‘Which is...?’
How could he even ask that?
She paused as a waiter approached with a single glass of juice on a silver tray. Dante took it with thanks and handed it to her.
She looked straight into those sinfully dark eyes. ‘Our child.’
‘And I am not?’ How could he boldly stand there and say that when he’d been the one to make such a deal?
‘No, you are doing this for a business deal—although you’d like everyone to think it’s for a charitable reason. But if there is one thing I know about you now, it is that you couldn’t possibly want to marry—even for your child. Everything I read about you in Celebrity Spy! is true. So far I have found nothing to make me think otherwise.’
‘At least you are well informed about me, whereas I know very little of you.’
She bristled as the conversation turned in a way she hadn’t expected. ‘There isn’t much to tell.’
‘I’d like to know why you were the hostess at that dinner party in London—“stepping in”, I think you called it. What exactly is your profession?’
She tried to suppress the urge to shock him, but it was too great. ‘I’m just a waitress.’ It wasn’t her choice of job—wasn’t what she’d hoped for as she’d started university in Australia—but circumstances had conspired against her.
She watched as he clenched his jaw and a surge of triumph rushed through her. He had certainly never envisaged marriage and fatherhood, and she was completely sure that if he had he wouldn’t have wanted his wife to be a mere waitress.
‘And that is enough for you?’
‘It’s had to be,’ she said, without realising she was opening the door to a discussion about herself she’d rather not have. She didn’t want to talk about her beloved father, about the emptiness in her life where he had been. She was an ordinary girl—but to her father she’d been a princess, and he’d been the most important person in her life.
Thankfully at that very moment other guests joined them, and after that there wasn’t much chance to talk—at least not about anything private, and especially not her past, nor the events which had changed her life. That was something she had no wish to share with a man incapable of any kind of emotion. He would never understand.
* * *
Dante unlocked the door to his apartment and for the first time since he’d been relegated to the small room which usually served as his home office he was glad of it. At least there he would be away from the temptation to kiss Piper, because after spending the evening being tormented by her body in the bronze creation Elizabeth had selected he was in danger of giving in to the lustful desire which pumped through him.
Never before had he had to restrain himself. He always got what he wanted, be it women or fast cars. Holding back was not a comfortable sensation, and he didn’t know how long he could go on being tempted so enticingly by her without acting on it.
‘Piper...’ He spoke softly as she placed her purse on the antique table in the living area. He wanted to tell her again how lovely she looked, and how much he wanted her, but instead decided that keeping to the terms of their agreement was better—for both of them. He couldn’t allow himself to care, knowing she would one day walk away. Just as she had done the night after his baby had been conceived.
She looked at him, her big green eyes full of uncertainty, and when she bit her lower lip he clenched his hands into fists at his sides. Now was not the time to remember how those lips had felt beneath his just hours earlier, how they’d responded so willingly. Nor was it the time to remember that if they had been here instead of in the car when he’d kissed her they would never have left for the dinner party.
‘Is something wrong?’ she asked tentatively.
Everything was wrong. He was falling under a spell he was beginning to think she had no idea she was casting. She seemed oblivious to what she did to him. Tonight he’d seen her smile and laugh with people she didn’t know, seen them warm to her in a way which had made pride fill him as she visibly blossomed.
‘I just wanted to say you made a good impression this evening. Thank you.’
‘I did it for my baby.’
She flung the words at him instantly and he bit back his retort. It was late, and now was not the time to be getting embroiled in a discussion he didn’t want, no matter what the time of day. The way she’d said my baby cut deep into his hardened emotions, more painfully than he’d thought possible.
‘Tomorrow we will be leaving for Tuscany, where you will do it all again—this time for me and my deal.’
CHAPTER SIX
PIPER SAT IN the sports car as it sped along the road towards Tuscany, glad that the threat of morning sickness she’d experienced earlier in the week seemed to have dwindled. Beside her Dante drove with clean precision, and she couldn’t help but glance at him as he drove, embarrassed when he caught her out. His sunglasses hid the truth in his eyes and probably, after the burning look of desire he’d had in them when they’d returned from the dinner party last night, that was for the best.
She had no wish to fall even harder for him than she had already, and certainly didn’t want to repeat their encounter in London. This was all about their child. Nothing else mattered other than giving her son or daughter the experience of knowing both parents.
‘We are almost there,’ he said, and quickly looked at her. ‘Tonight we dine with Bettino D’Antonio at his new villa, so it would be best if we exchanged a few details about each other before this evening, no?’
‘Is that in the interests of making our engagement believable or out of a genuine need to know more about the mother of your child?’ He’d caught her off-guard with his callous disregard for her feelings and she’d risen to the challenge he’d inadvertently given. They would never be a real couple, but he would always be her child’s father, and she intended to remind him of that duty as often as possible.
‘Such attention to detail is necessary whatever the reason.’ He slowed the car and turned off the main road onto a narrower road which twisted through a small and sleepy village before heading out into the countryside once more. ‘This weekend will be make or break after months of negotiations between myself and D’Antonio. He has also invited Gianni Paolini, my rival in this deal, so I fully intend to use our newly announced engagement and the baby to maximum benefit.’
The tension of several hours in the car with Dante, being excruciatingly aware of every move he made, got the better of her and she couldn’t help but continue to aim for irritation. ‘And by that you mean I shouldn’t elaborate on what I know about you, but paint a very different picture?’
‘It is what we agreed, Piper.’
He swung the car into a driveway lined with mature cypress trees and, knowing he was right, she looked away just in time to see a large villa come into view.
‘That’s so beautiful...’ she breathed, more to herself than to Dante.
‘It pleases me to hear you say that,’ he said as he stopped the car outside the old stone villa. ‘This is where I come to get away from everything. Except for this weekend, it is the one place I am able to completely relax. Bettino D’Antonio has recently bought a villa in the next village, which he intends to use during the winter months, and despite the fact I’d rather not conduct business from here, it suits me well.’
Dante got out of the car and she watched him walk around the front of its sleek black bonnet. He looked up at the villa as he did so and briefly she thought she saw his face relax, as if this was a place where he truly was at home.
When he opened her door she slid round in the seat and tried to get out in as elegant a fashion as the tight-fitting skirt would allow. She failed miserably, if the raising of his brows was anything to go by, as her skirt rucked up, exposing her legs. With a wicked and suggestive expression on his face he held out his hand to her and helped her out of the low car.
‘I have arranged for lunch to be served on the terrace. We can talk further on things we should know
about each other, and after that you should rest before this evening’s dinner.’
Piper didn’t know if she wanted to talk to Dante at all. She had no wish to share her past with a man who cared for nothing other than getting the next deal. But if he did get that deal she would have honoured her side of their bargain. Would he then keep his promise and be there for his child? She was in no doubt that her son or daughter would not have the kind of relationship she’d had with her own father—the kind that had driven her to board a plane for Rome, convinced she was doing the right thing to seek Dante out. She hadn’t wanted to deny her child the chance to have what she’d had, but as each day passed she was more certain than ever that Dante was nothing like her father.
‘If we are going to convince people that we are engaged for real then I suppose we do have to at least know a little of each other.’
She followed him into the villa, taking in the luxurious interior. It looked far more like a home than the sleek modern style of his Rome apartment, and her curiosity was aroused by the paintings and antiques she glimpsed.
Dante opened two doors which led out onto a terrace covered in wisteria that would be beautiful in the summer. ‘We are engaged for real, no?’
The tone of his voice left her in no doubt that he was taunting her—and enjoying it.
No, they weren’t. If it was for real she would be helplessly in love with him, and he would definitely be in love with her. She couldn’t deny there was an attraction, but it wasn’t love. Was it?
‘Not in the true sense of the word, no. We are not in love.’
‘But to look as if we are in love is what we have agreed on, cara, is it not?’
‘For very different reasons, yes, it is.’
‘Then I suggest we relax and enjoy our meal and the winter sunshine Tuscany has to offer before making sure it does appear to anyone we meet that ours is very much a real engagement.’
He sat at the table, looking far too relaxed and comfortable with the whole situation, whereas she was nothing but jumbled nerves. Was that the deal she’d struck with Dante, or the man himself? She couldn’t even consider the answer to that question.
* * *
‘You look tired,’ Dante said as he sat back.
The sought-after calm that usually settled over him after arriving in Tuscany wasn’t quite so easy to come by today, but then he’d never been here to do business before—and that business had never been so important or so wanted. He had to win this contract, and it was that sentiment, together with the way the charity would view him, that had forced him to accept that Benjamin’s suggestion of settling down was the answer to many issues—including, it seemed, a night of amazing but careless sex with a gorgeous redhead he hadn’t even bothered exchanging names with.
‘I am a little tired. Can we sort these things out now, so I can rest before taking a shower?’ She pushed her hair behind her ear and looked at him, the vivid green of her eyes holding a hint of unease.
He pushed aside the guilt that he was making her uncomfortable and tried to banish the image which had suddenly sprung to mind of her in the shower. It wouldn’t do to think of her naked beneath jets of water—not when he knew just how amazing she looked naked.
‘When and where we met will remain the same—at least there is little chance of getting that wrong. However, we will say we have been seeing each other secretly since.’ Briskness crept into his voice as he set out all that was supposed to have happened between them.
‘Why secretly?’ Her delicate brows furrowed in genuine confusion, making her look every bit as innocent as she had been—unknown to him—before he took her to his hotel room in London.
‘To protect you from press attention, of course—except that it didn’t go according to plan, as the Celebrity Spy! article will prove, giving me the perfect opportunity to refute its claims.’
‘And where will these meetings have taken place?’ She spoke in an efficient manner and might have been conducting a business meeting.
‘London and Rome. What do you like doing? Where would you have wanted to go?
She looked at him, the hardness in her eyes softening slightly. ‘Art galleries.’
‘Art? I had no idea.’ He was genuinely surprised, but couldn’t allow himself to get sidetracked now.
‘Why should you have? Neither of us expected the night we shared to become anything more than one night. We didn’t even exchange names.’
She strolled across the terrace, folding her arms about her as if trying to keep every detail about herself protected from him. He watched as she stood and looked out across the rise and fall of the landscape he loved so much, interspersed as it was by clusters of ancient villages.
He hadn’t expected anything from those few hot hours in bed with her, and certainly not to wake up alone the next morning. Was that why she’d lingered in his mind, teasing his memory with the passion of that night? Now, as he watched her, his gaze taking in her petite and slender figure showcased to perfection in another creation suggested by Elizabeth, he really did want to know more about her. What did she like? What was her favourite music and food? Questions raced through his mind.
‘And what of your family?’ He had to know at least something of her family background.
‘My family?’ She looked at him, suspicion in her eyes. ‘It is just my mother and myself. We moved to London, her place of birth, after my father died.’
A jolt of something akin to sympathy raced through him. She knew what it was to lose someone she loved too.
‘But you grew up in Australia?’ He walked over to her, conscious of her watching him carefully, keeping her attention fully focused on him, just as she had done that first morning in his office.
‘Yes, in Sydney. Anything else about my childhood you feel it’s necessary to know?’
The scathing tone of her voice should have warned him off, but knowing she too had lost her father drew him to her, as did a strange urge to talk of something he’d long since buried.
‘You at least knew your father, had a bond with him, which is more than I ever experienced.’
‘I’m sorry.’ The sympathetic look in her eyes as she looked up at him, placing her hand on his arm, conveyed her shock at the unexpected revelation which had come from him.
‘Don’t be.’ He shrugged off her touch and focused his gaze into the Tuscan countryside. ‘I barely knew my father, which is just as well. He wasn’t a man I would have wished to know.’
‘Don’t say that.’ Her shock rushed over him in waves. ‘Every child needs a father.’
‘Not one who walks out on a woman, a young boy and a newborn son. No child deserves a father like that.’
‘That happened to you?’ Her gorgeous green eyes were filled with sympathy and he gritted his teeth against it. He didn’t need sympathy from anyone—least of all her.
‘Sì.’ His overpowering anger made functioning in English briefly impossible.
‘Where is your brother now?’
Piper’s question rocked him to the core as memories of the time when that had been the only question he’d wanted an answer to flooded back faster than a high tide.
‘He died.’ The hounds were after him again, dragging out the horror of those years when he and his mother had had no idea where the teenage Alessio had gone. He couldn’t do this now. He didn’t want to share any of this with anyone, and definitely not a fiancée acquired through a deal. ‘He was missing for several years before I discovered the truth of his untimely death.’
‘That makes all I went through as a child seem so trivial.’
He turned to her just as she looked down, as if ashamed of even admitting such a thing. ‘What did you go through?’
She still didn’t look at him. ‘I was born without sight in my left eye, and before I had an operation to make it look normal I was teased mercilessly by other children. Then I was knocked down by a car when I was seven. I didn’t see the car, which thankfully wasn’t going fast, but after tha
t my parents—especially my father—wrapped me up and tried to keep me from all harm. I just wish I could have done the same for Dad. Maybe then he wouldn’t have been killed when a car he was a passenger in crashed.’
Before Dante could think what he was doing he’d taken Piper in his arms and hugged her. Her willing body moulded against him and he stroked her hair, inhaling the scent of her shampoo, wanting only to make her pain go away.
‘I had no idea,’ he said, thinking again of what she had first said, and the way she always kept her focus on him, especially in his office that first morning. It made sense now.
‘I don’t like to talk of my father.’ She looked up at him and he studied her closely.
‘I meant about your sight.’
Before she could drop her gaze he caught her chin with his thumb and finger, forcing her to look at him. ‘Nobody would ever know.’
She pulled away from him, a flush of embarrassment colouring her cheeks. ‘We can talk more later. I’m not feeling too good.’
He watched her go, wanting to call her back, to hold her to him again and give her comfort. Because, strangely, just having her in his arms gave him comfort. It was a sensation he was not at all sure about and so, feeling like a child learning to swim, enjoying the warm water and yet finding it terrifying, he moved swiftly to the water’s edge and out of danger. Sentiment was something he’d never dabbled with, and now was not the time to start.
* * *
Piper’s nerves were almost frayed as she and Dante entered the villa of the man he wanted to do business with—the man she had to convince their relationship was real.
She’d put on the emerald-green dress that Elizabeth had selected for the dinner, still ruffled by the fact that Elizabeth had known more of what was expected of her than Piper had. But that indignation had melted away when Dante had first seen her, looking at her not with the scrutiny she’d expected, but with genuine pleasure. And if she wasn’t mistaken there had also been a hint of something else which had sent a shiver of anticipation through her...
Married for the Italian's Heir Page 8