by Jane Porter
“But you don’t have a boyfriend.”
“Heavens, no,” she choked, face hot. “I’d never kiss you if I did, and I haven’t had a relationship in years.” It was more than that. She hadn’t ever had a serious boyfriend or a first lover, but she wouldn’t confess the entire truth. It’d be too mortifying if he knew.
“Why not?”
“For the same reason you prefer to live here, instead of Rome. I’m a solitary creature. I like my space.”
“Even though I barely know you, I have to say I don’t believe you.” He ran a fingertip over her cheekbone and then around her ear. “You strike me as someone who very much needs people. Provided they are the right people.”
She was lost, looking into his eyes. He was right. She did need people, good people. It was hard being responsible for everyone and everything. Hard having to be the grown-up, from a very young age. But she’d rather be the grown-up and do the right thing, than be impulsive and hurt Michael and the need for stability in his future. “I agree with you,” she said, drawing away. “But I also know that you aren’t one of those people for me.”
He gave her a look she couldn’t decipher. “I’m not in the habit of arguing with women.”
“Good.”
“But I’m going to prove you wrong.”
Her heart did a funny little flutter that made her breathless and hurt all at the same time. “Please don’t. I’m only here for a few days. Let’s focus on Michael. He’s what’s important.” She climbed one step and then another until she reached the landing, and then paused to look down at Giovanni. Her heart did another painful beat. “Tomorrow let’s sort this out for his sake, please. I need to return to Seattle.”
“Is that the best thing for Michael? Or the best thing for you?”
She frowned. “It’s the best thing for both of us.”
“I’m not sure anymore that it is.”
Her heart fell. She was right. He was changing his mind. He wanted Michael to stay here. He wanted Michael in Venice. Her eyes stung and her throat ached.
Before she broke down in tears, or said something she’d regret, Rachel fled.
* * *
Gio stood on the marble stair and watched Rachel disappear down the hallway, her footsteps practically flying in her need to escape.
He exhaled shortly. Tonight had not gone as planned, and what had taken place in the library, that was wrong. He knew he was at fault, too. The entire scene weighed on him. His stomach felt like he’d been chewing on rocks and glass.
He didn’t understand how he’d lost control of the situation so fast, and so completely. One minute they were discussing the newspaper headlines, and the next they were battling about ambitious Juliet whom Giovanni loathed, and then somehow Rachel was part of the fight and at the receiving end of his frustration and fury.
He didn’t actually believe Rachel was Juliet’s matchmaker, and he certainly didn’t think she’d benefited in any way from Juliet’s schemes, but Juliet was as amoral as they came. To pursue a dying man? To deliberately get pregnant, not caring that you were creating a life where the child would never know his or her own father?
Gio was far from perfect. As Rachel had said, he was driven and ambitious, but there had to be a line one didn’t cross. Juliet had no such scruples, and she’d needlessly complicated Antonio’s final year, creating pain not just for Antonio, but the whole family.
But tonight his frustration wasn’t with Juliet. It was with himself.
Why was he so intent on provoking Rachel? Why did he want to test her, tease her, draw a response from her?
What did he want from her?
But that was actually easy. What didn’t he want from her?
She’d woken him, and the desire consumed him. It had been far too long since he’d felt emotion, or hunger, and he felt both now.
He wanted her. And he would have her.
CHAPTER EIGHT
HE’D GONE TO bed tense, and then woke in the middle of the night to the sound of a baby crying.
It wasn’t an ear-piercing cry, but more fretful and prolonged. Giovanni rolled onto his back, smashing his pillow behind his head, and listened, eyes closed, to the wail coming from down the hall, realizing that he’d heard the crying even in his sleep and had incorporated the sound in his dream.
It hadn’t been a pleasant dream, either. He’d been talking with Antonio and they’d argued, and he didn’t remember what they were arguing about but it was tense, and Antonio turned around to face him, and as he turned the baby was there in his arms. And then the baby was crying, and Antonio blamed him for upsetting Michael, and Giovanni answered that he’d done nothing and that’s when he woke up.
And heard the baby crying down the hall in his room.
Was no one going to the baby? Could Rachel not hear him? Or had something happened to Rachel?
Giovanni flipped the covers back and climbed from the bed, throwing his robe on over his pajama bottoms. The pale green room was dimly lit, illuminated only by a small night-light. In the soft yellow glow he could see Rachel holding Michael and patting his back, crooning in his ear but the baby cried on, miserable.
She was facing the oil landscape on the wall, gently jiggling the baby as she studied the scene, unaware that she was being watched. She really was good with Michael, he thought, very much the mother the baby needed.
They would both stay here with him, he decided. It was logical. It made sense. Michael needed Rachel, and Giovanni wanted both Michael and Rachel...
“Is this normal?” he asked, approaching them.
She startled, turning quickly to face him. “He’s teething. It makes him fretful. But he’s not settling down and he feels warm to me. He might be coming down with something, which would explain why he’s been not quite himself the past few days.”
“He’s running a fever?”
“I think so.”
“You haven’t checked?”
She gave him a look he couldn’t decipher. “I didn’t bring a thermometer with me, but I’ll go buy one in the morning. You must have a pharmacy nearby, and if he’s feverish, I’ll take him to the doctor and have him checked out, just in case.” She pressed her lips to the top of the baby’s head. “Sorry to have disturbed you but we’re fine.”
She turned her back on him as she walked away, pacing back across the room, crooning in the fretful baby’s ear. In her pink robe, with her hair loose over her shoulders, she was small and delicate and very, very appealing.
His body hardened. He wanted her—in his bed, and out of bed. But she was wary of him, almost skittish. “Do you want me to take a turn with him?” he offered. “Could you use a break?”
“I’m fine.”
“You always say that.”
“Because I am fine.”
“Even when you’re desperate, you’re fine?”
She laughed softly. “I try very hard not to be hysterical. I don’t enjoy the state of desperation.”
Rachel blinked when Giovanni laughed, the sound low and husky. It was the first time she’d heard him laugh without mockery, and there was something in his voice, something in his amusement that thrilled her, making her flush with pleasure, her skin tingling, her body responding. It took so little for him to wake her up, make her come alive.
“You have a sense of humor,” he said.
“Not according to my mother.” But her lips curved wryly. “She thought I needed a sense of humor, at least when it came to Juliet.”
“How so?”
“I think she expected me to enjoy Juliet’s adventures and triumphs more. Instead I was me. Difficult, prickly porcupine Rachel.” She tried to smile again, but it felt tight and uncomfortable. “And to be fair, I wasn’t amused by Juliet. She was a lot of work and demanded a lot of Mother’s time. Or maybe Mother just preferred to focus on Juliet. Juliet was the beautiful daughter after all, and charming and admired by many. It gave my mother great pleasure to show her off.”
“Was your moth
er beautiful?”
“No. She looked like me.”
“You are beautiful.”
Rachel sputtered. “Hardly. I’m fairly utilitarian, but that’s okay. I’ve had twenty-eight years to come to terms with my attractiveness, or lack of—”
“Are you being serious?”
“Yes, and I don’t want compliments. I don’t need them. But I have a mirror, and a phone. I’m on social media. I know what beautiful is, and I know what society likes—”
“Society!” he scoffed. “And social media? You allow such things to influence you?”
“I know what’s beautiful. Classical features. High cheekbones. Full, plumped lips. Flawless skin. I don’t have any of that. My nose is too long, my mouth is too wide, my jaw is too strong, my eyes are a little too close—” She flushed, appalled that she’d said so much.
“I don’t agree with you. Not at all.”
“I’m not surprised. We don’t agree on almost anything.” She turned away, walking with Michael to the curtained window. She’d pushed the heavy silk drapes open earlier so she could see out. The tall houses across the narrow canal were dark but streetlights illuminated the sidewalk and cast a reflecting glimmer on the water. Venice looked so mysterious at night, with its labyrinth of canals and bridges, arches and hidden squares. It would be fun to explore the city at night, maybe even take one of those touristy ghost tours. Not that she wanted to encounter any ghosts.
“Are you really in danger of losing your job?” he asked, breaking the silence.
Rachel drew a slow breath, and then nodded. “I’ve used up all my sick days and vacation days, floating days and every unpaid leave day I could take. But management wants me back, or they need to hire someone else.”
“Would you really miss work if they let you go?”
She glanced at him over her shoulder. “I love planes. I really like my job. It’s exciting to be in the same field as my father. Admittedly, I’m not an aeronautical engineer, but I have his same passion for flight...it’s exhilarating.”
“So you really don’t want me to support you. You don’t want to stay home.”
She hesitated. “Does that make me a bad woman?”
“Of course not.”
“Did your mother work?”
“No.” He laughed, a low mocking sound. “Her job was to look beautiful and spend money. She did both, quite well.”
“Have any of your girlfriends worked?”
He took his time answering, and when he did, he was brief. “I don’t really have girlfriends.”
“No? What do you have?”
“Mistresses.”
“How does a mistress differ from a girlfriend?”
“There is no emotional entanglement. It’s a physical relationship.” As if reading her confusion, he added bluntly. “I don’t love them. And they don’t love me.”
“What do they get out of the relationship then, besides sex?”
“Great sex. And gifts.”
Her brows arched. “That sounds horrible. Have there been many?”
His mouth curved, a crooked mocking smile. “I’m in my late thirties. So yes, there have been many.”
“What are they like? Do you have a type?”
He leaned against the wall, hands buried in the robe pockets. The robe was pulling open, revealing the hard, muscular plane of his chest and a hint of his carved, chiseled torso. “I make it a point not to discuss past relationships.”
She forced her attention from his incredibly fit body to his ruggedly handsome face. “I suspect it’s not because you’re protecting them, but because you don’t like remembering. For you, there is no point in remembering. What’s done is done. What’s gone is gone.”
Gio’s black brow lifted. “You presume to know me?”
She shrugged. “You’re an engineer. I work with engineers every day. You’re all excessively practical.”
“Next thing I know you’ll be saying we lack imagination.”
“Not so. You have excellent imaginations. If you didn’t, how would you problem-solve? You have to imagine something to be able to build it.”
“You fascinate me, bella.”
“I doubt that very much.”
* * *
His gaze met hers and held. He looked at her so intently that he made her grow warm all over again.
“I like smart women,” he said quietly. “I like successful women. I wouldn’t say I have a type but I am drawn to brunettes with interesting faces—mouths that are generous, noses that aren’t too short or small, jaws that aren’t weak.”
Heat rushed through her, even as her stomach turned inside out.
She didn’t know where to look, or what to do. Spellbound, she stared across the room at a man who was absolutely larger than life and beyond anything she could have imagined for her. There was no reason he should like her, or be fascinated by her.
When little spots appeared before her eyes she realized she needed to breathe, and she dragged in a breath, dizzy, and dazed.
He couldn’t possibly be serious, and yet he didn’t seem to be laughing at her, or mocking her. He wasn’t even smiling.
No, he looked very hard and very virile and far too self-assured. What she wouldn’t give to have that kind of confidence.
Heart hammering, she glanced down at the baby in her arms. Michael had finally fallen asleep, his plump cheek pressed to her breast, his thumb against his mouth. He was so sweet, so beautiful. She loved him so much.
“He’s out,” she said. “I think he’ll sleep the rest of the night without any more tears.”
“That’s good.”
“It is,” she agreed, kissing the baby again before crossing to his crib. Bending over, she carefully placed him on his back. In his sleep, Michael sighed and stretched, tiny fingers opening and then relaxing. She watched him a moment, suffused with so many different emotions. Love, tenderness, worry, hope.
Across the room she heard a soft click. Rachel looked up only to discover that Gio was gone.
* * *
Rachel woke up to a still dark room that was quiet and cool. Far too quiet and cool. Glancing to the door separating her room from Michael’s, she saw that it was closed. Throwing back the covers, she raced from bed to yank the door open. The curtains had been drawn and the room was filled with a watery light. She’d taken several steps into the green room when she spotted Mrs. Fabbro walking past the tall arched windows, talking away to Michael in Italian, while Michael babbled back, as if the two were deep in conversation.
Rachel’s pulse still pounded, and yet her lips curved into a faint smile.
Michael seemed to adore the older Italian woman.
Mrs. Fabbro spotted Rachel. “Buongiorno,” she said, nodding her gray head.
“Is it very late?” Rachel asked.
Mrs. Fabbro didn’t seem to understand the question, but she crossed to the wall, and pressed a button. “Signor Marcello vi aspetta.”
Rachel didn’t understand Mrs. Fabbro, either. She walked over and held her hands out, gesturing that she’d like to take the baby.
Mrs. Fabbro seemed most reluctant to hand Michael over, but after a hesitation, she did.
Rachel nuzzled Michael’s warm cheek. He smelled sweet and fresh. He must have had a bath this morning. “Has he eaten?” she asked. “Uh... Bottiglia di latte?” she stammered, trying to remember the words for bottle, or milk.”
“Si. Due.”
“He has.” Gio’s deep male voice came from behind her. “Two.”
“Two?” Rachel said. “He never drinks that much when he wakes up.”
“It’s nearly noon. He’s been up for hours.”
Her jaw dropped. “I had no idea. I can’t believe I slept that long.”
“I told everyone you weren’t to be disturbed, and Signora Fabbro has enjoyed her time with Michael. You’re going to find it difficult to keep him out of her arms. She loves babies and children. She hates it when they grow up.”
“D
id she come with good references?”
“The best. She was Antonio’s and my nanny.” His expression softened as he looked at her. “I didn’t tell her Michael was Antonio’s until today. But I couldn’t deny it when she asked.”
“She guessed?”
“She knew he had to be mine, or his. He’s very much a Marcello.”
“You see the resemblance?”
“I do.”
“Are you still going to run another DNA test?”
“It won’t change the outcome, will it?”
Rachel shook her head.
“You used a reputable company for the testing. It’s a company I’ve used before—” He frowned, a crease forming between his strong black brows.
“You must be hungry.”
His abrupt change of subject made Rachel curious. What else was he going to say? “You’ve done DNA testing before, then?”
“It’s getting close to lunch. We should talk, after we’ve eaten.”
He wasn’t going to tell her, was he? Rachel hugged Michael, savoring his sweetness, and the light clean scent from his baby shampoo. “I can’t think of food until I have my coffee.”
“Are you a big coffee drinker?”
“I live in Seattle. We like our coffee.” The baby clearly didn’t want to be held so tightly. He wiggled and pushed back against her chest. Smiling, Rachel loosened her hold. “He’s feisty this morning. He’s definitely feeling better.”
Mrs. Fabbro now held her hands out, wanting to take Michael back. Her thin lips weren’t smiling and the expression in her dark eyes was somewhat intimidating.
“She really was your nanny?” Rachel asked, glancing from Mrs. Fabbro to Gio.
Gio grinned. For a split second he looked boyish and young. “She was,” he answered, still smiling. “She spoiled us rotten. She’s a pussycat. Don’t let her stern expression fool you.”
Rachel handed the squirming baby over and Mrs. Fabbro triumphantly marched away, putting distance between them. Rachel watched her walk off. “She didn’t need to send for you.”
“She rang for Anna. I happened to be closer.” Gio was also watching Mrs. Fabbro and Michael. “You don’t need to worry about him, not with her. She couldn’t have children of her own. Antonio and I became hers. She was very close to Antonio, so close that when he opened his own home in Florence, she went to oversee the house for him. She was still in his employ when he died.” Gio’s expression shifted, hardening. “After his death, I tried to bring her here, but she wouldn’t leave his house. She’s only here now because we finally closed his Florence villa and there was nowhere else to go.”