The Surprise Conti Child (6 page)

“Don't you regret that you missed out on a carefree, reckless kind of childhood then?”

Whatever reply came to him, he cut it off and looked down at her. “You sound wistful, Alexis. Are you sorry that you haven't lived recklessly enough?”

Pure taunt sizzled in that question.

He was thinking about that night, Alexis knew as surely as the pulsing beat of her heart. “Or the fact that having Isabella curtails you from it now?”

Refusing to take his bait, Alex looked away. Her confusion about him only rose. Made worse by her stringent awareness of him.

He'd looked after his brother and sister since he'd been a teenager. Even that week in Italy, he'd come to the villa because Valentina had slipped on some steps and twisted her ankle.

Within an hour, there he'd been—a hauntingly beautiful and masculine figure, concerned about his sister.

“Before the accident,” she said, trying to cover up her confusion, “it was more a sense of never having a moment to breathe. If it wasn't the day-to-day things at the store, it was Izzie getting sick. If it wasn't Izzie, it was some health issue with my dad. If it wasn't him, then wondering about finances...” She pulled in a deep breath. “After the accident though, yes, it felt hard. And not just because of the panic attacks.”

“Panic attacks? Has Isabella seen you have one?”

That he immediately thought of Izzie both warmed and alarmed Alex. “No, she hasn't. It's just fragments from the accident, that sense of my life careening out of control. I had them only a couple of times but they made me determined to ensure Izzie's future.”

Not even with Emma had she admitted how much it had all become for her before the accident. And yet, sharing bits and pieces from his own past, Leandro had put her instantly at ease.

It was almost as if he'd decided to make peace with her. Did he think they could forge a friendship of some sort? Would they be like those amicable partners who shared a child?

Because as good as that sounded ideally, Alex couldn't fool herself that she could ever be just friends with Leandro. Not if she wanted to remain sane.

Even now, headache relieved, a sleepy, languorous flush claimed her.

Her jacket off her shoulders, she was awash in pure, skittering sensation.

Then those supple fingers stole under her T-shirt, pushed under the straps of her bra and pressed into the knots in her shoulders. Alex groaned, every inch of her thrumming in a molten kind of way.

It had been so long since she'd been touched by such strong, masculine hands that made her aware of her own fragility.

A desperate yearning took hold of her. She turned her cheek toward the rough hand. Rubbed it against the hair-roughened wrist. Shivers spewed everywhere.

She could just imagine those hands everywhere on her skin, teasing, taunting, drenching her in—

The utter stillness of his form, the rough texture of his hand against her cheek, so incredibly good and yet so alien, jerked Alex back into coherence.

Breath hitching in and out roughly, she pushed off her seat.

Skin tight over angular features, Leandro stared back at her. Not a smidgen of the confusion or the stringent awareness that vibrated through every inch of her reflected in his own gaze however.

“Thanks,” she said jerkily, wrapping her hands around herself. “I'm...much better.”

“Are you in love with this... Justin, Alexis?” he said, without heeding the distance she'd put between them.

Senses still raw from the sensations coursing through her, shocked at how much she wanted his hands on her, a choked breath fell from her lips. The resolute lift of his chin, the implacable look in his eyes...that pushed his question to sink through. “You think I came to Italy because I'm hitching up with a man and want to fob off Izzie on you?”

Jaw tight, he wrapped his fingers around her wrist and tugged her closer. “No. As shocking as it is, it seems you're an exceptional mother and—”

Oh, the man made her so mad. “Why is it so shocking? That I had sex with you and liked it makes it impossible that I'm also a good mother? If that's the kind of attitude you're going to show around Izzie about her mother—”

He covered her mouth with his palm. Thoughts fragmented. Sensation zoomed. It was heat all over, stinging, unrelenting. From his palm, from his lean frame standing so close to her. Beneath her skin, in her muscles.

“I would never disrespect her mother in front of Isabella. And I said it the wrong way.”

“Your timing sucks, that's what Valentina said to me.” She had been so keen upon the previous night, she hadn't realized what that meant. “Seven years ago and now. With you...what did she mean? What was going on when we met seven years ago?”

“It is irrelevant, Alexis.”

“To me, you mean?” she instantly challenged him, head cocked. “Way to put me in my place, Leandro. But this stopped being about me and you six years ago.”

The question about seven years ago was a sharp reminder to Leandro of how easily Alex could distract him. Of how easily one innocent touch could morph into this craving.

“My wife had—”

Alex clutched his shirt, her knees threatening to give out under her. “
Your wife
... God, you were married?”

“
No!
I would never... No, she had passed away recently when we...met.”

“How recently?”

“A month to the day that night.”

A month...
the leaden weight on her chest eased enough for her to breathe.

Until she met his gaze, saw the self-loathing that settled into every line of his face.

“Rosa died after a long struggle with cancer and it took me mere weeks to forget that.”

Shame crawled through her insidiously, polluting her memory of that night, painting her with that same loathing she heard in his voice.

She pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes.
God, why had she asked?
“If you were the bloody saint your sister calls you, you shouldn't have come near me, you shouldn't have touched me.”

“You think I didn't try?” He dragged her to him in a violent explosion of temper. “From the moment I laid eyes on you...
Maledizione!
” Fingers dug into her arms. Hard chest grazed her breasts. Her body came awake as if someone had thumped on her heart.

Excruciatingly, violently awake.

The hard length of his legs cradled hers, shaping and molding her muscles. “From the moment I saw you telling Tina not to be a spoiled, whiny brat, from the moment I saw you laugh with Luca...your face...
you haunted me
.” Fingers splayed over her jaw, he caressed every inch of her face with his eyes.

Was he remembering or did he still want her?

“Rosa suffered with cancer for three years. Through endless chemo cycles, I never even looked at another woman. I never even felt the urge.

“But every time I looked at you, there it was in your eyes. Your attraction to me, so guileless, so honest... The more I tried to stay away from the villa, the more times I found myself there. The more I told myself to leave you alone, the more I found myself near you.”

Leave it alone, Alex.
Every self-preserving instinct yelled at her. But she didn't heed it. “So you're saying that I asked to be hurt? That I didn't deserve a speck of the respect that you had for your wife? That I deserved to be slept with and then discarded—”

He covered her mouth with his finger. “There was no future for us.
There was no us.
Not even an affair. I did what I did to make sure you understood that.”

“I would've preferred knowing that you weren't a heartless, ruthless jerk who used women and then abhorred them for wanting the same as you. I would've preferred to be treated as a person.

“I would have preferred knowing that you were grieving, that you—”

“
No
, Alexis! Do not spin theories about me. Do not make me out to be anything more than I am.”

“Your arrogance in dictating to me what I should think of you is astounding, Leandro.” She faced him, her heart pounding. “What scares you so much? That I might think you're a man with a conscience? That I might think you liked me and that you wanted me that night as much as I did you? That there was a connection between us that threatened all your principles?”

A muscle jumped in his clamped jaw. His head cocked, infinitesimally, as if something had come at him.

Gaze absolutely implacable, he looked at her. Slowly, Alex could see any hint of emotion driven out by his sheer, ruthless will. Could see the man of the past few hours retreat. Could feel the intangible wall rise up between them.

A shiver climbed up her spine. Like a warning to brace herself.

* * *

“What I did that night was a betrayal to Rosa. I obviously misjudged the effect of prolonged celibacy, especially when thrown in front of an irresistible temptation. I saw her waste away month after month and you...you were everything she couldn't be at the end.

“Vivacious, lively, beautiful.

“To hold you, to touch you...it's like that shot that shocks the heart.” He closed his eyes, every line of his face taut. “It was pure animal lust, nothing civilized, nothing to build something on. If it wasn't you, I'm perfectly sure it would have been someone else soon.”

The moment the words were out of his mouth, Leandro knew it was the utterly wrong thing to have said for the goal he had in mind.

Color leeched from her skin, leaving Alexis's features pinched. Like the lights going out of a brilliantly lit room.

Dio
, the woman turned him inside out. He had destroyed his entire strategy of putting her at ease, of showing that he could be understanding and perceptive, of earning her trust with his words.

What did she want—to elevate one night of weakness to life-changing import?

No!

He couldn't let her weave fantasies about that night, couldn't risk letting her imagine romantic ideas about the future. Not the kind she obviously still believed in, even after he'd behaved like a ruthless bastard.

He was exactly what she thought him—heartless, arrogant, used to getting his own way.

Still, she held her head high and faced him square, didn't buck against his obviously cruel summation of that night.

“Will you look at Izzie like she was a symbol of your betrayal, too? Because I swear, Leandro—” She looked ferociously breathtaking, eyes flashing fire. “I won't let you come near her if you do.”

Rendered mute, Leandro stared at her, amazed by the strength she showed even now.

What would it be like to possess a woman like her? To have her channel that intensity, that passion toward him? To bask in the strength of her conviction?

If his mother had possessed half that strength, would he have turned out different? Would he have had that reckless, carefree childhood that Alex mourned for him? Would he have known tender feelings?

Would he—

Dio!
It was as useless as it was pathetically self-indulgent.

He was the man he was, for better or worse. But she deserved an explanation. “For years, Rosa wanted a child and we didn't conceive. When you told me about Isabella, all I could think of was her. Of how cruel it was, even to her memory that I had a child with a woman I took in a moment of insanity.

“I would never hold an innocent responsible for my lack of judgment.”

Chin lifted. Shoulders squared. She had never looked so icily cold as she did then. Whatever inner fire that made her Alexis seemed to go out of her eyes.

He felt a moment's regret about what was right for her. But like she had said, this wasn't about either of them anymore.

“No, only me, because I was a willing participant in your betrayal. Thanks for clearing that up.”

She left the main cabin like a queen who had found him wanting.

It rattled him how much he wanted to follow her. How much he wanted to take her in his arms and tell her that all his disgust had been aimed at himself. That he considered her an innocent in all of this, too. That as much as he'd loathed himself,
Dio
, he'd never been able to forget her.

Even today, his self-control, his very intention in all this was threatened by all the things she made him feel.

But, at least this way, she would know what she was getting.

Because, as much as he resisted, there was only one way to be a part of his daughter's life.

He'd been prepared to marry Sophia. One woman was the same as another for the marriage he wanted. Of course, he could have lied and made his goal easier, but Leandro didn't believe in pretending things he didn't feel.

CHAPTER FIVE

F
ROM
THE
MOMENT
he realized he had a daughter, Leandro had tried to imagine what he would feel a thousand times. After all, he had raised Valentina for all intents and purposes. Something novel from the emotional spectrum he'd ever experienced, he admitted that much.

But the sight of the little girl that barely came to his knees, looking up at him with those gray eyes, both curious and reticent, punched through him. It was as if he was caught in a whirlpool of emotion, tossed about by a vicious eddy that threw him from grief to anger to sheer, gut-wrenching amazement that she was his.

And loss, excruciating loss.

It had been almost close to an hour since he and Alexis had arrived at the tiny brownstone house that belonged to her parents.

Tension swirled through the air from the moment she introduced him. The Sharpes were too polite to say anything to his face, better than what Alexis had received back in his home, but their doubt filled the air. Even more powerful was their obvious anger for Alexis. She had forgotten to mention that she had come to see him against their wishes.

After an excruciatingly uncomfortable half hour, they went to visit with friends and Leandro had been able to breathe again.

Keeping to his word, he had held himself back from approaching Isabella.

But waiting had never felt so painful as he heard Alexis's firm but husky tone and Isabella's soft voice in the kitchen. He had no one to blame. Neither would he let anything nor anyone stop him from setting it to right.

He stayed on the couch, anxious like never before when Alexis and Isabella walked back into the tiny living area.

Reaching him, Isabella leveled an unabashedly curious look at him. “Mamma says you're my
papà
.”

Leandro cleared his throat, found himself unable to utter a word still. Chill and heat, everything enveloped him.

“She said you guys were friends before and then fell out. Is that why you didn't come to see me before?” His gaze flew to Alexis's and held. That she hadn't filled his daughter's head with anything but the truth made his own treatment of her even more awful. “It's okay,” Isabella continued, laying her small hand upon his. “My friend Sam and I fight all the time, too. Mamma says friends gotta make up after fights. You and Mamma made up?”

“
Si
...yes,” he corrected himself when he saw her little frown. “We have.”

“Does that mean I can tell my friends that you'll be—?”

“Izzie, sweetie,” Alexis interrupted, “remember how we talked about your
papà
living all the way in Italy and us—”

“You can tell all your friends, Isabella,” Leandro added, ignoring Alexis's pursed mouth. “Maybe we can even meet your friend Sam tomorrow? Would you like that?”

“Can we throw the ball around with them? Sam's dad has a really good arm.”

Even as his arms ached to pull her into his embrace, even as prickling heat knocked at his eyes, Leandro consoled himself with shaking his little girl's hand. “
Si
, we can. Although it is your uncle, Luca, who's the best with a ball in the family.”

A cute, heart-wrenching smile split her mouth. And Leandro's breath caught.

It was in Isabella's smile that Alexis peeked through. The effervescent joy, the confident tilt of the chin, the way it tore through him... Alexis was in his daughter where it mattered. “I have an uncle?”

“You have an uncle, an aunt and a great-
nonno
in Italy, who're all dying to meet you.”

“What's a
nonno
?” Before he could answer, she tugged his hand. “Can I show you my new puzzle? Are you going to stay here? We only have three bedrooms but you can have mine. Unless you want to sleep in Mamma's room now that you're friends again?”

He laughed as her questions continued, much like the machine that threw tennis balls at a player.

“No, sweet pie, he can't stay here.”

“Why not?” Both he and Isabella asked at the same time.

Alexis's smile didn't falter. “Our house is too small for you. But Brooklyn has luxury hotels that should suit your exacting tastes.”

“I'm staying here, Alexis.”

His heart threatening to burst out of his chest, Leandro stood up and followed his little girl to her room.

Even as he was aware of a set of molten brown eyes digging into his back, censure and curiosity and a million other questions in them.

* * *

Maybe taking Izzie on a holiday to Italy for the summer isn't such a bad idea, Alex. Izzie will get to meet the Contis and you can have a nice break.

Her dad's words from this morning still rumbled through Alex, like the after-ripples of an earthquake that had upended her world this morning.

You went when we warned you against it. Now that he's being so reasonable, what's bothering you?

This was her mother. Clenching her teeth so hard that her jaw hurt, Alex dragged another cardboard box with canned organic beans.

The damning thing was the heartless, manipulative jerk hadn't even broached the subject of visiting Italy with her. Yet, here was her dad, the very man who'd looked at Leandro with the utmost suspicion last week, persuading her to not hold grudges and do what was best for Izzie.

Even now, her throat burned at her parents' continual, insidious hints about Leandro being a model father to Izzie. While they had never approved of a single decision of hers.

How had he done that? In just two weeks, how had he turned her own parents and even her best friend against her? And to what end?

Also, why was the man who'd wanted to be on his merry way to his waiting fiancée still here?

Marking off the cans on her inventory chart, Alex blew out a long breath. The broken A/C in the beginning of a New York summer meant the storeroom was like a sauna. Sweat poured in rivulets down the back of her neck. With her hospital bills from the myriad of treatments she had undergone still arriving every few weeks like buzzards circling a dead body, she couldn't afford to get the air-conditioning fixed now. Nor could she hire extra help to sort and stock their inventory.

Cursing, she pulled her cotton T-shirt off her back. The damn thing went straight back to sticking to her skin. Making sure that she didn't put undue strain on her left hand, she knelt in front of another box and ripped off the duct tape. She knew she was pushing herself, that this inventory could wait until next week after the long hours she had put in over the past few days.

God, she'd barely even spent any time with Izzie.

But going back home before she was exhausted meant seeing the blasted man. Seeing him meant remembering his words from the flight. Remembering meant...realizing that she'd, foolishly, hoped he would have some magnanimous reason for his behavior seven years ago. How naively unsophisticated she was in not accepting that she'd been a convenient lay and nothing else.

Until he'd said the words, until they had landed on her like poisonous darts, Alex didn't know they'd hurt so much. Didn't know that they would make her want to burrow into an emotional shell like Izzie's pet turtle and never emerge.

He'd been devoted to his wife, Alexis couldn't get over that. It said everything she'd assumed about him was wrong. Exactly opposite even.

Only when she saw him and Izzie together—Leandro, powerful and handsome and so thoroughly masculine and Izzie, tiny and smiling and his very image—did she remember the reason he was here.

Knowing that he was sleeping in the bedroom next to hers made even the little sleep she'd been getting disappear.

He should've looked incongruous in the small bed in Izzie's room, yet he looked right at home. Just as he'd slipped so easily into the role of a father.

With his utter devotion to Izzie, with his unpretentious, get-your-hands-dirty gardening skills he'd helped her mom with, with his keen attention to several issues that had to be fixed in the house and immediately arranging workers to do so...

In her parents' view, suddenly the man had gone from dishonorable stranger who'd impregnated and then ditched their reckless, good-for-nothing daughter
and more importantly
, their much-adored granddaughter to an accomplished, down-to-earth-even-though-he's-stinking-rich gentleman who could do no wrong in their eyes.

If she didn't hate him before this, Alex was sure she did now.

She attacked the second line of the stubborn tape with both hands, her temper finally fraying.

“
Alexis!
” came the thunderous growl from behind her.

Before she could react, she was hauled up from behind, viselike hands clamped tight under her arms. Awareness smoldered through her, like a current of lightning.

The moment she was upright, his grip gentled. Long fingers rested on the upper curves of her breasts. Air burned through her lungs.

Her back felt as though it would bow from the pressure of holding herself stiff.

The sheer violence of her need to feel those fingers drift down, the instant tightening of her nipples hungry for his touch, ripped through her. One step back would send her into the hard, male muscle that every inch of her wanted to feel.

God, the man was engaged to another woman. Didn't her body understand that?

Longing made her throat burn, muscles quiver, skin thrum. She didn't dare wiggle for fear of him touching her. “Let me go, Leandro,” she said in a husky voice. “I'm all sweaty.”

Instead of heeding her, he took a step further. The blanket of heat that surrounded her was instantaneous. The scent of him drifted down over her skin, covering every cell. Drenching her until all she breathed was him. “Not until you tell me what,
per carita
, you are doing.”

As always, he sounded perfectly balanced, unruffled.

“I'm working. We can't all dance attendance on you,” she snapped, and then regretted her words.

When he tried to turn her, she resisted. She couldn't face him, feeling so raw and vulnerable. She couldn't face herself if she betrayed how much she still wanted him.

Closing her eyes, she willed her breath to calm.

“Should you be pulling and pushing boxes that weigh a ton when your hand is nowhere near healed?”

“I was careful to not use my left hand.”

“And what if you hurt your other hand dragging things that shouldn't be handled without the appropriate tool?”

“I can take care of myself, Leandro.”

A hiss of impatient breath. “That is not up for debate. But that there are numerous things you need help with is fact, too. Especially around the store.”

“You forget that I've been taking care of my parents, Izzie and the store. We don't need your help. This isn't why I asked you to come.”

She heard his muttering in Italian, before she turned and looked up at him.

The clean, strong lines of his face struck her with that same fierce hunger.

For the first time since she'd laid eyes on him again, he looked truly confounded. If she wasn't battling her hyper-awareness of him and her growing, irrational temper, she would've enjoyed the look on his face.

“Why are you always so defensive? I will say this again because it does not seem to enter your stubborn mind. I do not think that you came to see me for any reason other than Isabella's welfare. And I am...glad that you did. Any man who turns away from his duty is not worth the air he breathes.

“Now, I have instructed your father to call back the manager who used to assist him at the store but full-time. My real estate agent has had some interest in the store, too.”

“For one thing, I can't afford to hire staff now.” Alex gritted her jaw. “And I have no plans to sell the store.”

He didn't even bat an eyelid. “I have transferred some money to your account. That should help until the store is completely operational again.”

God, the man had to be the most thickheaded, arrogant, high-handed specimen of the species. Didn't he realize she wanted nothing to do with him on a personal level? That her pride, which was all she had at this point, was hanging by a sheer thread? “I'm not taking money from you.”

“Why not?”

“Why should I?”

He looked at her as if she were lacking brains completely. “Because I have it and you need it.”

“I don't know what the hell kind of game you're playing, or what you're trying to prove. Or is that it? You get a kick out of changing how my parents see you? Your monumental ego can't stand that they think less of the mighty Leandro Conti?”

“
Cristo
, I only intend to help you. You think I like knowing that you struggled so much all these years when I should have helped?”

The guilt in his eyes stayed her for a few seconds.

“Well, I don't want your help. Is it not enough that you...you own half your country, do you also have to be good at gardening and fixing the house and a million other things?” Didn't he see how hard he was making this all for her? “You might as well label me incompetent and be done with it.”

* * *

If he had ever assumed he could understand the complexities of Alexis's mind, he was wrong. A simple conversation with her was like handling a hundred Lucas and Valentinas on their worst days.

From the moment they had spoken of that night seven years ago, it was as if there was an invisible wall between them and she had retreated behind it.

Except when they were both with Isabella. That was the only time she smiled, the only time she made eye contact with him.

Dio
, the only time the stubborn woman even acknowledged his presence in her house.

He hadn't been there a single night before he realized how much responsibility rested on her shoulders, how many day-to-day things Alexis handled with barely a complaint and with an efficiency that he couldn't help but admire.