by Dani Collins
All he had to do to kill it, however, was remember the self-loathing that had filled him when he’d woken with her naked body entwined with his, her hair spilled like a dark stain over his chest and stomach. She’d been equally appalled, sitting up, moving away. Silent. Neither of them had said a word, only departed for separate showers.
What kind of people behaved so dishonorably? Paolo hated both of them, himself for regressing into the man who succumbed to the desire of a moment, Lauren for not stopping him. She possessed the power to make him disregard consequences and seize something he never should have touched in the first place. It infuriated him. She made him edge toward being the irresponsible man he used to be and he couldn’t have it.
He glanced at her again, suspecting by the way her head lolled and her arms had loosened that she was fast asleep. So much for scenery gazing.
Completely misplaced protectiveness moved in him. She would be the instrument of another downfall if he didn’t handle this with absolute care and clear thinking.
Dio! The woman had a tongue, though, and the things she said provoked the most elemental reactions in him—emotional, difficult-to-temper reactions.
He couldn’t allow it. Rent a car and go wherever she wanted. Like hell she would. She could have her Italian holiday if she insisted, but not under his mother’s nose. Not a chance.
CHAPTER FOUR
PAOLO’S WARM FINGERS stroked the side of her face in a tender caress. Lauren sleepily turned her lips into the skin at the inside of his wrist.
He jerked his touch away and a curt profanity hit her ears.
Lauren blinked her eyes open, disoriented and aghast by her instinctive nuzzling. She’d known it was Paolo, so why...?
Hot with mortification, she looked down to find herself fully dressed in the passenger seat of his car. Beside her, he was turning away to make room for her to exit, leaving the door open. A crisp wind swirled around her, eager to sweep the cobwebs from her mind.
“Where are we?” she managed to stammer as she swung her feet to the ground.
She was dizzy from his touch so she stayed sitting, taking in the sculpted landscape of winter-stunted grass and bare shrubs. In the middle of the well-kept grounds a charming stone house rose in peaceful, old-world charm, its rock walls twined with dried vines. Wrought iron balconies jutted out here and there and behind it, across the valley, blue sky and snowcapped mountains formed a backdrop.
Curious, Lauren stood and the intensely blue lake, marbled with restless licks of white, opened below her, stretching an expansive arm into a stunning view that magnanimously stated Welcome.
“Oh,” she sighed in awe. Wrapping her fingers over the top of the car door, she drew in the crisp, clean wind and wondrous serenity. Alongside the house, stone steps led down to a glittering turquoise swimming pool that steamed on a terrace halfway to the beach. Cushioned loungers sat invitingly next to it, angled toward the view.
“You’ll enjoy your stay here, then?”
Lauren hitched her elbow over the car door and regarded him. He stood in profile to her, facing the water, fists in his pockets. He was so compelling yet remote. His wall of aloof detachment held her off, giving her a sense of irrelevance. She had the impression she was something he wanted filed away and forgotten.
Balming lips that felt dry and nerveless, she questioned, “Stay?”
“I’ve arranged this villa for your use while you’re here.”
So arrogantly conscientious. It would be funny if it weren’t so annoying. And indicative of his great desire to make her disappear.
Ignoring a pinch of childish insecurity, she shut the car door and moved to the top of the steps. “That’s very generous of you, Paolo, but if I’d wanted to stay in a villa miles from civilization, I would have arranged for it myself. I could, you know,” she told him with a boastful glance. “My grandmother made a fortune in real estate. My step-siblings think that’s why I moved in with her, to secure an inheritance. I didn’t, but she left everything to me anyway.” She couldn’t help grinning at that. Mamie was the only one who’d treated her decently and Lauren revered her for it.
“Then there’s Ryan’s share of his mother’s wealth,” she added, laying it on as thick as the moss on the stones beside her, determined to make him see she wasn’t without resources.
“It galls Chris no end that I’m keeping my share of Ryan’s trust, which is probably the reason I’m doing it since I don’t need it. And of course the U.S. government sends me widow benefits.” She wrinkled her nose, not feeling as good about taking that money. “If I thought it would go to anything but guns and tanks, I’d refuse it. Instead, I’m rolling it into a program that helps service families who’ve lost members in the line of duty.”
She swung her gaze back to the villa and its charming amenities. “So you see, I don’t need you to arrange another empty house for me. But I’ll stretch my legs while we’re here, before you give me back my phone so I can make other arrangements...”
Lauren’s voice faded as she descended the stairs in a lighthearted trip that stuttered Paolo’s breath.
“They could be slippery! Slow down. Hold the rail.”
“Yes, Mama,” she called back, continuing at a pace that made him hurry to be close enough to catch her if she stumbled.
“You’re determined to test my patience, aren’t you?” he said as they came out on the lawn below. The way she had pressed her face into his hand like a cat seeking more petting was still unsettling him. Now this sass and snub of the trouble he’d taken to accommodate her presence in his country. It was too much.
And was that pose of sexy absorption deliberate? She took in the short beach of rocky sand overseen by a handful of bare fruit trees. He took in skinny jeans that showcased graceful, filly legs. Short ankle boots added length so his eyes couldn’t help but travel up and down and up. His palms burned to stroke her slender limbs and test the back pockets that looked so tight he doubted he could slide so much as a single fingertip in, but he very much wanted to try.
The breeze off the water was stiff enough to make her turn up the collar on her smart leather jacket.
“What do you want me to say, Paolo? Wait, let me guess. Yes, Paolo. Of course, Paolo. Anything you say, Paolo.” She snorted disparagingly. “Been there, done that, except his name was Ryan. I’ll tell you what I’ll do, though.” She turned to him with a gamine look that encouraged him to believe she could be reasonable. “If I decide to stay in Italy, I’ll let you buy this villa for me. It looks like a lovely place to raise a child.”
“Stay?!” It was the moment between controlling the wave-skimming hydrofoil and feeling the deck lift into the zone where you knew you could lose it. He advanced on her, ready to bend her to his will. “What are you trying to do to me, Lauren?”
She took a wary step back, ankle wobbling as she met soft sand rather than firm, dry grass. “I’m not doing anything to you. I’m trying to do for myself, live my life. People like you and Ryan who never answer to anyone don’t understand—”
“I answer to everyone!” he broke in with frayed temper. “Do you think the investors in a bank want the head of it caught up in a paternity scandal? Again? It’s expensive and distracting and when he’s there because he cheated with his best friend’s wife they question his ethics!”
She blinked in shock, but he carried on, spelling it out for her because she obviously needed to hear it.
“It’s a family business, Lauren. My sisters and cousins do not appreciate when my fast and loose behavior messes with their living. I know because they’ve told me. And do you think my mother, who already attached herself to one unborn grandchild only to have it snatched away, will appreciate another incident just like it?”
The old helpless, hopeless ache spread shoulder to shoulder behind his rib cage, threatening to choke his voice. H
e ground words past it.
“My ex-wife’s lies broke her heart. I won’t let it happen again. So whatever you’re doing with your life, recognize it impacts mine!”
His passionate fury was as quick and sharp a slap as the wind gusting off the whitecaps. Lauren worked her heels into the sand so she felt a little more steady, but her ears ached with cold and strain, hearing more than Paolo had said.
His mother wasn’t the only one who had become attached to an unborn child.
She hadn’t seen past his bitter fury the day of her wedding when he’d been fresh from a fight with his ex. His mood had been an unpredictable storm building quietly on the horizon and she’d thought it was anger at being lied to. He’d been sarcastic and disparaging and portraying himself as inured to sentiments like love. He’d drunk too much and kissed the bride too passionately. They’d all dismissed it as an act of acrimony toward marriage.
It had never occurred to her that his heart had broken the same day his marriage had. He had been grief-stricken, feeling as though he’d lost the unborn child that had turned out to be another man’s. Of course he wouldn’t let himself believe her when she claimed he’d fathered this one. Of course he wouldn’t.
Lauren struggled her heels free of the sand and took a few steps toward the water, tortured by the memory of how quickly she had dismissed Paolo’s behavior at the wedding. He’s drunk, Ryan. It doesn’t mean anything. She hated having her own deep hurts trivialized and yet she’d been guilty of doing it to Paolo. Was she coming at their current situation only from her own side and failing to look at how it impacted him?
If she was, she knew why. She didn’t want anyone to know how much Paolo attracted her, least of all him. Every deflective action she took was a big, dirty, smokescreen to hide her fascination with a man who was far beyond her league and never likely to return her interest.
Lauren twisted a ring on her finger, not her wedding band, Paolo noted, and was annoyed with himself for attaching significance to that detail. He ought to be concentrating on the chasm of anguish she was churning up: that excruciating time when his father had just died and the baby he’d expected was gone. The spans on either side of his life had snapped and he’d been at loose ends, tumbling disoriented into a bleak gorge, aware there would be a very hard, painful landing before anything would straighten out again.
He’d been wrong to look to Lauren, a freshly minted bride, to soften his impact. He certainly shouldn’t be thinking Grazie, Dio, because Lauren Bradley was not wearing her husband’s ring now.
Her anxious gaze lifted from the water. “I’m not trying to make waves or to hurt your mother or ruin your career, Paolo. But try to understand. I’ve been patient all my life, waiting to grow up and leave home, waiting until Mamie didn’t need me, waiting to join my husband overseas, waiting to see all the places Mamie spoke about. Now you’re asking me to wait again? Until when? Twenty years from now when this baby is grown?”
“How is visiting all the places your grandmother talked about living your life? It sounds as though you’re trying to relive hers.”
It was a throwaway comment, something to ward off feeling guilty or softening with empathy, but her face froze. Her surprise faded into stunned culpability as her gaze dropped to the ground. She folded her arms protectively across her chest.
“I suppose that’s fair. I didn’t see it that way, but...” She moved to the water’s edge where she stood in silence for a long time.
After a few moments he ambled forward to join her, sensing he’d shaken her up more than he’d intended to. The weight of defeat in her profile gave him a pang of conscience. He hadn’t meant to be hard on her. He knew that a girl in her twenties was more apt to party than nurse an old woman. He couldn’t argue that she’d been tied down a long time.
“I lack imagination,” she said, rubbing her arms and looking down to kick at the loose stones among the sand. “I always choose the safe route. I told myself I was finally doing something bold and exciting, but you’re right. This is just a rerun of Mamie’s adventure. How is being exciting so easy for everyone else and I’m just...not?”
That’s not true. The statement formed on his tongue, but he swallowed it back, not willing to articulate that even though she usually did her best to look as mousy and timid as possible, she’d been drawing his notice for years. When she laughed, everyone turned to enjoy the sound.
“Define ‘exciting,’” he muttered to deflect from what he was thinking. “For most it’s a problem with impulse control. A lack of stopping sense. Addiction to adrenaline.”
“Is that what it is for you?” Her shiny-penny eyes lifted to his with a light of genuine curiosity and he felt the catch. Immediately the urge took him to hook his arm across her back, pull her into him and to hell with consequences.
He tempered it, pushed his hands in his pockets and stared out across the water. “I suppose it’s been all of them at one time or another, but these days it’s none,” he answered, feeling as restless as the kicked-up peaks on the water. “I’m dull as old knives and intend to stay that way.”
She laughed, richly and openly. “Oh, I am so sure, Paolo! Men like you don’t change. Life is one big game that you have to win.”
“I’m not like that anymore,” he insisted, ruffled by her pronouncement.
“No? You don’t even have to win an argument?” she teased.
He let her know with a dismissive blink that he wasn’t biting on that less-than-subtle catch-22.
She grinned and kicked around the beach for a minute, bending to pick up a stone before saying, “Maybe I’m going through a belated teenaged rebellion. I mostly came to Italy so I wouldn’t buckle to my mother’s nagging and move back to Manitoba.”
In a desultory throw, she flicked a flat stone across the choppy water. It bounced twice on the uneven surface and sank.
“Mothers like their children nearby. That’s normal.” He found a flat stone and sent it spinning. Four bounces. A warm-up on rough water, but a terrible performance nonetheless.
“She wants me to sit in a chair and not move. She’s so high-strung.” Lauren sighed with fatalism, thumb working circles on another flat rock. “I try to understand how hard it was for her to be the only one in that conservative rural school who was illegitimate, her mother an exuberant, colorful hussy. But honestly? All I can think is how lucky she was to have a mother that was interesting.”
She sent her rock across the water. Five. Respectable. For a girl.
“So you feel you have some wild streak that’s been suppressed all your life and it’s time to let it out? That’s fine, cara, but not in my backyard.” His next rock made six ticks before it struck a wave, preventing it from going farther. He frowned.
“Yes, you’ve completely lost your competitive edge, haven’t you,” she said with a knowing smirk that she chinned toward the water. “I’m actually quite good at this. My record is sixteen on a flat pond. What’s yours?”
He stopped looking for a good rock. “I can’t remember. It’s been years since I’ve done this.” He pushed his hands into his pockets so he wouldn’t throw rocks until he’d surpassed twenty. It would eat him alive now she’d given him a number to beat. He silently cursed her.
She held out her hand. “Phone, please.”
“Lauren—”
“You win, Paolo. I won’t flaunt my loose morals all over Milan. I just want to use the map thingy to find a place to eat. You can drop me at a café and I’ll figure things out from there.”
That didn’t sound like a win. It sounded like he wouldn’t know where she was.
“Don’t be silly. The house is fully stocked. At least come inside for a look. I’ll make you something if you’re hungry.” He glanced at his watch, recalling that he had a cocktail party at his aunt’s tonight, but he had time.
Since he didn’t ha
ve to collect Isabella, he recalled with a scowl.
“Fine,” Lauren said with a short sigh of frustration as she began climbing the steps that led to the pool, planting her feet with little stomps. “But I want it on record that I hate acting like such a doormat.”
“Accepting my invitation to cook for you is polite, not weak,” he stated.
“You weren’t serious, so that makes me weak. The minute someone with the least bit of assertiveness tells me what to do, I fold like a cheap lawn chair. ‘Lauren,’” she mocked, “‘you have to come to New York. No one else can afford it.’” She swung around at the top of the stairs, tapping her own chest. “I didn’t want to go, you know. I didn’t want to meet some military flyboy who saw me as a challenge. I certainly didn’t want to marry him. If I don’t start standing up for myself, I’m going to raise another wimp who trembles like a Chihuahua all her life like I do.”
He stood on the step one down from the top, trapped in the stairwell by her passionate speech. She was almost eye level with him and he couldn’t get past her without touching her. She had no idea the power she had over him right now. All he could think was that he only had to lean forward a few inches to kiss her. He was the one in danger of trembling and folding.
He kept his one hand locked on the cold rail and flattened the other on the damp stone wall, focusing instead on all that she’d said. Most specifically, I didn’t want to marry him. He’d been tortured by the vasectomy remark the whole way here, trying to dismiss it, but she’d sounded so bitter and convinced.
“You’re shivering like a toy poodle right now,” he noted to distract himself from his disturbing inner conflicts. “Go inside. The lock is coded to your birthday.”
That made her take a step back. “How do you know my birth date?”
“We met on your birthday.”
She snorted. “Crystal lied. It wasn’t my birthday. I’m October, not April.”