And if she knew anything about Cristiano Cassara, it was that he was never a fool.
That didn’t make her feelings hurt any less, but it felt better to think about things practically. No matter how impractical she might feel on the inside.
Her mobile buzzed in her pocket and she pulled it out, not surprised to see that she’d missed a host of messages from Fleurette.
Did you tell him?
Was it terrible?
Are you okay?
She texted back.
I told him. He is confirming paternity.
And she slid her phone back in her pocket and muted it, because she knew too well what her sister’s response to that would be.
After what seemed to her like a very long time, sitting there in silence in a house that was no longer hers—and had never been hers, if she was honest, or ever felt like more than the gift it had always been that she’d tried so hard to earn—she heard a noise at the door.
Julienne knew all she needed to about herself when her heart leaped at the notion that it might be him.
It wasn’t.
“Have you booked into a hotel, Ms. Boucher?” the man who stood there asked with a certain level of calm deference, as if Julienne might not recall that this was Massimo, Cristiano’s secretary.
And Massimo was perfectly polite, as always. There was no reason for Julienne to interpret his question as aggressive. Or snide in some way.
Don’t go making intrigue when there is only inquiry, she cautioned herself.
She named the hotel she’d checked into this morning, feeling outside herself as Massimo nodded, then withdrew.
And she was staring at her hands again when she felt the air change.
Because he didn’t make a sound. Not one single sound.
There was that sense of some sort of disturbance, that was all. The hair on the back of her neck prickled. And Cristiano was there when she looked up, filling the doorway that led to the rest of the house and staring at her with that same raw fury making his dark eyes burn.
There were so many things she ought to have said. Julienne struggled to find the right words, but her tongue felt stiff. Heavy.
She realized then that she could still taste him on her tongue. That he could likely taste her, too.
Somehow, that made it all worse.
Her throat was tight. She couldn’t tell if it was a sob or a scream. Or merely his name again.
And she understood as she stared back at him mutely that she’d been wrong about him all this time. Because she remembered him across all those years before that night in his hotel room in Monte Carlo. She remembered how cold and remote she’d thought him then. Always.
But she realized that he had not been cold at all.
Because now it was as if he was a block of frozen granite encased in sheets of ice.
His dark, bittersweet eyes glittered, but that was the only suggestion of heat she could see in him.
Everything else was ice. And the tension between them.
Taut. Harsh.
Julienne almost wished that he would say something. Do something. Even if it was terrible. Anything had to be better than this horrible silence.
She made herself swallow, though she felt as if there were knives in her throat. Perhaps actual knives would have been an improvement.
She swallowed again. Then cleared her throat. “If this situation is as terrible for you as it appears to be, I have a solution. I am perfectly happy to raise—”
“I would strongly suggest that you not finish that thought,” Cristiano belted out, and she wished, then, that she had not been so desperate for him to speak.
Because it was worse when he did. His voice was so frigid she felt...chapped. And more, as if she was shaking apart at the seams, though it all seemed to be entirely inside her. As if she was built on a flimsy foundation that could tip over at the slightest provocation.
As if she had already, the longer he trained that pitch-dark gaze of his on her.
“You are carrying my child,” he said, and there was no crack in his voice. No chink in the forbidding sheet of armor where his face should have been. Granite and ice. Ice and granite. “A boy.”
“I know I am, thank you.” Julienne forced a smile. “That’s why I’m here, Cristiano.”
“How could this happen?” he bit out. “And I would advise you not to get cute with me, Julienne. I understand the mechanics. But we used protection.”
“Did we?” She sucked in a breath when his expression got, if possible, more forbidding. “That is to say, I can’t claim that I was paying the slightest bit of attention.”
His gaze was like flint. “I always use protection.”
“So did my mother, as she liked to tell the world after a few drinks,” Julienne said, with perhaps more flippant dark humor than necessary. “And yet here Fleurette and I are.”
“What did you use?” he demanded. “Surely between the two of us, this should have been impossible.”
“Whether it should have been impossible or not, it happened. Six months ago. It isn’t going anywhere. He isn’t going anywhere.” But the way he was glaring at her seemed tinged with a kind of outrage, as if she’d done this to him. Deliberately. She blew out a breath. “And I was not using anything.”
“Do you have habit of propositioning men, hoping they take care of the practicalities, and then failing to pay attention either way?”
“I don’t have habit of men,” she retorted, not sure where this wellspring of dark humor had come from. But she laughed anyway. “There has only ever been the one.”
She saw his head tilt to the side, barely.
Barely.
And still, it was as if the room around them burst into flame.
Good job, Julienne, she snapped at herself. Remember how you weren’t going to tell him that? Ever?
Across from her, Cristiano had gone glacial. “I beg your pardon?”
Julienne winced. She’d never wanted to tell him this truth. She’d never planned to tell him anything. He hadn’t seemed to notice that night, and she’d assumed she’d never see him again. No need to burden him with the knowledge that he’d taken her virginity.
That was something she could hoard for herself. Like treasure.
But she rested her hands on the great roundness of her belly as she stared at him, so harsh and so bitterly cold, and really, what was the point of keeping these foolish secrets? What could any of it matter now?
“You do not habitually proposition men, is that what you’re telling me?” he asked when she did nothing but gaze at him, and it was more knives then, slicing deep.
“I do not. Habitually or otherwise.”
The tension between them rose even higher. She could hear it pressing against her ears. Making her head ache.
“I don’t really know how to answer that,” she continued brightly. “Perhaps I’ll begin a habit of propositioning men, now that I am involved in so many new things.” She rubbed her belly, and somehow found herself smiling at him over the child they’d made. The child. She forgave him his response because she wasn’t exactly at peace with it herself. How could she blame him? “You were the first. And yes, before you ask. The first proposition. The first man. The first father to my first baby.”
A terrible storm moved over his face, though his only physical reaction was the way his jaw worked. He looked away then, and she watched him press his finger and thumb to either side of his nose.
Fighting back something. She told herself she was glad.
But she found she was breathing far too heavily anyway.
“Very well then,” he said after a long while, like a man facing the gallows. “It is done.”
Julienne could still feel that shaking thing, making her feel fluttery inside in all the wrong ways. But she made herself laugh anyw
ay.
“It’s a baby, Cristiano. Not a harbinger of the end of days.”
It seemed to take him a lifetime for him to turn his head back to her. And she wished he hadn’t when that dark gaze of his landed on her with the weight of a great stone. Pressing the air from her lungs. Pressing the laughter out of her as if it had never been.
“I’m thrilled you find this so entertaining,” he said, every syllable an accusation. More than an accusation, a verdict. And if a man’s gaze could be a prison, she was sure she could see the metal doors clang shut all around her. Trapping her there in all that condemnation and cold. “I had no intention of continuing the Cassara bloodline.”
Her mouth was dry while curiously, her palms were damp. “Surely continuing the bloodline is the first and foremost responsibility of a man of your position.”
“Not for me.” Again, that muscle in his jaw told her long, involved stories about how furious he was without him having to say a word. “My grandfather had two sons. One of them was by all accounts a good man, a credit to my grandfather, and an excellent steward of both the Cassara name and fortune. The other was my father. Miserable. Vicious. And deeply committed only to the bottle, never his family. Never his responsibilities. My uncle died in his twenties in a boating accident, taking my grandfather’s dearest dreams with him. That left my father as the heir. To say that he was unable to live up to the expectations placed upon him would be to greatly understate the case.”
He shook his head, but it looked like fury to Julienne, not sadness or loss, or even disappointment. “He bullied my mother. He would have treated me worse, had my grandfather not taken me in hand. But I vowed to myself a long time ago that it would end with me. I would never, ever take the risk that I would produce more Cassaras like my father.”
“Then we won’t.” Julienne lifted her chin as she stared back at him. “This baby has just as much a chance to be a saint like your uncle as it does to turn out like your father.”
“If you knew my father, you would understand that the risk is unacceptable.”
“No one is born bad, Cristiano. They’re made that way. The good news is, that means we can do our best to make sure we go in the opposite direction.”
“Let us be clear what is at stake in this,” Cristiano said darkly. “It is not simply a fortune. A corporation. The world is filled with both. It is also all the lives that hang in the balance of those things. Do you know how many people I employ? If I had been a man like my father, they all would have been ruined years ago. And you should be aware, Julienne, that I am more like my father than you would ever wish to know.”
“That’s ridiculous—” she began.
“A good man would never have touched you,” he gritted out. “Much less the way I touched you, no matter what invitations you offered me after so many years. There is a darkness in me. There always has been, but you... You bring it out. And I can tell you from my experience with my own parents that such a darkness is no place to raise a child.”
Her throat hurt again, and she had the sudden, terrible fear that it was tears waiting there, threatening to come out.
“I’ve already told you this, but you don’t have to be involved,” she managed to say, trying not to let her voice sound so thick. So obvious. And ignoring that sharp, stabbing sort of pain in her heart. “No one need ever know you have a son but you and me. I will take this baby away and raise him in Seattle, where he will grow up wrapped in flannel and immersed in technology, and who knows? Perhaps he will never come to Italy at all. It will be like it never happened.”
And she could see that life stretch out before her, bright in its way and good, too—because she and Fleurette would care for this baby. They would devote themselves to him. They would do what they could to make sure he wanted for nothing.
But that sharp thing in her chest made it clear that wasn’t the life she wanted. For her or the baby.
How had she managed to hide that from herself before now?
“I’m afraid that is impossible.” And for a moment, Julienne could almost have sworn that the expression on Cristiano’s face was that sadness, that loss, she’d been searching for before. “I don’t know what you were expecting when you came here. But I will tell you now how it will be.”
A kind of foreboding struck at her then, turning over inside her like a hot spike of pain. Of heat. Of something in between the two she wasn’t sure she could name. “You don’t get to decide how it will be.”
His lips moved into something wholly mirthless, and darker than before. “My grandfather has an estate in Tuscany. It is quite remote, and will be a more than suitable place for you during your confinement.”
“My...what did you say? My what?”
“I still don’t know what you meant about your sister and you taking turns, but if that means that she must remain in Seattle, so be it. I’m not convinced that I care for her influence over you anyway.”
Julienne let out something like a laugh. “You must have lost your mind.”
“We already know that you have a habit of disappearing, Julienne.” Those dark eyes glittered. “You will go to Tuscany. You will have the baby. And the two of you will remain there.”
She was panting, her heart punching hard in her chest, but when he only gazed back at her as if what he’d said was perfectly reasonable, she found herself laughing again. In amazement.
“And how long will we remain there? The rest of our lives?”
His eyes glittered, glacial and harsh. “I can’t say.”
“You can’t say because it’s absurd. You can’t really think that I’m going to let you hide me away somewhere. I have no desire to raise my child in a prison, thank you. Even one in scenic Tuscany.”
“I’m afraid you will find that is not up to you to let me do anything,” he replied, too softly “It is done.”
She shot to her feet, cursing her new, pregnant body and how unsteady it made her feel on her own feet. And now the trembling inside of her had spread to the rest of her limbs. Now she simply shook, and there was no way he didn’t see it.
He saw it, all right. What was clear was that he didn’t care.
“This is not the stone age, Cristiano. What you’re talking about is illegal. Kidnap. False imprisonment. Do you want me to go on?”
“You’re welcome to put your complaint in writing, of course.” His gaze was impassive. His expression like stone. “You are no longer employed by the company and can therefore claim no access to the human resources department, but I’ll be certain to read any complaint of yours as closely as it deserves.”
He only watched her as she gaped at him, and she couldn’t help another incredulous laugh. “I’m not going to go with you, Cristiano. I will never, ever sign up to be locked away in some tower in the middle of nowhere, with or without my baby.”
“Do you have an alternative?” he asked her quietly, that glittering thing in his gaze a weapon. And he’d hit his mark, dead center. “Ask yourself this, please. Can you run from me? And if you do, do you truly believe I will not catch you?”
“Cristiano...” she whispered, though she had the terrible feeling it was already too late.
And that his name was less a song on her lips tonight than it had been once.
Especially when his mouth moved into that grim, hard line. “The question is not whether or not I can do what I wish. It is not even whether or not I should. The question is, Julienne, what can you possibly do to stop me?”
CHAPTER SIX
THE VILLA CASSARA was as beautiful as it was quietly renowned. It was a triumph of Italian country glory set down to make the most of the gentle Tuscan hills where, it was rumored, Cassaras had dreamed of sweet things for many generations.
Julienne had been a little too aware of the difference between reality and corporate marketing after all her years as a glorified candy seller, but that didn�
��t make the Cassara family home any less impressive. If she’d been an invited guest, she would no doubt have called the place a paradise.
But the villa wasn’t hers for a holiday. It was a prison. And it didn’t matter how beautiful a prison was. What mattered was that she couldn’t leave it as she chose.
Julienne had succumbed with embarrassingly little trouble. Cristiano had been implacable, as ever, but worse—he’d been correct. She could not outrun him. She certainly couldn’t fight him off.
She was six months pregnant and more debilitating by far, she had lost her heart to him a long time ago.
And so she had clung to what shreds of dignity she had remaining. She had let him march her out of the house where she and Fleurette had once lived—where she had made him into a myth in her head. A legend of all that was good and right, when maybe that had been nothing but a fairy tale a lost girl told herself as she figured out how to find her way out of her own dark woods.
She rather thought it said unfortunate things about her that she felt more grief over the loss of her made-up version of Cristiano than she did about the fact he handed her into another car, escorted her to the Cassara Corporation offices, then took her to the roof where the Duomo rose in the distance. There he’d strapped her into his waiting helicopter.
Her priorities had shifted around when he hadn’t boarded the helicopter himself, but let her fly away with his staff instead. She’d had nothing to do but think about the appropriate things to grieve as they flew through the night, away from the lights of Milan, then south toward Florence and the Tuscan countryside.
In the dark, as the helicopter came in to land, it was entirely too easy to see that there was absolutely nothing rolling out in all directions. Nothing but a vast inky black stretch, with only the villa casting off light, a small bright beacon in all the dark.
Her first, panicked assessment had not been wrong.
The next morning, Julienne had woken up in the room that the smiling housekeeper had escorted her to the night before. The room could easily have starred in a magazine spread on the wonders of Italian villas. Outside her windows, it didn’t look any more real. It was a glorious stretch of pretty fields toward the horizon, the view studded with cypress trees, red poppies and purples wisteria.
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