“Her name is Isabella. She’s six years old and she’s beautiful and precious and she’s … she’s yours.“

“No.” The word fell from Leandro’s lips—a snarling whisper in the quiet room. “That can’t be.”

Lips quivering, Alexis felt her chest rise and fall, but she held his gaze over the distance. “A DNA test will prove I’m right,” she said, as if she’d prepared the response.

It was the absolute purpose in her voice that held him mute. A daughter … His skin felt chilly, as if all warmth had been leached away from the world around him.

And yet the crystal chandeliers in the room glowed bright, the fire crackled in the marble-wrought fireplace and the moon hung jewel-bright in the sky outside.

The world continued spinning, whereas all the control he prided himself on had deserted him, leaving him shaken to the core.

He shook his head, gasping for breath.

Alexis stood composed amidst the curious and accusing glares aimed at her, her shoulders ramrod-straight. Alexis—whose eyes gleamed with pride and love as she claimed that he was a father. To her little girl.

Now this woman, whom he’d tried to forget, claimed her daughter was his … that his one moment of weakness had led to such a consequence …

The Legendary Conti Brothers

The Sinner and the Saint meet their match!

Known throughout the world as the Conti Sinner and the Conti Saint, these legendary Italian brothers have been the focused goal of many a gold-digger.

But hands off, ladies—that’s now finally at an end!

For rumours are that Leandro, the Conti Saint, has a seven-year-old secret … and Luca, the Conti Sinner, is engaged!

Don’t miss the chance to get your hands on this fabulous new duet by Tara Pammi!

The Surprise Conti Child June 2016

The Unwanted Conti Bride July 2016

The Surprise Conti Child

Tara Pammi

www.millsandboon.co.uk

TARA PAMMI can’t remember a moment when she wasn’t lost in a book—especially a romance, which was much more exciting than a mathematics textbook. Years later, Tara’s wild imagination and love for the written word revealed what she really wanted to do. Now she pairs Alpha males who think they know everything with strong women who knock that theory and them off their feet!

Contents

Cover

Introduction

The Legendary Conti Brothers

Title Page

About the Author

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

EPILOGUE

Endpage

Extract

Copyright

PROLOGUE

LEANDRO CONTI.

The name floated, almost reverently, on the lips of the sweaty, gyrating crowd, bringing Alexis Sharpe to a sudden halt in the middle of the dance floor in an exclusive Milanese nightclub she’d only been allowed into because of her new friend, Valentina Conti.

Their friendship had been instantaneous when Alex, backpacking through Italy, had somehow found herself facing the attentions of an enamored but harmless Italian waiter. Tina had interfered and instantly decided that she liked Alex.

Valentina, vivacious, sophisticated and rich, was as different from Alex as Milan was from Brooklyn, but Alex hadn’t been able to resist Tina’s generous heart. The differences hadn’t bothered her either until she had met Tina’s older brother.

Leandro Conti... CEO of Conti Luxury Goods.

Gorgeous, sophisticated Italian magnate.

Brooding. Forbidding. Almost godlike in the way he surveyed the rest of them. As if he existed on a different sphere.

For a twenty-year-old from Brooklyn, and for one who blended into average and dull on a daily basis, that felt very true.

That he was at the nightclub in Milan was as rare as a UFO sighting. Suddenly, even the most raucous party girls pushed their hair back, adjusting dresses poured over hourglass figures.

They were hoping to catch his attention, Alexis realized, with a dawning sense of defeat.

Still, she chanced a glance.

The central glass dance floor suspended above water and the interplay of light created an illusion of a vast space. Yet the edgy elegance faded against the darkly stunning man.

That same hungry, fluttery feeling uncoiled in the pit of Alex’s stomach.

Clad in a black dress shirt and dark blue jeans, the chiseled angles of his face tightly stark, he came to a standstill at the edge of the dance floor. That slate-gray gaze searched, and dismissed each face in turn.

How she longed to make sure he noticed that she, Alexis Sharpe, was a woman. That she couldn’t be dismissed so easily...a compulsion she’d never felt before.

She faced every day that she lacked any special talent, that she’d been overlooked, even by her parents. This vacation to Milan had been a desperate escape she’d grabbed after being rejected at another high-flying Manhattan firm for a job. When she’d realized she wasn’t equipped for a big career like some of her friends, that a menial job at her dad’s health food store comprised her future.

A summer in Italy because you’ve been turned down at another job, her mom had said in that resigned tone of hers. Rewarding failure, are we now?

As if she hadn’t expected anything different of Alex. The words had rankled but Alex needed this. A small rebellion in a life that had made her less than mediocre and thoroughly without merit.

And yet, when it came to Leandro Conti, she felt a reckless freedom, a vicious urge to stand out to him.

Like that time two weeks ago when he had arrived at the dinner with Valentina, their brother, Luca, and their friends on the veranda overlooking the lake.

A soft breeze had rolled in from the lake and Valentina had whipped up a batch of margaritas. Alex had had just one sip and instantly put it down.

Leandro had dragged a chair out next to her, inquired over Valentina’s twisted ankle, and then he’d turned that dark gray gaze on her.

“Other than chiding Tina that she is a big baby,” he mimicked her tone, and Alex cursed herself for losing patience with Valentina that evening a few weeks ago, “how are you enjoying your trip, Ms. Sharpe?”

That accent of his had sent a shiver curling through her spine even as it stiffened at his condescending tone.

Shock that he’d sat down next to her had stolen speech from her. While his gaze had traversed over her messy, high ponytail, her forehead, her nose and, then briefly, her mouth.

A bare five seconds, maybe but Alex had felt the perusal like a caress.

Heat had clamped her cheeks and she gritted her teeth. “Alex, my name is Alex. Why do you refuse to say it?”

His greeting to her had always been unflinchingly polite, as if he was determined to deny her even that small satisfaction.

Valentina, both shrewd and kind, had warned Alex that her older brother wasn’t someone to set her sights on.

Perversely, that warning had only intensified Alex’s attraction to the man.

“Why do you shorten it to a man’s name like that?” And then he had flitted that intractable gaze over the rest of her, her small breasts in her worn-out community college T-shirt, her midriff and her long legs in worn-out capris and her favorite sneakers. Moved up again. Four weeks amid Valentina and her friends dressed at the height of sophistication and it was the first time Alex wished she’d dressed up.

His thinly sculpted upper lip curled and Alex clenched tight inside. “Do you assume you are successful at hiding everything you are?” A taunt that no one else at the table could hear.

Shock buffeted her in waves as she looked inward.

Had she done that? Had she dressed to minimize herself, to willingly lay down in defeat before she could actually be rejected anyway by the world?

She met his gaze with a boldness she didn’t know she had, this man who saw her so clearly. “I have no idea what you mean.”

He sat at a perfectly respectable distance, yet fire uncoiled in every nerve. His warm breath feathered over the rim of her ear. “Little advice from your friend’s brother, Ms. Sharpe. Stop looking at men like that.” Then he looked at her again and those gray irises widened. “Unless you’re fully aware of the weapon you wield.”

He’d left then, without a backward glance.

Leaving Alex seething with humiliation and embarrassment and anger. Only then had she realized that he knew.

He knew that she was attracted to him.

And he had rejected her. Very thoroughly.

But she hadn’t even retorted because it was as if her brain was incapable of higher functions when he was close.

Like now.

The din of the nightclub, the slow jazzy tune that had men and women around her gyrating sensuously, the sweaty crush of the crowd and the heated scent of pheromones...everything faded as she studied him.

He stood about two feet from her, and yet, she was aware of every inch of that hard, lean body, could feel herself gravitate toward him.

As if he was a black hole and she was being sucked toward him.

Hasn’t he made a fool of you enough already, some tiny self-preservation instinct asked.

Alex clutched it like a lifeline, forced her legs to turn away from him.

She didn’t need an arrogant Italian to ruin her hard-won holiday this summer. To make her feel as if somehow she came up short.

She already lived with that feeling every day.

This trip to Italy, this whole summer was supposed to be about escaping, about being someone other than the Alexis who failed at everything, the Alexis who was nothing but a mere shadow of everything her genius brother Adrian had been. About living before she returned to being a disappointment to her parents.

Anxious to get away, she tripped in her four-inch stilettos. A leanly muscled forearm wrapped around her waist, steadying her.

Held tightly against a hard, male chest, her breath knocked out.

“Grazie mille,” she managed one of the two phrases she knew, breathless against the press of the corded muscles just below her breasts.

“You can barely stand in those stilettos. Just because Valentina offers a free pair of Contis doesn’t mean you should wear them.”

Her head jerked up, the gravelly voice tugging at her nerves.

Leandro Conti stared down that aquiline bridge of his nose. Neon blue lighting from the strobes cast blue shadows on his narrow, angular face, teasing her with flashes of his thin-lipped mouth.

The scowl on his brow straightened her spine. “Are you implying that I’m not good enough to wear your exalted designer shoes?”

“I do not imply.”

“You’re a jerk, Mr. Conti.”

His gaze flitted down over her neck, and her body tightly encased in a sheath dress she’d borrowed from Valentina. Even the stretchy fabric couldn’t make much of her nonexistent curves.

But under his stare, Alex felt scorched, marked.

“And you...are playing hard at being a grown-up. Unsuccessfully, I might say.”

“Damned if I do, and if I don’t, with you. At least three men wanted to take me home tonight,” she taunted recklessly, even as hurt pierced her, “so I say take your unwanted, stuffy opinion—”

His fingers tightened over her waist, but never hurting. Though his expression remained coolly remote. Alex wondered if his grip told more truth about him than his words. “Ah... I didn’t realize your goal was so low.

“Did my fashion-genius brother not advise you that those sturdy jeans and neon pink sneakers suit that innocent, American girl-next-door image of yours to perfection? It is the perfect lure.”

His infuriating attitude scraped. But the thing that her juvenile mind focused on was that he remembered her neon pink sneakers.

“Of all the faults I attributed to you, being a snob wasn’t one.”

“What did you attribute to me then?”

“Arrogance. Cynicism. As much feeling as a rock.”

He let her go then, almost shoving her away from him. As if she’d hurt him.

Alex tottered again on the heels. Her ankle throbbed.

His arm shot out again, accompanied by pithy Italian she was glad she couldn’t understand. Her body felt ragged, as if someone else controlled her limbs.

“Should you be drinking when you’re among strangers in a foreign country?”

The sharp, almost caustic tone of his words, fortunately, canceled out the sensuous web she fell into.

Oh, he made her so mad. And bold. And hot. As if every inch of her skin was on fire, hungry, desperate to be quenched with his touch.

“I had one...one glass of wine.” But since she’d barely eaten anything all day, it had gone straight to her head. “Not that I need to explain myself to you. Back off.”

One eyebrow rose in that imperious face. Arrogance dripped from the man even when he didn’t understand her. “Back off?”

His palm was a heated brand on her lower back while he was a fortress of wiry strength in front. Men she’d met at college were boys compared to Leandro Conti. Ergo, her utter lack of sophistication in handling him. “Leave me alone. You’re not my keeper, something in that vein.”

“So do you have a keeper, back home? I don’t think they’re doing a good job of looking after you.”

“What is this? The sixteenth century?” she quipped.

He wasn’t particularly amused but there was a gleam in those gray depths. An infinitesimal softening of that mouth. “You’re not quite the lost little waif I thought, are you?”

She forced a laugh to cover up the tingling she felt all over. He smelled so good, like the most decadent dark chocolate with a bitter edge to it. The one that clung to the senses long after it was consumed. The one you glutted on knowing it was going to settle into your thighs and hips. “Is it impossible for you to speak without being insulting?”

“You will not get sweet words from me, Ms. Sharpe. Barely eighteen and roaming a foreign country, staying with strangers. You might as well hang a Take Me sign around your neck. I’d never let Valentina—”

The barb landing sharp, Alex spoke through gritted teeth. “I’m twenty and I’m not Valentina.”

She’d die before she admitted that, since that first night that Valentina had brought her to the Conti Villa, all she had thought of was him. That it was his dismissive look that’d had her borrowing Valentina’s dress.

That it was his attention, his gaze that she had sought from day one. That the thought of leaving, of going back to her dull existence without knowing his kiss, his touch, haunted her.

“And Valentina and Luca are my friends, even if—”

“If you consider my brother a friend, if you mistake his intent toward you,” he said, as his nostrils flared, and she wondered if he was disgusted or angry or both, “you’re more foolish than I assumed. I should have never let Valentina bring you to the villa.”

“You find my presence so objectionable that you’re avoiding the villa, aren’t you?”

She hadn’t meant to betray that she’d noticed his absence. But he didn’t deny her claim either.

Hurt was a thorn nestled deep into her skin.

“Luca and I...we understand each other perfectly,” she added defiantly.

Although he was right.

A day after she had arrived at their villa, Luca had cornered her twice, teased her, kissed her. Made it clear within an hour that he’d love to make it more. Alex had a feeling Luca would take any woman to bury whatever lingered under that easy charm. And just as easily discard her the next morning.

But she hadn’t been tempted, at all. Alex felt nothing even as she admitted that Luca was sex on legs.

The man in front of her however...he made her feel naked and languid and achy all over, with just one look from those gray depths. For all his grating politeness, he made her feel as if he saw her, the Alexis that wanted to pack a lifetime of adventure into one short summer.

Why, she’d no idea.

“Have you already slept with him then?”

If she’d been a violent person, if the amused glint in his eyes hadn’t lulled her, Alex would’ve slapped him then. Instead, she slowly but firmly pushed his hand away and threw him a disgusted look. “Is this your job then? Follow around the women Luca tangles with and silence them with a dirty payoff—”

“I didn’t intend to offend you,” he offered roughly, and Alexis almost believed that he hadn’t meant to. That it was curiosity rather than judgment in his tone.

She had it bad, if she was justifying his cheap remarks...

“Could there be a different intention?”

“You don’t know Luca like I do. And you are...”

“I’m what, Mr. Conti? The stereotypical American slut? Easy? Weak enough for you to insult without knowing the first thing about me?”

Something almost like regret pinched his mouth. When his gaze flipped open again, a storm danced within it. As if some small part of him was uncoiling and awake. “Luca is a...sucker, as you call it, for your type.”

She raised an eyebrow then. Maybe not so imperious like him but she was proud of herself. “And what type is that?”

He sighed. Satisfaction pounded in Alex’s blood, the little sound of his capitulation a roaring defeat.

“You want your pound of flesh?”

“From the moment I arrived, you’ve looked at me like I was dirt beneath your handmade Italian shoes. I want every drop of blood that you owe me.”

A hint of a smile caressed his lips, tilting one corner of his mouth up. The impact of it was like molten honey through her veins, turning her languorous and sluggish. “You’re young and vivacious, a striking contrast of strength when compared to someone like Valentina. But your eyes, they betray your innocence and your vulnerability. You possess a distinct lack of artifice that is dangerously attractive. For a man like Luca with such jaded taste, you’re like a fresh drink of water that might just sate his unquenchable thirst. It’s enough to rouse a man’s instincts, enough to make him assume, foolishly, that you need to be protected.”

Heartbeat skittering all over the place, Alex stared, stunned. She had thought herself beneath his notice, inadequate to even catch his attention. “Why foolish?” she croaked.

“Because, as I’m realizing slowly, you might look innocent and vulnerable, but you’re not weak.”

“If that’s an apology,” she countered weakly, battling the fluttering feeling in her chest, “then it’s the most convoluted one I’ve ever heard.”

A couple of women, one dressed in black leather and the other a white cocktail dress, both so tight as if they were painted over their voluptuous bodies, passed them huddling Alexis toward him.

Their hushed whispers and awed mutterings were obvious enough for Alex.

Leandro Conti didn’t usually hang around nightclubs. Or parade in public, she realized, in complete contrast to Luca who seemed to go out of his way to engage the media’s attention.

Nor had he found her by accident. Valentina had already left.

Which meant he had come here looking... “Why are you here tonight?” When he frowned, she elaborated. “You barely seem to tolerate the normal pursuits and company like the rest of us.”

“Have you studied me so thoroughly then?”

Alex blushed. How neatly he had trapped her into admitting that she’d been obsessed with him. But she’d never met anyone like him, didn’t know how to hide her fascination.

His hand stayed on her elbow, separating her from the crowd. “My grandfather is convinced you’re a gold digger out to get her claws into Luca. I’ve been ordered to make sure you don’t succeed.”

Her jaw fell open. Disbelief slowly cycled to righteous fury. And here she’d thought he’d come for her. “Go to hell,” she whispered and took off.

Hot tears prickled behind her eyes and she resolutely locked them away. The arrogant jerk wasn’t worth a single tear.

Somehow, she managed to only delve deeper into the mazelike nightclub, the sexy, almost hip-hop-like music chasing her. One minute, she was pushing through the throng, and next, she was looking at a lushly carpeted, quiet corridor with three unmarked doors.

Cursing, Alex turned around and banged into the one man she never wanted to see again.

Why was he following her?

“I told you to go—”

His fingers on her wrist viselike, he slid a card at the door and tugged her inside. “You’re making a scene.”

The door closed behind them with a finality that made Alex jump. But the stinging response that rose to her mouth died.

It was a VIP suite. Eyes wide, Alex studied it, a furious flush rising up through her neck.

Floor-to-ceiling glass paneling made up the far wall of the plush suite, giving a perfect view into the dance floor and bar on the two levels.

Two lush couches stood against the far wall, adjacent to a small refrigerator. And on the other wall was a giant plasma screen that was currently turned off.

Gut swooping, she turned. “I don’t think we should be here. This area...”

“I own this club, Ms. Sharpe.”

Laughter, more sarcastic than warm, gurgled out of her. A villa in Lake Como, a nightclub in Milan, and a growing luxury goods collection that celebrities were crazy about—the Contis might as well be from a different planet. “Of course you do. Have you had men watching me all this time?”

The thick swath of his eyelashes shadowed his expression. “Valentina always has protection.”

“And you told them to keep an eye on the American gold digger/slut, too.”

“It was for your protection.”

“And who protects me from you?”

The dim, somehow still classy purple lighting in the room didn’t quite hide his flinch. But she was far too furious to wonder why.

“What do you intend? To lock me up here? To have me neatly packed away in one of your jets and have me dumped on the other side of Atlantic? To send me off silently into the night?” No, he wasn’t allowed to dismiss her like this. Not when she felt so weak-kneed and aware of him. “You know your brother is a fast worker. What if I already have him in my clutches? Maybe Luca and I’ve already, thoroughly, f—”

“Basta!” he muttered, before his hand descended on her mouth while the other one locked her against the wall.

The rough, almost possessive grip he had on her hip branded her. But it was his gaze that held her rooted.

A flash of temper? A spark of emotion? Whatever it was, it lit his usually droll gaze.

He wasn’t impervious to her.

Hot, reckless energy pounded through her, making her thrum with excitement. “You can think it, but I can’t say it, Leandro?” She drawled her words, adding a lazy taunt. “At least, with Luca, I know I’ll have a good time without insults.”

Gray irises widened, bleeding into the dark black around.

The quiet room shrank around the two of them, an explosive current springing into life. The masculine scent of him was a whiplash against her senses, his fingertips pressing into her flesh.

Yet all Alex felt was charged up.

“Do you know what you so dangerously provoke? Are you prepared for it?”

A wealth of meaning reverberated in his statement and it lay between them, a grenade ticking away.

Drunk on the challenge in his molten gaze, Alex couldn’t back down. “I don’t care how wealthy you—”

His tapered fingers squeezed her palm gently. “I don’t agree with my grandfather, bella.”

“No?”

“No.”

“Then why did you come tonight?”

Tension filled the infinitesimal silence before he answered, “Luca told me he picked up a drunk Tina and couldn’t locate you. I don’t like the idea of you being out at night in Milan alone.”

“You could’ve asked anyone else to do that. Your security team...you didn’t have to come yourself. You could—”

“What you’re hoping for, it will never happen, Alexis.”

“You called me Alexis,” she said simply, letting the warmth of his body float her away.

His head cocked to the side, and he rubbed her jaw.

Shock...he was shocked that he had said her name. The fingers that had been brushing her cheek pulled away. “Come, it is time for you to leave.”

It was as if he’d slammed a door in her face.

He wasn’t talking just about the nightclub or Milan, but Italy. He was telling her it was time for her to leave. Panic flared through her, but beneath it was a realization that sent her heart slamming against her rib cage. All these days...

“You want me,” she accused. “You made me feel like I was the only one who felt it, as if I was gauche enough to read it all wrong—”

In a near-violent movement that sent her breath bursting through her, Leandro captured her wrists. Stilling her body from leaning into him. “This is a mistake.”

Yanking her hands away from his grip, Alexis pressed her body against his.

A jagged sound wrenched out from his lips, throaty and low. Moving her hands up his chest, Alex tilted her head back. Every inch of his face was frozen in some kind of torturous agony. And she didn’t intend to let him win.

She buried her mouth in the opening of his dress shirt. Velvet-smooth and hot, his skin burned against her lips. “Kiss me, just once. Show me what you feel, just once.”

One hand snuck into her hair. Her scalp prickled as he tugged her up. Dark need pinched his features and Alex shivered, suddenly, finally, understanding the depth of the need he hid under that infuriatingly indifferent mask.

Anticipation roped with tension set her nerves on fire.

“You do not know who you’re playing with.”

She jerked back. “Am I so beneath you then?”

He shook his head. But the shadows didn’t leave his eyes. “You’re too young.”

“I’m old enough to know what I want.”

Flicking her tongue out, she tasted him. His hands vined tight around her, flattening her nonexistent breasts against his chest, knocking the breath out of her. “You think I’ll stop at one meager kiss?” Pure need punctured every word. “You think to play with my desire and walk away after a chaste embrace, to taunt me like you do these boys with your innocence?”

His warning only incensed her desire even more. “I’m not the one afraid, Leandro.”

A volley of Italian fell from his mouth as she pressed her lower body to his. The ridge of his erection against her belly made her quiver.

His fingers descended on her hips, hurting her with their grip to keep her unmoving. “I will not touch my brother’s seconds.”

“We shared one kiss before I walked away. I’m not interested in Luca.”

“You are the first woman in the world to claim that.” Something flashed in his gaze even as his long fingers drew maddening circles over her wrists. “Which is why he likes you so much.”

If her heart beat any faster, it would rip out of her chest. But still, she risked. And in this spine-tingling risk she took with Leandro, Alex felt more secure, more wanted than she’d ever felt in her life. “And you?”

It was as if all the walls he kept up fell down in dust and a primitive hunger filled his gaze. “I feel need, Alexis. When I look at you...all I feel is desire.”

Even then, it was she that lifted her head, reached up and pressed her mouth to his. She, who had no experience with men, that wrapped her hands around his nape and refused to let go.

She that touched her mouth to his.

Soft and hot and hard at the same time, his mouth was a gateway to heaven and hell. Every nerve ending quivering, every instinct driving her forth, she ran the tip of her tongue tentatively, slowly, over that cruelly sculpted lower lip.

With a growl that made her belly tighten, finally he relented. Finally, he touched that hard, harsh mouth to hers.

Lights exploded behind Alex’s eyes as if the world was a kaleidoscope of sensations and textures.

Masculine and demanding, he parted her lips and pushed in.

With his tongue and teeth, and with an expertise that made her sex shockingly wet, Leandro devoured her.

There was no playfulness, no seduction to his kiss, just as his words. It was a full-on sensual assault that left no doubt about where it was leading.

His hands skimmed everywhere—her breasts and the boldly taut nipples, her hips, the curves of her buttocks—before they crept under her dress and pulled it up.

Long fingers hitched her thigh around his hips until the heat of her was intimately pressed against the rigid length of him.

Every inch of her vibrated with excitement, desire, need, every inch of her thrummed at the sensation of power.

When he pushed her against the wall and covered her breasts with his hands, Alex whimpered.

When his fingers reached her wet core—alien and intrusive, her gaze flew to his, shocked and aroused and oh-so-willing. Her mouth dried at the stark need in those gray eyes.

Groaning, she came off the wall like a bow when he curled a finger inside her just so, driving a fork of heat through her pelvis.

When he flicked the rim of her ear with his tongue, and told her what he was going to do to her, Alex buried her mouth in his neck and gave herself over.

To the man, to the moment, to the incredible sensation of being wanted.

CHAPTER ONE

Seven years later

“DOES YOUR ARM still hurt, Mamma?”

Alex tucked the quilt around Isabella and kissed her forehead. “A little, baby,” she said, opting for the truth.

She was only six but Izzie somehow always knew if Alex lied to her. Or maybe it was that penetrating, deep gray gaze that Alex had never learned to handle. “But the cast should be gone in a couple more weeks and Auntie Jessie said I was healing well.”

Little chubby fingers traced the yet unhealed, inch-wide scar that ran from her left temple to her eye, bisecting her brow where a shard of glass had pierced the skin. This bruise, unlike the fracture to her ribs and arm, was only skin-deep yet looked much worse.

“It scares me, Mamma,” Izzie whispered in a low voice.

Tears coated Alex’s throat but she resolutely swallowed them back. “But you’re such a brave little girl always, baby.”

Her little chin wobbled. “I am but all the days you were in hospital and me here, alone. Grandmama didn’t tell me when you’d come home.”

Pushing herself completely onto the little bed, Alex gathered her bundle of joy closer. “It looks scarier than it hurts. See, I’m perfectly fine, okay?”

When Izzie nodded, Alex hugged her tight. Felt the tension unwind in her little girl’s body.

But fear lingered, a bitter taste at the back of her throat, leeching warmth from her very veins.

The sixteen-wheeler that had crashed into her compact sedan from the side had wrecked it into a pulp of metal. It was a miracle she’d survived, the doctor had said, and without permanent damage, too.

But all Alex could think of was the alternate scenario...

She could’ve lost her life.

And Izzie would be...

Like a black cloud waiting to swallow her, she felt the loss of breath, the violent impact of the air bag, of the crunch of bone and the shaft of nightmarish pain in her left arm all the way to her fingers...

The acidic taste of fear in her mouth...

Her hands shook, her skin clammy with sweat.

She buried her face in Izzie’s hair and took a deep breath.

As always, the sweet smell of her little girl’s skin anchored her in the now. Pushed back the nightmarish fingers of that panic to the edges...but she knew it wasn’t gone for long.

Anything could trigger it, she realized, remembering the almost episode at the store that very morning when the door had banged too hard.

She couldn’t go on like this, debilitated by fear.

Control, she needed control of this fear for Izzie. She needed to do something that wouldn’t paralyze her like this, something that would take care of her baby whatever the future brought...

And instantly her mind went to him.

The man with blue-black hair. The man who had given Izzie her shockingly clear gray eyes and her thick, straight black hair, unlike Alex’s strawberry blond curls. The man who had refused to see her again. Or speak to her. Or answer a single phone call seven years ago.

Even in that second before she’d lost consciousness, she’d thought of him. Of the desperate yet muted violence of his passion as he’d kissed her that night, of the way he’d moved inside her, of the way he had driven her to the edge of such intense pleasure that she’d thought she’d fragment into a million pieces...

One memory brought another now...

The disgusted look in his eyes after when she’d hung on to him like a limp vine, as his lust-heavy gaze slowly focused on her, followed by utter shock and disgust, of the jagged, agonized howl that had fallen from his mouth...the way he’d withdrawn immediately, righted her clothes so coldly and clinically, the way he wouldn’t meet her gaze as he drove them to the hotel Valentina and she’d been staying at in Milan...

The way he’d told her that he never wanted to see her again...

But now, now that she had faced almost certain death, Alex wasn’t willing to slink away in silence anymore. Even if that meant facing his rejection and failing.

Failure had haunted her throughout her entire life. She’d lived through being a disappointment, first to her parents, and then to herself, again and again, but she wouldn’t be one when it came to Izzie.

She deserved security, and she, Alexis, needed the peace of mind to live her life normally again. She needed to know Izzie would be taken care of if something happened to her.

The very thought of facing Leandro Conti again made her skin prickle alarmingly. But she’d do anything for her daughter.

* * *

“One of you will marry the Rossi girl.”

Impossibile!

Leandro Conti’s answer reverberated inside him to his grandfather’s ultimatum but walking deeper into the study, he stayed silent.

“Sophia Rossi?” his brother, Luca asked, shock etched into his face.

“Si.”

Leandro studied with interest the frail form of his grandfather, Antonio, behind the gleaming dark mahogany desk, still determined to intimidate his grandsons, while, next to him, leaning casually against the bookshelf, Luca adopted his usual devil-may-care attitude that infuriated Antonio so well.

Leandro sent his brother a warning glance. Antonio had not recovered completely from his heart attack a month ago.

Luca and his grandfather would have killed each other a long time ago, if it wasn’t for him. And he was tiring of playing the referee among his family members.

He had begun when he was fourteen and at thirty-five, he was still doing it.

“We’re too old for you to be arranging alliances for us, Nonno,” Leandro finally said into the cutting silence. “I will not marry again. And—”

“Ordering me to,” Luca interjected, “marry any woman is cursing the poor woman. Even one with steel balls like Sophia Rossi.”

Something glinted in Antonio’s eyes. “The only choice is which one of you will do it.”

“Or what, Nonno?” Luca spat the words. “You will cut Leandro and me out of this...venerable Conti empire?”

Luca’s tone made it clear it was anything but.

Because Luca’s creative genius and Leandro’s cutting-edge business practices over the past decade was what made Conti Luxury Goods a coveted designer label in Italy, and worldwide over the past three years.

That Antonio threatened them like this...it didn’t bode well.

“I will inform,” Antonio continued, “your sister that she’s not a Conti, that she...is the product of your mother’s shameful affair with her driver. I will disown Valentina publicly.”

A filthy curse erupted from Luca’s mouth, a fitting one while ice-cold fury filled Leandro’s veins.

He had learned all through his life that Antonio would do anything for their family’s business and knowing the kind of reckless, irresponsible, brutally selfish man his father had been, Leandro had even understood it.

But this was low, for a man Leandro respected, even liked sometimes.

Neither he nor Luca would let anything touch Valentina.

He swallowed the fury rising through him, and adopted an almost amenable expression. “Your heart attack has made you irascible, Nonno.”

“You cannot persuade me away from my course, Leandro. I let you bring Valentina here...your mother’s shame,” he spat the words, “I even accepted her as my own, but do not think—”

“You love Valentina, I’m sure,” Luca roared. “I thought you a better man than our father.”

Antonio flinched. Apparently, even he couldn’t stomach being compared to his son Enzo. “I accepted Valentina because that was Leandro’s price to let me mold him for the Conti empire.”

Luca turned to Leandro, disbelief in his eyes. “This is why you always let him rule your life?”

Leandro shrugged. “It was not a sacrifice, Luca. Snatching away the helm of the company from our father’s hands, ousting him from the board of directors, marrying Rosa, they were all things I did because I wanted to. That I could protect Valentina’s innocence was extra.” He turned to Antonio, letting him see his anger for the first time. “Luca and I have put Conti on the global map, something even you hadn’t dreamed about. What more could you want?”

“I want an heir to my dynasty.” Understanding glinted in his eyes but Leandro refused it. “Enzo was an utter failure as a son, as a husband, as a father, but even he gave me heirs.” Even the growl that fell from Luca’s lips didn’t detract Antonio. “This marriage to his daughter will silence that backstabbing Salvatore. Two birds with one rock.”

Leandro shook his head. “This is not the way—”

“What choice do I have?” Antonio’s voice loomed loud in the room. “You refuse to consider marriage and you...” Distaste robbed the old man of his words as he turned to Luca. “You change women like you change clothes.

“Death is not far for me, Leandro. I will not leave this world on the risk that Luca and you might be the last of the Contis.”

His desk phone rang and Antonio picked it up.

Frustration raging in his veins, Leandro turned to Luca.

Both Luca and he had learned early enough in life that Antonio had a will of steel. He had built Leandro both into a weapon against his own son, their father, even as it broke his own heart. Whether he loved Valentina or not, he wouldn’t back down from carrying out his threat.

“Luca—”

“Leandro, haven’t you done—”

The loud click of the phone hitting its cradle punctured the silence and both of them turned to Antonio.

“It seems there is no choice.”

Luca was the first to react. “What do you mean?”

“Salvatore Rossi’s daughter has decided only one of you will do for marriage.”

Thunder whooshed in Leandro’s ears.

“She wants you, Leandro.” His look toward Luca was withering. “Apparently, she is smart enough to reject the Conti devil.”

Luca’s glittering black gaze, so much like their father’s, turned to Leandro. A half smile played on his lips, and yet, Leandro had the sinking feeling that something else, something other than relief, hounded his brother. “Once again, the burden of this family falls to you, Leandro.”

With that, he left the study.

In the ensuing silence, they could hear the noise from the veranda. Valentina’s rapid words, along with laughter in between.

Valentina, who was all they had left of their mother...

“I begin to see the wisdom in the mode of life Luca has chosen. And the delirious freedom of hating you and this name and this...dynastic ego of yours...” With each word, his voice rose, fury pummeling him.

With shaking hands, he picked up the bottle of wine, the first that had been bottled at their Tuscan vineyard almost two decades ago, and thought of smashing it against the wall.

“Leandro...” Antonio’s low entreaty only spiked his temper. Because of course, Antonio loved him. It hadn’t been unconditional, true, but Antonio had been everything to the little boy who’d been shattered by his father’s volatility.

But Leandro didn’t throw it, didn’t give in to the baser urge.

Leandro didn’t believe in giving in to indulgent fits of temper, into foolish hopes that things were different, into thinking of his wants and needs before his duty or his family’s well-being.

He didn’t believe in being weak.

Only once in his life had he done that. Only once in his life had he lost control to the emotional turmoil that his father, and even Luca sometimes, seemed to feed on. In that moment, he had betrayed everything he stood for.

Even now, it wasn’t Rosa’s features he saw when he took himself in hand, when he had to appease his body’s needs without seeking out dirty satisfaction in some strange woman’s arms. He saw dark brown eyes, unflinchingly honest and hotly aroused, trembling pink lips, eager hands...

Shaking at the hold the memory had on him, and his body, Leandro put the bottle down.

“Another wife, Antonio? You have turned me into cattle.”

Antonio looked tired. “To make the Conti name respectable again at all costs, to do everything that Enzo ruined, this was your choice, Leandro.”

Leandro nodded. “Tell Salvatore that I will marry Sophia as soon as he pleases.”

He had been alone far too long anyway. A marriage for the sake of children—he had nothing against that.

* * *

Memories of that long-ago summer crashed through Alexis as she stared at the majestic Villa de Conti, glittering against the night sky. The magnificent towering gates that they had just passed, the scent of jasmine that grew on the columns of the terrace porch, the breeze coming off Lake Como, and the glitterati of the Italian society dressed in designer wear and elegant diamonds, it was a sensory assault.

Fiercely intimidating, too.

Alex ran a hand over her white silk button-down blouse nervously, not that she could ever compete with this crowd. Dark blue jeans and white pumps finished her simple attire.

She was glad she had called Valentina. The lie had fallen so easily off her lips—that she was touring Italy again and would love to see her. Valentina had sounded delighted, pretending as if they had remained friends after that summer instead of Alex calling her out of the blue. Had even sent Alex a car to pick her up.

But she hadn’t mentioned that Alex would be arriving at the villa the night of, what seemed like, a big party.

Thanking the driver, Alex exited from the car and looked up. Now that she stood there, anxiety made her empty stomach heave. Her mouth felt dry.

How was she supposed to locate him amid this crowd, much less tell him about Izzie?

Alex swayed, some primal instinct urging her to turn around and flee. But Izzie’s welfare and her own peace of mind depended on this.

Shaking at the warring logic and instinct, she froze.

“Alex? Alexis Sharpe?”

Luca Conti stood at the top of the steps, looking dashing in a black tuxedo. The usual, ornamental blonde on his arm was such a familiar sight that Alex felt a burst of affection. She had a feeling he’d been on his way out.

While she tried to get her vocal chords to work, Luca dismissed the blonde and came down the steps.

Vitality radiated from him, an easy smile on his lips. As he came closer, the cast of those similar features left her reeling afresh.

Before she could blink, she was enfolded in a tight hug. Alex returned it slowly, her throat thick, her limbs shaking.

Why hadn’t she tangled with this easy man, the desperate and shameful thought popped up.

Luca pulled back, studied her at leisure with those deceptively mocking black eyes. His grip around her waist tightened, in comfort, she realized as her shaking refused to cease.

“You’ve become stunning, bella. I knew I shouldn’t have let you go that summer.”

Alex smiled, grateful for his tease. “Thank you, Luca. Valentina knew I was coming. I...”

“But, of course, you are welcome, Alex.” She could see the curiosity in his eyes, but he didn’t press. Instead he offered her his arm. “Come, let us find something for you to drink and then we find Valentina, si?”

Alex shook her head. She had almost lost her nerve earlier, but not anymore. “I will see Valentina later, maybe. Luca...will you take me...can you please arrange for me to see your brother?”

“Leandro...” Shock reflected in his gaze as it met hers. “You came to see Leandro.” It was not a question.

“Yes.”

“It is not anything I could help with, bella?” he sounded sympathetic.

“No.”

Something flickered in his gaze before he looked up at the villa, and then back at her but this time, his look was different, the playfulness gone. Alex was sure he’d deny her.

“Then let us go find my esteemed brother.” Relief made her shiver. “I have to warn you, though, cara, that he is quite in demand, especially tonight. It will take us some time to reach him. Have patience, si?”

“Yes.”

Her legs barely holding her up, Alex half leaned on Luca’s arm. Her thudding pulse was a violent cacophony in her ears as they walked into the marble floored foyer and searched for that tall, lean frame that had haunted her dreams for seven years.

* * *

Alexis...

He’d thought he’d seen her an hour ago, her face paler than the simple, white silk blouse that clung to her curves.

Leandro had never been quite so shocked in his entire life as he’d been the moment he spied that lithe figure on Luca’s arm.

For a few minutes, he had stood there, stock-still, wondering if he was hallucinating. Wondering if the eve of his engagement to Sophia had unlocked the one face he had tried to bury in the deepest recesses of his mind.

Wondering if his one sin was finally catching up to him.

Until Sophia had put a hand on his shoulder slightly and called his name.

He’d turned to her, offered a quick smile and then slowly, his very sanity up for question, searched that same spot again.

There had been no Luca or her.

The long evening dragged on and on until Salvatore Rossi had paraded him in front of all the guests, boasting quite shamelessly that his daughter had snared a dynastic connection like Conti.

And Leandro Conti of all.

Even Sophia had cringed at some point. Who, Leandro admitted, he liked.

There was something self-sufficient and intelligent and very contained about her. At least, he would have a comfortable marriage, he realized halfway through the evening, free of all the marital drama he’d seen between his own parents.

Valentina’s innocence or not, he couldn’t take a marriage like that.

Within minutes of meeting her, Sophia had put his mind at ease.

He’d danced with her as the band played a slow jazz, then with his sister, who had chatted on and on about some old friend.

It was past ten and Leandro found himself in the private sitting lounge on the first floor, away from the still celebrating guests.

Salvatore Rossi and Sophia, Valentina, his grandfather, two of his aunts and two of his dissolute cousins were present. Luca had acted strangely, even for him, ever since Antonio had announced this merger.

Leandro was about to go looking for him when he appeared at the entrance and behind him, walked in the one woman Leandro never ever wanted to see again in his entire life.

The woman who’d known his one moment of weakness, the loss of his control...

Valentina’s cheerful greeting reverberated loud in the silence of the room, the clatter of her heels on the parquet floor as she went to the woman deafening.

It was Alexis he had seen earlier.

A neatly cut black jacket delineated slender shoulders. A silk blouse clung to a lush figure that he didn’t quite remember like that. She had been lithe, almost gaunt, breakable in his large hands...and yet so violently passionate...as if only Leandro could give her what she needed most.

Maledizione!

He was mad to be wondering about her body and yet his gaze continued its perusal of her with a mind of its own.

Dark blue jeans hugged her long legs, legs she had wrapped around him as he...his blood drifted south slowly, a heady thrill filled his veins, a feeling he had never known except that night...

Leandro gritted his teeth, willing his body under his command. One look at her and he was ready to react like an uncouth youth.

He lifted his gaze to her face, and stared in shock.

A jagged scar began somewhere beneath her hairline and went through her left brow, the skin puckered. Yet didn’t minimize her appeal. If anything, it added even more character to the strong lines of her face.

She was no dazzling beauty, then or now.

Hers was more insidious, seeping under one’s skin before you realized, the kind that enthralled the more you looked.

It lay in that high forehead, the intelligence that shone in those tilted, light brown eyes, the irresistible combination of innocence and confidence in the way she greeted the world, the too-bold nose and the lush, wide, implausibly gorgeous mouth. In how sinuously she trapped one’s attention, drawing in like a spider with her silky web.

She had been a roughly stunning sketch in black-and-white then. Now, now she was a hauntingly beautiful painting that had grown into its promise, that would bestow pleasure for years to come.

Her brown eyes, bold and direct, searched the room and settled on him.

A pure bolt of energy flew between them, locking them together as if they were the only people in the room, in the world.

Something inside him, something only she had known leaped and growled at the sight of her again.

Her skin paled under the brilliance of the crystal chandelier even as she held his gaze stubbornly. She held her left hand awkwardly against her body.

Cutting his gaze away from her, which took far too much effort, Leandro stifled the life out of that strange fever in his veins.

Why was she here now, after seven years? On the eve of my engagement of all nights?

Before he could voice a question, Antonio’s stringent words shattered the choking quiet. “It is family here tonight, Luca. Your dirty playthings are not welcome.”

Alexis flinched. When Luca would have interrupted, she stilled him with a hand on his arm. His usually volatile brother relented with a shrug.

Something ugly erupted in Leandro’s gut. Dio, she would make me jealous of his own brother?

Leandro saw her falter, pull a deep breath and then face Antonio. “I’m not Luca’s...plaything, Mr. Conti, nor will I leave before I say what I intend.” Then she leveled that resolute gaze at him. “I need to speak to you alone.”

Leandro hardened himself against the beseeching look in her eyes. After seven years, that she showed up tonight of all nights, there was only one thing she could be after—money. And that perversely made him angrier. “There is nothing you could say to me that you could not say here, Ms. Sharpe.”

“Leandro...” his brother again.

Leandro held up his hand, more than furious now.

How long had Luca been in touch with her? How could there be such...a friendship between them if not so?

And why the hell did he care whatever was between them?

He skewered the woman with his gaze. “Whatever game you’re up to, I’m not playing.”

Anger burned in her eyes, her lithe body faintly trembled with it. “Fine, so be it.” Her voice rang crystal clear in the rapt room, and still he could hear the tremble in it. “I came to tell you that you... I have a daughter.” Her chin rose. “Her name is Isabella Adrian. She’s six years old and she’s beautiful and precious and she...she’s yours.”

“No,” fell from Leandro’s lips, a snarling whisper in the quiet room. “That can’t be.”

His grandfather’s and Salvatore Rossi’s curses in Italian and Valentina’s muffled gasp registered on the periphery of his consciousness.

Lips quivering, Alexis’s chest rose and fell but she held his gaze over the distance. “A DNA test will prove I’m right,” she said, as if she’d prepared the response. But it was the absolute purpose in her voice that held him mute.

A daughter...

His skin felt chilly as if all warmth had been leeched away from the world around him.

And yet, the crystal chandeliers in the room glowed bright, the fire cackled in the marble-wrought fireplace and the moon hung jewel bright in the sky outside.

The world continued spinning whereas all of the control he prided himself on deserted him, leaving him shaken to the core.

He shook his head, gasping for breath.

He looked at Luca. Who looked just as aghast as he did.

Only Alexis stood composed amid the curious and accusing glares aimed at her, her shoulders ramrod straight.

Alexis whose eyes gleamed with pride and love as she claimed that he was a father. Of her little girl.

His child...something Rosa had wanted so desperately for years.

Now, this woman, whom he’d tried to forget, claimed her daughter was his...that his one moment of weakness had led to such a consequence?

Everything inside him clenched tight, as if the merest breath could shatter him. Robbing him of speech even.

“Whatever your scheme, Ms. Sharpe, you have already made a misstep in your bait.” Antonio finally spoke, his accented English falling like hard gravel over the marble floor. “If there were Conti bastards lying around for you to sully our name with, your claim would be believable if you said Luca fathered them.

“Not Leandro.

“Now before I call the polizia—”

CHAPTER TWO

“ENOUGH!” ALEX BIT OUT, her throat raw. Leandro’s silence distressed her more than his grandfather’s words. “I won’t stand quietly while you call my little girl names.”

She felt Luca’s hand on her shoulder and drew strength from it.

Faking defiance she didn’t feel, Alex held Leandro’s gaze.

Disbelief? Disgust? Something finally flickered in his expression and she felt as if she was bucking, bending against the force of it.

Aquiline nose, thinly sculpted mouth and the sleek, sharp planes of his face...he was just as arrogantly beautiful as she remembered.

Seven years hadn’t changed his feelings about that night then. She hadn’t hoped differently, neither would she let him shame her.

She had done nothing to be shameful of. Not then, not now.

“You stay silent even as you know there’s a chance that it’s true? I was wrong to come here, wrong to think Izzie...” She took a bracing breath. “You and your family, you don’t deserve to know her.”

Alexis turned her back on them with her head held high.

Out into the corridor she went, her pumps clicking hard on the gleaming marble floor, ignoring the hollow ache in her gut.

It was the uncertainty caused by the accident, the uncertainty about Isabella’s future, she told herself. Nothing to do with the man who stood there, unmoving like a rock while his family castigated her.

Having arrived at the end of the corridor, Alex stilled.

Approaching dusk hadn’t dimmed the beauty of the villa one bit.

The corridor opened into a semicircular balcony, offering a view to the ground floor, the acreage surrounding the house lit up by solar lights and the dark waters of the lake beyond.

A tinkle of laughter from the guests below her brought her attention back. Pressing a hand to her throbbing temples, she faced her current problem.

She couldn’t ask Valentina for a ride back. Would Luca help?

She turned and slammed headlong into a solidly male body. Threaded her fingers in that hard chest for purchase. “Luca, can you please...”

Crisply masculine and with a hint of aqua, the scent that filled her nostrils arrested the words on her lips. Her head jerked up so fast that she felt dizzy.

Penetrating gray eyes studied her.

“Why assume Luca?”

“Because he seems like the only decent person in your family.”

She tugged at her arm but Leandro didn’t relent. Her legs tangled with his, the hard, muscular length of his thighs against hers knocking the breath out of her.

Hard and hot, he made her head spin. “I have nothing more to say to you,” she breathed into his shoulder.

“You think to announce what you did and walk away calmly? Probably into the media’s mouthpiece? Make a mockery of the Contis?”

His grip viselike, he dragged her through a turn in the corridor that led to another sit-out area and then past a dark oak door. The hard thud of the door cut off the noise from the party, locking them away.

Breath rattling, Alex kept her back to him.

Her skin prickled at his nearness, her senses still jarred at the impact with his hard body. She rubbed fingers over her forehead, willing her heart to calm.

Slowly, she took in the sumptuous furnishings in the huge room, a dark mahogany study table to the side with papers strewn on it, the large four-poster king bed with dark blue sheets. That same cool aqua scent clung to the room. A small, framed picture sat on the nightstand on the opposite side, of a pretty woman with dark hair and delicate features.

Dear Lord, was this his room? Who was that woman then?

With her gut in a tight knot, Alex forced her gaze to the window. The view afforded here of Lake Como was even better. Spectacularly maintained gardens, acres of it, lit softly by moonlight and solar lights along the paths greeted her. Silence lingered in this part of the gardens.

Even his guests were not allowed to impinge on his private slice of heaven, she realized slowly.

This estate was not just beautiful but huge.

And this was only one of the many properties they owned.

The Contis were a dynastic family with an old-world wealth and Leandro...at the helm of it. And she had barged in on their illustrious party and told them that he had a daughter.

If her chest wasn’t so tight, Alex would have laughed at the absurdity of it.

“You’re afraid to face me now? After that performance in front of everyone.”

Low and crisp, his tone was like fingertips sliding over her bare skin. As if it was yesterday he had touched her and not seven long years ago.

Alex turned slowly, loathe to betray how unbalanced she felt in his presence.

He stood leaning against the closed door, minus the suit jacket, the gray of his dress shirt making his eyes gleam doubly. Leaner than she remembered, his features sharper. Even more settled into that powerful aura that had always clung to him.

The austere severity of his features from the sculpted jaw to that aquiline nose, the lean, wiry breadth of his chest tapering to a waist, the thinly sculpted curve of his lower lip, everything about Leandro Conti said leashed power.

Any moment now, she wouldn’t find him attractive. Any moment now, she’d remember that the same mouth that could kiss so passionately and tenderly could also shred her to pieces as soon as he was done.

“I’m trying to overcome my shock that you cared enough to stop me.” Instead, her insides thrummed with a thrill. “And if that was a performance, then you forced me to it.”

Those eyes of his studied her relentlessly. Why didn’t the infuriating man say anything? Demand a DNA test? Throw her out if he didn’t believe her? Threaten her like his grandfather had done?

She had been prepared for all of that. Except his impenetrable silence, this unnerving composure.

It made her want to take a sledgehammer and smash it to pieces.

“You pulling me into a room like this, away from prying eyes should bring back memories for you,” she threw recklessly. “Lucky for me, because it seems you erased that evening from your mind.”

His chin jerked, and his eyes lost that inscrutable expression. “I was successful. Until this very evening.”

Alex blinked at the hurt that pinged through her, as if her poisonous dart had found its way back to her. She didn’t think he was saying it to get a rise out of her, like she’d done.

No, he merely stated fact.

“What would you have dared to remind me, Alexis?”

Her name on his lips was a possessive caress that threatened her paper-thin composure.

Suppressing the dangerous urge to take up the challenge in his tone, she said, “Your assumption that I’m dying to...renew our acquaintance smacks of arrogance. I’m here only for Isabella.”

Whether he believed her or not, Alex didn’t know. But then, from what little she knew of Leandro, he thrived on self-control. That he hadn’t instantly called her a liar like his grandfather had done, his utter silence in the face of her declaration, said something else entirely, she realized with a little panic.

He circled the room, moving a thing here and there and finally, leaned against the bed. “How are you here, today?”

“I don’t understand.”

“How did you come to be here at the villa, tonight of all nights? Did you know—?”

“About the party? Of course not. You think I wanted to make a spectacle of myself in front of your exalted family? Valentina must have decided tonight was best.”

One haughty brow rose on his face. “For what?”

“I hinted, pretty heavily, that I wanted to say hello to you and Luca. She assumed that I was eager to renew my friendship with Luca.”

“And Luca?” The two words rang with his displeasure.

Frustration made her voice sharp. “What about Luca?”

Something flashed in his gaze, the first sign that maybe he wasn’t so composed. “How did you arrive on his arm?”

Of all the things he had said and unsaid today, this annoyed her most. “He was kind enough to escort me to you when I insisted on seeing you.”

“You told me that night that you were protected.”

The sudden shift in the conversation caught her off guard. “I was. I began the pill a few weeks before I left for Italy.”

“In preparation for your fling abroad?”

His barb pricked her, but she’d rather he believe that he’d been the convenient choice. The one man she’d picked out of a lineup to have her supposed holiday fling with. “I was in over my head from the minute I saw you, yes.” Resentment she’d swallowed for years flared. “What’s your excuse then?”

“You think I blame you for that night.” The idea seemed to shock him.

What else was she supposed to think, she wanted to throw back at him. Even now, he looked at her as if she was his worst nightmare. There was no point in scraping old wounds however. “Even the pill is not one-hundred-percent foolproof.” He remained silent again and it began to scrape Alex raw. “If you don’t believe me, then—”

“Since I’m still feeling the consequences of that...very activity seven years ago, I believe I will refrain from it.”

“That’s not an invitation. This trip isn’t a ploy to renew that...madness. You probably find this hard to believe but not every woman wants a piece of your esteemed Conti pie.” She was so angry she wanted to thump the man.

“Really?”

He made it so easy to despise him with his insufferable attitude.

To pretend that her skin hadn’t prickled, her heart hadn’t raced, that even the thought of Izzie had disappeared in that moment when she had spied him again in that lounge. To act as though, for seven years, she hadn’t relived every moment with him a thousand times.

“Yes. I have too much self-respect to be attracted to a man who thinks I’m a liar and worse. To want a man who dismissed me like garbage back in my life.”

Faint lines appeared around his mouth before he looked away.

Bloodthirsty enough after that scene in the lounge, Alex felt feral satisfaction that she’d landed another one.

“Why did you wait seven years to...make this claim?”

“Calling it a claim will not make it less of a truth.” The taunt was instant and yet...she had a feeling it had taken him this long to work toward the subject of Isabella, to acknowledge the ticking bomb between them.

He pushed off the bed and Alex needed all her will power to not step back. “Did you think I would have no questions for you at all?” She remained silent and he continued. “Why didn’t you let me know immediately?”

“By the time I realized I was...pregnant, I was almost ten weeks along.”

“Is that why you kept...the baby?” He raised a hand to cut her off. “You were twenty. I...cannot imagine Valentina mature enough to manage herself, much less a child at that age.”

Alex swallowed, the utter strength of her conviction that day amazing her even now. Her parents, her only close friend, everyone had advised her to give up the baby for adoption. “I just...” She shied her gaze away, her throat thick with emotion.

“Tell me why.”

Jerked by his sharp tone, she lifted her gaze. “That feeling...it’s inexplicable.”

Something so raw and visceral flashed in his gaze that her skin prickled. Arrogant, heartless, cynical...she’d made her decision to come here based on the fact that Leandro was all those things. What if she was wrong?

Fear pulsed down her spine. “I called your office a week after I found out. I... I was on hold for an hour. Finally, when your secretary came on, she cut me off, said you weren’t interested.

“That I shouldn’t call back.” Alex tried to keep any complaint out of her voice now however anxious she’d been then. “I called you a few more times. Got the same answer again.”

“You could have called your friend, Luca.” He spoke softly, yet it cracked through the room like a gale of wind. “You could have come back to Italy. You could have told Valentina. You could have emailed me—”

“And what? Capitalized the subject line—I’M PREGNANT, IT’S YOURS—like some spammer!” She colored furiously. “You wanted nothing to do with me. But... I still tried.

“I bought another ticket. I...thought you should know. The day before I was supposed to leave, my parents and I argued and my dad threw out his back at the store. I... I couldn’t go off in search of you then, especially when you were determined to forget me.

“With taking care of the store and him, when Isabella came... I barely had the energy to go through each day.”

“And later?”

How dare he sound as if it was her fault? “Later,” she said, feeling suddenly tired, “it was easier to believe that Izzie was better off without your rejection.” Easier to protect herself from the hurt he had wreaked on her.

The one time she had taken a chance to reach for something she’d wanted, she’d been rejected. Firmly pushed back into the forgettable category again.

There had been nothing special or memorable about her or that night for him. As if she was a mere blip in the life of another person yet again.

A disappointment, an inconvenience, a thing with no value or feelings whatsoever.

“Why did you change your mind now?” he bit out harshly. He ran his fingers through his hair while he paced the small room like a caged animal. “Or was that your plan all along?”

“Wouldn’t that be perfect for you if I had some ultimate agenda? If I proved your worst assumptions about me right? That way you won’t have to take any responsibility in all this...”

“Dio, why now, Alexis?”

It was his hoarse voice that halted Alex’s self-indulgent tirade. This was not about her feelings. This was about her baby.

“I just... I was in an accident three months ago, a bad one.” Automatically, her fingers went to the scar down her forehead and his gaze moved there. Throat raw, she continued, “It made me realize...if something happened to me, Isabella would be alone in the world. My parents...” She swallowed the fact that they had never approved of her having Isabella. “They’re growing old. I can’t sleep wondering about her future.”

Once again, silence descended, his stare unnerving her on a whole new level.

“I brought her birth certificate,” she said, busying herself with the handbag. “Just tell me where and when to bring her for the DNA test, although it’ll be a huge help if it’s in New York because I can’t—”

“There’s no situation that fazes you, is there? You set your course and you blaze through it, come what may.”

Alex blanched. Softly delivered but his innuendo pierced just the same.

He thought this was easy for her? To see him after all these years, to realize that he still viewed her with that loathing? To know that she’d never been anything more than a quick indulgence?

But she swallowed her own feelings and focused on what she needed to do. “I’m prepared to do anything to prove that she’s yours, yes.”

“And, in return?”

“Are you so afraid of what I would demand, Leandro?” The challenge escaped her before she could catch it, her femininity rearing its head.

An almost imperceptible widening of those stormy eyes. Something she wouldn’t have even noticed if she wasn’t so greedy about every nuance on his face.

“Do you have many to make then, Alexis? These demands?”

Why was she taunting him? Why this reckless, dangerous urge to provoke him? She pulled out the envelope she’d stuffed into her handbag. “Here’s some pictures. Maybe you could visit us and meet Izzie a couple of times over the next couple of years so that you aren’t a complete stranger? I could bring her here for holiday, to meet Luca and Valentina, if they’re interested.

“All I want is a promise that if anything were to happen to me, you’d...”

Her words trailed away as Leandro became still. The muscles in his face pulled taut over his features, a white pallor to his olive skin.

Her outstretched hand lay between them. And his gaze on the envelope, frozen.

“Leandro?”

The swath of his eyelashes flickered. His rough breath rattled loud in the room.

With gut-wrenching clarity, Alex realized that he’d rather she was lying.

From the moment she’d spoken Isabella’s name, it wasn’t the veracity of her claim he’d doubted. What had kept him silent, even as his grandfather had shredded her, was that Leandro needed her to be lying.

“You wish Isabella didn’t exist.” Horror filled her, turning her voice into a whiplash. “Do you despise me that much?”

He jerked around, pain streaking through his eyes. “What I feel about her has nothing to do with you.”

That’s good, she told herself. She couldn’t bear it if he despised Isabella like he did her. She wouldn’t allow it.

How much do you know of that man? Her mom’s question came back to her now.

She didn’t know that much, really.

Her intense attraction to him seven years ago, her fascination with him, the connection she’d felt with him, had been inexplicable. She stole another greedy glance at him, unable to stop herself. Lean and tall, he wore his power effortlessly and she wondered if that had been the draw for her.

Hands shaking, she stuffed the envelope back into her handbag. She needed to leave. Before she made this about her. Before she asked any more of those stupid questions...

Before she forgot that this man had crushed her tender heart in such a way that it hadn’t mended again.

* * *

“Show me the pictures,” Leandro finally forced himself to say.

Alexis stilled with her back to him, her slender shoulders a tense line.

His voice sounded as if he hadn’t used it in years, as if forming such simple words was beyond his capability. Told himself again and again that he was composed.

If he acted like it, he hoped his rioting emotions would catch on that he was composed, that he would survive through this new development in his life like he always did.

Giving in to the shame that he had behaved in a way he detested was only self-indulgent. Giving in to the guilt that clawed at him that he had abandoned his child...would only render him useless.

His head jerked up, the realization that he believed Alexis stunning him anew.

He believed that she was telling the truth, that her daughter was his?

Antonio would call him a fool, their lawyers would tell him to demand a DNA test. The rational, sensible part of him, which had been born out of necessity at a young age, warned that he was being reckless. That Alexis’s poise, her self-sufficiency, her declaration that she wanted nothing from him, that they all could be lies.

She could have waited all these years just so she could make a bigger splash, demand a bigger payoff.

He wasn’t unaware of his draw for women. If they fell like flies for Luca’s charm, they went rabid because of how sacrosanct his privacy was to him, because the media, frequently and fervently, painted him as the perfect man, still mourning his wife.

Yet that same instinct that had drawn him to her drowned out everything else. “Show me the pictures.”

Knuckles turning white, her fingers tightened over the straps of her bag. Her reluctance now would have been comical, if not for the fierce churning in his gut. “I didn’t come to force you to be a father.”

He moved closer, uncaring of the tremble in her lips, the slight widening of her eyes. Crowded her lithe body against the door, his self-discipline in tatters now. “You are afraid now? After you came all this way?”

Something in his tone must have finally registered because she pulled out the envelope.

He moved back toward the bed and spread them out on the dark cover.

There were ten, different sizes and in different poses.

His heart thundering, he picked up one eight-by-ten, a close-up. With jet-black hair that framed her face and serious gray eyes, and the cast of her features, drawn in chubbiness instead of sharp planes, the little girl was his mirror image.

The girl, no, Isabella...was his daughter. His own flesh and blood.

“There is nothing of me in her,” came Alexis’s reply behind him. Tentative and reverberating with a quiet joy. “Every morning, I look at her and I’m amazed that she’s mine.”

Inhaling roughly, he turned.

Raw emotion glittered in her eyes. Walking closer, unaware of her own actions, he was sure, she studied him avidly. He knew she was seeing her daughter, no, their daughter in his face.

Still, her gaze was like a physical caress. Possessive and hungry and intent. And deeply disconcerting for the instant ache it evoked in him.

He looked at the picture and then at Alex. “That determined chin, that’s you.”

A smile curved her mouth, transforming her into a stunning beauty. “Really?”

“Where is she now?” he asked, more to distract himself from the scent of her fluttering toward him. Subtle yet lingering. Like the woman herself.

“With my parents. Isabella and I live with them. A friend of mine has a boy of Izzie’s age and she takes her during the day. You can keep the pictures.” She looked through her bag and extracted visiting cards and extended them to him. Like a salesgirl pushing a product. “These have all my numbers and email address. Just call me in advance, because after the accident and this trip, I can’t take off more—”

“In advance for what?” he repeated.

She shrugged but hurt shadowed her eyes. “Y’know...if you decide to see her.”

He emerged from the emotional knockout, her intention in all the things she had told him tonight shaping into coherence. His gut tightened.

When he made no move to take the cards, she put them on the small study table. “I’ll be in Milan for two more days if you have any questions.” She worried her bottom lip between her teeth. “If you can arrange a car for me, I’ll be off.”

A growl he couldn’t control emerged low in Leandro’s throat.

She thought she would show him pictures of his daughter and then bid him goodbye? That he would call her and make an appointment like some distant relative?

Did she think he had no honor, no sense of duty?

Have you treated her like you have any?

“Stay tonight,” he finally said, somehow managing to keep his tone smooth. A herculean feat seeing that his head was in a whirl, his world precariously tilted on its axis. And this woman, whom he’d tried to forget at all costs, suddenly was at the center of it. “You look like you’ll faint any minute.”

“I don’t want to cause trouble—”

“Little late for that, yes?” He slid the pictures back into the cover. “Someone from the staff will show you to a bedroom. Buenonotte, Alexis.”

* * *

Leandro paced inside his bedroom, the scent of a woman lingering inside the walls after so many years as disconcerting as the one who had left it behind. A million thoughts crowded him.

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