by Sarah Morgan
‘Sex,’ Luca said happily, tugging his father’s hair, and Santo gave a murmur of contrition and threw her a look of exasperated apology.
‘Mi dispiace—I’m sorry—’
‘My fault. I started the conversation. He’s like a sponge. Just don’t say it again. With any luck he’ll forget.’
What might have happened next she didn’t know because Luca reached out his arms to her and almost toppled into the pool. Santo caught him deftly and scooped the child off his shoulders. ‘Your mamma is planning to run and you are in charge of stopping her,’ he drawled, handing the child to Fia. But, instead of releasing his father, Luca kept one arm around his shoulders and reached out the other to Fia.
Accepting the hug meant moving closer to Santo. His bare leg brushed against hers. His eyes flicked to hers. Wry amusement danced there.
Her stomach flipped. ‘He needs toys,’ she blurted out. ‘Toys for the pool.’
‘Of course he does.’ His eyes were still on hers, mocking her because he knew she was trying to change the subject. ‘We will go shopping this afternoon.’
‘He still has a sleep in the afternoon.’
As if to prove that statement, Luca, exhausted after such an energetic afternoon, flopped his head onto his father’s bare bronzed shoulder and closed his eyes.
‘I’ll put him in his bed.’ Somehow Santo managed to ease himself from the pool without waking the sleeping child.
Fia watched him cross the terrace and then left the pool herself and took a quick shower in the pool house.
She was just wrapped in a towel when Santo appeared behind her.
‘He didn’t even stir. I envy his ability to fall asleep so easily.’
He looked so impossibly gorgeous that Fia simply stared. ‘Right. Well, I’ll just go and—’
‘You’re not going anywhere.’ His mouth came down on hers and he gave the towel a sharp tug.
She made an abortive grab for it as it slid to the floor. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Proving to you that our relationship isn’t just about nighttime sex.’ His voice was a sensual purr and his hands slid down the length of her spine and pressed her against him. ‘You’re about to experience daytime sex.’
‘Santo—’
‘Wall sex, floor sex—’ he kissed her neck ‘—shower sex, bed sex—’ his mouth trailed lower ‘—how do you feel about pool sex?’
‘Absolutely not—’ she moaned as his fingers found that most sensitive part of her. ‘I wouldn’t be able to look the staff in the eye ever again.’
‘So I’ll fire them and then you won’t have to.’ A wicked glint in his eyes, he captured her mouth with his. ‘Turn around.’
‘What?’
‘I have a better idea than pool sex. Sun lounger sex. Bend over.’ He turned her and Fia gave a soft gasp as he bent her forward. Tipped off balance, she put her hands flat on the sun lounger, a movement that exposed her bare bottom. Feeling horribly vulnerable, she tried to stand but he pressed down on her spine and kept her there.
‘I’m not going to hurt you,’ he said softly. ‘Just relax and trust me.’
‘Santo … we can’t …’ she moaned, but his fingers were already stroking her there, teasing and exploring while showing a total disregard for her modesty. And within seconds she forgot about modesty. Just when she thought she’d go crazy, she felt the heat of his shaft against her and his strong hands grasped her hips and held her still as he slid deep. His throaty groan mingled with her soft gasp.
‘Cristo, you feel incredible—’
Fia couldn’t respond. Her shaking thighs were locked against the hardness of his, and he was all heat and power, each driving thrust sending her closer and closer to her own climax. It came in a rush of heat that engulfed them both simultaneously and she would have collapsed if he hadn’t been holding her. With a rough laugh, he eased out of her, scooped up her quivering body and carried her into the shower. ‘Great idea of yours,’ he said huskily, lowering her to her feet and turning on the jet of water. ‘Daytime sex. Yet another reason to leave my desk. At this rate I will not win my bet.’
‘Bet?’ Still dazed, she pushed her hair out of her face as the water cascaded over both of them. ‘What bet?’
‘That I can make the Ferrara Beach Club the most successful hotel in our group.’ He squeezed shampoo into his palm and gently massaged her hair. ‘I would never admit this to him, but my brother is a very hard act to follow. When he took a back seat in the company a year ago everyone assumed I would just hold the reins and not change anything, but care-taking someone else’s baby doesn’t interest me. I have more respect and admiration for my brother than any man alive, but I want to prove that I, too, have something to add to this company.’
Lulled by the gentle stroke of his fingers, Fia closed her eyes. ‘You’re so competitive.’
‘Sí, it is partly that, but not entirely.’ His voice soft, he turned off the shower and reached for a towel. ‘When our father died it was Cristiano who took over. I was in my last year of school. He was studying in the States. He gave up everything, came home and took over as head of the family. My father’s business was always small, but Cristiano took it and turned it into a global player. Because of him, Dani and I stayed in school and finished our education. He sacrificed a great deal for us. I want to do well, not because I am competitive, although of course I am, but because I love him and want to make him proud.’
He said it so easily, Fia thought numbly, standing still as he towelled the ends of her hair dry. No embarrassment. No awkwardness or fear that such an admission might somehow diminish his masculinity. Just a simple declaration of absolute family loyalty and commitment, as if that was normal. And for him it was, of course. She’d seen that commitment in all the Ferraras, but from a distance, not close up. They supported each other. Their lives were woven together like a piece of cloth, stronger as a whole than it would have been as individual strands.
Only now was she understanding what a fundamentally bad decision she’d made when she’d kept the news of her pregnancy from him. He was right, she thought miserably, that she’d thought like a Baracchi. She’d assumed that the rift between them was a scar that would never heal because that was the way her family had always dealt with things. No slight was forgiven.
It shamed her to remember how many times the Ferraras had made overtures towards her family. Always, her grandfather had taken it as an affront.
‘I didn’t know that about you.’ She tipped her head back and rinsed her hair. ‘I mean, I knew you were close to your brother, of course. But I didn’t know that he’d made those sacrifices. I knew he’d built the company into something amazing but I thought that was because he just had a driven alpha personality.’
‘That too.’ There was humour in his eyes as he turned off the jet of water and draped a towel around her shoulders. ‘But we are fortunate in that. It was Cristiano who grew the business and supported us all at a time when my family was devastated by the loss of my father. He held it all together. And now I am happy to be able to take over that role so that he can spend more time with his family.’
She remembered Cristiano at the wedding. Tall, dark and intimidating. ‘He doesn’t like me. He doesn’t approve of the fact you married me.’
Santo hesitated. ‘He doesn’t approve of the fact you didn’t tell me you were pregnant, but that is in the past now. He is protective of me, just as I am protective of him. I gave Laurel a hard time when they separated, mostly because I didn’t understand what was going on. Truthfully a man never knows what is going on in another’s marriage.’
She felt a twinge of envy. ‘You’re so close to your brother and sister.’
‘Of course. We are a family.’ He said it as a simple statement of fact. As if it couldn’t possibly be in doubt.
‘I like it when we talk,’ she said impulsively. ‘We’ve never really talked about normal things. Even that night—’ She broke off and he frowned.
‘W
hat?’
‘We didn’t talk. We just … did crazy stuff and then the call came and—’
‘—and your brother was dead.’
They’d never really talked about that either, had they?
‘He stole your car. You could have told everyone that, but you didn’t. I’ve never thanked you properly for not going public with that.’
‘How would that have helped? I had no desire to make a bad situation worse.’
‘It might have made you look better. Nonno told people you’d lent it to him. And to be honest I don’t know why anyone believed that, given the history between our families—’ She shrugged. ‘He made you look like the reckless one and I feel really bad about that.’
‘Don’t. He did not want to admit that his grandson stole the car,’ Santo said quietly. ‘He was grief-stricken. He didn’t want to see bad, only good, and I understood that.’
‘People believed—’
‘The people who mattered to me knew the truth. The opinion of the world in general is of no interest to me.’
And he’d been surrounded by supporters, protected by that web of family that was fundamental to who he was. Whereas she … ‘It was the worst time of my life. Worse even than the day my mother left and the day my father died. I thought Nonno was going to die,’ she confessed, drawing away from him and tightening the towel around her. ‘For weeks he just cried. Then he blamed himself and the guilt was almost worse than the grief. And then when he couldn’t bear the guilt any longer he blamed the Ferraras. He cursed your name with every breath he took. And that carried on for months after Roberto died. And then I discovered I was pregnant.’
Santo knotted a towel around his hips, dark brows locked together, eyes fixed on her face. ‘It must have been very frightening. You must have felt so alone.’
‘I was alone. I had no one to talk it through with. I didn’t know what to do. Somehow, you’d become the focus of his blame. He blamed you for lending Roberto a car he couldn’t handle. I told him Roberto took the keys, but he just didn’t want to listen. He didn’t want to believe it. Then he blamed you for driving a flashy car that was nothing but temptation for a young man like Roberto. It was frighteningly illogical. He was the only person I had left in the world and I was watching him fall apart in front of me. First his son, my father, and then his grandson.’
‘It must have been an unbearable loss,’ Santo breathed. ‘I remember when we lost my father, it felt as if someone had ripped a hole in our family. But we had each other and you had no one.’
‘After that night, I waited for you to contact me,’ she confessed. ‘I used to lie awake, dreaming that you’d come—’
He swore softly in Italian and gathered her against him. ‘And I assumed that I was the last person you would want to see. We talked about it, Cristiano and I, and we decided that it would be more respectful to keep a distance.’
‘But did you tell Cristiano about us?’
He was silent, his chin resting on her head. ‘No,’ he said quietly. ‘I didn’t tell him that part.’
‘And yet you are close and tell him everything.’
‘That night was—’ He broke off and she nodded.
‘Yes, it was. And that is why I couldn’t tell you I was pregnant. If you and I had ever spoken—if we’d had any sort of friendship or relationship—maybe I would have contacted you, but I honestly wouldn’t have known what to say. “Hey, do you remember that night when we had sex?”‘ She bit her lip and drew away slightly so that she could look at him. ‘First I was so swamped in my grandfather’s grief and my own I didn’t even know I was pregnant, and once I found out … I honestly didn’t know what to do. My grandfather wouldn’t have your name spoken in the house. How was I to tell him you were the father of my child? I didn’t have anyone to talk to.’
Releasing her, Santo dragged his hand over the back of his neck. ‘Now I am the one feeling guilty,’ he admitted in a raw tone. ‘When I walked into your kitchen that day and saw Luca, I just exploded. I thought “mine”, and that was all I thought. I gave no thought to your reasoning.’
‘I don’t blame you for that. I’m just saying that it isn’t as simple as just not telling you. It was much, much more complicated than that.’
He reached out a hand and drew her towards him. ‘I rushed you into this marriage—’
‘“Propelled” would be a better word.’ Fia leaned her forehead against his bare chest. ‘It was less shotgun than supersonic. But I could have said no.’
‘I wasn’t prepared to hear no.’ His hands stroked her shoulders and closed over her arms. ‘I pushed you into it.’
‘I still could have said no. I have a brain and a mouth. I didn’t agree to marry you because you bullied me.’
‘Then why did you?’ His voice was rough. ‘You were saying no and then all of a sudden you said yes. What changed your mind that day?’
Her heart was pounding. ‘One of the things you said to me was that I didn’t have a clue what a family should be like.’
‘I had no right to say that.’
Fia gave a sad smile. ‘You had every right to say that. You cared about your son. You saw my family and didn’t want that for him. But what you didn’t know was that I’d been studying your family and envying your family all my life. When Luca was born I did my best to create what you had, not what I had. I wanted him to have that same network of people who loved him. I found Ben and Gina who are both warm, expressive, good people. I banned my grandfather from saying bad things. I tried to give Luca that web of support that you Ferraras take for granted.’
‘I see that now. And I also see that one of the reasons Luca is so friendly and trusting is because he has been surrounded by love since he was born. And to do that in such difficult circumstances … I do think that what you achieved was nothing short of amazing.’ He cupped her face in his hands and kissed her gently. ‘That still doesn’t explain why you suddenly agreed to marry me.’
‘You kissed him,’ Fia said simply. ‘That first morning in your apartment when you were giving him breakfast. I walked in, sure that marriage would be the wrong thing … and you were kissing Luca. And I realised that nothing I’d created could match that. I realised that what I’d been working to reproduce was right in front of me. You were his real family. And he has a right to that, and to his cousins, aunts and uncles.’
‘And do you regret that decision?’
‘No. Luca loves being with you. It’s only been a few weeks but his life has changed so much for the better.’
‘You are an incredible mother and Luca is lucky. And you? What about your life?’ His tone was unsteady. ‘How is this marriage working for you? How do you feel?’
How did she feel?
She felt slightly light-headed as she always did when she was with him. She felt warm inside at his unexpected compliment. She felt—
She felt glad that she was married to him. And not just because of Luca.
Seriously unsettled, she pulled away. ‘I feel fine.’
‘Fine? What does “fine” mean? That word tells me nothing of how you really feel.’
She loved him. Somehow, over the past few weeks, she’d fallen in love.
The sudden realisation was like a sharp blade twisting in her heart and for a moment she couldn’t breathe. Oh, how stupid. What a crazy, dangerous, reckless thing to do.
His mouth tightened. ‘The fact that you don’t know how to answer tells me a lot. You are a very unselfish person. You married me because you thought it was the right thing for our son. And you should know that I am determined to make this marriage work. I truly want you to be happy. From now on we will do more together. Not just with Luca, but as a couple. I will make space in my day and so will you.’
He had misinterpreted her silence and she was grateful for that because the last thing she wanted was for him to know how she felt.
The downside was that now he felt he had to work extra hard to please her.
She was goin
g on his ‘to-do’ list.
Spending time with her wasn’t a pleasure, but a responsibility.
Her pride shattered, Fia pulled away. ‘You’re very busy—’ she pulled her damp hair over one shoulder ‘—and I’m very busy. Let’s just carry on as we were. Honestly, that suits me.’
‘Well, that doesn’t suit me. If this marriage is to work it has to be about us as well as Luca.’
He wanted the marriage to work for Luca’s sake. He was spending time with her for Luca’s sake.
Humiliation piled on humiliation.
Switching off her own emotions, Fia tried to work out how she’d react if she weren’t in love with him.
What would she say if she’d entered this marriage purely for the good of her son?
Spending time with Santo wouldn’t bother her, would it? In fact it would probably seem like a good idea to get to know each other better. It made sense.
‘Sure,’ she croaked. ‘If you want to spend time together, that sounds great.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE following morning she was woken by a shaft of bright sunlight as Santo opened the blinds.
‘Buongiorno.’ Sickeningly alert and energetic, he ripped the covers from her and handed her a robe.
Still half asleep, Fia gave a whimper of protest and stuck her head under the pillow. ‘What time is it?’
‘Time to get up,’ he said smugly. ‘You mentioned that you never see me in daylight so we are rectifying that, dormigliona.’
‘Are you calling me a sleepy-head? Because, if so, you are to blame. You shouldn’t—’
‘I shouldn’t what? Make love to my wife for half the night?’ He removed the pillow and scooped her into a sitting position. ‘I can’t believe how bad you are in the morning. How did you manage when you were the one who got up for Luca in the morning?’