Married for His One-Night Heir

by Jennifer Hayward

  He tugged at the collar of his silver-grey Armani as an A-list Hollywood actress droned on about her latest effort, his mistakes imprinting themselves in Technicolor detail. He’d made so many of them when it came to Gia, he didn’t even know where to start.

  He’d forced his wife into a marriage she hadn’t wanted. Had excused his bullish behavior by convincing himself he was doing the right thing. By telling himself it was all about his son and his well-being when, in actual fact, what he’d wanted was Gia.

  Then, he’d compounded the problem by refusing to admit how he felt. By fooling himself into believing he’d never let himself love his wife again, when he clearly did. By distancing Gia in the moment she’d needed him the most.

  Which, he acknowledged, knocking back a sip of bourbon on a bitter wave of self-recrimination, illuminated his true Achilles’ heel. That he was so afraid of becoming his father—of repeating those same mistakes he’d made—he hadn’t seen what was right in front of him. That in the imperfect family he’d been handed, he had everything he could ever want and more.

  The actress wandered off, finally absorbing the fact that he’d heard nothing of what she’d said. Nico and Lazzero materialized by his side, a bottle of vintage champagne and three glasses in his eldest brother’s hands.

  “For a man about to take over the luxury sneaker market,” Lazzero drawled, “you are looking a little less than over the moon.”

  He shrugged a shoulder. “The adrenaline rush. You have to come down sometime.”

  An enigmatic smile touched his brother’s mouth. “Not for a while, fratello. I just got the first day’s sales. They are through the roof.”

  That made a little dent in the numbness encasing him. But not much. He summoned a modicum of enthusiasm as Nico poured the champagne and proposed a toast. “To Elevate. May it wipe the competition from the face of the planet.”

  He took a sip of the excellent vintage. Attempted to follow the conversation as Nico made a very male comment about the beautiful dancers he was studiously ignoring on his wife’s command, a topic Santo couldn’t add to because he’d only glanced at them once to make sure they were doing their job.

  Nico gave him a long look. “What the hell is wrong with you? This is your big night.”

  “Her name starts with a G and ends with an A,” Lazzero supplied drily. “I feel like this is becoming a bad habit,” his brother drawled, “but maybe you should just turn around.”

  Santo spun on his heel to find Gia standing at the entrance to the club, perched at the top of the stairs that led to the crowded space. Clad in a fire-engine-red dress, her hair tucked behind her ear in a sleek, sophisticated style that skimmed her cheeks, her legs endless in the figure-hugging outfit, her dark looks contrasted against the bloodred color, she looked ravishing.

  Apparently, he wasn’t the only one to notice, because a whole contingent of men had turned to stop and stare. It was her confidence, however, that held Santo riveted. Shoulders squared, head thrown back, she looked utterly sure of herself. Defiant. Determined. Not a trace of the hesitancy he was so used to seeing in her.

  Something deep in his chest constricted. Filled him with a deep throb that bloomed and grew into something so big and powerful, it was hard to catch his breath. She had weathered the storm of the last couple of weeks with that backbone of steel she’d acquired. Had refused to succumb to it. She was, without a doubt, the strongest, most courageous woman he knew.

  In that moment, everything was crystal clear. He’d told himself he’d wanted a cookie-cutter wife. A woman who would fit perfectly into the seamless, even-keeled world he’d constructed for himself. When instead, he’d wanted Gia. The fire and the flame. What he’d always wanted.

  Her survey of the crowd came to a halt when it reached him, her gaze meshing with his. The vulnerability on her face, the layer of confidence that had slipped, kicked him hard in the ribs. He had put it there—that uncertainty in her eyes. It sent a rush of anger pulsing through his chest.

  His feet were moving before he’d fully registered it, carrying him through the packed, vibrating space. He reached the bottom of the stairs as Gia took her last step, his hands spanning her waist as he lifted her down. Hungry to see her, to touch her, to make things right between them, he kept his hands on her waist and pulled her close.

  “You came,” he murmured. “You look incredible.”

  “It’s your big night. I didn’t want to miss it.” She tucked a chunk of her hair behind her ear in a nervous movement. “I’m sorry I’m late. My flight was delayed, then I had to get Leo to Chloe’s. Then I couldn’t find a dress that was right and I was going through Chiara’s closet and I—”

  He saw it then, the tears glittering in her eyes. The emotion bubbling beneath the surface. His heart beat a jagged rhythm in his chest as he pressed his fingers to the trembling line of her mouth, cutting her off midstream. “It doesn’t matter. You’re here. How is your mother?”

  “Almost herself. She goes home tomorrow.” She flicked a distracted look around them. “Is there somewhere we can talk?”

  He wrapped his fingers around hers and led her through the thick throngs of partygoers to the small private lounge at the back of the club they’d used for media interviews. Directed her through the door and locked it behind them.

  Filled with a tiny bar, a couple of sofas and a coffee table, and lit with low-light lamps, it was a small, intimate space. The silence between them as they turned to face one another was deafening. Unsure of what to do with his hands, because they wanted to be on her but they clearly needed to talk, he jammed them in his pockets.

  “Gia—”

  She held up a hand. “No. I have things to say. I need to get them out.”

  He didn’t like the wounded, painful look in her eyes. Wanted to extinguish it. But since he was also responsible for it, he closed his mouth and forced himself to listen.

  “I’m sorry I threw all of that at you on the phone. I run, avoid my feelings, all of those things you say I do. But I was hurt. Confused.” She leaned back against the bar and raked a hand through her hair. “When you pushed me away after the dinner with Gervasio, I thought I’d broken something between us. It felt as if my marriage to Franco was happening all over again and I didn’t know what to do about it. How to fix it. So I cooked you dinner that night. Which you blew off,” she said, stating the painfully obvious detail he’d been kicking himself from here to Sunday for. “Then, when I called you in Munich, I heard Abigail in the background. Offering to introduce you to someone. As if the two of you were together.”

  He uttered an inward curse. He’d been so preoccupied with the party going on around him, about how lost she’d sounded, he hadn’t even thought about it. For him, it had just been Abigail acting like the professional networker she was. “It was nothing,” he said quietly. “You know that. You know me, Gia.”

  She shook her head. “I wasn’t being rational. I was hurt. You had triggered all my insecurities the way you’d shut off on me.” She dropped her gaze to the sparkling diamond on her hand. Twisted it to sit straight. “After I failed to conceive a child for Franco, he withdrew. He called me frigid, ice-cold. The affairs,” she conceded, “were a relief, because he left me alone. But they also decimated my self-confidence. I started to believe the things he was saying. How worthless I was. It didn’t help,” she added on an achingly vulnerable admission, “that I didn’t have a very strong base to start with.”

  He hated himself so much in that moment, it was palpable. “I was trying to keep things afloat,” he murmured. “Every time I engaged with you, we ended up in some deeply emotional place where I couldn’t think. Couldn’t function. Which wasn’t a place I could allow myself to be. Not with everything riding on this launch.”

  She fixed steady green eyes on him. “I needed you.”

  That gutted him like a knife. He closed his eyes. Absorbed the
far too powerful insight of hindsight. “It was my own history talking. My baggage talking, because it reminded me of my father. Of the relationship he and my mother shared.” He blew out a breath, struggled for the words to explain. “It was passionate. Fiery. Never calm waters. Which only got worse when my father started his own company. My mother didn’t want him to do it. She wanted him to stay on Wall Street, where the money was assured. But my father was addicted to the chase. To the win. He wanted this one to be his own.

  “Their fights,” he recalled, “were house-shaking affairs. Instead of having his eye on the business where it should have been, my father spent all of his time trying to keep my mother happy. The pressure—it was too much. He lost a big contract, one he’d bet the bank on, the business failed and he imploded.”

  Hurt flared in her dark eyes. “So you were afraid the same would happen to us? That I would be that destructive force for you?”

  “All I could see,” he said quietly, “in that moment, was that I was going to mess this up if I didn’t rein it in. Us. This passionate relationship we share. So I shut myself down. Withdrew. It was wrong,” he admitted. “If I could take it back, if I could do it all over again, I would, because I would never want to hurt you. Ever, Gia.”

  An emotion he couldn’t read darkened her gaze. “What?” he prompted.

  She drew in a deep breath. Issued a shaky exhale. “I’m afraid you’re never going to let yourself feel the same way about me again,” she said in an unsteady voice. “That I broke something between us when I walked away with Leo and I’m not sure you will ever let yourself go there again. That you will make this marriage work because you have to, but I will never be your ideal choice. I will be your necessity.”

  He blinked as she threw that loaded statement at him. At how utterly and completely misguided it was. How it was equally his fault, because he’d let her go there.

  She lifted her chin. “You had a list of the perfect woman, Santo. You rhymed it off to me countless times. She needs to be smart, with an impeccable social pedigree. Able to hold an interesting conversation over the dinner table with your business associates, but not too focused on business, because family takes priority. ‘Martha Stewart by day, a sexual fantasy by night,’ wasn’t that how you put it? And then there was stipulation number four. She can’t have too much baggage, because baggage is a problem.”

  He absorbed his own words. It was his list. He knew it backward and forward. But none of it had ever mattered with Gia, because how he felt about her had always superseded rationality. He opened his mouth to tell her that, but she gave him a look that said let her finish.

  “I am afraid,” she said quietly, “that I will always be that political liability for you. That weak link, just like your mother was for your father. That every time we get somewhere good, who I am will destroy us. That it will break us over and over again until you decide you don’t want me anymore.”

  He absorbed the heart-wrenching vulnerability on her face. How stripped down and bare she looked. It made his heart ache from deep within. And now, he decided, he’d had enough.

  He stalked the few paces across the room and came to a halt in front of her. Stuck a hand on the bar beside her. “First of all,” he said, “nothing your father ever says or does is going to break us. Ever. I promise you that. I signed Gervasio in Madrid, Gia. He’s here tonight. He asked about you. So that is done. And when things get complicated in the future, which they will,” he conceded, “because life is complicated, we will deal with it together.

  “Secondly,” he murmured, pressing a palm to her chest, absorbing the wild beat of her heart, “this is the only thing I care about. What’s in here. Who you are. It’s all I’ve ever cared about. And yes, I had a list. But you have always meant more to me than any list. You supersede it. It’s why we keep coming back to each other time and again. Because no one else will do.”

  Her eyes widened into shining emerald orbs, glittering in the lamplight. “And finally,” he said huskily, “I fell for you the first time I ever saw you, sitting at that cafeteria table by yourself. So brave. Strong. Determined not to let the world defeat you. And then,” he added, “I watched you grow into this amazing woman, more comfortable in your skin with every day that passed. I told myself I couldn’t have you. That you were promised to someone else. And then you kissed me in the elevator, and all my good intentions went out the window.”

  He brushed a thumb across her cheek, unable to resist touching her. “I was in love with you, Gia. I was going to go to your father the next morning and tell him you were marrying me, not Franco. But I never got the chance, because you walked away without a word.”

  * * *

  Gia’s heart tumbled right out of her chest and crashed to the shining dark oak floor. He’d been going to go to her father? He’d loved her? It was almost too much to imagine, how much she’d ripped apart, destroyed, by walking away.

  “I didn’t know,” she whispered, lifting a hand to trace the sexy golden stubble on his jaw. “We didn’t say anything that night.”

  A wry smile curved his mouth. “We were too busy doing other things...like making our beautiful son, who means everything to me.”

  A wave of heat engulfed her at the memory of that hot, torrid night. How perfect it had been. How it had changed her in every way. But it also unearthed the uncertainty of the past few weeks. All the nights he hadn’t touched her since.

  Santo read her in one even look. “You think I don’t love you?” he said huskily, his hands cupping her cheeks. “You think I’m not crazy about you, Gia? You don’t think I want you every minute I’m with you? When I saw you at that party in Nassau, I knew it wasn’t over. That it would never be over for me. Why else,” he prompted softly, “do you think I showed up at your doorstep at midnight like the raging bull that I was? Because it’s always been you, Gia. It will always be you.”

  She sank into the wall, her knees weak. To wonder about it for so long, to dream about it for so long, to be so afraid she was never going to hear him say those words to her, made it almost surreal to hear. Her heart was pounding so loudly in her chest, she thought it might thunder right out of it.

  “I love you,” she whispered. “So much it terrifies me. I always have.”

  He brought his mouth down on hers in a hot, hard kiss. She wound her arms around his neck and moved closer, her hands tangling in his hair as they exchanged soul-searing kisses, every hot breath, every stroke, every taste of each other a confirmation of what they were. What they could be. A consummation of the promises they’d made to each other.

  “We should go back to the party,” she murmured reluctantly against his mouth. “You are the host.”

  “Later.”

  Air became something she gasped in between indulging in the heated recklessness of his kiss. But soon even that wasn’t enough. She wanted more—to obliterate the misery of the past few weeks. To drown herself in the connection they shared. To make everything better.

  He took control, backing her up against the wall, his hands moving over her body in a sensual exploration that set her on fire. Caught up in the madness, desperate for him, she arched into his touch and sought closer contact. Begged him for more. The sparkly material of her dress a barrier to more intimate contact, he swept his hands up the back of her thighs and took the dress with him. Then it was only the hard, muscled length of him blanketing her with heat. He was hot and hard and she wanted him inside of her.

  He palmed her thigh and curved it around his waist until she cradled the throbbing length of him at her core. Broke the kiss on a soft groan as she rocked against him in a rhythm that set him aflame.

  “Santo,” she whispered, eyes on his, “love me.”

  “Always,” he murmured, his gaze hot and smoky with passion.

  And so he did, long and slow, every deep thrust, every achingly good caress, imprinting on her how much he loved her.
Needed her. Cementing the bond they had always shared.

  * * *

  “I have to give a speech,” Santo groaned when they finally came back from the sensual abyss, straightening their clothing with shaking hands. “A few more hours,” he promised, “and I’m taking you and Leo home. And then we are spending a week at the villa in Nassau alone. And if I mention the word Elevate once, you can punish me. In all the right ways of course,” he purred, sliding her a heated look as he straightened his tie.

  Gia peeled her gaze away from how utterly gorgeous he looked in the dark grey suit, because he would always make her heart race like that. “A week alone?” The idea melted her insides.

  “A belated honeymoon, courtesy of Delilah. No newspapers, no interruptions, just us.”

  She frowned as an obstacle to that plan presented itself. “What about my work with Nina? I’ve already been away a few days.”

  “I cleared it with her,” her husband responded with his usual indomitable confidence. “I was prepared to spend the week convincing you to forgive me using whatever methods necessary.”

  She went a little weak at the thought of it. Which wasn’t necessary, she conceded, because she loved and adored him. But this time, it was an adult love that had grown into everything she’d ever imagined it could be.

  “Sold,” she murmured, rising on tiptoe to give him a kiss. He returned it with a hard one of his own, then slipped his hand through hers as they walked toward the door.

  “Ready?”

  She nodded. She wasn’t afraid of what was behind the door anymore, of what life would throw at her next, because she knew that whatever it was, she had Santo beside her and that was all that she needed.

  Hand in hand, they walked into the buzzing, electric night. A tiny smile curved her lips as they joined her new family, congregated near the champagne fountain that threw up a luxurious, golden spray. Because this time, she was the girl at the center of the light.