The Scandalous Sabbatinis: Scandal: Unclaimed Love-Child
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She snatched in a breath that seemed to catch in her throat. ‘You’re blackmailing me, Luca, can’t you see that?’
He steeled his resolve. ‘I admit it was not the most polished proposal, but the end justifies the means. I want my child. I want to provide for her. I want her to be a part of my extended family. I want her to embrace her Italian heritage, to learn my language. I can’t give her that at a distance and you can’t do it on your own.’
‘But a loveless marriage…’ Her eyes communicated her anguish. ‘Ella’s just a baby now but it won’t be long before she’s old enough to see things are not quite right between her parents. No amount of money can compensate for that. Surely you see that?’
Luca placed his hands on her shoulders, holding her gaze with his. ‘We will work at our relationship. There is no doubt of the attraction that still exists between us. That is a good enough basis to start from.’
‘You’re asking me to give up everything,’ she said, still with that worried look in her slate-blue eyes. ‘I have so much more to lose than you. I will be alone in Italy. I don’t speak the language, or at least only a few words here and there. What if your family doesn’t take to me? Have you thought of that? I have never met them. They will no doubt be just as angry as you are about Ella being kept a secret all this time.’
Luca dropped his hands from her shoulders. ‘It won’t be easy. I am the first to admit that. I will do what I can to make things go as smoothly as possible. My family will accept you. I will make sure of that. They will adore Ella and in time may come to adore you too. It will take time. You will have to be patient.’
He put some distance between them before he spoke again. ‘I will compensate you handsomely for marrying me. I will have an agreement set up by my financial and legal people. That should help dissolve some of your current doubts.’
Bronte screwed up her forehead in a frown. ‘You think you can pay me to be your wife? You think I can be bought?’
The look he gave her was cynical. ‘One thing I have learned through business is that everyone has a price. I am sure you have one too.’
She glared back at him furiously. ‘You think you can afford me?’ she asked, not caring if she was goading him too far.
His top lip curled upwards with the same cynicism she saw reflected in his gaze. ‘Name your price,’ he said.
Bronte threw a figure at him, an astonishingly exorbitant sum that would have made most men flinch in response. Luca’s expression was mask-like. It showed no emotion. It was as if they were discussing a business transaction.
‘Fine,’ he said. ‘I will make sure the funds are deposited in your bank account as soon as possible. You will need to give me your banking details, unless you would like me to write you a cheque here and now.’
Bronte scribbled her details down on a piece of paper, a war going on inside her over what she had just done. She had sold herself. Her future was now in his hands. She handed him the note, her eyes not quite able to hold his. ‘I will need to give the parents of my students some notice,’ she said.
‘I am sure your business partner will be able to see to everything,’ he said. ‘I want us to be in Italy at the end of the month. I want our marriage to be conducted at the family hotel in Milan. That way, all of my relatives can be there. It is too far for my elderly grandfather to travel all the way to Australia.’
Bronte’s eyes flew back to his. ‘Are you out of your mind? I can’t possibly tie up everything here in less than three weeks!’
‘I am a busy man, Bronte,’ he said. ‘I have commitments here that will now have to be put on hold until we get back.’
She frowned again. ‘So you’re expecting me to follow you back and forth across the globe?’
His eyes challenged her to defy him. ‘That is what most loving wives would do, is it not?’
It took Bronte a moment to catch on. ‘You… you want me to pretend our marriage is normal?’
‘But of course,’ he said.
She folded her arms crossly. ‘That’s out of the question. I won’t do it.’
‘It is not negotiable, Bronte,’ he said. ‘I will not be made an object of ridicule the world over for having a wife who hates the sight of me. You will at all times and in all places maintain the guise of a devoted wife.’
Bronte fumed as she stood facing him. ‘Is this marriage going to be an exclusive arrangement or are you going to continue with your philandering ways?’
He held her gaze for an interminable pause. ‘That, cara, will depend entirely on you,’ he said. ‘Why would I stray if all my needs are being met at home?’
‘And what about my needs?’ she asked, giving him a glowering look.
He picked up his car keys and made his way to the door before he answered. ‘I think I showed you only a few minutes ago how effectively I can meet your needs.’ His dark eyes ran over her from head to foot, undressing her, caressing her, tempting her all over again. ‘As my wife, Bronte, you will want for nothing.’
He closed the door on his exit and Bronte finally let out the breath she hadn’t even realised she had been holding.
You will want for nothing, he had said. But what about what she wanted most of all? No amount of money was going to buy her the love she so desperately craved.
CHAPTER EIGHT
BRONTE decided to take Ella with her to Luca’s hotel the next day, not just so he could spend time with his daughter if he happened to be there, but more to protect herself from falling into his arms as she had done last night.
Her body was still quivering with aftershocks, her flesh still tender from where he had possessed her so thoroughly. She felt ashamed of how she had fallen into his arms so quickly. Her actions had cancelled out every word of protest she had made to him about resuming their relationship. It would give him all the more power over her. He had always had the advantage. Wasn’t it true that the person who had the most power in a relationship was the one who loved less? By loving Luca in the past, she had become the most at risk of being hurt, and that was exactly what had happened. But this time the risk was much higher because Ella was part of the equation.
As soon as Bronte got out of the car a swarm of paparazzi came towards her, seemingly from nowhere. ‘Miss Bennett?’ A journalist held a microphone in her face. ‘Is it true your daughter is the secret love-child of Luca Sabbatini, the hotel tycoon?’
Bronte tried to stop the cameras flashing in little Ella’s face. ‘Do you mind?’ she snapped. ‘Keep away from her.’
Several camera shutters went off like a round of air rifle bullets. Ella started to cry and Bronte opened the back door of the car and fished her out of her seat, holding her close against her chest as she walked into the hotel with the bag containing Ella’s baby DVDs and photos banging painfully against her hip.
The press followed like a pack of hungry dogs snapping at her heels. She bolted towards the reception counter and, trying to soothe Ella as well as ignore the camera flashes, she handed the bag over to the concierge. ‘Could you please put this aside for Luca Sabbatini?’ she asked. ‘He’s staying in the penthouse.’
The concierge smiled and placed a swipe key in front of her. ‘Signor Sabbatini asked for you to be given this. If you give me your keys, I will get the valet parking attendant to take care of your car for you. If there is anything we can do to be of assistance with the little one, please don’t hesitate to ask. We have cots and baby food and a babysitting service if you should require it.’
‘Er… I’m not staying here,’ Bronte said quickly. ‘I’m just dropping off the bag with… er… I’m just leaving this for him.’ She pointed to the bag perched on the counter.
The concierge gave her an urbane smile. ‘Signor Sabbatini expressly asked for you to be given full access to his suite. He is not here at the moment but should be back shortly. He would like for you to wait until he returns.’
Bronte ground her teeth. She had two choices: turn around and put Ella through the drama of facing the press again, or go up to Luca’s suite and kill some time until the paparazzi left, hopefully before Luca returned. She let out a breath of resignation and picked up the swipe card and the bag of DVDs and photos. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘We’ll wait for him.’
The suite was blessedly quiet and Bronte was finally able to settle Ella, who had come close to becoming hysterical over the fuss downstairs. Her little face was bright red and her eyes still streaming, and tiny heart-wrenching hiccups were rattling intermittently in her chest. ‘Don’t cry, darling,’ Bronte said softly, rocking her gently from side to side. ‘Shh, it’s all right. They’ve all gone away now.’
But for how long? she wondered. And how on earth had they found out about Ella being Luca’s child? Had Luca made some sort of announcement without telling her? It was a frightening thought that this was what she and Ella might have to live with: the constant intrusion of the press which Luca had described previously. How would she ever cope with it? How could she protect Ella? She didn’t want her daughter terrified every time they went outside. Was this really how celebrities and royalty lived? If so, it was absolutely unbearable.
Ella gave one last little hiccup and laid her head on Bronte’s shoulder, her dark lashes falling down over her eyes. Bronte carried her through to Luca’s bedroom, her stomach giving a little flutter as her eyes went to the bed that looked the size of a football field. She thought of herself lying there in Luca’s arms, not in anger or out of control passion but in mutual longing and need.
And love…
No, she checked herself sternly. You don’t love him any more. He killed everything you felt for him by shutting you so ruthlessly and mercilessly out of his life.
But still…
The smell of him was in the room, the musk and hint of citrus that she could not, even after two years, get out of her senses.
She laid Ella gently down on the middle of the bed and placed a bank of pillows either side of her to keep her from falling off. She couldn’t help a little flare of her nostrils as she held a spare pillow up to her face, breathing in the scent of Luca, a host of memories flooding her brain.
Not one night, she reminded herself as she tossed the pillow to the floor in a fit of pique. He couldn’t even stay with you one full night. How on earth do you think he is going to settle down to being married with a child? He wanted custody and he was going about getting it. Bronte was superfluous. She would be dispensed with as soon as the lust he felt for her died down. He didn’t know how to run a relationship. He was too selfish, too closed off, too focused on his career. He didn’t know how to make sacrifices for other people. He didn’t know how to love.
And yet he seemed to love Ella…
Bronte strode out of the bedroom to get away from her traitorous thoughts but they followed her, just as the paparazzi had done earlier. Click, click, click went the shutters of her brain, bringing up the touching moment when Luca had seen Ella for the first time the night before.
Bronte had always found Luca to be so emotionally distant, but last night she had seen a side to him she had never glimpsed before. He had looked down at the child in his arms, his eyes so full of wonder and amazement that she was his. Bronte had thought she had seen a hint of moisture when he’d turned and faced her, but in a blink it had gone so she didn’t know if she had imagined it.
The door of the penthouse suddenly opened and Luca came in carrying a briefcase and a toy shop bag bulging with toys. ‘Bronte,’ he said, frowning. ‘The concierge told me there was a bit of scene with the press outside the hotel. Is Ella all right?’
Bronte folded her arms across her chest. ‘She was terrified. It took ages to calm her down. She’s sleeping on your bed.’
He put the briefcase and toys down and reached up to loosen his tie. ‘I should have warned you,’ he said. ‘I’m not sure how they found out. I was going to make an announcement once I had informed my family.’
‘Have you told your family?’
He shrugged himself out of his jacket and laid it over the back of one of the plush sofas. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘They were shocked, as you can imagine, but pleased, especially my mother. She can’t wait to meet Ella. I have promised to email some photos. Did you bring them with you?’
Bronte gestured to the bag on the floor near the sound system. ‘I’ve brought everything I could find. I even have a lock of her baby hair in a matchbox. I found another one this morning and divided the lock in two. I thought you might like one of your own.’
He picked up the bag and found the matchbox. He set the bag back on the floor and looked at the commonplace box for a moment. Bronte watched as his long tanned fingers opened it, his dark eyes homing in on the tiny curl of silky hair. He touched it and smiled, but there was sadness in it.
She swallowed and moved forward, taking the bag off the floor to ferret out the first album of pictures of Ella. ‘I haven’t had time to make copies of everything. I thought you might like to have it done professionally or something. This one is of the first few months of her life.’
Luca took the album and sat down on the sofa. Bronte didn’t know what to do with herself. She wasn’t sure if she should go and sit beside him or leave him alone to view the photos by himself. ‘Um… I think I’ll go and check on Ella,’ she said and darted out.
When she finally came back in, Luca was sitting with his eyes glued to the huge flat screen TV where he had put in one of the DVDs. The sound of Ella’s tinkling laughter as Bronte lifted her high in the air filled the room. The next clip was of Ella having her first swimming lesson at the age of six months. They were tears and screams and then happy splashes as she gradually got used to the water on her face during the mother and baby class.
Luca looked up and pressed the mute button on the remote control. ‘I can’t find a DVD with Ella as a newborn. Do you have one?’ he asked.
Bronte went through the bag, feeling self-conscious about how disorganised this was making her appear. Was he criticising her for being a bad mother? Was he thinking a devoted mother would have everything filed in neat, beautifully scrapbooked albums, or DVD cases in chronological order, not stashed haphazardly in a green shopping bag? No doubt his mother would have her sons’ locks of hair in priceless heirloom velvet boxes with the family name inscribed on the outside, not in a run-of-the-mill matchbox. She chewed at her lip as she hunted through the bag, the stretching silence shredding at her already overwrought nerves.
‘Can’t find it?’ he asked.
She sat back on her heels. ‘I must have missed it when I gathered the others up from Mum’s place.’
‘I would like to see it,’ he said. ‘I will come around and get it tomorrow, that is if you can find it by then.’
Bronte got to her feet and glared at him. ‘I know what you are implying, so why don’t you come right out and say it?’
He didn’t rise from the sofa; instead, he sat back and returned her look with the elevation of one of his midnight-black brows. ‘And what would I be implying?’ he asked.
She hissed out a breath. ‘You think I’m doing a bad job of being Ella’s mother. I can see it in your eyes. You think because I haven’t got all this stuff organised properly I can’t possibly be a good mother to her.’
This time he did rise from where he was sitting. His increase in height made the room shrink, irrespective of its commodious proportions. ‘I think you are projecting your own insecurities on to me,’ he said. ‘You are the one who thinks you are an inadequate mother, not me.’
Bronte felt her back come up at his too close to the truth summation of what she felt a lot of the time. ‘You don’t know anything about parenting,’ she threw back. ‘You don’t know what it’s like trying to earn a living and bring up a baby. You don’t know what it’s like to be so tired at the end of the day or sick and overwrought and still have to get up half the night, if not all the night, to see to a baby’s needs. You live in a cotton wool world, Luca, you always have. You don’t even have to make your own bed, for God’s sake.’
His mouth tensed as if he was holding back a stinging retort, the silence going on and on and on until the air felt thick and too heavy to breathe.
Bronte wondered if she had revealed a little too much of her struggles and if he would go on to use it against her in a custody battle. She was making things so much worse by losing control of her emotions. Like last night, falling so readily into his arms, demonstrating so conclusively how much she still wanted him. She bit her lip and moved to the other side of the room, staring down at the view below rather than see the light of victory shining in his dark eyes. She needed to get away to garner her self-control. She needed to regroup. Her feelings were getting the better of her. Next thing, she would be on her knees begging him to take her back, marriage or no marriage.
‘I admit I have a lot to learn,’ Luca said. ‘But at least I am willing to do so. A lot of men simply walk away from their responsibilities. But I will not. I want to be involved in every way possible with Ella.’
Bronte spun around. ‘Well, why don’t you start right here and now?’
He frowned as she stalked towards the door, only stopping long enough to take out her purse from the change bag she had brought for Ella. She practically shoved the bag against his abdomen, her eyes flashing at him in frustration and fury. ‘Have the rest of the evening with her,’ she said. ‘You can feed her and change her and try and settle her when she won’t be settled. I will be back in a couple of hours.’
Luca flinched as the door swung shut on her exit. He let out a long breath and sent his hand through his hair. He heard a little whimper coming from his bedroom and went through to see if Ella was waking.
She was sitting up in the middle of his bed, surrounded by pillows, two big fat tears rolling down her cheeks. ‘Mummy?’ She scrubbed at her blue eyes and looked so forlorn Luca felt his heart tighten to the point of pain. ‘Mummy gone?’
‘Mummy’s gone out for a while, mio piccolo,’ he said and gently lifted her off the bed. ‘But Papà is here. Papà is always going to be here. You will never be alone, my little one.’
Ella smiled at him through her tears and batted at his face with a dimpled hand. ‘Papà.’
Luca cuddled her close, her little legs wrapping around him like a monkey’s. She smelt… actually, she didn’t smell so good. He looked at the wet patch on his bed and grimaced as he felt the dampness soaking through her candy-pink leggings to his hands. ‘I don’t suppose you can give me any hints on this process,’ he said wryly as he carried her out to the lounge area where the change bag was. He picked it up with his spare hand and took Ella to the bathroom. He put her on her feet on the floor but, before he could even unzip the bag or remove her leggings, she was off. ‘Ella, wait,’ he said, missing her by millimetres as she giggled and toddled out, her sodden and loaded nappy seeming to mock him as she went.
Luca went in pursuit and captured her just as she knocked an ornament off one of the coffee tables in her effort to hide beneath it. Thankfully, the ornament just thudded to the carpeted floor without breaking and without hurting her. ‘You little minx,’ he said with a smile as he tugged her gently out by the ankles before he scooped her up in his arms.
Ella giggled and patted his face again. ‘Papà finded me.’
Luca smiled, even though his chest ached at the irony of his little girl’s words. ‘Yes, Ella, Papà found you.’
He took her back to the bathroom and this time held on to her with one hand while he tried to open the change bag with the other. Ella wriggled and squirmed but somehow he managed to get a new nappy out as well as a change of clothes.
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