Alessandro and the Cheery Nanny

by Amy Andrews

  And then he was gone but she was left in no doubt that Valentino Lombardi hadn’t believed her for one single moment.

  Nat and Julian were sitting on the lounge, watching the television, when Alessandro rejoined them. ‘Is it bad?’ she asked.

  ‘No.’ Alessandro shook his head and sat beside them. Julian automatically crawled into his lap and he unconsciously opened his arms to accommodate his son. ‘Fit, healthy forty-year-old male. But there’ll be more.’

  Nat watched the easy affection between them and her heart swelled. ‘Had he been travelling?’

  ‘Yes. He’s just got back from South America. They’re chasing down his fellow passengers and his other contacts now.’

  Thanks to geography swamp flu, a mutant form of influenza A, had, until today, been kept from Australia’s shores. But it had been declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization and there were protocols that had to be followed.

  Julian’s thumb had crept into his mouth and he giggled at something on the television. Alessandro rubbed his chin against his son’s hair, his arms momentarily tightening around his little body. ‘It was good seeing Uncle Val again, yes?’

  Julian’s thumb slipped out as he turned and looked at his father. ‘Oh, yes. I love Uncle Val. I like being called Juliano.’

  Nat watched Alessandro’s smile slip a little and prayed he’d tread carefully. The first day they’d met he’d reprimanded her for using the Italian version of his son’s name, citing his dead wife’s preference for it to be anglicised. She could tell then it hadn’t been his choice but he was just trying to stick with the wishes of the woman who had given his son life.

  ‘You like that, il mio piccolo bambino?’ Julian nodded enthusiastically. ‘You know Mummy liked you to be called Julian.’

  Nat held her breath. She’d rarely heard Alessandro talk about Julian’s mother with him. Occasionally, as they’d emptied the boxes they’d come across something and Julian had mentioned his mother. Nat had encouraged it, had encouraged Alessandro to facilitate it. After all they should be able to talk about the woman they both loved so dearly. But neither seemed keen to talk openly.

  Using the ‘m’ word now seemed like another good step forward in their relationship. Julian nodded. ‘I know. But I like Juliano better.’

  Alessandro raised his eyes to Nat. They looked like polished river stones—black and glassy with emotion. She could see the rush and tumble of feelings there as they swirled around. Would he insist on sticking to Camilla’s dictates or would he follow his son’s lead?

  Alessandro looked down at his son, his heart stretching in his chest, growing bigger, like a balloon ready to burst. He’d expected tears, withdrawal, a return to the sadness at the mention of Camilla. Not a matter-of-fact reply.

  ‘I can…’ He hesitated and looked at Nat. She nodded at him and he continued. ‘I can call you Juliano too, if you like.’

  Both Alessandro and Nat held their breaths this time as they hung on Julian’s reply. The boy simply nodded, said ‘Okay’, stuck his thumb back in his mouth and returned to watching the television.

  Alessandro let out his breath. He looked at Nat who was blinking back tears. She smiled at him and he wanted to pull her close, put his arm around her and snuggle her in beside them, feel her head drop onto his shoulder. But Nat’s very sensible insistence that they keep their relationship from Julian…Juliano…stopped him.

  So he smiled back at her instead and mouthed, ‘Thank you.’

  Alessandro’s elation didn’t last long. By the time he’d finished reading to Julian—Juliano!—he was seething with frustration. It shouldn’t be this hard to call his son by the name he had been christened with. It shouldn’t feel so unnatural. He wanted to kick things, yell, shake his fist at God.

  He wanted Nat. He wanted to tumble her into bed, pound into her, make all the thoughts that circled endlessly in his head, like vultures around prey, go away. She’d help him to forget, if only for a few hours. She always helped him forget.

  Nat was coming out of her shower when Alessandro grabbed her, pulling her naked body hard against his, lowering his head to claim her mouth in a kiss bordering on savage. She responded instantly, twisting her head to give him all he needed, clutching at his shirt for purchase as the power of the kiss almost knocked her backwards. She gave way to his questing tongue, opening to him, and he growled triumphantly low in his throat.

  He pulled back slightly, his breathing harsh, his hands kneading her bare buttocks. ‘I need you. Now.’ He was so close his lips brushed hers with every word.

  Nat could feel his hardness even through the layers of his clothes and her eyes practically rolled back in her head as she fought the urge to rub herself against him like some half-crazed feline. He was so close and the smell of him, the taste of beer on his breath, his mere presence was intoxicating. She could barely think for the pheromones that were clogging her senses as their chests heaved in and out, loud in the quiet of the house.

  But she knew something was wrong. He’d been so happy earlier, had gone into Juliano’s room with a spring in his step. And now he was looking at her with trouble tainting the lust and desire.

  She pushed against his chest. ‘What’s wrong, Alessandro?’

  Alessandro’s arms tightened around hers momentarily and then he sighed and stepped back. Damn her for being so shrewd. He raked a hand through his hair as his gaze raked her body. Despite his inner turmoil she was butt naked in front of him and he wanted her. ‘Nothing,’ he dismissed, reaching for her.

  Nat stepped to the side, evading his touch. ‘Alessandro.’

  He heard the warning note in her voice despite the mesmerising sway of her breasts as she moved. Then she shook her head at him, rolled her eyes, reached for her nightdress at the end of her bed and threw it on over her head.

  ‘Better?’

  Alessandro shot her a grudging smile. ‘No.’ She sent him a reproving look and crossed her arms. He sighed and felt for the edge of her bed as he sat down. ‘It feels so strange calling him Juliano. And it shouldn’t. Inferno! He’s half Italian, for goodness’ sake. It should come naturally.’

  He felt suddenly impotent, despite the raging hard-on in his pants. Pushing off the bed, he stalked around the room. Damn Camilla and their screwed-up relationship.

  He turned to face Nat, rubbing at his forehead. ‘He was christened Juliano.’ He dropped his hand. ‘Camilla insisted on it.’

  Nat stayed very still. Camilla. So that was her name. She frowned. ‘So why Julian?’

  Alessandro snorted. Because it was just one of the ways Camilla had screwed with him, made him pay. But he couldn’t say that to Nat because as far as she was concerned he was still in love with his wife and what kind of a man did it make him to admit he wasn’t? Admit he’d never loved her in the first place?

  He sighed. ‘It’s a long story.’

  He looked sad and defeated and she felt dreadful that he’d gone from being so happy to deeply troubled. Had Valentino’s arrival dredged up old, painful memories?

  ‘Can we please just go to bed? I want you.’

  Nat’s stomach clenched at his blatantly sexual request. She’d hoped he’d take this opportunity to get some stuff off his chest but just because he finally uttered her name it didn’t mean he was going to open up about Camilla.

  A stronger woman would have pushed harder. A stronger woman would have insisted they have it out for once and for all. But the way he expressed his desire, the way he looked at her with those wounded eyes, she knew she’d give him anything. She pulled the nightdress up over her head and opened her arms to him.

  Much later in his bed, Nat lay draped down his side, her head on his shoulder, his fingers absently running up and down her arm. Sleep hovered around them in a post-coital haze that was both energising and paralysing at the same time.

  She rubbed her cheek against his shoulder, revelling in its warmth and their combined aroma. Her hand was resting on his belly and she trailed her fi
ngers up his chest. ‘Val looked at me very strangely this afternoon when I opened the door.’

  ‘He was probably trying to work out how available you are,’ Alessandro murmured. The mere thought punched him in the gut, even though he knew the real reason his cousin had given her such a strange look.

  ‘You seem close.’

  Alessandro smiled. ‘We grew up in the same village. Our fathers were brothers. My parents, they were very…passionate people…they argued, a lot. They split up and got back together and split up and got back together. They were up and down like yo-yos. I would get shuffled to Aunty Rosa’s when things were in upheaval. Which was often. It didn’t matter that she was deaf or had six kids of her own, she always took good care of me. She and my uncle had this totally different relationship. Ben adored Aunty Rosa.’

  ‘Did you have siblings?’

  ‘No. Just me. Which was probably a good thing.’ Even though as a kid he had yearned for siblings like Val. Someone to share the burden. ‘My father finally left for good when I was fourteen and my mother really fell apart. We both moved in with Rosa after that.’

  Nat heard the dull ache in his voice and felt it all the way down to her soul. She rolled on her stomach and propped her chin on Alessandro’s chest. ‘Did you miss your father?’

  Alessandro dragged his gazed from the ceiling to mesh with the warm welcoming glow of hers. ‘Not really. I barely knew him. He travelled with his work a lot. He wasn’t exactly a hands-on father. He left it up to my mother mostly. And then when he was home they were usually arguing.’

  Nat’s heart broke for him. Her own memories of her father, before he’d walked out, couldn’t be any more different. Maybe that explained Alessandro’s clumsy fathering. No solid role model. Maybe he too had left it up to Camilla.

  ‘I’m surprised you married at all with that kind of history.’

  Alessandro looked away from her knowing eyes, his fingers stilling on her arm. If only she knew. It had never been his intention to marry. He’d been more than happy playing the field and having a damn fine time doing so. His childhood had cured him of the romantic notion of finding ‘the one’ and he’d been merrily working his way through the rest.

  And then Camilla—clever, sexy, cool-as-ice Camilla—had fallen pregnant. Deliberately.

  He looked back at the ceiling, his fingers resuming their feather-light strokes. ‘You sound like you talk from experience. Are your parents divorced too? Is that why you haven’t ever married?’

  Nat shut her eyes as he firmly changed the subject. She’d obviously pushed him far enough for one night and he’d revealed all he was going to—which was a hell of a lot more than she’d known to date. They didn’t do this—talk. They had sex until they fell into exhausted slumber. Talking had never been high on their list of priorities. But suddenly she wanted to know everything there was to know.

  She sighed and turned on her side again, draping her arm across his chest, her leg over his thigh as she pondered his question. She didn’t want to talk about herself but maybe if she did, he might open up some more about himself.

  ‘My father left when I was eight.’ Her words fell into the silence and she felt Alessandro’s finger falter temporarily before starting up again. ‘No warning. He’d been having an affair for a year and the other woman, Roxanne, was pregnant. So he just…left.’

  Alessandro heard the slight wobble in her voice and tightened his arm around her. ‘I’m sorry.’

  Nat shut her eyes. Why after all this time was the devastation still so potent sometimes? ‘It was never the same after that. I spent time with him and Roxy and the kids over the years, Mum made sure of it. I have two wonderful half-brothers. But it was like he’d moved on from me. Sure, he still loved me, I knew that, but he just stopped being a father to me, like I stopped being his responsibility.’

  Nat swallowed the lump that had lodged in her throat. It had been a long time since she’d thought about this stuff. ‘He had his new wife and his boys and I was just always…an afterthought. The old love and affection we had was gone. He became withdrawn from me, emotionally distant, and I always felt like—still do, I guess—that I had to prove I was still worthy of his love.’

  It didn’t take Alessandro long to figure out why Nat had felt such an instant rapport with Juliano. When he looked back now at the distance between him and his son not that long ago he cringed. Thankfully she’d been here to show them the way.

  ‘It must have been hard for you to watch Julian…’ Alessandro shook his head. ‘Juliano. In the beginning.’

  Nat nodded. ‘I could see the way he looked at you with such longing and it reminded me of the way I used to look at my dad after he’d left. I know the situation was different with you two, that grief was involved, but…’

  ‘It’s okay,’ Alessandro assured her. ‘I knew we were in trouble, I just didn’t know how to fix it.’ He kissed her forehead. ‘And then you came along.’

  Nat smiled and snuggled closer. ‘Super-Nat to the rescue.’ Alessandro chuckled and her heart filled with the sound of it. ‘Pity I wasn’t so good at fixing my own problems.’

  ‘Is this about the man you talked about in the lift that day? You said it had become untenable.’

  Nat nodded. ‘He was newly divorced when I met him and that was probably my first mistake. But he was so sad, so knocked around by life and so kind and caring and he was so happy to be happy again, with me, I fell in love with him. He was endearing.’

  Which was exactly why being here with Alessandro was stupidity. Alessandro and Juliano were just history repeating itself. Except it was worse. Rob and his wife had chosen to separate. Alessandro hadn’t chosen for his wife to be taken from him.

  ‘So what happened?’

  ‘His ex-wife was in his life, our lives, a lot.’

  ‘You didn’t like her?’

  ‘I liked her fine. But I don’t think either of them ever really let go. He spent more and more time with her, making excuses to see her. A leaky tap. A family wedding. A Valentine’s Day meltdown. And after years of coming second to her I just couldn’t do it any more.’

  ‘That does sound untenable.’

  Nat shut her eyes, the skin on her arms turning to goose-bumps as Alessandro drew circular patterns with his fingers. It had been awful. A long slow death, hanging on, hoping things would change.

  ‘C’est la vie.’ She shrugged. ‘By the end there wasn’t really any love left. Just hurt. I’m over it now.’ She didn’t want to talk about Rob any more. Or her father. It was his turn.

  ‘What about your wife? Camilla? How did she die?’

  Alessandro’s fingers stopped abruptly. He couldn’t talk about Camilla. Not to her. Not to anyone. He could barely utter her name without waves of guilt pinning him down. She had no idea how much it had cost him to say her name earlier.

  He shifted, displacing her temporarily, and then moved over her, settling his pelvis against hers. ‘I think we’ve talked enough for one night, don’t you?’ And he lowered his head, dropping a string of tiny kisses up her neck and across her jaw.

  Nat should have protested. God knew, she wanted to know everything about him but she felt her body respond to his weight and his smell and the way his mouth found all her sensitive places. And did she really want to know about the perfect Camilla and their perfect love? Hadn’t she had enough of that in her last relationship?

  So she didn’t push him away and insist on talking. She didn’t get huffy. She didn’t get up and leave his bed. Instead, she shut her eyes and let him sweep her away to the place she knew he could take her.

  There’d be enough time for talking when she moved out and their relationship came to an end.

  CHAPTER NINE

  THE following Thursday afternoon Nat led Alessandro into cubicle fifteen to examine a thirty-eight-year-old woman complaining of a sore leg. She had her nine-month-old baby boy with her, who was crying and irritable.

  Alessandro smiled at the rather harried-looking w
oman who apologised about the noise as she jiggled the babe on her hip. ‘He’s picked up a bit of a cold so he’s not exactly a happy camper at the moment.’

  ‘That’s okay…’ he searched for the patient’s name on her chart label ‘…Nina. What seems to be the problem?’

  ‘I’ve got this really sore leg,’ Nina said.

  ‘Why don’t you give the baby to Nat and hop up here so I can have a look?’

  Nat smiled at Nina and the baby and held out her arms. ‘What’s his name?’ she asked.

  ‘Benji.’

  ‘Come on, Benji. Let’s give Mummy a bit of a break.’

  The baby went willingly enough, sneezing three times during the transfer. ‘Bless you, bless you, bless you,’ Nat cooed, stroking the baby’s warm forehead as she settled him on her hip and began swaying.

  Alessandro was momentarily distracted as he watched Nat with Benji. The baby had stopped crying and was looking at her curiously as Nat’s ponytail swished with the rocking of her hips. Nat chose that moment to look up at him and he gave her a lazy smile.

  She looked good in her uniform. She looked good in shorts. She looked good in her nightdress. And she looked absolutely sensational out of it. He should have guessed she’d look good with a baby on her hip.

  Nina, oblivious to their undercurrent, climbed up onto the gurney, swung her legs up on the mattress and proceeded to roll up her jeans. ‘That’s a bit of a climb, isn’t it?’ she puffed.

  Alessandro’s wandering attention returned to his patient. ‘So, have you injured yourself in any way?’ he asked half his brain still engaged with other thoughts. Images of Nat last night straddling him, smiling down at him.

  Nina shook her head. ‘My calf’s been sore ever since I got off the plane yesterday.’

  Suddenly Alessandro’s brain snapped into laser-like focus. ‘Plane?’ He frowned. Painful calf. Air travel. DVT? ‘Where did you fly from?’

  Nina’s brows furrowed. ‘Perth.’

  Alessandro’s gaze sought the area that Nina was rubbing. Perth was only a four-hour flight, which made it less likely for a blood clot to have formed in the deep veins of her leg but it wasn’t unheard of. And Nina was a little overweight.