“Tell me then,” she said quietly, holding her breath, the stakes suddenly higher than she could stand, her need to understand burning her alive. “How did you feel about me?”
He frowned, and the longer he contemplated that the more her stomach dipped, hope dropping from her. Strong feelings shouldn’t take so long to identify. “I liked you,” he said softly. “I cared about you. I’ve always cared about you, even as a child.” She stiffened in his arms, frustration gnawing at her gut.
“You were so…wild and passionate, a total free spirit. Your laugh was the most infectious sound. And then your mother became ill and it was though a part of you was being swallowed.” He ran his hand over her hair softly. “I wanted to protect you even then. You were in so much pain, watching her die, and die so slowly, must have been impossible. When we married, I thought I was protecting you – from your father’s bankruptcy, from the danger he was courting with his risky behaviours. It never entered my mind that I could have been hurting you more than anything else would have.”
Alessia’s heart shifted.
“I should have told you that you meant something to me.”
“What did I mean to you, Max?” The words were devoid of feeling. “Except for an opportunity to save dad?”
“I wanted to save you too.”
“I don’t think I needed saving.” She pulled away from him then but he caught her wrist, stroking the flesh there gently.
“I’m grateful for what you did for him,” she said hoarsely. “But if our first marriage has taught me anything it’s that you and I will always be at cross-purposes.”
“We can’t be.” He pulled her closer again, her stomach now so rounded that even when their torsos brushed there was space between their faces. “Our first marriage was littered with mistakes – all mine. Not being honest with you, not treating you like a grown woman, not acknowledging that you had feelings and needs. I freely admit to those mistakes. If our first marriage has taught me anything it’s the importance of learning from mistakes. So tell me what you want now, Alessia. Tell me what you need.”
She was silent.
“I was a far from perfect husband back then, but that wasn’t because I didn’t care for you. I didn’t know what I was doing. I put you on a pedestal, your age and who you were made you untouchable.”
“It’s all so hard,” she said honestly. “Without the baby, you’d just be some man I’d once been married to.”
She felt him stiffen, and wondered if he resented the implication that she regretted being pregnant.
“Is that what you want?”
“I don’t know what I want,” she said honestly, and then remembered the realisation she’d had, a few nights earlier. “Except that I think, for the sake of our baby, we should try to be friends.”
“Friends?” He lifted a brow in obvious surprise.
“We’ve never been friends,” she said with a slow nod. “Not really. But I’m friends with Fiero. And Gabe, Nico, Luca and Raf. So why not you?”
A blade of jealousy pressed against him at her easy reference to the rest of his family. She was a part of their lives and they of hers in an easy way that Massimo had never achieved. Maybe without their first wedding? But that had been necessary. Carlo’s stubbornness had made sure of it.
As to the ‘why not’, he could think of a pretty good reason. Would she still want to be friends if she knew he was the reason Sam had ended their engagement? He’d paid her ex-fiancé a small fortune to get out of her life. Was that the gesture of a friend?
Yes. A good friend. He’d made sure she hadn’t been preyed on by a fortune hunter. He’d looked out for her when she’d needed him. He straightened his spine, fixing her with a direct stare.
“Fine.” He nodded, determination firing his blood. “Friends.” And he sealed that promise with a kiss that went so far beyond friendship it melted her knees.
* * *
“Yaya made sure we could all cook,” he explained, as he kneaded the dough, his long fingers working rhythmically at each fold, so her eyes were drawn to the sight of that, fascinated by the ease with which he manipulated the dough.
“Even you?” She couldn’t resist asking, a smile playing around the corner of her lips. His eyes dropped to it, and her temperature soared.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” His grin pushed butterflies into her tummy. It had been a week since they’d decided to try being friends, and it was nothing like what she’d expected. His warmth was so natural, so easy, and such an enormous contrast to the way he’d been before, when she’d felt as though he barely registered her existence.
“Just that you really don’t strike me as an apron and rolling pin kind of guy.”
His grin widened. “I’m offended.”
“You have other talents.” Her cheeks glowed pink at the unintentional double entendre. “I mean, you work so hard at Montebello Industries,” she clarified.
His brows lifted.
“Long hours. Saving the world one corporate take-over at a time, that kind of thing.”
He laughed. “I still have to eat.”
“I don’t think I saw you cook once…before.”
“Didn’t I?” He frowned. “No, probably not.” He’d done his best to spend as little time as possible at home. It had felt like the right decision at the time but now he felt a rush of remorse, flooding him from every angle. He lifted his eyes and saw she understood – his guilt increased ten fold.
“Yaya was adamant that we’d all have good life skills. No grandchild of mine is going to expect to be waited on hand and foot,” he imitated his grandmother’s thick Greek accent. “I don’t think she ever approved of the money we grew up with. Or maybe she just learned her lesson after her kids…”
“Your parents?” Alessia interjected softly. She knew the basics of his story, but it was still something she struggled to comprehend.
“They were given a lot of latitude.”
She nodded thoughtfully. “I guess this is something we have to think about.”
“Spoiling our kids?”
She tilted her head to the side a little so her long blond hair shimmered like a sunbeam. “Just how we raise them.”
He laid the pizza dough on one oven tray then turned his attention to the rest of the dough, kneading it and rolling it. “Your childhood was pretty down to earth, right?”
“In lots of ways, yes. Dad spoiled me,” she sipped her wine, having allowed Massimo to pour her a small glass of Tempranillo. “And mom adored me, but in terms of material stuff, while I never wanted for anything, I wasn’t overly indulged. I think there was a good balance.”
“And they spent a lot of time with you.”
Sympathy spread through her. “Yes.” She fought an urge to reach out and touch his hand with hers. “Until mom’s diagnosis, they did.”
“How old were you when she first got sick?”
Alessia replaced her wine, watching as the red spread over the glass, leaving beautiful legs running around the edges.
“Seven.” Alessia compressed her lips, the memories so fresh in her mind despite the number of years that had passed between. “It was the most beautiful summer’s day. You know what Ondechiara is like in the summer – there’s nowhere quite so beautiful or charming. Mom used to talk about the town in North Carolina that she came from and say Ondechiara reminded her of it.” Alessia lifted her shoulders. “We’d taken a picnic down to the beach and then walking back up the steps she just collapsed. It was hot, so at first dad thought it was heatstroke or something, but he called the doctor anyway. You know how much he loved her.” A melancholy smile spread over Alessia’s face as she remembered her parents’ picture-perfect marriage – something she’d always wanted for herself.
Massimo inclined his head in silent agreement, prompting her to continue.
“It was paraneoplastic syndrome, associated with lung cancer.”
“She didn’t smoke.”
“No, not ever. Some pe
ople are just unlucky.” She grimaced. “As you know, she was in remission a couple of times before it came back – too aggressive to fight.”
“That must have been so hard on you.”
“Yeah, it was the worst.” She grimaced. “Dad was always protective of me but after that – after mom – he started to worry non-stop. He babied me.”
“Yes.” He hesitated a moment. “It’s one of the reasons I felt protective of you, before.”
“I was twenty years old,” she reminded him with a droll twist of her lips. “And I saw marrying you as a way to escape, not compound, my lifestyle.”
He nodded, reaching for some passata from the fridge. He opened it and poured a little on each pizza base, spreading it almost to the edges.
“He didn’t want to lose you.”
“I know that.” She took another sip of her wine. “Do you ever see your parents?”
“Occasionally.”
“You’re angry with them?”
He shrugged. “I’m not angry. I’m not grateful. They’re my parents,” he pulled a block of parmigiano from the fridge and began to shave it. “They’ll always be my parents, but I don’t have a lot of time for them.” He spread the cheese over the passata, then began to finely chop a few mushrooms. “To tell you the truth, your father always felt more like a father to me than anyone else.”
She knew how close they were. Massimo had visited often – probably why her girlhood crush had landed on such fertile ground. “He adores you.”
“It’s mutual.”
She shifted her gaze to the window. It was dark out, the street hung with beautiful little golden lights, strung from one side to the other.
“He was overjoyed that we’d reunited. And about her.” Alessia ran her hand over her bump without thinking.
“Yes.” Massimo spread shaved parmesan over the pizza base, and she watched the easy movement of his hand, fingers that performed the duty as if by muscle memory, so confident and powerful.
Her cheeks warmed; she looked away again. “And your parents? They weren’t at the wedding.”
“I haven’t told them.”
Alessia’s features showed surprise. “About our marriage? Or the baby?”
“Both.”
“So your parents have no idea they’re about to become grandparents again?”
His laugh was relaxed, showing no signs of the strain Alessia might have expected. “You say that as though you think it will affect their lives in any way. They’ve long since given up anything more than a passing interest in what we do.”
“I can’t believe that.”
“Believe it.”
“But they’re –,” She shook her head. “I mean…”
Neither of them spoke as he layered prosciutto over one of the pizzas and olives over the other. He slid both into the oven, then turned back to her, sipping his wine before speaking, his eyes holding hers over the rim of his glass.
“Do you know what happened with Fiero and Elodie?”
Alessia hadn’t expected the question, but with Massimo, she was becoming more adept at those curveballs. She shook her head. “Only a little.”
Max inclined his head. “I don’t know the full story, naturalmente. But what I do know is that Elodie fell pregnant – unexpectedly. They weren’t in a relationship. It was a fling and he was still married –though the marriage was all but over. They couldn’t separate, because of Gianfelice’s illness, and Elodie always believed the worst of Fiero – that he ran around behind his wife’s back getting women pregnant.” He grimaced. “When he learned the truth about Jack, he was furious. He couldn’t forgive Elodie –,”
“But Elodie was only doing what she thought best for everyone,” Alessia defended hotly. She adored Elodie Montebello – now sisters-in-law, their affection had been forged when Alessia was simply a family friend and local doctor who occasionally tended to Jack’s scrapes and bumps.
“Si. That is not in doubt – and it’s not my point.”
“Oh.” She sipped her wine, waiting.
“Fiero was an absolute bastard to Elodie – we all were.”
Alessia’s eyes narrowed. A desire to defend Elodie seemed unnecessary; she only wished she’d been around then to tell them all to grow up.
“The thing is, we never spoke about it, but we all understood. Having been abandoned by our parents – which is what we were, essentially, even though it was to the love and care of our grandparents – we knew what a son meant to Fiero. What Jack meant to all of us. It’s like our parents’ choice to allow us to be raised at Villa Fortune and to sort of opt out of our lives meant we would always do the opposite. Fiero reacted way too harshly but it was an instinct – an instinct to be the polar opposite of our parents.”
“And you feel the same,” she murmured softly.
There was surprise in the depths of his eyes, but then he nodded. “Yes.”
She nodded for no reason – or perhaps it was because yet another piece of the puzzle was sliding into place, making sense of this man for her. It wasn’t the nineteenth century. They both knew she could have raised this child on her own, and that Massimo could have been an important part of their daughter’s life without Max and Alessia having to get married. But that would have never been enough for Max. He had needed to marry Alessia but not because of their daughter or because of guilt over their first marriage. Massimo was righting a wrong of the past. He was trying to reach back through time and fix his own childhood, to heal the hurts inflicted by his parents, to reassure himself that their acts were outside the biological norm.
Had she always known that? On some level. But clarifying it filled her with a sense of panic, as well as a new sense of commitment. Fully understanding his reasons for insisting on this marriage didn’t change anything – it simply underscored why she needed to remember the strict parameters of what they were.
In the midst of that, though, they were becoming friends, and with every revelation he made, she began to trust him – and she began to trust their future.
Chapter Eleven
“DO YOU EVER THINK about him?”
Even in her third trimester, Alessia moved with a grace that had his eyes lingering on her, watching the gentle movement of her body as she lifted her arms over her head.
She was tired. Christmas at Villa Fortune was exhausting, but he knew it wasn’t just the social interactions with his brothers and cousins, with Elodie and Maddie, and the children.
It was everything that went along with visiting his family. Pretending they were completely in love. Sharing a room, and a bed, when he knew her preference was to avoid that. He’d surprised them both and curled up on the sofa in their room rather than inflict his presence on her. He’d sensed her prevarication, as though she wanted to tell him not to be so silly. And if she’d said that? He would have told her it wasn’t silly. He couldn’t sleep in the same bed as her without touching her. Not intentionally, but during his sleep, he knew he would reach out for her at some point, his fingertips brushing her bare skin, his body stirring to life with needs, his body whispering promises to hers that she too wanted fulfilled.
So he’d slept on the sofa, and she’d slept in the bed, but in the morning, when they’d joined his family and watched as the children unwrapped their gifts, she’d sat at his side, nestled there as though there was nowhere else on earth she’d rather be. And it had been the most natural thing for him to reach down and put an arm around her shoulders and draw her even closer, to press his lips to the top of her head and inhale her sweet fragrance. He’d thought it would be make believe, an act to fool his family into thinking everything between them was normal – a simple marriage – but it hadn’t felt at all like pretence.
He’d watched her with his family and hadn’t felt the usual spear of jealousy – a familiar sensation to him now, whenever he watched her ease with Fiero or Nico, and even with Gabe. She was one of the few people who could easily charm him into a smile.
Why was that j
ealousy missing? Because he had no place for it. He wasn’t excluded from her warmth, he no longer needed to keep her at a distance, as he’d done so well during their marriage. He didn’t need to remind himself the whole time they were together of all the reasons he couldn’t touch her.
She was a grown woman, she was having his baby, and she was relaxing around him, so it was, at times, easy to forget that their marriage was a house of cards. Built on his paying off her ex-fiance and her falling pregnant during a night that shouldn’t have happened.
“Who?” She relaxed back on the sofa, the light cast from the Christmas tree giving her an ethereal glow. He reached for her legs, curled up beneath her, and gently guided them to his lap. His hands moved her feet rhythmically and without forethought – he saw them bare and simply wanted to touch.
He wasn’t sure why he was asking her this. Perhaps he was simply a glutton for punishment?
What could she say that would be acceptable?
“Sam.”
Her eyes opened wide, surprise obvious. “My fiancé?”
“Ex-fiancé,” he corrected automatically.
“Right.” Her smile was relaxed again. She leaned back against the cushion. “That feels so good it should be illegal.”
His body stirred, tightness forming inside of him. He ignored it. Frustration spread through him. “You didn’t answer my question.”
“Didn’t I?” Her eyes were heavy. He should let her go to sleep, not torture her with questions about this man. What was he hoping? That she’d somehow absolve him of all guilt? I never think of him. I never even really liked him. Our engagement was a mistake. Anything that would help him realise that he’d been completely justified in getting involved in her life the way he had?
“Do you really want to talk about him?”
He kept his voice relaxed, though it was with effort. “Sure. Why not?”
Alessia closed her eyes, because it was easier to shield her hurt that way. He didn’t care. He had no personal stake in this question, he was just interested, the way Massimo was interested in everyone and everything. He had to know what made people tick, he had to understand the world – and her fiancé was a part of that. Had their engagement not broken off so abruptly, and so close to the wedding, their night together wouldn’t have happened.
Loving the Enemy Page 11