by Dani Collins
“I thought you were living in Quebec?”
“I am. Was. Paolo, how?” She opened her palms in bafflement, wishing away the skip that plucked at her heart when she looked at him. But he was so masculine and sure. His sunglasses obscured his eyes, setting off his blade-straight nose, his stern jaw, his mouth with its narrow upper lip and the squared-off but full bottom one.
That mouth had traveled everywhere on her, tender and wicked and determined to draw forth every last ounce of pleasure. Her stomach contracted in a clench of desire remembering the way he’d devoted himself to kissing the arch of her foot, the backs of her knees, her inner thighs....
Flushing, burning in a hell of sins, she jerked her gaze back to streets she didn’t see. “You didn’t say anything about coming to Italy last night,” she said in a strained voice. “Your assistant said you were leaving town after the benefit and gone until the New Year, but she didn’t say where you were going. How are you here ahead of me? Were you on my flight, too?”
“No, I arrived ahead of you.” He pursed his lips with dismay before saying, “I didn’t wish anyone to know we were associating beyond our brief conversation last night. You have put me in a difficult position. You understand that, si?”
She had put him...? Defensive anger poured through her. She’d grown up with step-siblings who had always pointed to her as being at fault and she didn’t take that sort of blame any longer.
“I didn’t rape you and steal your sperm, Paolo.”
“Who knows you are pregnant?” he demanded.
“Just my doctor.”
“Who else?”
“No one! All the books said to wait three months before telling anyone.”
“They don’t mean the father, Lauren. Or did you try telling him and things didn’t work out? Is that why you’ve come to me? What happened with the real father? Tell me. I’ll help you.”
Lauren stopped thumbing the clasp on her pocketbook, annoyance making her heart ring and come out fighting. “The real father didn’t believe me and is behaving like an ass.”
He shot her a sharp glance until he read her meaning in the withering look she offered. His sexy mouth firmed into a hard line.
“You are being an ass,” she asserted. “I needed time to figure out what my life would look like as a single mother so I kept it to myself. Why didn’t you call?” she challenged. “You knew we hadn’t used any condoms.”
A muscle twitched under his eye. “I believed you were unable to get pregnant so even though I didn’t mean to take that risk, the likelihood of conception didn’t seem high enough to follow up on.”
All she heard was the first part and it caused her a sensation like a knife had been thrust into her throat. Another one turned slowly about eight inches lower, deeper in her chest. “Ryan told you I couldn’t get pregnant?” she choked out.
“Not in so many words, but I’m Italian. We have big families. You always struck me as—” He stopped, seeming to rethink what he’d been about to say.
“What?” she prompted. Sad? Pathetic? Gullible? She braced herself, willing him to continue.
“You seemed like a woman who wanted to be a mother,” he allowed as though it grated to acknowledge that. “Whenever I saw Ryan, I naturally asked if babies were on the way and he always said, ‘No luck yet.’ So I knew you were trying.”
“Very enlightened of you to assume it was my deficiency, not his,” she bit out.
“No matter whose deficiency it was, you have to admit it’s a stretch for me to believe one night is all it took for you to get pregnant after that many years of trying with your husband.”
“Well, you haven’t had a vasectomy, have you?” she blurted.
The car jostled slightly as he reacted, sending her a sharp look. “What are you saying? Ryan wouldn’t have done that.”
Any remorse she felt over revealing her husband’s duplicitous nature was quickly overshadowed by her tremendous bitterness over the secret he had kept from her. The many secrets.
“He did exactly that,” she said, scraping the words from the bottom of her trusting heart. “Before we married. And never told me.”
“Then what makes you believe he did it? Why would he even consider it before having children?” he argued.
“I don’t know.” She scowled, still capable of a shred of empathy for the man who’d had an even worse relationship with his father than she had with her mother, times a million. “You know how difficult his father was,” she charged begrudgingly. “I can’t help thinking that had something to do with it.”
Paolo shook his head, unable to comprehend this piece of information. He wanted to dismiss it completely, but when he glanced from the road ahead, he saw Lauren struggling with myriad emotions, fighting to hold on to her pride. Her bottom lip trembled with injured dignity before she firmed it, causing a strange tremor to hit deep in his chest.
This baby is a miracle.
He pulled his attention back to the road, uncomfortable with what she was saying because it supported a profile of Ryan that Paolo had long been trying to put from his mind. He grew even more uncomfortable in front of Lauren, given a certain conversation they’d almost had at Ryan’s birthday a couple years ago.
“Are you sure, Lauren?” he blurted, willing her to be mistaken. “How did you find out if he didn’t tell you?”
“Their family doctor came to see Elenore a few days after the funeral. She was a wreck and I said that I wished we’d at least been able to give her grandchildren and he said, ‘Well, I tried to talk Ryan out of that vasectomy, but he insisted.’ He said it like he thought I knew. I pretended I did while I finished my coffee, then I went upstairs, packed my things and flew home to Quebec.”
Lauren was still ashamed of that abrupt departure, but she’d hit the end of her rope in playing the mourning widow. She had already been months into accepting Ryan’s philandering, but it had been a fresh blow to count up all those years of anguish at what she had believed was her inability to conceive. She was just grateful Ryan had apparently used protection against disease while he’d been sleeping around because she had tested clean.
Tell him, she thought, glancing at Paolo. Tell him that Ryan was probably also ensuring none of his many affairs turned up with the sort of complication Paolo was currently facing.
She couldn’t do it, though. Paolo’s face was a wall of stubborn refutation, not unlike the way he’d looked the other time she’d brought up Ryan’s peccadilloes. Paolo didn’t want to hear anything against his friend and she wasn’t in the mood to be called a liar.
Deflated by his stubbornness and the long flight, she asked, “How far to my hotel?”
“You’re not going to a hotel. I told you, you’ve put me in a difficult position. The last thing I’ll allow you to do is run around Milan attracting attention.”
“Like whose?” she exclaimed. “I’m not even traveling under my married name. I’m back to being Lauren Green, complete nobody.”
“Don’t be naive, cara. After the stir you created last night, our photos are everywhere, all tagged to raise the same speculations as three months ago. Your new hair is a red flag. The paparazzi would love to spot you, especially going into a doctor’s clinic. Did you have plans to do such a thing?”
“Such a scandalous thing as having my blood pressure checked? Yes, I made arrangements. It’s a sensible precaution. But what stir? I was at your party for ten minutes and hardly spoke to anyone.”
“Exactly. Everyone was asking about the mystery woman who stole the host.” He muttered a few base curses in Italian. “Even Isabella was fielding questions. It was very awkward.”
“Well, I’m sorry for Isabella,” Lauren said sarcastically. “Maybe for your fiancée’s sake, the next time you have a one-night stand, call after a few weeks to see if there’s anything you need
to know.”
Dead silence, then a dangerous, “Did you really just say that to me?”
“Is my naïveté showing? Because the not calling is what makes it a one-night stand, is that right? I’ll work on getting that right while I’m here.”
“That’s not funny, cara,” he said in a gentle voice that chilled with warning.
“I’m not trying to be funny. I’m trying to get over the fact that you don’t want anything to do with me, yet you’re abducting me. Why? Just take me to my hotel,” she insisted. “Or I will use my very decent Italian and my new mobile phone.”
She was so enamored with the cute little gadget, she couldn’t resist pulling it from her pocketbook to show it off. “Look, it even has the two-way camera and global coverage. That means I can do this.” Holding the locked screen before her as though she had a connection, she spoke in Italian. “Good afternoon, Officer. I am being held against my will by this man.” She turned the phone to Paolo’s supercilious expression.
Before she realized he could move so fast, the phone was in his breast pocket and his hand was draped casually over the stick shift again.
“Hey!”
“Take a nap,” he said. “We have a long drive ahead of us.”
It was the same condescending trivialization of her needs and feelings she’d grown up with. She automatically swung through the old gamut of anger draining into the helpless sadness of feeling like she could never win, would never matter, couldn’t do what she wanted and would only be chastised if she did.
She looked out the side window, catching a glimpse of a charming bell tower overlooking a square of some kind. Chocolate shops? Perfumeries? What else did the square hold? She wanted to know and she was old enough, and free enough, to make a decision like that for herself.
“People always wondered why I chose to live with a sick old lady and that sort of dismissal is why. All I ever heard growing up was, ‘Do as you’re told, Lauren. Don’t fuss. It doesn’t matter whose fault it was, just say you’re sorry and don’t talk of it again.’ Even Ryan did it to me. ‘Do we have to talk about that now? I’m only home for three days.’”
With a burst of pent-up frustration, she flung her head around to say, “I’m sorry my organs are perfectly healthy and I dared to get pregnant when you were only taking pity on a weeping widow. It won’t happen again, trust me.”
Assaulted by a fierce need to self-protect after that outburst, she struggled to do the zip on her jacket, then folded her arms and turned her back on him as much as the tight confines of the bucket seat would allow.
He reached to make an adjustment on the console and heat poured onto her feet. “Ryan never told me you had this kind of temper.” He sounded amused which made her want to hit him, but she kept her face averted, so overwhelmed by everything that had happened in the past twenty-four hours, she could have cried.
“Like Ryan ever got to know me, home for three days out of a hundred,” she grumbled.
“Lauren,” he said with an imploring tone that nearly got to her.
“Oh, just forget it, Paolo. I want to enjoy the scenery. Drive to Sweden if you like.” She waited a beat then goaded, “I’ll rent a car when we get there and go wherever the hell I want.”
* * *
Women.
Paolo had thought Isabella’s stilted kiss-off when they had landed had been bad. My father texted. He thinks, under the circumstances, it’s best we don’t see each other.
Paolo was edging toward being a pariah again. One favor three months ago, one good deed for the sake of a valued friendship, and his life was coming undone at the seams again.
Letting out a measured breath, Paolo eyed the woman beside him, wondering how he’d let it unfold this way. After he’d swept up the pieces of his broken marriage and shattered reputation, he’d been so careful, so very careful to keep himself in line. He struggled every day against reckless impulses and had learned to double think his gut-level decisions with coolheaded logic. Brick by brick, he’d rebuilt himself and the family bank into something that was solid and trustworthy. With the economy as shaky as it was, he couldn’t afford any missteps.
And yet he’d stumbled right into Mrs. Bradley.
Ryan has disappeared, Paolo. No one will tell me anything. Please help me.
For some reason he still had her message on his voice mail. He couldn’t bear to listen to it, but couldn’t make himself erase it.
Paolo wasn’t a man who believed in extrasensory perception, but he’d known Ryan was gone the second he’d heard her strained voice. As boys, the two of them had nearly killed each other dozens of times, but no matter how far Ryan might have fallen or how long it took him to come out of the water, Paolo had always known Ryan was still alive and right behind him.
He frowned, thinking about that: right behind him. They’d first met while sharing classes at an international school outside Singapore. Initially, they’d been too competitive to like each other. Paolo was used to outpacing other students without even trying, but suddenly every quiz or spelling bee or sport match was a contest with the American boy. Ryan had been determined to overtake him in every arena.
In later years, Paolo would learn that the Bradley family motto was “Good, better, best. Never let it rest. Do your good better. Do your better best.” And if you didn’t, you caught hell when you got home.
Paolo had his own motto: Lead. You couldn’t do that from second position.
The turning point had been a cross-country race at semester’s end. They were twelve and well out in front of the rest of the pack despite the rain and mud and steep climb through slippery jungle. Paolo had just splashed through a swollen creek, Ryan was hot on his heels, when a sound—
To this day Paolo didn’t know what self-preservation instinct had made him turn and grab his competitor and drag him forward. A sound, something in the way the muddy water slid fast under his feet...primal awareness? Whatever it was, it saved Ryan from a slough of earth that scarred the hillside with a deep gouge. They had both stared at the gaping gorge where they’d both had their feet seconds before.
“We have to stop the others,” Paolo had said.
Ryan ran ahead to the finish line in record time. Paolo waved the next boy off and sent him back to stop the other runners. Later, they were touted as heroes—something that seemed to become an ingrained piece of Ryan’s makeup. He had found a way to earn his father’s approval. He had embraced putting his life on the line for others with future acts of derring-do.
That identity had followed Ryan into his career in the military. He’d been determined to save the world. He’d mocked Paolo mercilessly for being destined to take up banking of all professions, rather than high-octane black ops. Paolo had quelled his envy of Ryan’s action-packed life by doubling down in his studies, covering the bases for his eventual career, but pursuing a dream at the same time. A dream he’d had to abandon into a sensitive scar that Ryan never failed to poke.
Through all of that, somehow both men had overlooked the true danger in what Ryan did.
Paolo had had to face it when Lauren had reached out to him, however. Even though, deep inside, he’d sensed he wouldn’t hear good news, he’d made calls. He knew people, influential people. He’d quickly learned what was being smothered by a government trying to salvage a mission gone terribly wrong.
Paolo had been struck by survivor’s guilt. Was it really duty that had led him to take up the family profession? Good sense? Or plain old cowardice? Why was it Ryan’s responsibility to take the narrow chances in the name of peace and freedom, and not his?
If he had been with his friend, could he have saved him?
Somehow he’d found himself on a plane, the knowledge of Ryan’s death a secret that ate like a cancer inside him. He’d had to tell Lauren. Had to see her. He hadn’t questioned that compulsion, had jus
t followed it. Some things couldn’t be said over an electronic connection, he supposed.
Ryan’s family had been there when he’d told her. It couldn’t be avoided. They’d had a right to know and they were as devastated as expected. The Bradley mansion had become the pit of hell and Paolo hadn’t been able to bear it, not when his own emotions were hanging by a thread. He’d needed to leave that place and there was Lauren, looking so alone, her hands like icicles when he picked them up, stiff and frozen. He hadn’t examined his decision to take her with him. He hadn’t even given her a choice; he’d just pulled her away.
Alone with her in his suite, he’d been able to let down his guard. It hadn’t been long before they’d been crying in each other’s arms, eventually moving to the bed out of physical and emotional exhaustion. He had spooned her warmth into the hollow of his body as comfort for both of them. That was all it had been intended to be.
Then he’d woken more aroused than he’d ever been in his life, his skin tight and hot, his need to thrust into her primeval. He wished he could say he had put up a fight, but it had been the most pathetic of his life. He’d pressed her away from kissing his throat, but all she’d had to say was Paolo.
His name. She’d known it was him. That was all that had been important in that darkened room. His heart had pounded hard, trying to fill the palm stroking his bare chest. Having anything between them at that point had become intolerable.
If it had been just the once, it might have been forgivable, but they’d kept going, orgasm after orgasm. He’d stripped her naked, kissed and licked every inch of her, not letting himself think of anything but owning her in every possible way.
She’d been a greedy sensualist, deliciously uninhibited, biting his shoulder, legs like a vise around him, so wet and tight and insatiable he’d almost died.
Perhaps he should quit wondering how she could be pregnant and consider how she could not be.
He glanced at her, thankful her back was to him and she couldn’t see he was sweating and having trouble controlling his breathing. Desire drummed like an inexorable march inside him: want, want, want.