An Innocent to Tame the Italian Page 17

  The woman he adored with every breath in him. The woman he’d go down on his knees for. The woman who could strip him to his soul with one look, one word, one kiss.

  The woman who refused to shift her gaze from the laptop screen in front of her and spare him a look. The woman who was even now digging those misaligned front teeth into her lower lip.

  “Massimo, take your seat,” Leo said. Massimo covered the distance to Natalie, his chest such a tight knot that it was a miracle he could breathe. The scent of her, so familiar, made him shake.

  Somehow, he kept his head as Leo began the meeting and Franco asked questions about the recent leak of the security designs while he made copious notes, and in between, there was Natalie, pulling up schematics for a new multilayer security design on the projector, addressing Giuseppe’s and Franco’s questions, and Massimo went from dumb disbelief to utter amazement.

  She had come up with a new set of security designs? She’d been working with Leonardo? Giuseppe—who apparently appreciated Massimo’s proactive backing out of the contract because of the security leak, whose CTO had been smart enough to recognize Natalie’s unusual talent—had persuaded his board to give BCS another chance.

  Natalie’s frantic, almost feverish movements in collecting her laptop, her handbag.

  He moved his body into her space and she stilled. “I’ve been to New York to see you. I’ve seen Frankie.” When she turned her stunned gaze at him, he nodded. “He’s good. He’s excited to see you soon.”

  “Thanks, but I’ll see him in a day. I’ve tried to repay any damage I’ve done to the project. You have it, Massimo, everything you ever wanted.”

  She hitched her bag over her shoulder, calmly dismissed Massimo and moved to Leonardo. There was no spark in her, no fight, no laughter, no joy. Just a...pale imitation.

  “Thank you for letting me fix this. I’d prefer to work from home if you still want me on it. If you arrange for a ride to the airport—”

  “You’re not going anywhere,” Massimo bit out.

  “Massimo—”

  Fury burned through him as he met Leo’s gaze. “You know I’ve been going mad trying to find her.”

  Leo shrugged. “That day, you weren’t in a place where you’d hear a word I said. No chance for rational talk. You persuaded me that she was brilliant. I saw no reason to not use her. Later, after I convinced her to fix it, her condition was that I not tell you.”

  Had she written him off completely? Had he lost her before he had realized what he’d had?

  Leo closed the door behind him. When Natalie moved to follow his brother, Massimo waylaid her, trapping her between the table and his body.

  “Let me go.”

  “No! Tell me why you helped.” He wanted to touch her so desperately, more than he needed his next breath.

  “Because that project meant something to me. Being on a team that created cutting-edge technology, being on a team with you and Leonardo and all those men and women, discussing strategies with you, building something real out of all those years of dreams...it meant something to me.

  “More than money. More than the power or prestige of it. More than...” She looked away. “All my life, I’ve never been a part of a community like that. I wanted to finish what I’d started.”

  “Then stay. See it through.”

  “I can’t stay near you.”

  He placed his hands over her shoulders, bracing himself against the waves of pain crashing through him. “Natalie mia, will you please look at me?”

  He fell for her all over again when she leveled those beautiful eyes at him and gazed steadily.

  “Where do I start, cara mia?”

  “There’s nothing to start, Massimo. Nothing to say...”

  He clasped her jaw with his hand, his heart bursting with all the things he wanted to say. “First, I beg for your forgiveness, tesoro. Please, Natalie, if you ever thought that there was something worth knowing in me, loving in me, please, cara mia, you will stay a minute and you will listen, sì?”

  She looked up at him then, meeting him square in the eye. Gaze filled with tears. “You shamed me. You... You gave me everything...everything I never asked for, everything I never expected to have in life. Everything I had never even dreamed of...and in one moment, one moment, you took it all away, Massimo.

  “I’ve never felt so alone. More alone than that night when my dad didn’t return. To not have known you would have been okay.

  “But to know you and love you and love the best of you and then...” She looked down, and her tears poured onto her chest, dampening her white shirt. Massimo pulled her into his arms, unable to bear her pain, hating that he’d done this to her. “You made me doubt myself. As if I was less. As if I didn’t deserve you. I only went to him to talk about—”

  “No, look at me, Natalie! I don’t care why you went. I don’t give a goddamn about him. Cara mia, all I care about is you. About you and nothing else in the world.” He tilted her chin up to look at him and the pain there skewered him. “Cristo, you’re the most wonderful thing that has ever come into my life. The most joyful thing. The thing that Mama hoped I would find and nurture.”

  He kissed her soft cheek slowly, softly, breathing in the scent of her. Looking for courage in the tension that swept through her body. “Forgive me for all the dirty accusations.” A kiss at her temple. “Forgive me for not listening.” A kiss on the tip of her nose. “Forgive me for putting the bloody contract before you.” A kiss on her forehead. “Forgive me for not trusting you.”

  He dropped to his knees, anchoring his hands around her hips, burying his face in her belly. Pressed countless kisses to every inch of her he could touch and feel. He was shaking and he couldn’t stop himself because he was still afraid he would never hold her like this.

  He let the fear and the joy and the warmth gush through him, let himself breathe it in. Because this was what loving Natalie meant.

  Embracing this...emotional storm. Embracing the fear. Embracing the fact that she’d make him weak and strong but better for it. And he let her see all the things he couldn’t put into words in his eyes. “Forgive me, the most, for not trusting myself. Forgive me for not listening to the part of me that is worthy of you.

  “Forgive me, cara mia, for not saying that I love you. Forgive me for being an arrogant bastard who couldn’t see love when it kissed him on the mouth and held him in the night and told him there was a hero inside waiting to get out. Ti amo, Natalie. You make me a better man, cara mia. If you were with me I’d be the best of them all. The best Brunetti of all. And I’d maybe start a new trend of what it means to be a Brunetti, sì?”

  Natalie fell into Massimo’s waiting arms, the sob she’d been trying to bury bursting out of her chest. “I love you, too, Massimo, so much that it terrifies me. I... I’ve never loved anyone like that. I...want to trust this but—”

  “Shh...cara mia. No, there’s no place for fear or doubts between us. There’s no place for anything but love.” And then he was kissing her mouth, so softly, so tenderly, and Natalie fell into the kiss. His desperation, his relief, his warmth, his love—his kiss spoke of a thousand things and she took it all in. “Say you’ll believe me, Natalie.”

  He had believed her when he had no reason to. Given her a chance to prove herself. She would give him a million chances, she realized, shaking with alarm, but whatever fear and doubts came at them, Natalie wanted to face it with him. Together. “I do believe you. I’m all in, Massimo.”

  “We’ll bring Frankie here immediately. We’ll build a home for ourselves. We’ll start fresh, cara mia, with no shadows. And when you marry me—”

  And just like that, Natalie fell in love a little more. “What?” Her heart thudded in her chest.

  His eyes shining, Massimo slid his lips over hers in a silky caress. “When you marry me, we’ll start our own brood of Brunetti
s and the first thing and the only thing we will teach them is—”

  “How to be courageous in love,” she finished, her eyes full of tears.

  His teeth dug into his lower lip and he nodded. “So you will, sì?”

  “Sì. You’re my hero.” He was so solid and warm and hard around her. “And you’re all mine,” she said, and he nodded, and when he pulled her into his lap and buried his hands under her shirt, looking for warm skin, she gave herself over to it.

  He was her hero. Her man. Her entire life.

  EPILOGUE

  IF SOMEONE HAD told Natalie a few months ago, or even a few weeks ago, that she’d be walking down a beautifully manicured path with elegant trees and boxwood and wisteria on either side, while her little brother walked in front of her, toward a stunning vista of lakefronts and mountains in an ivory designer gown that supermodel Alessandra Giovanni had requested personally of a designer friend who never did private commissions, toward the tech billionaire Massimo Brunetti to make her wedding vows, she’d have laughed hysterically.

  She’d have rolled on the floor, laughing her ass off.

  No woman was so lucky to have a wedding at such a stunning location with the elements behaving perfectly as if they’d conspired to give her their best on her most important day.

  No woman could be so selfish as to demand a designer gown that was yards and yards of lace and tulle that made even skinny little hackers look like a princess.

  No woman would hope to have a kind, sexy, absolutely wonderful man waiting for her at the end, his heart in his eyes, looking knee-meltingly gorgeous in a black tuxedo.

  No one in their right mind would at least guess that all of the above could happen to an orphan who’d never thought she was worthy of anything so wonderful.

  But it was happening. Alessandra and Greta looked stunning on one side and Silvio and Leonardo on the other side, the latter with a warm smile for her that still stunned Natalie even after a month since she’d saved the Fiore project.

  And then she was there, close to the man she adored with all her heart.

  As she reached Massimo and he took his hands in hers and tugged her closer with a little too much enthusiasm that had the small, intimate crowd laughing, Natalie was trembling, sheer terror that it was all a dream that would disappear taking hold of her.

  His fingers tight around hers, his breath whispering against her temple, Massimo said, “I have you, cara mia. You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen and I love you so much, and whatever comes our way, we’ll face it together, sì?”

  “I’m scared, Massimo. I love you so much and it robs the very breath from me when I think of our future and with—”

  His finger covered her lips, the warmth of his body a comforting cocoon. “But I shall never, ever let you go. If you fall, I will always catch you. We will build our empire or take down someone else’s if that’s what you prefer, sì?” he whispered, and Natalie laughed because this man knew her so well and each day he showed her what she meant to him.

  She licked her lips, knowing that everyone was waiting. But God, she didn’t want to start their life together with lies and shadows. “I wanted to tell you but I was afraid. Afraid that it would hurt you,” she added quickly when she saw the light dim in his eyes. “This...this tiara—” she touched the exquisitely delicate diamond tiara wrought in the finest white gold that had been delivered three days ago sitting on top of the elaborate coif that her hair had been beaten into “—I... I didn’t borrow it from Alessandra. I lied. Because I was worried you wouldn’t understand.

  “He...he sent it to me.”

  “I knew it, bella.”

  “What?”

  “From the moment you opened the package and tried to hide the packing material and then burst into tears when you saw the card.”

  “Please don’t be mad, Massimo. I’ve cut my association with him but he was still a big part of my life. He’ll always be a big part of my past and I can’t change it and I hate that I hid this from you—”

  “I have long decided to forgive him, cara mia,” he said, stealing the ground from under her. “I will help Leo find him, and stop him from causing further havoc in our lives, but how do I stay angry with a man who protected you when you were alone in the world? How long do I hate a man who gave me the most wondrous, beautiful gift of you? Ti amo, Natalie. Your past and your present, your stubborn but loyal heart, your fire and your flaws, I adore everything about you, cara mia.”

  Her tears plopped down her cheeks and Natalie didn’t give a damn if her makeup was ruined. “I love you, too, Massimo. Now, hurry up,” she whispered against his mouth, “so that we can start building that empire and a brood of Brunettis.”

  His eyes glittered with wicked warmth and then the priest was admonishing them and Alessandra sighed and Frankie asked Leo in a loud whisper if they were going to kiss so frequently and then in the midst of the chaos and the love and the laughter, suddenly, she was now Natalie Brunetti.

  And when Massimo took her mouth in a soft, tender kiss she lost her heart all over again.

  * * *

  If you enjoyed An Innocent to Tame the Italian by Tara Pammi, you’re sure to enjoy Leonardo’s and Vincenzo’s stories in The Scandalous Brunetti Brothers trilogy, coming soon!

  And why not explore these other Tara Pammi stories?

  Married for the Sheikh’s Duty

  Sheikh’s Baby of Revenge

  Sicilian’s Bride for a Price

  Available now!

  Keep reading for an excerpt from Wed for the Spaniard’s Redemption by Chantelle Shaw.

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  Wed for the Spaniard’s Redemption

  by Chantelle Shaw

  CHAPTER ONE

  Spanish Stud’s Sex Romp with

  Cabinet Minister’s Wife!

  RAFAEL MENDOZA-CASILLAS SCOWLED as he sifted through the pile of newspapers on his desk. All the tabloids bore similar headlines, and even the broadsheets had deemed that it was in the public interest to report his affair with Michelle Urquhart.

  The story wasn’t only in the UK. All across Europe people were eating their breakfast while studying a front-page photograph of the heir to Spain’s biggest retail company entering a top London hotel late at night accompanied by the voluptuous Mrs Urquhart. A second photo showed him and Michelle leaving the hotel by a back door the next morning.

  One can only speculate on how Europe’s most prolific play
boy and the Minister’s wife spent the intervening hours!

  That was one journalist, writing in a particularly tacky tabloid.

  ‘It is one scandal too many, Rafael.’

  Hector Casillas’s strident voice shook with anger and Rafael held his phone away from his ear.

  ‘On the very day that the company’s top-selling Rozita fashion line launches a new bridal collection your affair with a married woman is headline news. You have made the Casillas Group a laughing stock.’

  ‘I was not aware that Michelle is married,’ Rafael said laconically when his grandfather paused to draw a breath.

  Not that her marital status interested him particularly. He was not responsible for other people’s morals—especially as his own morality was questionable. But if he’d known that Michelle’s husband was a public figure he would not have slept with her. Even though she had made it clear that she was available within minutes of him meeting her in a nightclub. Rafael never had a problem finding women to occupy his bed and, frankly, Michelle had not been worth this fallout.

  He leaned back in his chair and watched the rain lash the windows of his office at the Casillas Group’s UK headquarters in London’s Canary Wharf. The Casillas Group was one of the world’s largest clothing retailers, and as well as Rozita the company owned several other top fashion brands.

  Rafael visualised his grandfather sitting behind his desk in the study of the opulent Casillas family mansion in Valencia. There had been many occasions in the past when he had been summoned to that study so that Hector could lecture him on his failings and remind him—as if Rafael needed to be reminded—that he was part gitano. The English word for gitano was gypsy, and in other areas of Europe the term was Roma. But the meaning was the same—Rafael was an outsider.

  ‘Yet again you have brought shame on the family and, even worse, on the company,’ Hector said coldly. ‘Your mother warned me that you had inherited many of your father’s faults. When I rescued you from the slums and brought you into the family I intended that you would succeed me as head of the Casillas Group. You are my grandson, after all. But sadly there is too much of your father’s blood in you, and tacking Casillas on to your name does not change who you are.’