Sexy Billionaires

by Carol Marinelli

  Paolo faced him. ‘Dante, you’re my brother, I love you. I too went through what you did but it’s not your job to keep protecting me.’ His brother’s eyes flashed. ‘If you really want me to go ahead with the paternity test I will, but know this, it will only be for you and I will never look at it. I do not need proof that this is my baby. I know, and I love Melanie. We will be getting married. No matter what.’

  Dante felt as if he were trying to climb up an incredibly steep and slippy slope. He put a heavy hand on Paolo’s shoulder. ‘I don’t want you to do the test. And I’m sorry for ever asking you and putting you through this.’

  His eyes asked his brother to forgive him and Paolo did, without question, straight away. Because he had been there too and he understood.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  ALICIA’S BACK TENSED when she sensed the brothers coming back into the room. She glanced up quickly and the bleak look on Dante’s face made her blood run cold. She avoided Melanie’s eye and looked at her hands.

  Dante came to the end of the bed and Alicia could hear the breath he took. When he spoke his voice was clipped. ‘Melanie, please accept my congratulations on your baby. You and Paolo have my best wishes and I am truly sorry for any hurt I may have caused.’

  Alicia sensed his eyes settle on her for a moment, like a flash of sun passing through the parting clouds, but she kept looking resolutely down at her hands.

  Her sister spoke with quiet dignity. Alicia saw Paolo take her hand. ‘Mr D’Aquanni, thank you. You have no need to apologise. I know what…’ She stopped for a second. ‘It doesn’t matter what I know. We’re all fine, Paolo and I are together and our baby is healthy; that’s all that matters.’

  Nobody moved for a long moment and then Alicia felt compelled against her will to look up. Her eyes clashed with Dante’s dark, intense gaze and she couldn’t look away. She started shaking her head even before the words came out. ‘Dante I’m not—’

  ‘Alicia, please, come with me now.’ His voice sounded strained.

  Alicia looked from one set of speculative eyes to the other. They didn’t need to hear this—this was between her and Dante. She remembered his look just now after seeing the baby and it had hardened and firmed her resolve.

  Before walking out of the clinic, though, she went and looked in on her niece for a long emotional moment. Dante watched her from a distance; he didn’t trust himself to go back and look at that tiny baby again.

  Outside the clinic Alicia felt a curious calm settle over her. Nothing could disguise the fact that seeing the baby—seeing his baby niece—had had little or no impact on Dante. And that meant that Alicia had to face facts. She couldn’t go on like this. It would kill her.

  She turned to face him as he was about to open the car door for her. His easy action angered her. Did he really think she was going to meekly jump into the car, pretend that the last twenty-four hours hadn’t happened?

  When Alicia didn’t move Dante looked at her sharply. ‘What is it?’

  Something in her expression made ice settle around his heart—the ice that had lodged there when he’d seen baby Lucia. Paolo and Melanie’s happiness had been almost too much to bear. It was so alien to him, that image…He needed to get back to terra firma. Away from here. With Alicia. He would take her back with him; they would sort things out, go on from there.

  ‘I’m not going with you.’

  Her voice cut through his thoughts. ‘What?’ He frowned and then an impatient look crossed his face. ‘Of course you are. I have to be back in Rome tonight. Come on, get in, it’s freezing.’

  Alicia was oblivious to the cold weather, the leaden skies.

  She shook her head. ‘No, I’m not going back. This is it, Dante. The end.’

  His hand fell from the car door. ‘Alicia, come on. We can talk about whatever is wrong in the car.’

  Whatever is wrong? Where would they start? This had nothing to do with Paolo and Melanie any more. This was them. The fact that Dante had been wrong all along was laughably beside the point.

  She shook her head and backed away slightly, arms around her belly, her eyes huge.

  A feeling moved through him, panic mixed with relief. ‘If you want to stay for a few days, that’s fine. I can send the plane back to get you when you’re ready…’ his mouth quirked tiredly ‘…or you can come economy if you insist, I know how you feel—’

  ‘No!’ She had to stop him, had to make him see. ‘You don’t understand. I mean I’m not coming back—at all. I want you to go now. I want to stay here. I know we’ll have to see each other again, at the wedding or…or whatever…’ already a knife was piercing her heart at that thought ‘…but that’s it, Dante. This affair is over.’

  A fierce elemental wave of possessiveness moved through him and he stepped forward. ‘No, it’s not. You don’t say when—I do.’

  ‘That’s just the problem,’ Alicia said sadly. ‘You will, one of these days, and I won’t be able to bear it.’

  He stopped advancing, exactly as she’d known and feared he would. She knew there was only one way to make Dante walk away—the only solution—because he was stubborn and determined and if he thought he could persuade her…she might still be too weak to resist.

  She tipped up her chin in that defiant way that had become so endearing to him but Dante wasn’t aware of the subliminal message. He was battling a cave man instinct to grab Alicia and pull her into the car. And yet something was keeping him from moving—she had said she wouldn’t be able to bear it.

  Against his will, he had to ask, ‘What do you mean?’

  Alicia took a deep breath. ‘What I mean, Dante…is that I’ve been stupid enough to fall in love with you.’ Her heart stopped for a brief, hopelessly hopeful, second. But when she saw the way his face leached of colour, the vaguely horror struck expression, she hardened her heart. This pain eclipsed anything she jad experienced before, but somehow she stayed standing.

  ‘You can’t have,’ he breathed, his mind seizing in shock. ‘I never asked you to fall in love with me.’

  Alicia would have smiled wryly if she’d had the wherewithal. ‘You can’t make someone fall in love with you, you can’t ask someone to fall in love with you…it’s uncontrollable.’ She didn’t know how she stood in the car park on that cold day and said the following words with such calm.

  ‘The heart wants what the heart wants…and my heart wants you, Dante. But I want it all, not just a temporary arrangement. I want the works. I want to be married, to have children…to know the joy that Melanie and Paolo know…I want to grow old with you. I want the full package…and I know you don’t want that; it’s glaringly obvious.’

  Something cynical lit Dante’s eyes at that moment, as if he’d seized on something in her words, and Alicia reacted with unchecked fury. Her arms dropped, she pointed a trembling finger at him. ‘Oh, no, you don’t, Dante D’Aquanni. Don’t you dare reduce what I’ve said to a cynical justification. I couldn’t care less if you were the king of Italy or that street kid grown up and waiting tables in Naples and you know it. So don’t you dare try that.’ She was shaking with emotion.

  His mouth opened and shut. She had caught him—pricelessly. With deadly accuracy. He felt removed from the situation. She was standing there, saying these words and he couldn’t feel anything. Like when he’d watched Lucia only moments before. As if a granite block was weighing him down inside. Yet again someone was asking him to believe, not to be cynical…and the pain of the last time when he had believed was still too memorable. Like a default mode, he went inwards. Self-protection.

  He stepped backwards to the car and said with a clipped finality that tore what was left of Alicia’s heart to shreds, ‘You seem to have it all figured out.’

  Alicia nodded. An aching sob built inside her. Dante was remote and calm and controlled. He didn’t have a heart. He’d lost it so long ago that now it was irredeemable.

  ‘Can I give you a lift somewhere?’

  Just like that
, he was already moving on. Alicia couldn’t stop a half hysterical gurgle of laughter breaking from her lips, and then a wave of weariness came over her. She shook her head. ‘No. Just go, Dante. Go home.’

  With barely a backward glance he got into the back of the car. Within seconds the door had shut and it was pulling away out of the car park, leaving her standing there, alone…and contemplating the advantages of very possibly fainting in such close proximity to a clinic.

  The mornings were the worst, when she would wake up and reach for Dante, only to find an empty, cold space. And then she would remember. One morning she’d groaned with the pain it had been so acute, and curled up into a ball. And she couldn’t help but go over every last bit of that fight they’d had in Milan; she could see now how fantastically coincidental her own admission that they had shared a similar past must have seemed, coming so close on the heels of his story.

  She knew instinctively that he’d believed her though when she’d mentioned records and the orphanage because that would have appealed to the logical side of him that would want proof. And, with his apology to Paolo and Melanie, she knew he’d finally accepted the full truth. How could he have looked at that tiny baby—so like Paolo—and not?

  But, despite all that, it was useless to obsess over words. He would never let someone into his heart because it was too late. He was full of demons and contradictions.

  That week, Alicia had stayed in a hostel near the clinic and in the mornings would rise and wash and go to visit Mel and Paolo. Even though it was obvious that they wondered what had happened, they never asked about her pale face or where Dante was. And then she would go back to the hostel in the afternoons and cry. Non stop. For being so stupid as to fall for a man as damaged as Dante.

  At the weekend she returned to the apartment in Oxford to pack up and move out. On Sunday morning she lay in bed and contemplated the cracks and peeling paint of the ceiling. Melanie had asked her to move into the London house with them. But that was Dante’s house; there was no way she could do that. She’d look for somewhere nearby and she would have to start looking for work. The door buzzer sounded and Alicia dragged herself out of bed. She felt about a hundred years old and she knew it would be old Mrs Smith from next door, wondering if she could get her some milk from the corner shop because she always called at the same time every day when they were home. She pulled on faded jeans and a sweatshirt.

  Alicia pulled the door back, pasting a fake smile on her face. ‘Good morning, Mrs Smith.’

  The old woman smiled at Alicia. ‘I’m so sorry to bother you, pet; it’s my hip, in this weather…’

  Alicia let her carry on as she pulled on shoes and a coat. ‘It’s no problem.’ Believe me, you’re doing me a favour; I could stay in bed for the rest of my life and never leave…

  As she came back into the little lane that led up to their doors, Alicia was looking at the paper she’d bought, unaware of the men standing at her doorway. She only noticed them when she looked up for a split second to see where she was going. She only saw one man, even though somewhere she had registered others too.

  The milk fell from suddenly nerveless hands, breaking open and splashing all over the ground and her shoes. The paper followed. Shock and pain slammed into her and she finally moved for sanctuary, to her door, pushing past, willing herself not to be aware of his presence. ‘No…no, leave me alone, Dante. Just leave me be.’

  She couldn’t get the key in the lock because her hand was shaking too much. He plucked it from her hand and turned her to face him. He looked awful. He looked grey; deep lines marked his face, his eyes were bloodshot. She hadn’t really taken his appearance in at first, too stunned. All antipathy flew out of the window. She reacted on pure instinct, almost reaching out a hand.

  ‘Dante…my God, what is it, you look—’

  ‘About as bad as you, I’d say.’ His voice was hoarse.

  She knew she did look bad, after a week of incessant crying over this man who didn’t even deserve it. Pain flooded back. She rediscovered her backbone. ‘If you’ve come here just to insult me—’

  ‘I haven’t. Dio—’ he ran a hand through his hair, which seemed to have grown longer in just a week ‘—isn’t it obvious?’

  She was tight-lipped, barely holding on to some control. ‘Not to me it’s not.’

  He stood back a little and, perversely, Alicia wanted to grab him and hit him and kiss him all at the same time. He looked to the two men who were beside him and Alicia blanched slightly. And then she recognized them. It was the reporter and photographer from that first night at Dante’s villa on Lake Como—the local paparazzi. They were looking dazed, out of place, as if they’d just been beamed from another planet.

  Déjà vu made her dizzy. She looked from them to him with what she knew must be a stupid look on her face. ‘Why are they here?’

  Dante looked grim. ‘I brought them with me to bear witness.’ His mouth twisted. ‘Flew them here on my plane, which is an extravagance you’ll just have to forgive me.’

  Alicia’s mouth opened and closed. And she watched, struck dumb, as Dante knelt down on two knees before her, in a puddle of milk.

  ‘Alicia, I was a fool. A stupid, blind idiot. I walked away from you and told myself I didn’t need you, didn’t want you, didn’t love you…’

  Alicia was feeling light-headed. Still they didn’t touch. He was looking up at her and she couldn’t move.

  ‘You were right. The heart knows what it wants, and my heart wants you. Needs you. Loves you. The past week has shown me what a future without you in it would be like…’ He shook his head and, amazingly, moisture glistened in his eyes. ‘I could hardly last a week, how did I ever think I could last a lifetime? It took the thought of seeing you at some family function, but not being able to touch you or talk to you to finally crack open my heart, and when I thought about how I would feel if I saw you with another man…’ He shuddered visibly. ‘Not even seeing my own baby niece, who is called after my mother, could do it.’

  He bowed his head for a moment before looking up again. ‘When this all blew up, it had such parallels to what had happened before…I was jealous that Paolo had the gall to fall in love and believe that everything could be OK. With no cynicism, no suspicion. And then you came along, like a tiny tornado, and from that first moment…I was yours. But I fought it—fought it all the way, right to the bitter end. I twisted everything you did to see the worst possible aspect because I was too much of a coward to trust in something good. To be optimistic.’

  Alicia felt her own eyes start to water and she furiously blinked to keep it out. Her throat swallowed convulsively. This had to be a dream but the presence of the other two men grounded her in reality. Fantastic reality. Unreal reality.

  Dante took her chilled hands in his. ‘Please tell me it’s not too late.’

  Alicia shook her head, her eyes watering in earnest now. She didn’t know what to say, where to start. Her heart felt fit to burst and she was overwhelmed that he was here, saying the words she’d longed to hear. Maybe she took too long to speak because Dante’s face got bleaker and bleaker.

  He rose like a dark demon, his face stark with pain. ‘I won’t let you send me away. If you meant what you said last week, then you can’t have—’

  Alicia reached up and put a hand over his mouth. She smiled tremulously through her tears. ‘I’m trying to tell you that it’s not too late.’

  The relief and sheer joy that crossed Dante’s face made her feel even weaker. He pulled her up, holding her high, and she put hands on either side of his face, pressing small kisses everywhere. It was frantic and impassioned. She could vaguely sense movement near them and it was only when she pulled back that she noticed the photographer snapping feverishly, the reporter taking notes.

  She wrapped her arms tight around his neck and pressed her face into it, breathing his scent deep. It was like coming home, like a balm to her ravaged soul. She whispered in his ear, ‘Do you think they could leave n
ow?’

  She felt him nod, his voice was low and husky. ‘I wanted to make you believe, to show you that you could trust me.’

  Alicia smiled a watery smile and pressed another kiss to his lips. Then he turned and spoke to the men. ‘OK, that’s it, you’ve got your story. I don’t need witnesses for the next bit.’

  Alicia couldn’t believe he was putting his heart on his sleeve so publicly. For her. He pulled back to see her face, momentary tension in his body, and Alicia revelled in it. Shyly she smiled, her eyes on his, telling him everything he needed to know.

  He was about to slide the key in the door when Alicia noticed something.

  ‘Mrs Smith’s milk!’

  Dante rolled his eyes and lowered her down his body slowly. ‘If we go and get milk for Mrs Smith, then can I ask you to marry me?’

  She nodded happily.

  The bemused paparazzi sent a shot of Dante D’Aquanni and Alicia Parker walking hand in hand to the local corner shop to get milk around the world. And, less than twenty-four hours later, the story broke of a winter wedding to take place at Dante’s Lake Como villa.

  Three and a half years later…

  Dante picked up the cuddly toy from the floor of the hall. He stopped with one foot on the bottom step and looked around. A buggy stood just inside the villa’s main door. The detritus and evidence of a young person lay everywhere.

  A young person and now an even tinier one.

  His heart swelled as he looked up the stairs and started to climb. To think that he had ever thought he couldn’t experience this, would have denied himself this. The love and fulfilment of a soul mate, a family…

  He shivered inwardly at how close he had come to shutting it all out.

  Just then his wife appeared at the top of the stairs. She was doing up the buttons of her dress. She smiled and he felt an answering one rise up from his feet as he unconsciously speeded up. She looked a little tired, a little plumper around the middle, her breasts were bigger from nursing, and he felt that ever present desire surge through him as strong as the first time he’d ever kissed her. He could truly say he’d never seen anything or anyone more beautiful.