by Lucy Gordon;Sarah Morgan;Robyn Donald;Lucy Monroe;Lee Wilkinson;Kate Walker
“I am your lover. Why not?”
She could tell him why not, the arrogant—Her thoughts stopped mid-tirade as she became more aware of the sticky wetness between her legs. She knew this feeling. She’d had it once before. The first time they’d made love. It had a distinctly different quality from the times after when they made love using a condom.
“You didn’t use anything,” she screeched at him, scrambling to her feet.
Trying to get off the mattress so she could get to the light switch, she tripped and started to fall. She yelped, but didn’t make contact with the hard floor because two strong hands pulled her back onto the bed, right into his lap.
“Stop this. You will hurt yourself.”
“You didn’t use a condom!” she condemned him again.
“No, I did not.” He didn’t even sound remotely sorry.
“Why not?”
“One reason is I did not have one with me. I was not prepared to be locked in a vault all night with you, dolcezza.”
Sweet? She’d give him sweet! “One reason? What was the other? You were so out of control with lust you didn’t think of it?” Right. More likely he just hadn’t cared. After all, he wasn’t the one who had ended up pregnant the last time. “You didn’t even try to pull out at the crucial moment.”
How could she have been so stupid?
“I did not think of such a thing.” And his tone of voice implied he wouldn’t have been impressed with the thought if he’d had it. “I was out of control. So were you, no?”
“That’s no excuse!” she said instead of answering the provocative question.
“I was not attempting to excuse it.”
No, he hadn’t been. Not that that made any sense. OK, so he wasn’t the one who’d got pregnant the first time they had unprotected sex, but he was a responsible man. She knew it even when she wanted to pretend otherwise. So, why wasn’t he upset?
She would have expected some sort of remorse prompted by his over-active guilt gene.
She tipped her head back, trying to see what he was thinking, but the pitch black gave her no clue. “We can’t have this conversation in the dark.”
“I do not suggest we have this conversation now at all.” He moved his arm and a brief glow illuminated his wrist. It was almost eerie in the otherwise complete blackness. “You have barely a half an hour to wash and prepare yourself to meet your employer.”
Oh, no, he was right! Their conversation, her anger and confusion, they would all have to wait. She couldn’t bear the idea of being caught naked in bed with Salvatore by her boss. She tried getting up again, but he set her firmly to one side.
“I will get the light. Then you may move without doing yourself an injury.”
“Too bad you didn’t show such refined protective instincts last night.” She was doing quick mental calculations, and just as the light came on she realized something terrifying.
“It’s the middle of my cycle.” She stared up at him, immobilized by the utter certainty they had made another baby the night before. “Last time I got pregnant when it wasn’t even the right time. What chance have I now that it won’t happen?”
His face clenched. “Do not take on as if the world has ended. It has not.”
Not his world maybe, but then his world hadn’t altered last time either. Only hers had. She’d had her heart ripped right out of her chest by his rejection and then all over again by the loss of their baby.
She didn’t say anything, just looked up at him, feeling the tragedy of her life pressing in around her in stifling waves.
He said something harsh under his breath and bent down on his haunches beside her. “It will be all right, cara. Trust me on this.”
She stared at him, not seeing him, but rather an image of herself once again pregnant. Once again alone. She shook her head. “I can’t trust you.”
“You can.” He tugged her to her feet and then kissed her hard on her mouth. Letting her go, he said, “Go wash yourself and dress. I will clean up out here.”
Get dressed. Yes, she had to dress before the timed lock on the vault released and let the rest of the world in again to see what an idiot she’d been.
Salvatore swore as he watched Elisa walk toward the bathroom, her body bowed like that of an old woman. She was terrified of once more becoming pregnant with his child. He had seen it in her eyes, but he had not expected it. He had told her he now knew he had made a mistake in his reaction to the news a year ago. Did she not realize he would never abandon her again?
She belonged to him and he would take care of her.
Starting now. It took him only seconds to dress. His shirt smelled of her and his body reacted in a predictable fashion to the feminine fragrance teasing his nostrils. Ignoring his desire, he folded up his suit coat, hiding the evidence of their lovemaking. He deflated the mattress as well, putting it and the blanket back in the storage cupboard.
A snicking sound indicated the vault was unlocking as Elisa emerged from the bathroom. Her skin was too pale and her pupils too dilated for his liking, but he could not reassure her the way she needed to be reassured in front of Signor di Adamo.
She avoided making eye contact as she slipped her shoes on and then stood, waiting for the door to finish unlocking. He let her get away with it. For now.
Just as he had promised the evening before, Signor di Adamo was waiting on the other side once the door was open, his expression filled with deep concern.
He pulled Elisa into an exuberant hug. “Piccola. You are all right. Praise the good God above.” He held her away from him, no doubt noting what Salvatore had earlier, but giving it an entirely different interpretation. He shook his gray head. “This has been too much.”
He looked at Salvatore. “Arrangements must be made.”
Salvatore nodded. “Sì. We will talk, but first I must make some calls.”
The old man agreed and led Elisa back into his apartment.
While Signor di Adamo fussed over her, Salvatore called his office and ordered two more operatives and then made arrangements for himself and Elisa to travel to Sicily later that afternoon.
When he informed Elisa she was to return to the hotel with his operatives while he and her boss discussed what was to be done about security for the store, she did not even put up a token protest.
Which, more than anything else could have, revealed her continued state of shock from realizing they had made love without using protection. He grimaced as he watched her go from the store. She had only more shocks to come.
Elisa stepped out of the shower and started toweling off.
She was in her own tiny bathroom in her small but cheerful apartment.
Once they had left the jewelry store, she had informed the operatives for Vitale Security that she wanted to go home. They had balked, but she’d remained adamant, simply refusing to get out of the car until the driver took her to her apartment. Salvatore would have picked her up and carried her, she had no doubt, but she was equally sure he would fire another man for doing so.
His operatives had apparently understood this as well and eventually took her where she wanted to go. Home.
She needed the familiar.
Upon arrival at her apartment she had tried to dismiss them, but it had been their turn to be obstinate. So she’d left them in the hall and still felt guilty about it, but not enough to invite them inside her small home.
After taking them something to drink and offering them chairs from her dinette set, which they refused, she had left them to do their sentinel duty and gone to take a shower. She’d needed to be clean and she could not stand the thought of strangers in her tiny apartment while she did something so intimate.
She wasn’t in the mood for company period. Her mind was functioning again, but barely. The thought of putting on a calm façade for the two men was anathema to her, so she left them in the hall and didn’t even care if her neighbors thought it odd she had two armed guards outside her door.
She d
ressed and brushed her long hair into a wet ponytail. Then she made herself some coffee, all the while her mind spinning with the reality of the night before.
She had let Salvatore make love to her.
Unprotected sex.
The words pulsed in her brain like a blinking neon sign. Garish. Loud. Impossible to ignore.
She’d gotten good and mad at Salvatore, but she was the idiot who had allowed him admission to her body—a man who had proven his only feelings for her were lust. She hadn’t once considered the possibility of pregnancy. Had not thought to ask about protection. Which was gross negligence on her part, or just plain insanity. She didn’t know which.
She went to take a sip of her coffee, but put the cup down again, remembering something she’d read during her pregnancy a year ago. She got up from her small dinette table and dumped her coffee down the drain.
Some doctors thought caffeine wasn’t good for babies, and if she was pregnant she wasn’t going to lose this baby.
She wasn’t.
She pressed her hand into her lower abdomen. Did she harbor Salvatore’s baby in her womb? Was she nurturing new life?
She was still confused, still devastated by the very possibility of conception. Nevertheless a fog that had shrouded her mind and heart since the involuntary termination of her first pregnancy began to dissipate. A very tiny spark of warmth began to glow deep in her heart.
The fear was still there. So was the anger. The pain had not miraculously disappeared, but underneath it all a sense of life and living she had thought gone forever furled into fragile being.
“You look lost in thought, cara mia.”
She spun away from the sink to find Salvatore less than ten feet away. Her gaze skittered to the door.
“I sent them away.”
“How did you get in?”
His dark eyes looked wary. “You did not answer my knock.”
She hadn’t heard him come in either. She had been very lost in thought. “So?”
“So, I picked the lock. The door is not very secure. I am not happy about this. You could be accosted in your sleep and never even hear the perpetrator trying to get in.”
She shook her head.
“I assure you it is true.”
“I wasn’t denying it.” Why had she never realized that the man liked to argue? Probably because before, the arguments, even small disagreements like this, had ended in bed. A place she had thoroughly enjoyed being with him. Before. “I was trying to clear my mind.”
His mouth quirked. “Did it work?”
“No.” She wasn’t sure what would. It was as if her life was just out of focus, but for the first time in months…she wondered if it was going to stay that way. “Why didn’t you just knock again? Louder.”
“I was worried.”
She saw that, in the faintly gray cast to his freshly shaven face, in the tiny lines at the corners of his eyes.
“Did you think I was going to do something stupid?”
“I did not think you would harm yourself, but I did think you might disappear again.”
“You looked for me the last time.” She’d wondered if he had.
“Sì. But you could not be found.”
No need to wonder how he felt about that. Chagrin and residual anger were clear in his expression and tone.
“So, you picked my lock to make sure I was still in here. What was I supposed to do—climb out through the window?” She wasn’t anywhere near as big as Salvatore, but even so, such a thing would have been a real feat.
“You are resourceful.”
“I see.” Curiously touched by his estimation of her intelligence and abilities, she turned her head to hide her expression from him. “Would you like some coffee?”
“I had coffee at the hotel. I want to talk.”
Yes, she could tell he’d gone back to the hotel, for not only had he shaved, but his damp hair indicated he had also showered and his suit was fresh. He was wearing a tie today.
Why that detail stuck in her mind she did not know.
Maybe because it was easier to focus on the mundane than the possibility—no, probability—she was pregnant again.
“What do you want to talk about?”
“The likelihood we will be parents in nine months’ time.”
Chapter Eight
THAT had her looking at him.
He wasn’t smiling. No teasing. He’d meant it, but then possible parenthood was no joking matter.
“I suppose this time you’ll believe the baby is yours, or are you wondering if I’ve had a lover in the past year?”
“I know you have not.”
“How? Have you been having one of your operatives spying on me?”
Dull color burnished his cheekbones and her eyes widened. “You have!”
“You would not see me. I had to know you were all right. So, I had you checked up on.”
“Well, unless you had me followed twenty-fourseven, you can’t know if I’ve been faithful to you, can you?”
Why had she put it like that? There was nothing to be faithful to. They weren’t married. They weren’t even dating any longer.
“I just know,” he said, ignoring her slip of the tongue.
“What, now security tycoons are psychic too?”
It was a juvenile jab and his expression said he thought so too. “This arguing is getting us nowhere.”
“Maybe we have nowhere to go.”
“On the contrary. We leave for Sicily in an hour.”
“What are you talking about? We aren’t going to Sicily.” She put her hands on her hips and gave him her best glower. “I have a job. Signor di Adamo is counting on me.”
“Adamo Jewelers will be closed until the auction.”
Her heart contracted with pain at what that would mean. “No. That will ruin his business. He’ll lose everything.”
“This will not happen.”
“Says you?” she challenged him.
“Sì. I say. I have worked things out with your boss. My company will finish installing the new security system while the store is closed as well as seeing to some necessary structural and wiring changes in his building.”
“He can’t afford that.” She should know. She did the books and Signor di Adamo was hanging on by a financial thread.
“I have taken care of it.”
If Salvatore had worked around her boss’s pride to the extent that Signor di Adamo allowed him to do these things, then he had been ten times more politic with him than he’d ever been with her.
“What about the crown jewels?”
“They will be transported to an undisclosed location for storage until the auction.”
“I suppose your company is supplying security for the auction now as well.” Not that she really minded. She hadn’t known how she was going to handle security for the prestigious guest list, much less the jewels. It was just his high-handed way of handling things that got to her.
“Sì.”
“I don’t understand why I have to go to Sicily, then. I’m not at risk if the jewels aren’t in my keeping.”
“And how are would-be thieves to know that you and Signor di Adamo no longer have access to the jewels?”
They couldn’t exactly put out an ad in the paper. She bit her lip and stared out the window, then looked back at Salvatore. “I guess I just assumed that if they knew we had them, they’d know when we didn’t.”
“The world is not such a simple place, amore.”
Something snapped inside her at the use of that endearment. “You know, I’ve put up with you calling me sweet and darling. I don’t like it—” and her heart called her a liar “—but I tolerate it. They’re just words to an Italian man. I know that, but don’t you ever call me love. Got it? Love has nothing to do with our relationship.”
She wasn’t going to fool herself into believing love prompted his protectiveness or concern for her. Sicilian guilt and obligation to a family friend mixed with a lot of red-hot de
sire were the extent of his feelings toward her and she’d do well to remember that.
His expression could have been set in cement. “You are saying you no longer love me. I know this.”
“And you don’t love me, so let’s not play games.”
“I was not aware I was playing any game.”
“Then stop using endearments, would you?”
“You are dear to me.”
“I’m your guilty burden, you mean.”
Another layer of cement poured over his expression. “Did last night feel like guilt?”
She couldn’t deal with what it had felt like. She had to deal with reality. “Last night was about two people overcome by lust to the extent that they both forgot birth control.”
“I did not forget.”
“Right.” She glared at him. Men, especially macho men like Salvatore, had a hard time admitting when they’d messed up. “You just decided to forgo any attempt at preventing the conception of a child.”
“This is so.”
“What?” She could not have heard what she thought she had just heard. No way. Not possible.
“I chose to do nothing to prevent pregnancy.”
“You said you didn’t have a condom with you.” Was that whisper-soft voice sounding so stunned hers?
“I did not, but I could have made love differently to you.”
“But you didn’t.”
“I did not.”
She plopped down into the dining chair she had vacated earlier, her legs going wobbly on her. “Because you thought real men didn’t pull out, or something?”
His eyes mocked her words. “That thought was not in my mind.”
“What thought was in your mind, then? You can’t tell me you wanted me to get pregnant.”
“But I did. I do.”
She could actually feel the blood draining from her face as shock made her heart skip a beat and her breathing shallow. “You want me to get pregnant?” she asked again, incapable of voicing any other concept.
“Sì.”
“But why?”
“There are many reasons.”
“Name one.”
“Your health.”