Claiming His One-Night Baby

by Michelle Smart

  Downtown turned out to be a thriving metropolis full of character and colour and all kinds of scents. Her hair whipped around her face which with the sun shining down on them acted as an industrial hairdryer.

  He drove them round the back of a gleaming skyscraper that looked over the harbour and into the underground car park, coming to a stop in a space with his name on it.

  ‘Handy,’ she commented. ‘Are these your offices?’

  He grinned. ‘I need to pop in for a few minutes to sign some documents before we eat.’

  There was an elevator a short walk from the parking space. Matteo punched a code and the doors pinged open. Inside, he pressed the button with the number thirty on it.

  ‘Why did you use a code?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s a security measure. If you don’t know the access code the elevators won’t work for you. This is an exclusive elevator for my staff and patients.’

  They arrived at their floor before she’d even registered the elevator moving.

  The medicinal smell hit her the moment the doors opened.

  ‘Do you do surgery here?’ she asked in surprise.

  ‘Where did you think I would do it?’

  ‘Not on the top of a skyscraper. I thought these were your administrative headquarters.’

  ‘They’re on the next two floors up.’

  ‘But you run your clinic in a skyscraper?’

  He laughed. ‘Trust me, the facilities here are second to none.’

  Three receptionists dressed in white clinical uniforms manned the immaculately clean room with the fabulous views of the ocean they stepped into. Matteo had a brief chat with them while Natasha stared around in wonder at the plush furnishings and tasteful artwork.

  It was like being in a hospital that had amalgamated with a five-star hotel.

  ‘I can give you a quick tour if you want?’

  ‘As long as you’re not going to give me the hard sell for a buttock enhancement or a new nose,’ she jested.

  The amusement that had played on his lips since the exhilarating drive over faded. It faded from his eyes too, his stare unfathomable. ‘You’re the last person who needs anything done.’

  It was his tone. The starkness to it. It made her veins heat and her chest fill with a longing that made her yearn to reach out and touch him.

  That was all she seemed to want to do. Touch him. And smell him.

  She could almost believe he meant it. Almost. But she knew too well that something in her did need fixing. Why else had she never pleased her parents in anything she did? Why else would Pieta have chosen her? She’d been wrong for him in every sense possible but still it had been her he’d chosen to be his wife. It had been her he’d trapped into staying with him even after the truth had come out between them.

  She didn’t want to think about Pieta.

  Since her talk with Matteo ten days ago things had been better between them. They’d both made a concerted effort to build bridges without saying so in words. Like so much between them, it wasn’t something that needed saying.

  What also didn’t need to be said was the reigniting of the chemistry that had always been there, swirling between them but now gaining an intensity she was finding harder to resist.

  Resist she must. There was too much danger in it. She’d been besotted by Matteo as a teenager but she wasn’t a teenager any more. She was an adult with a little life growing inside her that needed her protection. Learning to find her own voice and not be afraid to speak it had been hard, finding her spine and the courage to stand up for herself harder. She couldn’t afford to lose that.

  She didn’t want to be so vulnerable again. She couldn’t be. Not for herself and especially not for her baby.

  So she swallowed the emotions pushing through her chest and up her throat at the way Matteo was staring at her and forced her tone to be airy as she said, ‘I thank you for the compliment but I’ve always fancied a new nose.’

  ‘Your nose is perfect.’

  ‘Hardly. How about new breasts? We could do a deal—buy one boob, get one free?’

  His expression changed, a wryness spreading over his features, as if he too was pulling himself back. ‘I think being pregnant has already done that for you.’

  The strange almost melancholic moment broken, he led her down a wide corridor and briskly said, ‘I can’t show you everything as we have patients in residence and surgeries being performed, but I can show you enough so you get a good feel for what we do here. After all, it will be our child who will inherit it all one day.’

  ‘I hadn’t thought of it like that,’ she said, startled.

  ‘Once everything’s out in the open with the family I’ll get a new will drawn up.’

  ‘Really? So soon?’

  ‘Death has no favourites. It can strike anyone at any time.’ She knew from the look he gave her that it wasn’t the patients he’d dealt with during his residency years he was thinking of but Pieta. ‘With us being unmarried I want the peace of mind to know that if anything happens to me, our child will automatically inherit without any protracted legal drama. You should get one done too. We should both do everything we can to protect our child.’

  ‘Okay,’ she agreed, knowing it made sense, unbelievably touched at what he planned.

  He’d said since the scan that he accepted paternity but his talk about a DNA test, although said in the heat of the moment and soon disregarded, had put doubts in her mind. Only small doubts, but they’d been there, tapping away at her.

  This simple deed put those doubts to rest and she could hardly credit the relief sweeping through her.

  If this didn’t prove he accepted paternity then nothing did.

  He believed her.

  ‘We’ll have to think about guardians should anything happen to both of us,’ he said.

  ‘You have given this a lot of thought.’

  ‘I’m not prepared to leave our child’s future to chance.’ He pulled a tablet out of his pocket and pressed away at it, saying, ‘These are the private rooms the patients stay in post-op.’ He put the tablet back in his pocket and opened a door halfway up. ‘This one’s empty.’

  Natasha looked inside. It was like no hospital room she’d ever seen. This was a plush hotel room except more clinically clean.

  ‘Any thoughts on guardians?’ he asked, closing the door and leading them on to the end of the corridor. Matteo entered a code into a silver box by the end door. It swung open and they stepped into another corridor with a very different feel to the one they’d just been in. The thick carpets had been replaced with shiny hard flooring, the soft hues of the walls now brilliant white.

  ‘I don’t know. If I thought Francesca wasn’t going to disown the pair of us, I’d say her.’ She only just managed to stop her voice from cracking.

  ‘She might surprise us.’

  ‘Do you really think so?’

  ‘No.’

  She sighed. ‘Nor do I. We’ll have to see how things go and then decide. But definitely not my parents.’

  The grimace he gave showed he felt exactly the same way. ‘Do they know you’re here?’

  ‘No. I haven’t spoken to them since the funeral. They know how to contact me if they want anything.’

  He stopped walking abruptly. ‘They haven’t called you?’

  ‘No. I’m sure they’ll crawl out of the woodwork when they think Pieta’s inheritance has been sorted. In fairness, I haven’t called them either.’

  His jaw clenched and he breathed heavily. ‘Fairness be damned. You don’t owe them anything.’

  ‘I owe them my life,’ she pointed out, her heart twisting to see the protective anger on his face. She wanted to stroke that face. She wanted to feel those firm lips on hers again. She wanted it so badly it was becoming like a drug.

  Sometimes when they talked she would see more glimpses of the man she’d fallen for all those years ago. Her desire for him then had had such purity to it. Her desire had been innocent, a longing to be w
ith him, to be held by him.

  ‘Anyone can create a life,’ he said, his voice low, his face edging towards hers. ‘We’ve proved that. It’s how you care for the life once you have it that shows the person you are.’

  Almost hypnotised by the intensity in his eyes, she felt her face inching closer to his in turn, her lids becoming heavy, moisture filling her mouth as the electricity of anticipation danced over her skin.

  There was no purity to her desire now. She’d lost her innocence long before she’d lost her virginity. Now her desire was a living thing inside her that fed on his presence, a battle she fought harder with every day that passed.

  She wanted him. She craved him. She couldn’t bear to fall into bed with him again and when it was over for him to roll over and swear at the horror of what they’d done. For her own sanity she needed to keep a lid on her feelings for him but it was becoming harder as each hour with him prised it off a little more.

  Because what she needed to remember more than anything else was that they had no future together as anything other than parents of their child. She’d had one disastrous marriage and couldn’t contemplate another relationship.

  Matteo didn’t want a relationship with her any more than she wanted one with him. That did nothing to stop the chemistry between them taking on its own life form. That did nothing to stop her lips parting and her eyes closing as the whisper of his breath played over her skin and his scent played in her senses...

  A loud bang jerked her back to reality as the large swinging doors they’d almost reached were slammed open.

  Natasha stepped back and swallowed hard, managing a wan smile at the two medics who strolled past them, greeting Matteo loudly as they passed.

  He ran a hand through his dark cropped hair and stilled for a moment before going through the doors that had only just stopped swinging.

  ‘This is our operating wing,’ he said in a gruff voice, resuming the tour. He reached again for his tablet, which she realised through the daze their almost kiss had put her in had all the information he needed about what was happening at that very moment in his clinic delivered to his fingertips. ‘We have operating theatres and recovery rooms, everything you’d expect from a normal, functioning hospital.’ As he spoke, a nurse in full scrubs walked past talking on a phone and waved at them.

  ‘We leave nothing to chance,’ Matteo continued. ‘Room seven’s empty. You can look from the doorway but I must ask you not to go inside. No one’s admitted without scrubs on.’

  He opened a door for her.

  Natasha peered inside and gaped. This was an honest-to-goodness operating theatre, just like those she’d seen on the television. Except bigger. And shinier.

  ‘I need to sign some papers off in my office and then we’ll go and eat. How do you like the idea of eating by the docks?’

  She strove to match the casual tone he’d now adopted, to pretend that they hadn’t nearly just locked lips. To pretend her mouth didn’t still tingle and her limbs didn’t feel weak with longing for him. ‘As long as a seagull doesn’t try and steal my chips.’

  ‘You want chips?’

  She was glad to think of something that didn’t involve his hands running all over her body. ‘Yes. A big bag of chips. And a big American club sandwich.’

  ‘Then that is what you shall have.’

  They were back in the reception area, heading up a different corridor. The door at the end had Matteo’s name on it.

  He unlocked it and she followed him inside.

  Like the rest of the clinic, his office was scrupulously clean.

  ‘Do you see clients in here?’ she asked, looking around, keen to look anywhere but at him, not when her heart was still pounding beneath her ribs.

  ‘Those that I take on personally, yes.’

  ‘Do you perform many surgeries yourself?’

  ‘Not as many as I used to do. The business has gotten so big it takes all my time. I make sure I do enough to keep my skills sharp.’

  He sat behind his desk and pulled a stack of papers from a tray. ‘This should only take me ten minutes. Help yourself to coffee—there’s decaf if you want it.’

  She could sense him avoiding her gaze as much as she was avoiding his.

  ‘I’m good, thanks.’

  Needing to keep her gaze away from him, Natasha passed the time by looking round his office, at the shelves crammed with medical texts, the walls lined with his qualification certificates. His certificate from medical school still bore the name Matteo Pellegrini.

  She hesitated before asking something she knew had been a majorly important decision in his life. ‘Why did you change your surname?’

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  FROM THE CORNER of her eye Natasha saw the nib of Matteo’s pen hover over a sheet before he pressed it down and signed it, then placed it on the fresh pile he was making. ‘Because I no longer wished to be acknowledged as my father’s son.’

  ‘It got that bad?’ Their relationship had never been the same since the childhood fire that had ruined both little boys’ lives.

  ‘Don’t pretend you don’t know, bella. I’m sure you were told all the details.’

  ‘Are you talking about the argument you two had at your brother’s funeral?’

  He jerked a nod and signed another form.

  Pieta had asked her to go to Roberto’s funeral with him. It had been one of the only times she’d ever denied him anything he’d asked of her. She’d stood her ground doggedly, pointing out she’d never met Roberto and that seeing as it was going to be such a small, intimate funeral, it would be inappropriate for her to be there. Pieta hadn’t wanted her there for support—he hadn’t seen Roberto in years—he’d wanted her there for appearances’ sake. Even back then she’d known that. Appearances be damned, she’d thought; she wouldn’t put Matteo through it. He would have hated to see her there. It would have made a bad day even more difficult for him.

  Thinking back on it, her refusal had been the moment she’d discovered that she did have a spine. She’d found it for Matteo’s sake.

  ‘I know you two had a blazing row and that you changed your surname two weeks later. I never knew what the argument was about but I assumed the two events were linked.’

  ‘You assumed? You never asked Pieta?’

  ‘I never asked about you, not to him or anyone. Any news I heard about you came about in general conversation.’

  Slowly he turned his head to look at her, his green eyes narrowed.

  She raised her shoulders and pulled her lips in before saying quietly, ‘I had this fear that if I brought your name up, they’d be able to see through me.’

  ‘What did you think they’d see?’

  ‘The truth about our past.’

  And the truth that my feelings for you ran deeper than anything I tried to feel for Pieta.

  ‘Eventually it stopped mattering, but not speaking about you became a habit.’

  He stared at her for a long time, so hard it was like he was trying to dig into her mind. Eventually he sighed and dragged a hand down his face. ‘At the funeral my father said it should have been me he was burying, not Roberto.’

  Her mouth dropped open, utter shock thumping her.

  ‘Seriously? He said that to you?’

  ‘Sì.’

  ‘That’s outrageous. My God, Matteo, I’m so sorry. It must have been the grief talking—he couldn’t have meant it.’ How could a father say such a thing to a child? Her parents had manipulated her and twisted her emotions to suit their own purposes but never had they wished her dead.

  Something sharp clawed into her chest, overlong talons scraping through her heart, making it bleed to imagine what it must have been like for Matteo to bury the brother he loved with one breath and then in the next to hear his own father say he wished him dead.

  How could someone be so cruel?

  ‘He meant it. He never forgave me for the fire. I always knew in my heart that he blamed me for it and at the funeral he confirmed
it.’ Matteo could still hear his father’s words in his ear and feel the spittle that had flown from his mouth as he’d delivered his hate-filled words.

  They’d buried Roberto under blue skies and warm sunshine, the kind of glorious day his brother had loved for the first eight years of his life but had shunned for the last twenty. He’d hated people seeing the horrific burn scars that had covered his body. He’d refused to look in mirrors, would refuse to enter a room if it had reflective surfaces in it. He’d shunned everyone who wasn’t immediate family, only leaving the house for medical purposes. He’d lost all his love for life and become a recluse.

  Matteo had said goodbye to his brother, his heart bursting that Roberto’s last journey should be so blessed with such glorious weather, grabbing hold of any sign of blessing he could to ease the pain racking him.

  Then, as he’d turned from the graveside, his father had snatched hold of his arm and spilled his venom all over him.

  ‘That’s rubbish.’ Natasha looked like she was about to burst into tears, her face white, her eyes glistening. ‘How could it be your fault?’

  ‘I was in charge of him when it happened.’

  ‘You were ten years old.’

  Somehow Natasha’s outrage and upset warmed the coldness that had filled his core as it always did when he remembered that dreadful day.

  ‘I know how young I was and it took a long time for me to accept the blame wasn’t mine. It didn’t—doesn’t—stop the guilt,’ he told her slowly. ‘Deep down I always knew my father blamed me too and that it was the root cause of our estrangement. I spent twenty years hoping for his forgiveness. I always hoped he would see what I was doing with medicine and be proud of me. I always dreamed of the day he would welcome me back into the fold.’ The bitter laugh escaped his mouth again. ‘I learned at Roberto’s funeral that I would never get it.’