THE UNCOMPROMISING ITALIAN

by Cathy Williams

  Why couldn’t she see that?

  He had stopped thinking about the possibility that she was still saving herself for Mr Right. Just going down that road made him see red.

  ‘I hate it when you talk about responsibilities,’ she snapped, looking briefly at him and then just as quickly looking away. ‘And you’re driving way too fast. We’re going to crash.’

  ‘I’m sticking to the speed limit. Of course I’m going to talk about responsibilities. Why shouldn’t I?’ Would she rather he had turned his back on her and walked away? Was that the sort of modern guy she would have preferred him to be? He hung onto his patience with difficulty, recognising that the last thing she needed was to be stressed out.

  ‘I just want you to know,’ Lesley said fiercely, ‘That if anything happens to this baby...’

  ‘Nothing is going to happen to this baby.’

  ‘You don’t know that!’

  Alessio could sense her desire to have an argument with him and he had no intention of allowing her to indulge that desire. A heated row was not appropriate but he shrewdly guessed that, if he mentioned that, it would generate an even bigger row.

  What the hell was wrong? Of course she was worried. So was he, frankly. But he was here with her, driving her to the hospital, fully prepared to be right there by her side, so why the need to launch into an attack?

  Frustration tore into him but, like his impatience, he kept it firmly in check.

  Suddenly she felt that it was extremely important that she let him know this vital thing. ‘And I just want you to know that, if something does, then your duties to me are finished. You can walk away with a clear conscience, knowing that you didn’t dump me when I was pregnant with your child.’

  Alessio sucked in his breath sharply. Ahead, he could see the big, impersonal hospital building. He had wanted her to have private medical care during the pregnancy and for the birth of the baby, but she had flatly refused, and he had reluctantly ceded ground. If, indeed, there was anything at all amiss, that small victory would be obliterated because he would damn well make sure that she got the best medical attention there was available.

  ‘This is not the time for this sort of conversation.’ He screeched to a halt in front of the Accident and Emergency entrance but, before he killed the engine, he looked at her intently, his eyes boring into her. ‘Just try and relax, my darling. I know you’re probably scared stiff but I’m here for you.’ He brushed her cheek lightly and the tenderness of that touch brought a lump to her throat.

  ‘You’re here for the baby, not for me,’ Lesley muttered under her breath. But then any further conversation was lost as they were hurried through, suddenly caught up in a very efficient process, channelled to the right place, speeding along the quiet hospital corridors with Lesley in a wheelchair and Alessio keeping pace next to her.

  There seemed to be an awful lot of people around and she clasped his hand tightly, hardly even realising that she was doing that.

  ‘If something happens to the baby...’ he bent to whisper into her ear as they headed towards the ultrasound room ‘...then I’m still here for you.’

  * * *

  An exhausting hour later, during which Lesley had had no time to think about what those whispered words meant, she finally found herself in a private room decorated with a television on a bracket against the wall and a heavy door leading, she could see, to her own en-suite bathroom.

  Part of her wondered whether those whispered words had actually been uttered or had they been a fiction of her fevered imagination?

  She covertly watched as he drew the curtains together and then pulled a chair so that he was on eye-level with her as she lay on the bed.

  ‘Thank you for bringing me here, Alessio,’ she said with a weak smile that ended up in a yawn.

  ‘You’re tired. But everything’s going to be all right with the baby. Didn’t I say?’

  Lesley smiled with her eyes half-closed. The relief was overwhelming. They had pointed out the strongly beating heart on the scan and had reassured her that rest was all that was called for. She had been planning to work from home towards the beginning of the third trimester. That would now have to be brought forward.

  ‘You said.’

  ‘And—and I meant what I said when we were rushing you in.’

  Lesley’s eyes flew open and she felt as though her heart had skipped a beat. She had not intended to remind him of what he had said, just in case she had misheard, just in case he had said what he somehow thought she wanted to hear in the depths of her anxiety over her scare.

  But now his eyes held hers and she just wanted to lose herself in possibilities.

  ‘What did you say? I can’t quite...um...remember.’ She looked down at her hand which had somehow found its way between his much bigger hands.

  ‘What I should say is that there was a moment back then when it flashed through my mind—what would I do if anything happened to you? It scared the living daylights out of me.’

  ‘I know you feel very responsible...with me being pregnant.’ She deliberately tried to kill the shoot of hope rising inside her and tenaciously refusing to go away.

  ‘I’m not talking about the baby. I’m talking about you.’ He felt as though he was looking over the side of a very sheer cliff, but he wanted to jump; he didn’t care what sort of landing he might be heading for.

  So far she hadn’t tried to remind him that he wasn’t her type and that they weren’t suited for one another. That surely had to be a good sign?

  ‘I don’t know what I’d do if anything happened to you because you’re the love of my life. No, wait, don’t say a thing. Just listen to what I have to say and then, if you want me to butt out of your life, I’ll do as you say. We can go down the legal route and have the papers drawn up for custody rights, and an allowance to be made for you, and I’ll stop pestering you with my attention.’ He took a deep breath and his eyes shifted to her mouth, then to the unappealing hospital gown which she was still wearing, and then finally they settled on their linked fingers. It seemed safer.

  ‘I’m listening.’ The love of his life? She just wanted to repeat that phrase over and over in her head because she didn’t think she could possibly get used to hearing it.

  ‘When you first appeared at my front door, I knew you were different to every single woman I had ever met. I knew you were sharp, feisty, outspoken. I was drawn to you, and I guess the fact that you occupied a special place of intimate knowledge about certain aspects of my private life not usually open to public view fuelled my attraction. It was as though the whole package became irresistible. You were sexy as hell without knowing it. You had brains and you had insight into me.’

  Lesley almost burst out laughing at the ‘sexy as hell’ bit but then she remembered the way he had looked at her when they had made love, the things he had said. She might have had insecurities about how she looked, but she didn’t doubt that his attraction had been genuine and spontaneous. Hadn’t he been the one to put those insecurities to bed, after all?

  ‘It just felt so damned right between us,’ he admitted, stealing a surreptitious look at her face, and encouraged that she didn’t seem to be blocking him out. ‘And the more we got to know one another the better it felt. I thought it was all about the sex, but it was much bigger than that, and I just didn’t see it. Maybe after Bianca I simply assumed that women could only satisfy a certain part of me before they hit my metaphorical glass ceiling and disappeared from my life. I wasn’t looking for any kind of involvement and I certainly didn’t bank on finding any. But involvement found me without my even realising it.’

  He laughed under his breath and, when he felt the touch of her hand on his cheek, he held it in place so that he could flip it over and kiss the palm of her hand. He relaxed, but not too much.

  ‘Thanks to you, my relationship with Rachel is the healthiest it’s ever been. Thanks to you, I’ve discovered that there’s far more to life than trying to be a father to a hostile teen
ager and burying myself in my work. I never stopped to question how it was that I wasn’t gutted when you told me about the pregnancy. I knew I felt different this time round from when Bianca had presented me with a future of fatherhood. If I had taken the time to analyse things, I might have begun to see what had already happened. I might have seen that I had fallen hopelessly in love with you.’

  All his cards were on the table and he felt good. Whatever the outcome. He carried on before she could interrupt with a pity statement about him not really being the one for her.

  ‘And I may not cry at girlie movies or bake bread but you can take me on. I’m a good bet. I’m here for you; you know that. I’ll always be here for you because I’m nothing without you. If you still don’t want to marry me, or if you want to put me on probation, then I’m willing to go along because I feel I can prove to you that I can be the sort of man you want me to be.’

  ‘Probation?’ The concept was barely comprehensible.

  ‘A period of time during which you can try me out for size.’ He had never thought he would ever in a million years utter such words to any woman. But he just had and he didn’t regret any of them.

  ‘I know what the word means.’ The thoughts were rushing round in her head, a mad jumble that filled every space. She wanted to fling her arms around him, kiss him on the mouth, pull him right into her, jump up and down, shout from the rooftops—all of those things at the same time.

  Instead, she said in a barely audible voice, ‘Why didn’t you say sooner? I wish you had. I’ve been so miserable, because I love you so much and I thought that the last thing you needed was to be trapped into marriage to someone you never wanted to see out your days with.’ She lay back and smiled with such pure joy that it took her breath away. Then she looked at him and carried on smiling, and smiling, and smiling. ‘I knew I was falling for you but I knew you weren’t into committed relationships.’

  ‘I never was.’

  ‘That should have stopped me but I just didn’t see it coming. You really weren’t the sort of guy I ever thought I could have fallen in love with, but who said love obeys rules? By the time I realised that I loved you, I was in so deep that the only way out for me was to run as fast as I could in the opposite direction. It was the hardest thing I ever did in my entire life but I thought that, if I stayed, my heart would be so broken that I would never recover.’

  ‘My darling... My beautiful, unique, special darling.’ He kissed her gently on the lips and had the wonderful feeling of being exactly where he was meant to be.

  ‘Then I found out that I was pregnant, and after the shock had worn off a bit, I felt sick at the thought of telling you—sick at the thought of knowing that you would be horrified, your worst nightmare turned into reality.’

  ‘And here we are. So I’m asking you again, my dearest—will you marry me?’

  * * *

  They were married in Ireland a month before their baby was born, with all her family in attendance. Her father, her brothers and her brothers’ partners all filled the small local church. And, when they retired to the hotel which they had booked into, the party was still carrying on, as he was told, in typical Irish style. And just as soon as the baby was born, he was informed, they would throw a proper bash—the alcohol wouldn’t stop flowing for at least two days. Alessio had grinned and told them that he couldn’t wait but that, before the baby discovered the wonders of an Irish bash, she or he would first have to discover the wonders of going on honeymoon, because they had both agreed that wherever they went their baby would come as well.

  And their baby, Rose Alexandra, a little girl with his dark hair and big, dark eyes, was born without fuss, a healthy eight pounds four ounces. Rachel, who was over the moon at the prospect of having a sibling she could thoroughly spoil, could barely contain her excitement when she paid her first visit to the hospital and peered into the little tilted cot at the side of Lesley’s bed.

  The perfect family unit, was the thought that ran through Alessio’s mind as he looked at the snapshot picture in front of him. His beautiful wife, radiant but tired after giving birth, smiling down at the baby in her arms while Rachel, the daughter he had once thought lost to him but now found, stood over them both, her dark hair falling in a curtain as she gently touched her sister’s small, plump, pink cheek.

  If he could have bottled this moment in time, he would have. Instead, still on cloud nine, he leaned into the little group and knew that this, finally, was what life should be all about.

  * * * * *

  Keep reading for an excerpt from PRINCE HAFIZ’S ONLY VICE by Susanna Carr.

  Ten years ago one devastating night changed everything for Austin, Hunter and Alex. Now they must each play their part in the revenge against the one man who ruined it all.

  Austin Treffen has the plan… Hunter has the money… Alex has the power!

  Read each of their stories in the captivating Fifth Avenue trilogy,

  only from Harlequin Presents:

  Avenge Me by Maisey Yates (June 2014)

  Scandalize Me by Caitlin Crews (July 2014)

  Expose Me by Kate Hewitt (August 2014)

  And don’t miss the Fifth Avenue prequel that started it all, Take Me, by Maisey Yates!

  Order your copies today in ebook format.

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  CHAPTER ONE

  HER LOVER’S PICTURE was on the front page of every paper in the small newsstand.

  Lacey adjusted the dark sunglasses that concealed her bright blue eyes and squinted at the newspaper on display. Although the headline was in Arabic, the print was big and bold. She could tell that something important had happened. Something that could explain the jubilant attitude that shimmered in the marketplace. No doubt Prince Hafiz had made his countrymen proud again.

  She wondered what he had done this time as she requested the daily English paper in halting Arabic. Did he add a fortune to the royal coffers? Convince another industry to make the Sultanate of Rudaynah their headquarters? Win an award?

  She decided it would be best to wait until she got home before she read the paper. Lacey took another glance at the pictures of Hafiz that covered the stall. His expression was solemn, but it didn’t stop the secret thrill sweeping across her heated skin. It was unnerving that Hafiz could elicit that kind of response through a photograph.

  The photo was an official head shot the palace systematically offered to the press, but while the image was familiar, it always grabbed the reader’s notice. No one could look away from Prince Hafiz’s mysterious dark eyes and harsh mouth. He was devastatingly handsome from his luxuriant black hair to his sharp bone structure. Women watched him from afar, too awed of his masculine beauty.

  Or perhaps they sensed his raw power beneath his sophisticated manners. Lacey had instantly recognized the sexual hunger lurking below his ruthless restraint. His primitive aura was a silent warning that most women heeded. But for Lacey, it drew her closer.

  She had found Hafiz’s relentless self-discipline fascinating. It had al
so been a challenge. From the moment they had met, she had been tempted to strip him from his exquisitely tailored pinstripe suit and discover his most sensual secrets.

  Just the thought of him made her impatient to get back home. She needed to return before Hafiz got there. His workload would crush a lesser man, but he still managed to visit Lacey at nightfall.

  The blazing sun began to dip in the desert sky, and she didn’t want to contemplate how Hafiz would respond if she weren’t home.

  He never asked what she did during the day, Lacey thought with a frown. At first his lack of interest had bothered her. Did he think time stood still for her until he appeared?

  There were moments when she wanted to share her plans and ideas, even discuss her day, but she had always held back. She wasn’t ready to reveal the work she had done. Not yet. Lacey wanted to show Hafiz what she was capable of. How she could contribute. She wanted to show that she was ready to make his sultanate her permanent home.

  It hadn’t been easy. There were days, weeks, when she had been homesick. Lonely and bored. She had missed her wide circle of friends and colorful nightlife, and she craved the basic comforts.

  It was aggravating that the newspaper hadn’t been delivered today at her penthouse, but that wasn’t surprising. After living in the small Arabian country for almost six months, Lacey still hadn’t gotten used to sporadic service, frequent power outages and laborers arriving at work anywhere from three hours to three days late.

  Her connection to the outside world was just as erratic. The communication services were usually down, like today. When they were running, the content was heavily censored.

  Definitely not the lifestyle she had enjoyed in St. Louis. Not that she was complaining, Lacey hurriedly assured herself. She was willing to forego many comforts and conveniences for the one thing she couldn’t get back in the States: Hafiz.

  Lacey shivered with anticipation and handed the coins to the newspaper boy. She practiced her Arabic and felt a sense of accomplishment when the young man understood her. Lacey shyly tugged at the bright orange scarf wrapped around her head and tucked in a wayward strand of hair.