“We have a brother, Matteo,” his sister, Pia, said on a call one day. She wasn’t doing a good job of concealing the hurt in her voice, which told him she’d seen it on the news. “I’d think you might have called to tell me that, specifically, rather than letting me find out with the rest of the world.”
“I didn’t tell you because I didn’t know if he’d ever be found.”
“You didn’t call me after he was found. After he married your assistant.”
“I thought you were calling to tell me your own blessed event had occurred,” he replied rather than answering her. Because he didn’t know how to answer it. Was he pretending none of this was happening? His parents’ deaths. His new family configuration. Pia’s march to the altar, conducted in private ahead of her impending motherhood.
His parents were gone, and he would never know either one of them better than he did now. He was no longer the eldest brother, the oldest San Giacomo heir, which had always been a major foundation of his life. And the little sister who had always looked up to him, the only member of his family he’d loved unconditionally, had her own messy life to handle as she saw fit.
And he stood high in an office building in Hong Kong and thought instead of Sarina.
“Family is messy,” his sister said quietly after a long moment, rich with layers Matteo opted not to excavate. “Look at our mother.”
“I would rather not.”
And indeed, Matteo never had. Alexandrina had never taken an interest in the son she’d complained was too much like his father. Perhaps Dominik, the true firstborn son she’d surrendered, was the reason why. But that didn’t change how distant she’d been throughout Matteo’s life. Or how little he knew how to mourn her when he’d hardly known her.
“You try being forced to marry against your will,” Pia suggested, a dark note in her voice. “I doubt you’d fare any better.”
“Pia.” Matteo had promised himself—and Pia—that he would not interfere in her personal life after the funeral. He ran a hand over his face. “Is this a cry for help?”
“Of course not.” But she was quiet for a long moment. “Maybe it would have been kinder to leave our brother where he was.”
“That’s a decision he will have to make on his own,” Matteo told her, because it was what he’d told himself. It was what he believed, no matter what.
“Fair enough,” Pia said. “You should go home, Matteo. It’s been too long.”
But it took him another six weeks to even think about making his way back toward London.
And he made a purely business-related decision to stop off in San Francisco on his way.
“I must commend you on this personal touch campaign,” his American attorney told him with a broad grin, shaking his hand when they met in an upscale bar in the city. It was packed with businesspeople in their suits and on their phones, wheeling and dealing the night away. “Must be exhausting, but it’s already reaping huge rewards. What a brilliant move, to spin that mess at your father’s funeral into a harbinger for the new era of Combe Industries.”
Matteo had read the articles. A Combe with a heart? they’d asked.
Because now he was seen as some kind of hero. A man who had defended his sister while they’d all grieved, then had taken it upon himself to undo his own father’s bitter legacy with an unexpected round of personal connection.
It was exactly what Matteo had wanted.
And he felt nothing.
“I am delighted it is having the desired effect,” he told his attorney, and tried not to take against the man’s endless grinning.
He already regretted stopping here. He had been away from London too long; he knew that. And while it was nice that it was working to rehabilitate his image—and with it, the company’s—this tour of his had actually been a huge miscalculation.
Because out there in all the far-flung corners of the planet, Matteo had found himself sitting alone in one hotel room after the next, reliving that night in Combe Manor with Sarina.
He had spent these months making love to a ghost.
Until he was more than a little afraid that he had become one himself.
And no matter how much alcohol he tossed back with grinning men in suits like the one across from him tonight, it didn’t make him real. It didn’t fill the pages of those books with words, sentences, stories. All it did was further emboss that fool’s gold on their spines.
“Don’t look now,” his companion said. Matteo’s back was to the door, and though he heard an uptick in the noise level around them, it wouldn’t have occurred to him to bother to turn. “Here’s an opportunity for you to prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, how little that nonsense with your board affected you.”
“I haven’t thought about it in months,” Matteo lied.
“No time like the present,” his attorney replied, and he was no longer grinning. “Because I can assure you it’s all anyone’s thinking about right now, no matter if they haven’t given it a moment’s thought since. And if they haven’t recognized you yet, they will.”
Matteo followed his attorney’s gaze, shifting to look toward the door that led out to the street.
There was a scrum of people, exclaiming in that way they did when they were performing politeness for the group.
You wouldn’t know genuine emotion if it bit you, that voice inside him pointed out, sounding entirely too much like the psychiatrist he’d never wanted. You’re not one to judge.
The wall of people shifted and suddenly, she was there.
Sarina. Here.
Matteo went still. Except for once, it wasn’t ice that held him in its grip. It was much too hot for that. Too electric.
His attorney was still speaking, but he could barely make sense of the words.
Because she was right here, and this was why he had come, he acknowledged now. He had put himself in her city as if it was a test of fate—and he’d won it.
And he had been carrying her face around inside of him so long now he’d begun to tell himself that he was overestimating her in retrospect. That no one alive could be as perfect as he remembered her.
But if anything, he saw now, he had underplayed the intense kick of her beauty. And what it did to him.
The soft silk of her hair. That fine, delicate nose and her dark eyes. Her mouth, the line of her jaw, the pert thrust of her breasts and the—
His gaze, greedy to take in all of her after all these weeks, stopped short at her belly.
Matteo had spent hours that night learning every inch of her. He had particularly concentrated on her lush hips. Her navel. And the sweet slope to the molten heat between her legs.
And the last time he’d seen her belly, it had been flat. Not jutting out as it was now in a dress that emphasized its roundness.
It was as if a bomb detonated inside Matteo. He was shocked to realize that he remained in one piece.
One moment he was a man who traveled the world, carrying his ghosts within him in and out of hotels and offices, one bleeding into the next while he remained numb.
And in the next, he was alive.
Bright and blisteringly alive, with a rage so deep and so intense he was truly astonished there were not pieces of him scattered all over this bar. That the bar itself still stood. That San Francisco itself had not been razed to rubble.
He rose from his seat, no longer paying the slightest attention to his companion.
Then he was moving, the crowd seeming to part before him with no effort at all.
He kept his gaze trained on Sarina as if she might make a break for it. As if she might turn tail and race out into the night the moment she saw him—and it occurred to Matteo that he didn’t actually know what she would do.
But he knew what he would do.
Sarina was talking to the group arrayed around her, nodding as if she was engaged in
the conversation. But Matteo saw the precise moment she noticed him bearing down on her.
Likely because he was a bright blaze of righteousness aimed straight at her.
She broke off midsentence. And he saw a complicated series of emotions race across her lovely face, too many to name, though Matteo recognized one above all the rest.
Guilt.
Bright red licked at the edges of his vision. His heart thundered inside his chest, though he thought not even a full-scale cardiac event could change his course or stop him. Not now.
“Matteo.”
His name was a whisper. Or perhaps a prayer for deliverance. But he heard her all the same.
“Dr. Fellows,” he said, though he hardly recognized his own voice. “What a surprise. In more ways than one.”
She shifted away from her group, waving them off, though she never took her eyes from his. Because she was many things, this woman who had tipped his life on its end and ruined him, but she was no fool.
“Matteo.” Sarina cleared her throat. “The thing is—”
“I understand congratulations are in order,” Matteo said, his voice a silken threat that should have torn down the building. And the whole block along with it. “And I’m betting if I put my mind to it, I could guess exactly how far along you are. Shall we test that theory?”
“Matteo, I really... I think—”
He didn’t move and yet she cut herself off as if he’d flipped a table. And that rage in him beat on, so dark and so consuming he was surprised he could see anything at all through the betrayal. And all the other dark things he couldn’t quite name.
But he could see Sarina. No matter where he’d gone, how long he stayed away, he could always see her.
Damn her.
“Sarina,” he said, almost softly. Almost nicely. “Little one. I will never forgive you.”
CHAPTER TEN
KNOWING THAT THIS day was always going to come should have made it better.
But it didn’t.
Sarina couldn’t catch her breath. She couldn’t do a thing about the way her pulse kicked in, harsh and wild.
Matteo’s dark gray eyes were ripe with thunderstorms that she could already feel inside of her. When he jerked his head toward the door, Sarina turned and led the way outside. Away from all these people who were likely already alerting the world that Matteo Combe and Sarina Fellows seemed far more connected to each other than they should have been.
Out on the street, the San Francisco night was cool, and far quieter than the bar behind them had been. Fog was already creeping in, swirling around with the shadows and clinging to the lights. Making halos out of headlights and making all this worse, somehow.
Or maybe that was Matteo. He looked taller, though she knew he couldn’t be. His shoulders seemed broader. His mouth was a stern, furious line, and still she wanted to put her hand on him. She wanted to sink against him, limp and delirious, and let him carry her as if she weighed nothing at all.
Sarina hadn’t known it was possible to want like this. It had been bad enough these last months. It had been like a nagging ache, the way she longed for him, and she’d lectured herself extensively on how and why she wasn’t going to fall into the trap of sentimentality so many did. He was her first; that was all. That was all.
But now he was a great deal more than that.
And yet Sarina suspected that even if she hadn’t gotten pregnant, she would still feel shaky and overwhelmed and needy at the sight of him. She had no idea what to do with that, when it said so many things about her she didn’t want to face.
“Are you well?” he asked, gritting out the question as if it caused him pain. “And the...baby?”
Sarina swallowed hard at his hesitation. And then again when he actually said that word. Baby.
“I’m perfectly fine,” she managed to say, somehow, though she was half-blind with emotion she didn’t want to admit she felt. “The exhaustion and nausea have passed, thankfully.”
“I am delighted to hear it.”
Every word he spoke was like a blow. He lifted a finger and a car pulled up at the curb moments later. Matteo wrenched open one of the passenger doors, his dark gaze locked to Sarina’s like he expected her to take off down the block.
She was ashamed to say she considered it.
“I understand that this is a shock,” she began, trying to sound calm. At her ease. “It was a shock to me, too. But I don’t think that’s any reason to—”
“Sarina.” He sounded almost...kind. It was terrifying. “If you do not get into this car now, I will put you in it.”
She believed him.
Sarina told herself it was the threat of being manhandled that had her following his orders, but she was fully aware she’d been fantasizing about his hands on her only minutes earlier. And ever since she’d marched away from Combe Manor, for that matter, though she didn’t like to admit that. Even to herself.
She climbed into the back seat of the car. And then sat there in the charged silence as he climbed in behind her, something in him seeming to vibrate. As if he truly was a storm about to break.
“I thought I had the stomach flu,” she found herself saying as the car slid into traffic. The divider was up, separating them from the driver, and she told herself it was a confessional. A safe enough space, back here in the dark, if she ignored the large man brooding at her from the other side of the leather seat. “You know how the viruses are these days. They linger on forever. That’s all I thought it was. But it didn’t go away, for weeks and weeks. By the time I finally went to a doctor, they estimated I was already three months pregnant.”
“Did this estimate occur today?”
She managed not to cringe at his icy tone. “No. But—”
“But you felt no need to tell me. I can only assume that if I hadn’t happened to be in that bar tonight, if I hadn’t happened to see you with my own eyes, you would never have shared this news with me.”
Sarina blew out a breath.
“I don’t know what I would have done.” He started to say something and she frowned at him. “Neither do you. I was getting used to the idea. I hadn’t made any decisions.”
“Do you imagine that is throwing me a bone, Sarina? You did not make any unilateral decisions about my child? How good of you.”
That was so sardonic it hurt. And she didn’t think she could do this. But she didn’t see how she had any choice. Wasn’t that what he was so angry about? The choices she’d thought she had to...not do anything?
She cleared her throat. “It’s not your child.”
She could feel him grow sterner. Harsher. “I would advise you not to lie to my face and tell me I am not the father. That you happened to have lost your virginity to me and then cavorted your way across Europe in the same fateful week.”
“It’s not a child, Matteo,” Sarina managed to get out. “It’s twins.”
And she had to turn and look at him when the silence seemed to echo.
He was staring back at her, an arrested look on his face. “Twins.”
As if he had never heard that word in all his days.
“It’s why I’m already so big.” She waved at her belly. “To be honest, I can’t really process it myself. Much less...”
“Much less share it with the father of those twins. I am aware.”
She threaded her fingers together and scowled at them, which she figured was less aggressive than scowling at him. And her guilt at not telling him the moment she’d found out was lessening by the second the more he raged at her about it. Because what did she owe him, exactly? She would have told him eventually. Surely she would have.
“You were off traveling,” she pointed out. “It’s not as if we exchanged cell phone numbers.”
“Because if we know anything about you, Doctor, it is that you are stymied in the face
of seemingly unreachable men off doing their business. You have no history of hunting them down and forcing them to speak to you at your whim, whether they want to talk to you or not. You certainly didn’t assemble an entire file on me while you were plotting to strip me of my own company. However could you have found me?” His eyes blazed. “You did not want to find me. I doubt you tried.”
She felt too hot. Much too hot, as if she might be sick again—but she knew she wouldn’t be that lucky. “I would have.”
The laugh he let out then was hollow. Raw. And Sarina was sure it left burn marks all over her.
“You can tell yourself any lies you like, but I saw the truth on your face when you saw me in that bar,” he growled at her. “If you could have kept this a secret forever, you would have. Let us be perfectly clear that this is the person you are.”
The injustice of that walloped her and she forgot to be careful with him. With the volatile tension stripping the oxygen from the air between them.
“Says the man who blackmailed me into sleeping with him,” she snapped at him.
He turned then, shifting his big body so fast that she caught her breath in a kind of gasp. But he didn’t touch her.
He doesn’t want to touch you, something in her insisted. You’ve made him hate you.
And she couldn’t have said why that made her feel inexplicably distraught when really, it should have been cause for celebration.
“I will be the first to list my sins,” he told her, his voice low and hard. “I don’t need anyone to provide me with a hair shirt, as I have my own. I did not blackmail you into sleeping with me. If you cast your mind back, I think you will find that you are the one who put your hands on me first.”
“I was a virgin.”
“Happily, you don’t believe in such patriarchal constructs,” he retorted, hurling her own words straight back at her.
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