For a long moment there was silence, before Dante slowly took in her words. ‘Not yet’ she had said, while looking so ripe with child that he wouldn’t have been shocked if she’d suddenly gone into labour right there on the oatmeal sofa. No, that wasn’t quite true—he would be pretty shocked if that happened.
‘Why not?’ he demanded. ‘What are you waiting for?’
His words were like bullets, and Justina felt as if she’d just removed the vest which might have bounced them back at him. All the fight went out of her—because how could she possibly explain that her life had been non-stop activity for the past thirty-five weeks? That she’d been afraid to turn down any work since she’d first stared aghast at the telltale blue line which had confirmed her pregnancy? That she hadn’t wanted people to think she was going to retire or start taking things easy because she still needed to work—baby or no baby? She was going to have to work for all kinds of reasons—the main one being her own sense of crippling insecurity, which always lurked just below the surface of her life.
Hadn’t it been easier to cram her life full of jobs? Much easier to have things which kept her busy rather than to have to think about a future she’d never envisaged and which she still couldn’t quite imagine. But as she met Dante’s gaze she could see that her actions might easily be interpreted as selfishness. And hadn’t that always been one of his number one accusations against her? That she was one of a terrible breed of women who refused to put other people first—or rather put their man first?
‘I kept putting it off,’ she said. ‘Maybe it was an extended form of denial that it’s actually happening. I’ve been to all the childbirth classes....’ Her voice tailed off as she remembered the ignominy of that. Everyone else had been part of a gleeful couple—each man proudly patting his partner’s bump at every opportunity and religiously doing all the breathing exercises. One man had even given up soft cheese and alcohol in order to ‘share his wife’s experience’. Justina had just felt such an oddity in their midst. Maybe they’d found it slightly embarrassing that she didn’t have a partner—that she’d clammed up whenever they had tried to quiz her about her baby’s father. And hadn’t she felt so unbelievably lonely as she’d tried to stem her envy of their seemingly uncomplicated and ordinary lives?
‘It just seemed so unreal,’ she continued slowly. ‘Like it wasn’t really happening to me. As if I’d wake up one morning and find that it had all been a mistake.’
His gaze was still fixed on her and she waited for some control freak tirade to follow because she’d dared to neglect the material requirements of the D’Arezzo heir. But to her surprise there was no outburst. Just that same faintly despairing expression in his dark eyes, which was infinitely worse. She thought that he’d never seemed more distant as he stood there, his powerful body seeming to absorb all the light in her usually airy apartment. But there was something compelling about him which drew the eye so that it became impossible to look anywhere else other than at him.
‘What do you do to relax?’ he asked suddenly.
The question was so unexpected that she didn’t have time to concoct a convincing answer. Instead, she shrugged. ‘I’m not very good at relaxing.’
‘I can tell. You look worn out,’ he said softly. ‘So why don’t you think about the baby for once—instead of your unquenchable desire to be number one in the music business? Go and take a bath, or something. Isn’t that what women usually do to relax?’
‘You would know about that better than I do, Dante.’ She was about to add that she would have a bath when she wanted one—and preferably after he’d gone—but his phone had started ringing and he’d clicked to answer it. And unbelievably, he was holding up a forefinger to silence her while he listened.
She contemplated telling him to go and take his calls somewhere else—but she was damned if she was going to stand there like some sort of simpering secretary, waiting patiently for him to finish his conversation. Instead, she stomped into the bathroom and locked the door behind her, turning the taps full on and recklessly dolloping in far too much lime and mandarin bath foam, before she hit the music button and then lowered herself into the foamy water.
When she’d first moved into this apartment she’d had a sophisticated sound system installed which played music in all the rooms. Usually she pressed the ‘shuffle’ button, so that she never knew which track was coming next. But today she selected Metamorphosis—which had been one of the Lollipops’ most successful albums. A success which had come at a cost.
It was the album she’d been writing when her relationship with Dante was breaking up. She hadn’t been able to listen to it for years but her reasons for needing to hear it now were important. No, they were vital. She needed to revisit that dark place she’d been in. She needed to remember the heartbreak and the desperation she’d felt as it had all slipped away from her. To remind herself that the occasional twinge of isolation was nothing to the pain she’d suffered in the past.
She lay back in the warm water, the shiny mound of her belly emerging from the white suds as the sound of the music filled the bathroom.
It hurt. It hurt more than she had expected it to. The lyrics of one song in particular felt like having a bucket of salt poured over an open wound, and she flinched as the memories all came flooding back. It was a song which had soared up the charts. Women had bought it in droves. She’d even been approached about having it used in the film score of a romantic comedy, but she had said no—even though her agent had hit the roof when she’d told him. She hadn’t been able to bear the thought of having it associated with comedy when it symbolised the bleakest time of her life. In fact, she’d always regretted releasing it as a single. It had been played on the radio so much that for a while she’d stopped listening in order to preserve her sanity.
She’d written it when she’d got back from finding Dante in bed with that blonde, pouring all her feelings out into a song because she hadn’t been able to bear the shame of telling anyone else what had happened. She’d entitled the track ‘Her’ and the words were still unbearably painful to hear.
Does she know the things you said
When you were lying in my bed?
Your words of love became a slur
When you whispered them to her.
Justina wanted to scream. To turn the music off and with it the images it brought back—but she couldn’t move. She was marooned in a great tub of bath water, feeling and looking like a beached whale, her usual agility long gone. So she closed her eyes and waited for the track to finish.
The water was almost cold by the time she carefully got out, hoping that Dante would have taken the hint and gone.
But he hadn’t gone. He was still talking on the phone, looking out of the window as he conversed in his native tongue. He must have heard her enter the room—even though she was moving soundlessly on bare feet—for he turned round, his eyes narrowing when he saw her.
Maybe she should have put on some jeans and a sweater, not the full-length silken robe which she’d wrapped tightly over her baby bump. But why should she start turning her whole life around to fit in with him? She was dressed for bed and she intended to go to bed—perhaps he might take the hint and leave her to it.
His voice slowed as he watched her push a lock of damp hair back behind her ear, and he said something in Italian before cutting the connection and sliding the phone back into his jacket pocket.
‘I thought you’d have gone by now,’ she said ungraciously as she slumped down onto the sofa.
‘I was listening to the music. Unsurprisingly, the acoustics in your apartment are the best I’ve ever heard.’ His smile was brief, but damning. ‘Tell me, do you always listen to your own songs when you’re lying in the bath?’
If she said ‘never’, wouldn’t that indicate that he could still unsettle her enough to make her behave in an uncharacteristic way? A
nd she didn’t have to justify herself to him.
‘That’s none of your business. I can listen to what I like. Frankly, I’m surprised you’re still here—not least because that last song must have made you feel intensely uncomfortable. Or maybe not.’ Her eyes challenged him with a bravado she was far from feeling. ‘Maybe it feeds your massive ego to hear yourself written about in a song.’
‘Not that particular song, no,’ he reflected. ‘It was unforgivable for you to take our private disagreement and throw it into the public arena.’
‘Perhaps if you hadn’t behaved like a total sleaze then I might have found something good to write about you.’
‘“A total sleaze”?’
His eyes narrowed, but she could tell by the way that he was tapping his forefinger against his lips that he was furious.
‘Is that what you think I am, Justina?’
He was walking towards her now, with a look on his face which was making her shiver. Actually, it was making her do much more than shiver. It was making the soft, curling excitement at the pit of her belly slowly begin to unfurl. She knew she ought to move, to run away—but her slumped position on the sofa meant that she wasn’t able to run anywhere. And deep down she knew she didn’t want to.
‘It doesn’t matter what I think you are,’ she said.
‘No?’
‘No. You’re nothing to me any more, Dante.’
For a moment their gazes locked, and Justina held her breath as he walked round the back of the sofa to stand behind her, so that she couldn’t see him. She could feel a strange kind of tension begin to shimmer in the air around them.
‘I think it does matter.’ There was a pause as he brushed a fingertip over the back of her neck. ‘You don’t like me very much, do you?’
She shook her head. ‘No.’
‘Brutal, but honest,’ he mused, his fingertip retracing the path it had just taken, as if he was fascinated by the innocuous column of flesh he found there.
She tried to fight against the sudden whisper of pleasure that touch had given her. ‘What are you doing?’
He began to massage her shoulders, briefly expelling a breath as he felt her soft flesh beneath his fingers again. ‘I’m trying to make you relax, but it isn’t easy because you are very tense, tesoro,’ he observed softly. ‘Very, very tense.’
Justina swallowed. She ought to assert herself. She ought to tell him to stop. But how could she bear to do that when it felt this good? His fingers were kneading at the tightness in her shoulders and she could feel the tight knots dissolving as if by magic. His thumbs began to circle rhythmically at the base of her neck and it was impossible not to just go with it. She told herself that the caress of his fingers on her skin was dangerous. She knew that. But it had been so long since she had been touched. Not since that night back in Norfolk, when their baby had been conceived.
She closed her eyes. ‘Dante—’
‘Shh.’ His fingers continued with their steady movement. ‘Don’t talk.’
‘You shouldn’t be doing that.’
‘All I’m doing is making you relax.’
But that wasn’t all he was doing. He must know that. Because the tension which had melted away had now been replaced by a very different kind. She could feel it building in the air around them—like the heavy electricity you got before a violent thunderstorm. She could feel the melting ache of heat between her thighs and the insistent tingling of her breasts as she yearned for him to touch them. And wasn’t it appalling that the woman who was due to give birth in a few short weeks should be feeling this rising tide of need?
So stop him!
Her throat felt dry, her mouth so parched that she could barely get the words out. ‘I don’t think—’
‘Good. Don’t think. Just feel.’
And—oh, God—it was all too easy to do that. Sinfully easy. His hands were working deeper into the flesh around her shoulders and he had drifted two thumbs down over her ribcage. Her heart was fluttering wildly in response. Surely she was mistaken but had he...had he just brushed his hands over her breasts? Yes. There it was again. Definitely. The whisper of his fingertips was butterfly-light but achingly accurate.
‘Dante—’
‘For once in your life, will you just shut up?’ he questioned, splaying his hand over one peaking nipple and letting his thumb circle over the tight bud.
She began to squirm with excitement. She couldn’t help it. She wanted to call his name out loud. She wanted him to walk round to the front of the sofa, to pull her into his arms and start kissing her and make love to her properly. But he wasn’t doing that. He was... He was...
She gasped as he leaned over her, so that his lips were on the top of her head. She could hear the heavy sound of his own breathing and it was echoing the sound of her own. She could smell the sandalwood scent of his aftershave and feel the warmth of his flesh as he touched her. His hand had skated down over the swollen mound of her belly and he was pushing aside the folds of her silken robe. She could feel her thighs parting—as if she was a puppet and someone was pulling her strings. Well, he was. That was exactly what he was doing. He was skating little circles over the cool skin of her inner thighs until she was gasping helplessly with pleasure. And then his finger flicked over her moist and eager flesh until it alighted on the tight little nub and she opened her thighs wider. She gave another gasp as he began to make that achingly familiar movement, her hunger briefly tempered by the fear that he might stop.
But he didn’t stop. He carried on with what he was doing. Stroking his finger against her aroused flesh until she was past caring about anything—victim to her own urgent needs as she called out his name like a betrayal.
It happened in a rush. One minute she was climbing towards the blissful summit, still shadowed by the fear that the peak might elude her, or that it might not happen at all. But Dante always delivered. Every time. Only never like this. Never quite like this. She found herself making little cries that sounded like pleas as she spasmed helplessly around his finger.
Time shifted and slowed as she drifted back down from a dazed state of bliss, unsure what to do next even if her weighted limbs had been capable of any kind of movement. All she knew was that he was tugging her robe back into place before dropping a light kiss on top of her head almost as an afterthought.
He walked around the sofa and stood facing her with an expression on his face which she couldn’t fathom, even if she’d had the energy to try. She could feel the colour still flooding her cheeks, and the intense dryness in her mouth which made the thought of speaking seem like a chore. Her head felt as heavy as lead but she forced herself to keep her chin lifted, because she wasn’t going to cower away and pretend that nothing had happened.
‘What...what did you do that for?’
He gave a short laugh. ‘You’re now going to tell me you loathed every minute of it, I suppose?’
She wished that the telltale heat in her cheeks would magically disappear. ‘That’s...’ And why was her voice sounding so infuriatingly husky? ‘That’s not the point.’
‘I thought it was exactly the point.’ He shrugged his shoulders in a particularly Italian way and his lips curved into a smile of undeniable satisfaction. ‘You were uptight, so I started to massage your shoulders. And then you seemed a little...turned on...so I did exactly what you wanted me to do.’
For a moment she looked at him in disbelief, but the unrepentant expression on his face was nearly as damning as his words. ‘You hateful...bastard!’
‘Guilty as charged.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘But while you might hate me, Justina, I hope you won’t be hypocritical enough to deny that you still want me. You made that pretty clear.’
Just as he wanted her. Her face was flushed and belligerent and she was glaring at him, and he was tempted—oh, how he was tempted. Would i
t be the end of the world if he joined her on that great big sofa and started to kiss her? He could feel the throb of desire at his groin and imagined the sweetness of her fingers stroking him there. Imagined her guiding him into her sticky warmth. He found himself wondering what position he would have to take to make it more comfortable for her, because he had never made love to a pregnant woman before.
He shifted his weight as desire fought a fierce battle with reason. She was pregnant, he reminded himself, and she was pregnant with his child. Maybe he shouldn’t have touched her like that—but hadn’t the restless wriggle of her curiously sensual body made it impossible to do otherwise?
Averting his gaze from the anger which was still sparking from her eyes, he glanced at his watch. ‘And, much as I hate to miss out on today’s dose of character assassination, I really must go. My plane will have been refuelled and I’m flying back to the States.’
Justina hugged the lapels of her robe closer. ‘That’s the best bit of news I’ve had all day.’
‘I’m sure it is. But don’t worry, because I’ll be back in time for the birth.’
‘You don’t have to.’
‘Oh, but I do. You may not need me, Justina—but my baby does.’ He pulled a business card from his wallet and put it down on the table next to her handbag. ‘You’ll find all my details there, including my private number.’
‘Gosh, I am privileged. Or maybe not. How many women are in possession of one of these, I wonder?’
‘You’ll also find the number of my assistant, who has been instructed to help you,’ he continued smoothly, as if her interruption had been nothing but a minor irritation. ‘Anything you want, you ring Tiffany—she’s very efficient. If you can’t face furnishing the nursery yourself—as seems to be the case—then she can do it all from New York.’
Justina’s post-orgasmic lethargy was replaced by a growing feeling of rage. Tiffany? Who the hell was Tiffany? He wanted his assistant to go out and buy stuff for her baby, did he? While managing to make her sound useless and helpless in the process?
A Scandal, a Secret, a BabyMarriage Scandal, Showbiz Baby! Page 7