Had he guessed what she was thinking?
‘Giovanni is interested in you...but I would advise you to stay clear of him.’
Carly dropped her phone. Stared at him. For a moment she felt a flash of vain pleasure—Giovanni was a good-looking guy after all, funny and a fantastic uncle to Isabella. But that soon dissipated to annoyance. Did Max actually think she would sleep with him one day and consider dating his brother-in-law the next? Anger bubbled in her stomach.
‘I don’t know, he’s handsome, rich and available, there’s a lot to be said for all three things,’ she said in a breezy tone when in truth she wanted to fling her phone at him.
Max frowned but then a slow shrewd smile formed on his lips. ‘I thought you said money doesn’t matter to you.’
‘It doesn’t.’ She threw her hands up into the air. ‘For crying out loud, Max...we slept together yesterday.’ She paused, trying to contain her anger. ‘Do you actually think it meant so little to me that I would date your brother-in-law?’
Unperturbed by her anger, Max shifted forward in his seat. Placing a hand on the sofa between them, he leant in, those green eyes searching hers. ‘What did it mean to you?’
Goosebumps jumped to attention along her body, domino style—up her arms, chasing around her neck, then down her spine. Did he really have to speak so low...as low and tenderly as he had whispered her name yesterday when his back had arched and his body at a precipice had stilled?
She tried to dredge up the laid-back front she had worked so hard to maintain all day, but it was nowhere to be found. She was too exhausted, she was too damned aware of Max, to keep up the pretence. ‘It was very special.’
He nodded to her whisper, placed his hand lightly on her knee. Her heart sank in fear while her body did a hula-hula dance. She picked up her phone, needing a diversion before things got out of control. And given the sparks of desire flashing between them, one wrong move could prove fatal. She was not going to sleep with Max again. No way.
‘Here! I found it! The photo I wanted to show you.’
Max reluctantly took the phone from her, his calculating gaze studying her first. He looked at the photo. Didn’t say anything. Thrown, Carly asked, ‘Isn’t it the most adorable photo ever?’
Max stared at the photo, his throat closing over. He gripped the phone tighter, something twanging in his heart. Unbeknownst to him, Carly had taken a photo of him and Isabella when he had been talking to Valentina’s sister and her family. His back was to the camera, his focus on the family, but Isabella, who was in full view of Carly, was staring up at him with love and adoration in her eyes.
He blinked, dazed by the rush of love for his daughter pounding through him.
He nodded blankly when Carly asked, ‘Are you okay?’
Heat beat through his body. He yanked off his already open bow tie, which Isabella had undone when he had read her book to her earlier. He had pretended not to notice and when he had acted all confused when he pretended to spot it, Isabella had giggled in delight.
‘She adores you.’
Max nodded. He bit the inside of his cheek, knowing it was crazy that he was struggling so much to talk, but what he was about to say came from the very depths of him, words that he had said before but without the intensity of emotion now coursing through him. ‘I...and I love her.’ He looked up and into Carly’s cornflower gaze and heard himself say things he’d never thought he’d dare say to anyone. ‘When Marta died... I was afraid to love Isabella.’ He ran a hand through his hair. ‘Losing Marta tore me apart. To lose Isabella would be incomprehensible.’ He stopped, pain and shame sweeping over him.
‘You wanted to protect yourself against further pain...that’s understandable.’
‘But not excusable. Dio, she was a three-month-old baby—what was I thinking?’
‘You were in shock, in pain. You’re not a robot, Max, you’re human. These feelings happen.’
‘I thought it would be best if she was independent, not reliant on me...in case anything ever happened to me.’
With a sigh Carly shifted in her seat. She laid her hand on top of his. ‘You’re a good dad, Max. Isabella has always been well cared for.’
The disquiet churning inside him stilled at her touch, at the sincerity of her tone. ‘Will you send me a copy of this photo?’
‘Of course.’ She picked up her phone, swiped to some other photos. ‘I’ll make sure to send you the ones of you dancing too.’
He groaned. ‘Those you can delete.’
Carly chuckled. ‘No way! A hot Italian guy dancing... I can’t wait to show them to my friends.’
He lunged for the phone. Carly shifted it out of his grasp, holding it high above her head. He leant into her. She fell against the back of the couch. He followed. His body was on hers, his mouth hovering over hers. ‘Give me the phone, Carly.’
Her eyes twinkled, daring him. ‘And what exactly are you going to do if I don’t?’
He bit back the urge to growl. ‘I’m going to kiss you and a whole lot more.’
Carly’s eyes darkened. She breathed out a faint gasp. ‘In that case I guess I won’t be giving you the phone.’
* * *
Later that night, lying in Max’s bed, her fingertips digging into his shoulders, her body taut with desire, Carly stared into Max’s eyes, her heart splitting open at the desire, at the tenderness there, and in that moment, as his body arched and hers bowed up to meet him, she gave up all pretence of toughness and cynicism, all pretence that she was capable of protecting her heart against this incredible man.
She was in love with him.
CHAPTER TEN
THE FOLLOWING MORNING, Carly sank her nose into Isabella’s cotton candy-striped pyjamas, inhaling lavender with an undertone of mashed bananas. Carly called out to Isabella, who had tucked Sunny into her bed and was attempting to read him Sleepy Heads in Sleep World even though she was holding the book upside down. ‘Sweetheart, you have to learn to eat your bananas properly.’
In response, Isabella gave her a beam of a smile.
Carly ignored the painful tug on her heart and focused on packing Isabella’s suitcase.
The job almost complete, the sound of familiar footsteps out in the corridor had her grabbing hold of the final few items from around the room and packing like a ninja suitcase packer. The sooner they got back to London, the better.
‘I was wondering where the two of you had got to.’
Carly forced herself to smile breezily, to contort her face into what she hoped was a chilled-out expression. ‘Isabella and I were playing with her toys.’ She paused and gestured to all the toys strewn around the room. ‘We got a little carried away in a name-and-find-it game. I’ll tidy up once I have her case packed.’
She went and scooped up a bunch of Isabella’s tiny socks from the top drawer of her wardrobe.
‘You don’t have to pack Isabella’s suitcase,’ Max said, coming closer.
She tried not to wince, wishing he would keep his distance from her. ‘Luciana said that you had some urgent business to attend to. Why don’t you go back to that?’
Max stilled. Carly grabbed Isabella’s hairbrush and hairclips from her dressing table and packed them into the vanity bag that came with her suitcase.
‘What’s going on, Carly?’
Carly considered Max for a moment, seriously tempted to tell him that she was hacked off because she had woken this morning in his bed only to find that he had long vacated it, given how cool the sheets were on his side of the bed. She was hacked off she had slept with him last night. S
he was hacked off because she dreaded saying goodbye to Isabella. She was hacked off because last night, as Giulio and Valentina had hugged her and Isabella goodbye she had realised that she didn’t want to say goodbye for ever to the Ghiraldini family. She was hacked off because last night, when Max had laid her down on his bed and with infinite care and tenderness brought her to climax time and time again, every defence in her had melted away. She was in love with him. So yes, she was majorly hacked off...and embarrassed.
But she wasn’t going to let Max know any of that. Instead she said, ‘I hate the thought of going back to work tomorrow. I have a meeting with my accountant. That’s never fun.’
Max eyed her dubiously.
Carly kept his gaze, trying to remember everything she was hacked off about, but with his nearness, the inhaling of his freshly showered scent, she felt her anger, her defensiveness crumble so she pirouetted around and went and flung open Isabella’s bedroom window, desperate for some fresh air.
‘I’ve rearranged some meetings that I was due to attend later today in London. We can delay our flight until this evening. Let’s take the boat out again, go for lunch in Argegno,’ Max said.
Carly flipped the lid of the suitcase over and, zipping it shut, dropped it down to the floor. ‘I said I would meet a friend this afternoon.’ Which was kind of the truth—she had told Agata, a friend from her college days, she would meet up with her some day this week. Given Max’s suspicious look, he obviously wasn’t buying it. But there was no way she was staying here a moment longer than she needed to.
She was holding onto her sanity with the thinnest of threads. She needed to get back to London, have some space and time to try to process just how much she had fallen in love with Max and Isabella.
And the worst part of it all was that in seeing Tomaso and Bianca’s love for one another yesterday, the way the Ghiraldini family had each other’s backs, she knew now more than ever that she wanted a family, love, a marriage of her own.
And what had she done? Only gone and fallen in love with a man who wanted none of that.
‘Cancel your meeting with your friend.’
Carly startled at the soft plea in Max’s words. He looked as though he really wanted to spend the day with her. Images of the three of them out on the lake, eating a lazy lunch in a waterside restaurant, had her wavering. But no. She was going to stay strong.
She shrugged, said, ‘I don’t want to,’ before dropping to her knees to pick up the army of soft toys Isabella had scattered around the room.
She ignored Max when he said Luciana would take care of the tidying.
About to crawl behind the toy kitchen to rescue a dejected-looking toy pig, she came to a halt when Max’s feet stepped in to block her way.
Sorely tempted to push him out of the way, she had enough sense to know that she would have little hope of budging him. This was the man who had effortlessly pinned her to the bed with his legs last night as his mouth wreaked havoc on her never-before-so-sensitive breasts. The pain had been delicious.
Now, she rocked back onto her haunches and glared up at him.
He didn’t move an inch.
‘I’d like to see you again in London.’
For a moment elation steamed through her. She was going to see him again! But then cold reality slammed into her. She nodded, smoothed her hands over her blue trousers. ‘In a professional capacity, I assume.’
* * *
Glaring up at him, her cheeks flushed, a toy silver tiara on her head, Carly looked like an angry princess from one of Isabella’s story books.
Max couldn’t decide whether to crouch down and pull her into his arms or to back right off. This conversation wasn’t going the way he had anticipated. This morning when he had woken at his usual time of five, for the first time in years he hadn’t felt the need to jump right out of bed in a bid to ignore the loneliness that had been slowly eating him away.
Instead he had wanted to stay with Carly’s body pushed against his. To make love with her again. But it was that thought, that...inevitability that had seen him reluctantly climb out of the bed and dive into the pool.
Last night, their lovemaking had been hot and wild at first, a crazy, lustful, head-spinning, time-stopping exploration of each other’s bodies. But when he had carried her to his bedroom, Carly’s giggles had faded, and when he had laid her down on his bed, everything had shifted between them. He had seen in her eyes the same tenderness, vulnerability, uncertainty grabbing his heart. They both knew that making love in the intimacy of his bedroom would change things. It would shift their relationship up a gear.
He had offered to take her back to her bedroom but she had said no, said that she wanted to spend the night with him.
Their lovemaking had been slow, tentative, achingly delicate...as though it had been the first time for them both.
He had made love to Carly with his heart jammed with emotion, his skin tingling with the connection, the consuming need burning between them.
When he had ploughed through the pool earlier this morning he had had to stop and pull himself out of the water, disorientated, breathless at just how close he felt to her, at the speed of what was happening between them. He needed to slow everything down, to back off from making love together for a while. Instead he wanted to get to know Carly fully without the emotional minefield of sex.
He knew it would be torture to see her and not act on the chemistry that detonated between them whenever they were in the same room. But they had both been hurt in the past, they needed to take things more slowly. He wanted to show Carly just how much he wanted her in his life but he didn’t want to scare her away. So he had cleared his appointments for later today, intent on spending time with her. But Carly obviously had other ideas.
He backed up two steps, creating enough distance to ensure he couldn’t touch her, and crouched down.
He picked up a purple plastic mirror and tossed it into the apple-green toy box Carly had been dragging behind her in her clean-up, trying not to let his nervousness and doubts show. ‘I want to see you outside work—maybe we could go on a date?’
Carly sat back on her heels. ‘Why?’
Taken aback by the coolness of her tone, the defensiveness in her eyes, Max wondered if he had read this all wrong. He certainly was out of practice with everything to do with dating. Panic rolled like waves in his stomach. He stood and went to the bedroom windows and breathed in some fresh air. From the lake he could hear a father on an outboard calling out instructions to the child who was alongside him sailing a dinghy and failing to catch the wind.
He turned, trying to ignore his male pride, trying to ignore the fear, the dread, the apprehension of inviting someone into his life. ‘I enjoy your company. You’re fun...even if your jokes aren’t great.’
Given Carly’s unimpressed scowl, he reckoned his attempt at humour had died.
Building bricks and trains and dolls were all gathered up and thrown into the toy box, which was then tidied away beside the bedroom’s bookcase, before Carly stood and regarded him with her hands on her hips. ‘So we’ll meet as friends?’
‘Yes.’
Her eyes narrowed, her lips pursed. ‘I’ve enough friends, Max.’
He flinched at the coldness of her voice. He studied her for a moment, trying to figure out how to make all of this okay. ‘We can be friends at first...then we can see how things work out.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Let’s date for a while, see how we get on. I want you in our life.’
Her nose flared and she tossed her head back. ‘Why?’
Her tone was blunt, hacked off. He rolled his neck against the stiffness there. ‘We’re good together.’
Carly folded her arms, clearly unimpressed. He stumbled on. ‘Maybe things can become more permanent between us after a while...it’s too early to say if they will, of cours
e. There’s no point in rushing things, is there?’
Glancing back at Isabella, who was busy baking and cooking at the toy kitchen, Sunny sitting in the tiny sink, watching the proceedings, Carly stepped closer to him and whispered, ‘Permanent?’
He hesitated for a moment... Dio! Why was she looking for so many answers? This was all getting out of control. He fought the urge to walk away, a primal fear gripping his heart, a fear of loving again and losing that person. But the need to keep Carly in their lives had him say, ‘Maybe you’ll move in with us.’
Carly shook her head. ‘Look, Max, it was a good weekend. Let’s not overcomplicate this.’
‘Isabella will miss you.’ Carly’s furious expression had him rush on, gesturing to the villa, to the lake outside. ‘I can give you a good life—we’ll travel, come here to Lake Como.’
Carly stepped even closer, her blue eyes sparking. ‘I don’t want your money, your lifestyle. My job is in London. I don’t have the time to be travelling or coming here with you.’
Thrown by her outright rejection, Max asked, ‘So is this it? You don’t want to meet me again?’
Carly bit her lip. ‘Outside of you being my client, no. It’s for the best.’
Max inhaled a breath before pointing towards the door. ‘You go and pack. I’ll finish up here.’
‘I’m almost done and I’ve promised Isabella that I’ll take her out to the swings once we’re packed.’
Max went and picked up Isabella. If Carly did not want to be part of their lives, then he wasn’t going to beg her...or prolong this goodbye. Anger, disbelief, hurt pride welled up inside him with a crushing intensity. ‘I’ll take care of Isabella. Go and pack. We’ll leave for the airport immediately.’
* * *
Max’s car passed a signpost for Regent’s Park and London Zoo. For a moment Carly was about to turn around to Isabella and ask if she’d like to go there, to visit a real-life Sunny in the elephant enclosure. When she’d been writing Sleepy Heads in Sleep World she had often visited the zoo to observe the animals for inspiration. But she caught herself in time, the sensation of Max’s gaze on her having her sitting ramrod straight in the passenger seat next to Max’s driver, Thomas.
Resisting the Italian Single Dad Page 15