Italian Mavericks: Carrying The Italian's Heir

* * *

‘You look tired,’ Dante said as he sat back.

The sought-after calm that usually settled over him after arriving in Tuscany wasn’t quite so easy to come by today, but then he’d never been here to do business before—and that business had never been so important or so wanted. He had to win this contract, and it was that sentiment, together with the way the charity would view him, that had forced him to accept that Benjamin’s suggestion of settling down was the answer to many issues—including, it seemed, a night of amazing but careless sex with a gorgeous redhead he hadn’t even bothered exchanging names with.

‘I am a little tired. Can we sort these things out now, so I can rest before taking a shower?’ She pushed her hair behind her ear and looked at him, the vivid green of her eyes holding a hint of unease.

He pushed aside the guilt that he was making her uncomfortable and tried to banish the image which had suddenly sprung to mind of her in the shower. It wouldn’t do to think of her naked beneath jets of water—not when he knew just how amazing she looked naked.

‘When and where we met will remain the same—at least there is little chance of getting that wrong. However, we will say we have been seeing each other secretly since.’ Briskness crept into his voice as he set out all that was supposed to have happened between them.

‘Why secretly?’ Her delicate brows furrowed in genuine confusion, making her look every bit as innocent as she had been—unknown to him—before he took her to his hotel room in London.

‘To protect you from press attention, of course—except that it didn’t go according to plan, as the Celebrity Spy! article will prove, giving me the perfect opportunity to refute its claims.’

‘And where will these meetings have taken place?’ She spoke in an efficient manner and might have been conducting a business meeting.

‘London and Rome. What do you like doing? Where would you have wanted to go?

She looked at him, the hardness in her eyes softening slightly. ‘Art galleries.’

‘Art? I had no idea.’ He was genuinely surprised, but couldn’t allow himself to get sidetracked now.

‘Why should you have? Neither of us expected the night we shared to become anything more than one night. We didn’t even exchange names.’

She strolled across the terrace, folding her arms about her as if trying to keep every detail about herself protected from him. He watched as she stood and looked out across the rise and fall of the landscape he loved so much, interspersed as it was by clusters of ancient villages.

He hadn’t expected anything from those few hot hours in bed with her, and certainly not to wake up alone the next morning. Was that why she’d lingered in his mind, teasing his memory with the passion of that night? Now, as he watched her, his gaze taking in her petite and slender figure showcased to perfection in another creation suggested by Elizabeth, he really did want to know more about her. What did she like? What was her favourite music and food? Questions raced through his mind.

‘And what of your family?’ He had to know at least something of her family background.

‘My family?’ She looked at him, suspicion in her eyes. ‘It is just my mother and myself. We moved to London, her place of birth, after my father died.’

A jolt of something akin to sympathy raced through him. She knew what it was to lose someone she loved too.

‘But you grew up in Australia?’ He walked over to her, conscious of her watching him carefully, keeping her attention fully focused on him, just as she had done that first morning in his office.

‘Yes, in Sydney. Anything else about my childhood you feel it’s necessary to know?’

The scathing tone of her voice should have warned him off, but knowing she too had lost her father drew him to her, as did a strange urge to talk of something he’d long since buried.

‘You at least knew your father, had a bond with him, which is more than I ever experienced.’

‘I’m sorry.’ The sympathetic look in her eyes as she looked up at him, placing her hand on his arm, conveyed her shock at the unexpected revelation which had come from him.

‘Don’t be.’ He shrugged off her touch and focused his gaze into the Tuscan countryside. ‘I barely knew my father, which is just as well. He wasn’t a man I would have wished to know.’

‘Don’t say that.’ Her shock rushed over him in waves. ‘Every child needs a father.’

‘Not one who walks out on a woman, a young boy and a newborn son. No child deserves a father like that.’

‘That happened to you?’ Her gorgeous green eyes were filled with sympathy and he gritted his teeth against it. He didn’t need sympathy from anyone—least of all her.

‘Sì.’ His overpowering anger made functioning in English briefly impossible.

‘Where is your brother now?’

Piper’s question rocked him to the core as memories of the time when that had been the only question he’d wanted an answer to flooded back faster than a high tide.

‘He died.’ The hounds were after him again, dragging out the horror of those years when he and his mother had had no idea where the teenage Alessio had gone. He couldn’t do this now. He didn’t want to share any of this with anyone, and definitely not a fiancée acquired through a deal. ‘He was missing for several years before I discovered the truth of his untimely death.’

‘That makes all I went through as a child seem so trivial.’

He turned to her just as she looked down, as if ashamed of even admitting such a thing. ‘What did you go through?’

She still didn’t look at him. ‘I was born without sight in my left eye, and before I had an operation to make it look normal I was teased mercilessly by other children. Then I was knocked down by a car when I was seven. I didn’t see the car, which thankfully wasn’t going fast, but after that my parents—especially my father—wrapped me up and tried to keep me from all harm. I just wish I could have done the same for Dad. Maybe then he wouldn’t have been killed when a car he was a passenger in crashed.’

Before Dante could think what he was doing he’d taken Piper in his arms and hugged her. Her willing body moulded against him and he stroked her hair, inhaling the scent of her shampoo, wanting only to make her pain go away.

‘I had no idea,’ he said, thinking again of what she had first said, and the way she always kept her focus on him, especially in his office that first morning. It made sense now.

‘I don’t like to talk of my father.’ She looked up at him and he studied her closely.

‘I meant about your sight.’

Before she could drop her gaze he caught her chin with his thumb and finger, forcing her to look at him. ‘Nobody would ever know.’

She pulled away from him, a flush of embarrassment colouring her cheeks. ‘We can talk more later. I’m not feeling too good.’

He watched her go, wanting to call her back, to hold her to him again and give her comfort. Because, strangely, just having her in his arms gave him comfort. It was a sensation he was not at all sure about and so, feeling like a child learning to swim, enjoying the warm water and yet finding it terrifying, he moved swiftly to the water’s edge and out of danger. Sentiment was something he’d never dabbled with, and now was not the time to start.

* * *

Piper’s nerves were almost frayed as she and Dante entered the villa of the man he wanted to do business with—the man she had to convince their relationship was real.

She’d put on the emerald-green dress that Elizabeth had selected for the dinner, still ruffled by the fact that Elizabeth had known more of what was expected of her than Piper had. But that indignation had melted away when Dante had first seen her, looking at her not with the scrutiny she’d expected, but with genuine pleasure. And if she wasn’t mistaken there had also been a hint of something else which had sent a shiver of anticipation through her...

But now was not the time, and she focused herself. She had a role to play—her part of the deal they’d struck a week ago in Rome.

‘Dante,’ Bettino said as he met them, taking Dante’s hand and shaking it firmly. ‘I confess that I was sceptical about the news that you had become engaged, but now I can see exactly why a man such as yourself would succumb to the need for marriage.’

Piper smiled graciously at Bettino and tried to ignore the frisson of tension which had transferred itself from Dante to her at the other man’s words.

‘Bettino, meet Piper Riley—my fiancée.’ Remarkably Dante supressed the tension and pride shone out in his voice. Piper felt her stomach flip over with nerves, still unable to believe she’d actually agreed to this charade.

She wanted to shy away from Bettino, despite his friendly smile and grandfather-like eyes. All she wanted to do was step back from his scrutiny and the limelight to a place where she felt safe, but this was part of the deal she’d made with Dante and she would do it so well even he wouldn’t question her authenticity. She had to if she stood a chance of Dante being any kind of father to their child.

She smiled at the man Dante wanted to secure his deal with and harnessed all she’d been told about being in the public eye—first by the company she’d worked for in Sydney and then in London, and finally by Elizabeth, who had instructed her in the art of being the kind of woman a man like Dante would need at his side.

‘Thank you for inviting me to your lovely home, Signor D’Antonio. It’s a real pleasure to be here with Dante.’

As she spoke Dante slid his arm around her back and she breathed in slowly against the heat his touch sent scorching through her. She glanced up at him, thankful he’d at least stayed on her right side so she hadn’t jumped when he’d touched her. Maybe telling him about her lack of sight hadn’t been such a bad idea. Even if it had come out before she’d been able to stop it—something which never normally happened.

‘I am pleased Dante has brought you. It is always a pleasure to meet a beautiful woman.’

‘The pleasure is, of course, all mine, Bettino.’ Dante’s voice positively dripped with desire and admiration as he looked down at her, and the smile on his lips would have fooled anyone. As would the soft, desire-laden darkness of his eyes.

‘My other guests will arrive shortly,’ Bettino said, turning his attention back to Dante. ‘And after this evening I will make my decision as to whom I do business with. But for now I want you both to relax and enjoy the evening. I want to see the real Dante Mancini, just as I want to see the real Gianni Paolini.’

‘A very astute way of doing business,’ Dante said, and Piper wondered if it was only her who noticed his jaws pressing tightly together.

Bettino laughed and they followed him into the villa, where they were offered a glass of champagne by a waitress—a role Piper felt far more suited to.

‘Piper would prefer juice,’ Dante said, and pulled her close again, looking down at her. ‘We’re looking forward to being parents.’

Bettino laughed and clapped a hand on Dante’s shoulder. ‘So not only are you to be married, but you are to be a father too?’

Piper blushed furiously at Dante’s not so subtle way of informing Bettino of their news, but all thought was swept away as Gianni Paolini arrived with his wife.

He was an older Italian man who was nearer Bettino’s age. Beside her she felt Dante’s presence, and that unmistakable aura of power he’d had on the night they’d met in London. But would it be enough? Suddenly it mattered to her.

As the meal began the men talked around the subject of the deal, and Piper listened as Dante spoke passionately about his business. Her interest was aroused when Bettino asked him why he’d started his own business, and she watched as he seemed to square his shoulders.

‘I started as a teenager, clearing building sites of offcuts and soon it became a large and expanding company—one which I hoped would make things better for my mother, who’d brought me and my brother up alone.’

‘You have a brother?’ Bettino asked, and Piper held her breath, hardly hearing the meaningless talk of the other women.

‘My brother died.’ Silence hung in the air, suspended on an atmosphere that might have been sliced with one swipe of a sword.

Thankfully the two older women had begun to talk about the various regions of Tuscany and Piper joined in, eager to divert attention from Dante. ‘There are many parts of Tuscany I’d love to see.’

‘Then you must ask your fiancé to take you,’ said Gianni Paolini’s wife.

Piper thought her tactics had worked—until suddenly and inexplicably the spotlight was turned on her.

‘What do you do, Piper?’ Bettino’s wife asked.

Piper felt as if she was about to be tripped up, tricked into saying she was just a waitress—an unemployed one at that. Determined not to be outwitted, she drew on her career dreams. ‘Art is my passion. I studied it at university for a time.’

‘You didn’t finish your course?’ The question, full of conjecture, hung in the air, and to make matters worse she could feel Dante’s gaze on her now.

‘No, I didn’t. I moved home to be with my parents when my father became very ill.’ Saying it aloud brought all the pain back.

‘What would you have done with your degree in art?’

In stark contrast to his wife, Bettino’s voice was full of interest and, as always, she blossomed beneath such genuine interest in her subject.

‘I would have set up my own business as an art curator.’ She pushed back the agony of losing her father and focused on the one thing she’d always been passionate about. Art.

Bettino sat back and looked at her as their main course arrived. ‘We should talk later. I am looking to commission someone to bring this place to life with art.’

‘Thank you, but I couldn’t—not with a baby due in the summer.’

‘Nonsense.’ Bettino’s voice softened. ‘We’ll sort something out.’

Piper almost couldn’t keep the fizz of excitement at such a prospect under control, but she had to. She had to remember this was Dante’s deal, not hers. With a smile she was unable to hide she looked across the table at him, and the irritation or annoyance she’d thought would be there after that little exchange was missing. In its place she saw the same desire he’d had in his eyes as they’d arrived, but somehow it was more intense. It seemed to smoulder, and she could feel the heat across the table.

She blushed and looked down, hoping the conversation would take a different turn.

‘Do you plan to spend a lot of time here?’ Dante asked Bettino, and Piper wondered if that had been a deliberate ploy to rescue her. Whatever it was, she was glad that she was no longer the centre of attention.

* * *

As the hour moved towards midnight Dante placed Piper’s coat over her shoulders, pleased the evening had gone well. Piper had been amazing—she’d become the confident and vivacious woman he’d met in London. She’d held her own as they’d asked her questions which, from their earlier talk, he knew would cause her pain. He’d found himself drawn to her in a way he’d never known, eager to discover more of the woman beneath the sexy exterior, but he’d quickly dismissed that idea.

That night they’d first met in London he’d experienced mind-blowing sex with her, unwittingly taking her virginity and creating a child that would bind them together for ever. But that didn’t alter anything. No matter where she was or who she was with she would always be his, and even though he didn’t want to tonight he would have to watch her close the door to her bedroom and shut him out.

It was for the best. He didn’t want commitment and emotion. It was something he couldn’t do, because the few times in his life that he had, it had forced away those he’d invested in emotionally, locking them out of his life for ever. He’d sworn after Alessio’s death never to become emotionally involved with anyone ever again.

But with Piper that pledge was difficult to keep. She entranced him, made him desire her with just one of those coy looks she often gave him when she thought he wasn’t looking. When she’d admitted her lack of sight in her left eye he’d wanted to hold her and show that it made no difference to him at all, that she was the most desirable and sexy woman he’d ever known. He wanted more than ever to care for her, protect her always.

After the way she’d had Bettino D’Antonio practically eating out of her hand he wanted her even more. She’d been marvellous tonight, her beauty subtly shinning in a way that the vain women he usually dated could never have achieved. It had made him want her again, in his arms and in his bed. Before their marriage ended and they went their separate ways he wanted her—completely.

He lowered his head to her left ear, about to whisper how well she’d done, when she jumped and turned abruptly to face him, a spark of annoyance in her green eyes. It quickly faded as she remembered her role and she smiled sweetly at him just as Bettino joined them in the large hallway. He berated himself for not remembering what she’d told him earlier, but the need to be close to her had become overwhelming, just as it had that night in London when nothing else had mattered except making her his.

‘You startled me,’ she said softly, before looking again at Bettino. ‘Thank you again for such an interesting evening, and I’d be honoured to help you locate any items of art you require.’

‘Thank you. I will definitely contact you regarding this matter,’ Bettino stated firmly, and for a moment Dante wondered what was coming next.

Had something been said or done this evening to jeopardise the deal? He’d thought Piper’s love of art might have clinched the deal, maybe forcing the older man to make up his mind before the end of the evening.

The genuine look of shocked joy on Piper’s face at Bettino’s words was so unexpected that Dante laughed gently at her innocent pleasure.

‘I will wait to hear from you, signor,’ she said.

‘Goodnight, Mancini,’ said Bettino as Dante put his arm possessively around Piper—not for show, as he expected she thought it might be, but because he wanted to.

He needed to feel her close, to inhale the heady scent of her perfume and feel that gorgeous body next to his. The thought of saying goodnight to her once they returned to his villa was not one he welcomed—not when the insistent throb of desire was alive in his body. He wanted her more than he’d ever wanted any woman.

‘Goodnight, Signor D’Antonio.’

Bettino turned to Piper and took her hand, bowing over it as if he would kiss it in a gesture suited to another century, sending a spark of jealousy hurtling through Dante as she blushed and smiled shyly at him.

‘Goodnight, Piper. I’m very pleased to have made your acquaintance. Your presence here this evening has been most welcome.’

‘Thank you,’ Piper said softly, sending a thrill of desire sparking through Dante.

She was a beautiful woman, inside and out, and a woman like that wasn’t right for him. But that knowledge didn’t curb the need which was pulsing through him.

That need and desire, which he doubted he could suppress for much longer, formed a potent cocktail as he drove as fast as the narrow roads would allow back to his villa, aware of her watching his every move in a way which added to the sexual tension swirling around them.

Did she feel it too?

There was no way out of it now—no way of avoiding it. He wanted Piper and he wanted her tonight. Now.

CHAPTER SEVEN

PIPER WATCHED DANTE as he strode across the high-ceilinged living room of the villa. The look on his face was intense her heart beat a little faster. He looked as if he wanted to devour her there and then. The same expression he’d had as they’d entered his hotel room in London.

‘You made a good impression this evening.’ He stopped striding and stood, leaning one arm along the cream stone of the fireplace, and she fought hard against the dark and passionate look which filled his eyes—and the way her body responded.

She couldn’t want him—not after he’d shown his true colours, shown himself to be a sharp and driven businessman who would stop at nothing to achieve his ultimate aims. He was using her and their baby. How could she find such a man attractive when all she’d ever dreamed of was a caring, loving man? He was so wrong for her, and yet being with him felt so right. Just as before, she wanted to be with him in every way possible, to risk everything and feel his kiss, his touch.

She certainly hadn’t been fooled by his subdued and grief-laden voice as he’d spoken of his brother at the dinner table. He’d spoken of how difficult things had been for his mother, bringing up two young boys. Such a revelation had come as a shock, but she hoped she’d hidden it well. After all, as his fiancée she would have known such things.

‘I did my best,’ she said now, and sat down on one of the large, comfortable sofas. She couldn’t stay in the middle of the room, watching him as if she were waiting for something to happen. She was certain that at any moment the tension around them would snap.

‘You were utterly brilliant and you won D’Antonio over. He loved you. He practically melted each time you spoke and you know it.’

There was a caustic edge to his words as they sliced through the atmosphere in the room and she knew right there and then that something had changed. It felt different between them, and she didn’t know what it was.

‘Telling him of your passion for art was a clever move.’

‘It is real, Dante. It is what I would have done if I hadn’t given up university when my father became ill.’

‘A well-played move, no?’

‘I should go to bed.’ She got up. The need to escape both the brooding man who dominated every bit of space in the room and the way her body yearned for his touch and his kiss was overwhelming. She definitely had to go.

‘Tell me about your father’s illness.’

Dante’s words froze her to the spot and she looked at him, still standing without a care in the world, so casually leaning on the mantelpiece of the fireplace.

‘There’s nothing more to tell.’ She fired the words defensively back at him as grief assailed her, rushing back so strongly her legs felt weak. She wanted to sit down, but doing so would mean staying beneath his scrutiny.

‘It would have helped me to know of such a detail before spending the evening with D’Antonio, trying to convince him we are a couple in love—a couple about to marry and share our lives—which means sharing our pasts.’

‘That’s something you too are guilty of.’

He pushed firmly away from the fireplace and came towards her, but she couldn’t move, even though she knew she should. The fierce intensity in his eyes struck fear into her heart, closely followed by anticipation. For what, she didn’t know.

‘But we are not really sharing our lives, are we, Dante? We are engaged to be married, and it is merely for the convenience of your business deal.’

Now all the worries she’d had about the future over the last week pushed forth and she couldn’t stem the flow of words.

‘What will happen when you get your stupid deal? Will you walk away from me, from your child, as if we never existed?’

Dante closed the distance between them, coming to stand very close to her, making her heart pound in a way she’d only experienced once before, on the night he took her hand and led her to his hotel room.

‘You don’t think very highly of me, do you, cara?’

He spoke softly, serving only to irritate her further. She wasn’t a sullen child to be appeased.

‘Your reputation isn’t exactly squeaky clean, Dante. What am I supposed to think?’

She wasn’t about to stand there and discuss this tonight, least of all admit how much she liked him—and more. She was tired—which, together with the pregnancy, must be the reason for her emotions being all over the place. It couldn’t be Dante. She didn’t want it to be Dante—didn’t want him to affect her.

‘I never go back on a deal, Piper. Ever.’ A firm and sharp edge speared into his words, and if they’d been discussing anything else she might just have fallen for it. ‘I needed to know about your father’s illness. It’s the sort of detail a loving fiancé would know.’