by Dani Collins
She could see by his expression it wouldn’t be that easy, only that refusing to marry him would, in his eyes, prove once and for all that he wasn’t the father.
She jerked conflicted eyes to the blurred panes of glass on the cupboards, brow knotting in pain. “You’re not being fair,” she murmured, hurt that he refused to take her word.
He lightly caressed her cheek with his knuckle. “Lauren.”
She leaned away from his touch. “Don’t. Getting your way like that will make me hate you.”
Paolo tensed, feeling as though heavy chains were settling and binding around him. Lauren had been beyond his grasp for too long for him to accept distance now.
“Don’t be stubborn,” he growled, frustrated that she refused to see what a chance he was taking in offering marriage without a guarantee about the baby’s paternity.
“You’re the one being stubborn,” she accused, crackling with the passionate energy that lit such a fire in him.
“I have to take a long view,” he reminded.
“Well, I’m not about to rush headlong into marriage without considering all the ramifications, either. I married the first time because I thought it was my only option. My mother had brainwashed me into thinking I needed a man in my life. I don’t. When the baby is born, you can take blood tests. Let me know then if you want to be involved, and we’ll discuss marriage.”
“And you’ll vilify my reputation in the meantime. Very nice,” he bit out.
Lauren rotated to face him with feminine aggression. “If you think you can change my mind by telling me your job is more important than my happiness, you’re wrong. Been there, done that. Tell me what I will get out of marriage and I’ll think about it.”
Hellfire, she was beautiful. The short hair worked for her, exposing a face that glowed with passion and assertiveness. That force tapped an answering signal in him, making him want to frame her face in his hands and kiss the hell out of her. They were both still aroused. That’s why they were on the verge of killing each other, snapping like territorial dogs. If she thought he wasn’t aware of the points of her nipples turgid against the fall of her light sweater, she was kidding herself. All he could think about was how close he’d had her to orgasm simply by fondling her breast. It took all his self-control not to adjust the ache behind his fly, but he was afraid that if he touched himself, he’d give in, open his pants and have her on the floor.
She knew what was going on in his mind. Her breathing pattern hitched and her lips parted invitingly while her body language grew soft and receptive.
He smiled. “You want the sex as much as I do, cara. Marry me.”
“I’m not as uptight as I used to be, Paolo. I can have sex without a ring.”
He let his brows go up, not liking that supercilious note in her voice. It was too suggestive of confidence that she could manage him. “You think?” he challenged.
She snorted. “I may be easy, but so are you.”
He folded his arms, taking full advantage of his height to look down on her. “And if I told you I won’t make love to you until my ring is on your finger?”
“Really?” A smile of genuine amusement grew across her lips. “You want to take that on as a challenge or a bet or whatever it is your crazy, competitive nature drinks in as fuel? You have a streak of perversity, you know that? Okay, run with it. Let’s see how far you get.” She chuckled and turned away to reach for her water, turning back with the glass raised nearly to her grin before adding, “Keeping in mind that I can have sex whenever and with whomever I choose.”
“Oh, that’s where you are wrong, cara. Very, very wrong.”
He hemmed her in with long arms braced on either side of her. Flutters of heat fanned the desire simmering inside him, but his ego was fully on the line now. He wouldn’t make love to her until he had what he wanted: her. And he was the only man who would touch her ever again.
“I’m not coming back to another empty house and having a heart attack because you’re down the road flirting with university dropouts. You and I will be joined at the hip until you agree to marry me, sharing this house or staying in the city to see my family—which is where we are going tonight. Do you have something to wear or shall we go shopping?”
Lauren was gearing up to tell him to back off and get real, but her inner diva heard the magic word and went, O-oh, shopping. The suitcases upstairs were half empty and she had high intentions of filling them.
Paolo straightened and nodded. “Shopping it is.”
“Wait! That wasn’t agreement.”
“You want to know what marriage to me offers, do you not? Allow me to show you how you are treated when you are related to the most powerful banker in Milan. And you will agree to dinner. I would like my mother to know about us before the rumors start. Because they will.”
The assumption in that phrase “know about us” got her back up, but it was overshadowed by the resignation in his tone. Lauren shivered. She wanted to be as confident as she managed to sound about having her baby alone, but deep down she was as fragile and uncertain as any new mother. She longed for support she could count on, just not when it was being offered so reluctantly.
And despite the kisses they’d shared today and his claim that he was attracted to her, she was genuinely gun-shy about rushing into another marriage that was only trying to serve convention.
Getting out of the house suddenly sounded like an ideal distraction from dwelling on problems they couldn’t resolve.
* * *
Paolo had to give Lauren credit. As a man who had escorted countless women through the fashion houses in Milan—relatives, mistresses, his first wife—he was very familiar with where to go and whom to see. His own clothes were tailored almost exclusively by Corneliani; the son of his father’s tailor had been making Paolo’s suits since Paolo had been a ring bearer for Vittorio’s parents at three. Nevertheless, Paolo knew where they were headed even before Lauren seated herself next to him, placed two hands over the pocketbook she set on her knees and said with breathless anticipation, “Via Monte Napoleone, please.”
He privately smirked. She was a natural when it came to learning what a wealthy banker offered a woman.
Being wanted for his money didn’t bother him. He knew it was part of the package along with his looks and his position in society. He was secure enough to know his own worth apart from those trappings and, to be honest, was just as superficial when it came to singling out a woman. He liked the beautiful ones and if they possessed a sharp wit, all the better. None had ever made him ache with desire quite the way Lauren did, which unnerved him a little, but he was coming around to accepting it.
Marriage. The more he thought about it, the more determined he was to make it happen. There was something enormously satisfying in the image of her wearing his ring and standing by his side.
He still couldn’t believe she’d thrown a tomato at him though. What a virago! It made him want to laugh even as he recognized he’d have to tame that streak out of her. Who would have guessed so much emotion and passion had been stifled under that curtain of hair she’d been wearing all her life? He was incredibly stimulated by it—dangerously so. He feared it would feed into his own wildness. Stifling it in both of them could pose quite a challenge.
There would be compensations for tempering it, though. He took care to demonstrate that by saying to the woman who greeted them at the design house, “Lauren will need a page in the Donatelli account.”
“Of course, signore,” the woman said with a subtle shift of heightened respect and closer attention to her new client. “Is the signorina looking for anything in particular today?”
Lauren broke from her absorption of her surroundings to say in Italian, “I’m looking at everything. But, Paolo, don’t be silly. If there’s one place my grandmother would want me to spend her money, i
t would be here. She worked as a model for this house in the seventies,” Lauren added in an aside to the woman, moving deeper into the room with the awe most people saved for the frescoed ceilings of his country’s renowned cathedrals. “Did you ever hear of Frances Hammond?”
Within moments Paolo’s wealth and name had been trumped by the mysterious quilting of intergenerational female relationships. Their hostess rushed to phone for refreshments while designers emerged from back rooms to coo over their special visitor.
Paolo left Lauren in their capable hands, spending a quiet hour at his office where half the staff had stolen away to Christmas shop. When he returned, he found Lauren so happy he stood arrested for a long moment.
She’d completed her transformation from widowed wife to a confident woman of means. Her yellow-brown eyes were sparkling, set off by a green-and-gold scarf knotted around her slender neck. Her smart tunic dress was straight enough, and loose enough, to disguise that her waist was thickening and she distracted from that area with a pair of chic, four-inch heels.
He realized that it hadn’t been hair weighing down her personality all these years. It had been lack of joie de vivre. Here was her true spirit in all its glory, and she stopped his breath.
Mine, he thought, but restrained himself from a possessive kiss. Everyone was now calling her “Signora Bradley.” The cat had a claw out of the bag.
He made arrangements for delivery of her purchases to the house on Lake Como, subtly signaled that Lauren’s credit card receipt should be torn up and the balance put on his account as he had originally requested, then waited until they were alone in the car to ask, “Did you tell them you’re pregnant?”
“Of course not!” Lauren angled toward Paolo, aware of his gaze flickering to her bare knees. A pleasurable warmth swished through her, making her feel beautiful and confident, something that had been wavering since meeting him again in New York. This visit with women who had subtly reminded her of all the qualities her grandmother had possessed had reinvigorated her toward believing she could get there, too.
With a brush of her wispy bangs to the side, she said, “They kept remarking on my weight though. I finally explained I’d been sick earlier in the year and lost a lot and when I made a point of gaining it back, I went overboard.”
“What is it with women? You’re healthy,” he protested. “But were you genuinely sick? I remember thinking you were too thin when I saw you in Charleston.”
“Depressed. After losing Mamie I didn’t have to make regular meals anymore. I thought Ryan would ask me to jump on a plane any day, so I kept the groceries low. Then I got that woman’s email and the fighting started. My stomach was in knots.”
Paolo’s heart jerked. He took his foot off the accelerator and drew a subtle breath, focusing on keeping both of them alive in heavy traffic as he absorbed how rough a time Lauren had been through.
It bothered him that he’d known nothing about her anguish, but why should he have? His coping strategy had been to avoid her and he had. He was nevertheless deeply disturbed by the fact that she had needed her husband and Ryan hadn’t responded.
“I’m sorry you lost her, Lauren. I don’t think I’ve said that and it’s always been apparent to me what she meant to you.” He reached across and squeezed her hand, the sexual tension there but subdued. He was utterly sincere in his condolences.
Lauren squeezed back, but released him right away and he thought it was to keep her emotions under control. Her voice was thick as she said, “Losing her was really hard. She was always the one to pick me up when my stepfather’s kids knocked me down.”
“Physically? They hurt you?” His protective instincts gathered.
“Emotionally. My father died when I was six. Mom never worked outside the home so when the insurance money ran out she needed a husband to support her. Gerald worked in the oil patch and had three kids. He was away a lot and I guess he thought Mom filled the void. If they love each other, I’ve never seen it. His kids hated us being in their home and tortured us when Gerald wasn’t there, calling me praying mantis and stealing my things. They were awful. My only relief was visiting Mamie, but Mom limited my time with her, afraid she’d poison me with self-assurance I guess. Although, Mamie could be a brat,” Lauren confided with a grin of appreciation. “She spoiled me, sending me the latest gadgets and designer clothes. It’s no wonder Gerald’s kids hated me. They must have been jealous.”
“I like her style,” Paolo said with affection for a woman he’d only met once, but whose fragile, yet elegant beauty had left an impression.
“She liked yours,” Lauren countered with a smirk. “Every time I came home from Charleston she’d ask, ‘Did you see that sexy Italian from your wedding?’”
“What would she tell you to do now? Marry me?” Paolo challenged lightly.
Lauren was quiet a long time, then said to the side window, “She’d say don’t marry for any reason but love. You don’t want to be tied down when you find the person you’re meant to be with.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
DESPITE THE GRANDNESS of Paolo’s ancestral home, it was very much that: a home. The villa was set behind an ornate gate on an expansive estate of fountains and sprawling trees, but children played in the hedge maze and men smoked on a terrace off the second floor. Winter pansies shivered in ceramic pots at the front doors.
They arrived as a very pregnant woman was unloading children from a limo. Paolo moved to greet the woman with an embrace and kiss, agreeing to her children’s pleas to join them on the lawn after he said hello to his mother.
“This is not Isabella,” the woman said with a significant look from Lauren to Paolo.
“No, this is Lauren Bradley,” Paolo said, explaining to Lauren, “Maria is the second of my three sisters, all younger. She runs our branch in Switzerland. Her husband is with the Red Cross and must be overseas?” He looked to Maria.
“On his way back from that flood in Asia, which wasn’t as horrific as feared, thankfully. It seems the earth-shattering events are happening at home today. What’s going on, caro fratello?” Maria kept her tone artificially playful. “I thought the old Paolo had only been visiting three months ago. Has he returned to stay?”
Lauren heard the underlying hardness as clearly as Paolo did. He pulled away from the patronizing way Maria tried to thumb her lipstick off her brother’s cheek. Lauren couldn’t help but draw in on herself, assaulted by ignominy.
“Lauren is our guest, Maria. Don’t make her feel uncomfortable. I don’t like it.” Paolo took Lauren’s hand and pulled her into the house.
Lauren stumbled a little, feeling Maria’s gaze like a dagger in her spine, but she was too terrified to look back and see what the woman was truly thinking. Apologies choked up her throat, but she couldn’t voice them, not when Maria’s reference to “the old Paolo” reminded Lauren of his promiscuous past and that she, Lauren, was merely his latest conquest.
A conquest full of consequences.
They moved purposefully through a classically decorated house. It was more richly appointed than her mother’s tasteful house where only company sat on the good furniture. People leaned and perched and nested everywhere, all talking a mile a minute, hands gesturing, all creating a din of cheerful Italian and bursts of laughter.
Lauren would have dug in her heels from being dragged into the crowd, but he rushed her past the startled eyes of his family.
She should have fought him on coming here today. She had thought she would be meeting his mother, not his entire family. She should have stayed at the house on the lake, should never have come to Italy. Why had she even called him when Ryan went missing? It had been a stupid, weak, desperate act.
Warm, stomach-grumbling scents greeted her when they entered the kitchen where copper pots steamed and marble workspaces were covered in trays and bowls. A woman with coiffed
hair, perfect makeup, and not so much as a water stain on her apron turned from sending out a maid with a tray of hors d’oeuvres. Her smile for Paolo was warm and filled with love.
She checked slightly as she spotted Lauren.
“Mama, you remember Lauren.” Paolo moved to embrace and kiss his mother. His wide shoulders eclipsed the confused astonishment on Carlotta Donatelli’s face. By the time he had stepped back, she had recovered herself into the gracious woman Lauren had met at Ryan’s funeral.
“Oh, my dear.” Carlotta took up Lauren’s hands. “Do you even remember me? What a difficult time for everyone. How are Elenore and Chris?”
“I haven’t spoken to them recently,” Lauren hedged, clearing her throat of a husk of culpability. “But, well, you saw them at the funeral. I don’t imagine they’ll ever recover.”
The way I have. Lauren felt as though the baby in her belly glowed like a beacon of light, filling her with joy that must seem very inappropriate in these circumstances. The reality of being pregnant by this woman’s son, a woman so close to Ryan’s mother, hit Lauren. She began to really see how the underground tremor of their actions that one night would spread to topple and reshape the landscape around them. The Bradleys would be devastated all over again. This woman might side with them.
What would that do to Paolo? To his feelings for their child? For her?
Lauren dropped her gaze, growing more remorseful and devastated by the second. Her fingers went limp in Carlotta’s delicate grip. She tried telling herself the responsibility was split equally between them, but family was family. The Donatellis would point their fingers toward Lauren as the instigator. Whatever acrimony they directed at Paolo would only be deflected by him onto the woman who had caused him to be seen badly by his family.
Strong hands gripped her shoulders and Paolo’s warm breath stirred the air near her cheek.
“Can I leave Lauren with you while I greet the children, Mama? They’re waiting for me.”