by Dani Collins
Paolo turned his head long enough to say bluntly to her companion, “Leave us,” before he lifted his Neanderthal knuckles off the map. Folding his arms, he ignored Lauren’s mouth as she hung it open at his audacity.
“Why are you here and not at the villa? You knew I was coming,” he said.
“And you thought I’d have tea and cookies waiting? I assumed you’d leave my phone on the hall table. Believe it or not, I wasn’t keen to see you. Please stay to finish your coffee, Dino. Gracias.” She stood to gather her things, determined to end this by separating herself from Paolo swiftly and cleanly. “You’re creating a jam,” she pointed out. People were looking and she’d never been comfortable at the center of attention.
“Why didn’t you use the car in the garage?” He took her bags with proprietary ease, leaving her scrambling to hang on to her purse at least.
“I felt like walking, but it was cooler than I expected. Hence the new hat.”
“If you’d taken the car, I would have known you were shopping and wouldn’t have run through the house like a madman, yelling for you. Don’t do that again, Lauren.”
To cover how disturbed she was by that revelation, she snorted, “When would I have occasion to? After this we really are never going to see each other again.” She meant it. Keeping Ryan’s secret and making her feel a fool was unforgivable.
He said nothing as he stowed her bags in the space behind the driver’s seat.
Rather than argue, she said haughtily, “Leave everything on the front step,” and started to turn away. This was painful enough, hating him while still reacting to every little flex and shift of his powerful body.
“Get in the car, Lauren.”
“I prefer to walk,” she told him, using a cutting stare to drive home to him that she would die before she’d go anywhere with him.
“Do you want me to put you in it?” He pushed his seat into place with a sharp click and a meaningful gather of his muscled frame.
“You wouldn’t. Not here,” she scoffed with a little smile and shake of her head. A car crawled past, honking repeatedly.
“I will,” he assured her. It wasn’t so much his tone that gave her pause, despite it being very severe. It was the inferno of cold heat in his eyes, a maelstrom beneath his calm demeanor.
Her heart skipped a beat. She wasn’t afraid of him, but for a second she was afraid of it. The energy. The source of his anger. It was an unknown force, but it felt very personal.
To combat it, she reminded herself he was a liar. He had held her in contempt for sleeping with him so soon after Ryan’s death while fully aware that Ryan had been cheating all along. As her indignant fury soaked back into their staring contest, the spark of rebellion in her expanded to an inferno.
“Go for it,” she goaded, and returned to the café and Dino’s watchful curiosity.
Never in a million years would she have believed Paolo would do it, but athletic arms gathered her up faster than a parent caught a runaway toddler. The sudden grab startled her into letting out a yelp that turned into a string of angry protests as she wriggled in the cradle hold that pinned her to his chest.
He was beyond impervious. And strong. Amazingly strong since she was not only tall, but she’d started putting on baby pounds.
None of that made an impact and despite her struggles, he wasn’t the least bit rough. He carried her around to the passenger side like she was a case of crystal tableware, prone to breakage.
Why that made her feel secure, she had no idea, but for all the horrid embarrassment of being manhandled in public like this, there was a component of sweetness. She loved being close to him again. Feeling the ripple of his flexing muscles made her go weak with anticipation...
That would be embarrassing. She began to struggle more earnestly, but he didn’t set her on her feet until he needed to free one hand to open the car door.
She glared at him, flushed and hot. Shaking off his grip on her arm, she said, “You made my hat fall off!”
“Get in or I’ll run over your damned hat.”
He would. She could see he was in just that sort of rancorous mood.
Fuming, she plopped into the car and buckled up, watching as he circled the car, snatched up her hat, then threw it across to her as he climbed behind the wheel.
“What is wrong with you?” she muttered as she gently pinched the felt brim back into shape.
“You are wrong with me,” he bit out, squealing his tires as he peeled away like they were leaving a bank robbery. “I haven’t behaved so outrageously in years, but you had to throw down the gauntlet, didn’t you?”
“You didn’t have to pick it up!”
“I was worried about you,” he near shouted. “You fainted two days ago, in case you’ve forgotten. I thought I’d find you facedown in the pool. Instead you were flirting with some transient. I wasn’t about to leave you to make your own way home and not know if you made it. What if he followed you?”
“He’s a grad student on break—”
“I don’t care who he is. Don’t talk to strangers.” He pulled into the villa’s drive, reducing her leisurely twenty-minute walk to half a minute with his arrogant, caveman foot on the gas.
“Strangers like you? Because you sure aren’t the man I gave you credit for being!”
He said nothing, just braked to a firm stop and sat there with hollow cheeks, hands gripping the wheel of the car so hard his knuckles stood out white and sharp as the glaciers across the lake.
“I would ask you why you did it, but I already know. You hate me and Ryan was your best fr—”
“I thought something horrible had happened to you today! Does that sound like I hate you? Look at my hands. They’re still shaking.” He showed her one that was a hair off rock steady. “What does that tell you?”
“That you’re a really good actor.”
CHAPTER SIX
SHE SLAMMED OUT of the car and went into the house. He followed, aware that he’d already revealed too much, but he couldn’t leave things like this.
“Stupid electronic locks,” she muttered with a baleful glance when he entered. “I’m looking for the manual, you know. I’m going to change the number.”
“You didn’t answer when I called out to you.” He set her shopping bags on the sofa. “I knew you were upset last night. I shouldn’t have left you like that.” Paolo ran a hand down his face trying to erase those few minutes of recalled terror when he couldn’t find her in this house. “You have no idea what that was like. None.”
“You honestly thought I had drowned myself in despair? I’m not depressed, Paolo. I’m angry. So angry you can’t even imagine. And where can I let it out? On a dead man? No one wants to hear that the Great American Hero was a common cheat. If they did, all those women who slept with him and all those men who knew about it would be saying something, but they’re not! They want their mythical hero.”
She gestured expansively as she spoke, animating the full injustice. “Meanwhile, I get to maintain the lie. I get to look like the dopey wife who didn’t have a clue, and in six months, I get to look like the inconstant spouse. Thanks to you.”
Lauren’s pointed finger of accusation could have been a bullet, Paolo felt it go through him so tangibly.
“If you were the least bit worried about me, you’d take responsibility and help me through all of this.” Her voice grew jagged. “But you just want me to quit making life difficult for you. Well, happy day for you, I’m going south and you can forget I exist.”
If only, he thought while “No” formed like a diamond inside him. He spoke it quietly and without compromise. Dio! If she met up with another smooth-talking backpacker who thought he could get lucky with her—
Paolo had hit a wall when he’d seen her nestled so close to the stranger, her pixie face as t
rusting as ever, the young man dazzled and eager. Paolo had already been frantic and that had been a new threat he was completely unwilling to tolerate. Another man in her life? Like hell.
He instinctively knew the action he wanted to take to curtail such a thing, but he had spent years training himself not to react from his gut. Better to look at this from all sides first.
“You’re not the boss of me, Paolo.” Lauren carried her bags to the kitchen island and began putting away the contents. “If I want to go, I’ll go.”
True, he didn’t have much influence over her and that needed to change. This was a turning point. Keeping her at a distance was not working. Hiding her away was a temporary measure at best. He’d been reacting out of shock since she’d ambushed him in New York, but her pregnancy would be discovered. His reputation would need triage no matter whether the baby turned out to be his or not.
He still shied from embracing the baby as his own. Logically he knew it was not only possible but probable, but his heart would not let down its guard. A large part of that was his reluctance to trust Lauren—or rather himself. Believing could turn out to be wishful thinking born out of how susceptible he was to her.
For some reason his libido caught fire at the mere thought of her. Despite their argument yesterday, he’d barely slept as he relived Charleston. She wasn’t exactly dressed to entice today, wearing a knitted pullover and fresh jeans, but the blue cables draped softly over her narrow shoulders and thrusting breasts, while the jeans cupped her bottom faithfully, giving her a leggy yet curvy silhouette that drew his eye and held it.
He wanted her and it wasn’t going away. Possessing her in Charleston had made the hunger worse, not better. If she hadn’t been pregnant, a quiet, lengthy affair would have been the perfect solution, but she was pregnant. And alone.
He had nothing but contempt for men who refused to take responsibility for their children. Standing on high ground knowing he wasn’t the father would be cold comfort if Lauren wound up raising her child alone while the world judged Paolo as the deadbeat who’d put her in that position. No, he couldn’t take that risk with his reputation and, frankly, wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he cut her off simply because the baby wasn’t his. If she had fallen into a dead-end affair just before Ryan disappeared, it was because she’d been lonely, grieving over the loss of her grandmother and scorned by her unfaithful husband.
Whose fault was it that she’d still been in that marriage? He kept coming back to that. If you were the least bit worried about me, you’d take responsibility and help me through all of this.
He couldn’t deny that he’d been worried about her. The depth of his worry unnerved him, making him expect a cold sweat to condense over him as he let himself contemplate tying himself to her permanently. Instead, the mist seemed to clear from his mind while a weight lifted away. Marriage. Si. It was the perfect solution. His gut knew it and so did his intellect.
“If you give me a few days to make arrangements,” he said with placating calm, “I can take you south myself. We’ll call it a honeymoon.”
* * *
Lauren subtly slid one hand over the other, pinching the back of her hand and giving it a fervent twist for good measure. Her heart tripped into a trot, a canter, then a gallop. It found an opening in the shields she usually kept in place against Paolo and raced toward him.
“Are you proposing?” Her voice wasn’t quite steady as disbelief threatened to unbalance into spirit-swelling elation.
He stood taller, his stature filled with pride and masculine elegance. Her mind’s eye took a photo of him like that: regal and handsome and projecting his will like a force that made her sway with admiration and primitive desire to capitulate.
“Si, that is exactly what I am doing. Proposing marriage.”
A glow of jubilation warmed her. “You believe me about the baby, then?” Finally. She began to soften all over. A joyous smile tickled her lips.
His expression remained shuttered.
“That can be proven in time, but in the short term you need someone to watch out for you. Since I will be perceived as the father, I’ll do what’s expected—”
Her ears blocked out the rest. Her heart snapped back into her chest, doors slamming behind it. Everything in her was crushed and buried under disappointment and rejection. She turned back to her groceries to hide what a slap-down this was.
“Why would you do that again? Marry when you’re not sure whether you’re the father of the baby?” she choked out, keeping her head down, confused and appalled by how buoyant and excited she’d been at the prospect of him falling in love with her.
“This time I know there is doubt. And Ryan shouldn’t have left you in a position of feeling you had to isolate yourself from people to hide his behavior. As his friend, it’s my duty to look out for his wife. Did you not just tell me to take more responsibility?”
“Not because you think I’m some kind of charity case! I want you to take responsibility because you love and want your child.” She wanted him to want her.
Recognizing that, realizing she was still the needy girl who had married in a rush in case Ryan changed his mind, made her want to break down into jet-lagged, hormone-provoked, hurt and angry tears. Mamie had told her a thousand times she could have everything she dreamed of if she would only believe she deserved it, but it was hard. Very hard when this man was offering a pity-marriage on the heels of his pity-bedding.
“I’m sure I’ll come to care for the child no matter who fathered it. Which is something you will communicate to any man who might come forward in the future.” Paolo’s demeanor hardened right down to the pinpoints of his aggressively contracted pupils.
Her heart skipped a beat, startled by his sudden shift to undisguised possessiveness. His teeth showed in a subtle snarl.
“I’m going into this with my eyes open, but so are you. Once we tie the knot, you and the baby are mine. No take-backs.” He withdrew her phone from his pocket and held it out to her. As though he expected her to call her mystery man and blurt out his reverse-ransom demands.
Lauren wanted to release a laugh of offended pride, but was afraid it would come out as a sob. She ignored the phone and held his stare with defiant refusal to move across the room and touch it while a sensation like falling down a mountain tumbled through her. Her voice hurt her throat when she managed to speak.
“No need. I won’t marry a man who thinks it’s okay to cheat.”
His head recoiled like she’d slapped him. He tightened his grip on her phone until she thought the screen would crack. “I don’t cheat.”
“I wish I could believe you, Paolo, but you’ve lied to me before.” Her hand shook as she went back to stowing groceries in the refrigerator. “Men like you are incapable of monogamy.”
“Men like me?”
“Like you and Ryan. You’re sex machines. You made a pass at a bride on her wedding day, for God’s sake!”
“And you kissed me back,” he near shouted. “You came out to the garden after me, so don’t make out like I hunted you down. I was trying to get away from you. You made the first move in Charleston, too. So which one of us is the sex machine?”
Before she knew what she was doing, the yellow tomato left her hand and was flying at his head.
He fielded it like a pro, his reflexes catlike. His reaction of astonished disbelief came more slowly as he looked at the orb smashed into his palm. Very deliberately he set it aside and wiped his hand on his shirt, lifting his head in a way of a predator locking onto his prey. Retribution was a ferocious light in his outraged expression.
Lauren’s heart stopped. All her blood drained into her toes and a cold sweat chased it. She was as flabbergasted as he was and the way he seemed to gather and glow with challenge melted her into a puddle of apprehension.
“I—I—” she stammered
.
He began walking toward her and she tried to retreat, backing into the fridge door and knocking condiments over in their trays while her nerveless fingers lost their grip on the cloth bag. It fell to the floor. More tomatoes rolled out toward his menacing steps while she managed to shuffle around the door and clatter it closed, taking refuge at one end of the island, putting it between them as he came up to the other end, threat in every line of his aggressive stance.
Part of her knew this standoff was insanely childish, but he looked not just furious, but intent. She was trapped and a frisson of something unidentifiable went through her. Not real fear, but the kind that chased you through a haunted house, making you want to laugh while you were screaming your head off.
“What are you doing hiding behind furniture? You wanted a fight, didn’t you?” he taunted in a voice that sent a sensual slither down her spine. “Or were you inviting something else?”
“I was inviting you to get lost, but you can’t stand for a woman to resist you, can you?” She practically threw the words out.
“If you at least tried to resist, cara, we might not be in this situation.”
“Who is chasing who right now? I don’t want anything to do with you. You’re behaving like an idiot.”
His head went back in insult while a hint of desperation shadowed the eyes that stayed fixed on her. “Do I really have to chase a woman who wants to be caught?”
Her heart did a backflip while she protested, “Get over yourself!”
At the same time her heart raced with something more like anticipation than fear, even though she was very scared how she’d react if he touched her.
He made a sudden fake to her left. She feinted in a mirror dodge that started him down one side of the island. She took her chances running down the opposite side.
Paolo was not only competitive, but strong, athletic, and ruthless. Before she’d taken four steps, he had vaulted onto and slid over the island, landing before her so she would have crashed into him if he hadn’t caught her by the arms to cushion the impact.