The Surprise Conti Child Page 6

  She didn’t want to hear it from the man who had been an escape and a gift she’d given herself, too.

  “I should be leaving,” she said into the silence.

  He flicked her a quick glance and nodded. “We’ll leave in ten minutes.”

  Alex whirled toward him so fast that she lost her balance. A corded forearm pressed into her belly holding her up.

  She closed her eyes, the heat of him stroking every suppressed desire.

  Heart rapping a staccato beat, muscles quivering, she struggled to remember what had sent her into panic.

  “We...you said we.”

  His arm rigid around her, his warm breath brushing her cheek, he studied her with an infuriating calm. “Si.”

  Panic fluttered in her belly. “Why?”

  “I’m coming with you.”

  “To Milan?”

  “To New York.”

  Her gut flopped to her feet, leaving her hollow.

  But his gaze remained serious.

  Alex shook her head as if the action could bring her teetering world back to balance. “I don’t understand.”

  Tapered fingers tightened over her slender wrist. Even in the sensual fog her senses waded through, Alex wondered if that was the true marker of his mood. “I wish to avoid the bother of calling you later, making an appointment, intruding on your busy life, dragging us all through the whole process again. With my forthcoming wedding and an irate fiancée to appease, it is better to get this out of the way.”

  “Get what out of the way?” she whispered.

  Hardness edged in with the casual amusement in the narrow line of his mouth. “Meeting my daughter.”

  * * *

  He’d shocked her.

  A feral kind of thrill fizzed through Leandro’s veins. Childish and uncharacteristic of him, he knew, but then, Alexis always brought out a side of him that he didn’t know existed.

  The longer she stared at him with that resolute light in her eyes, the sharper his awareness of his own desires became.

  Elemental heat arose in him, his fingers tingling at the soft musculature of her belly, drenching him in remembered pleasure.

  Last night, he’d been in shock. With a clear view of his plan this morning, the effect of Alexis’s lush, understated beauty was stringent.

  Her clean lemon soap scent lingered in his nostrils, more evocative than the most intrinsic perfume, provoking an overwhelming urge to bury his nose in the crook of her neck.

  The neat braid she’d weaved her hair into made the scar stand out starkly against her pale brow.

  Slender shoulders still held that battle-ready rigidity even though the way she had folded her arms and created distance between them, betrayed her.

  Betrayed what though, Leandro had no idea. And that, he didn’t like.

  Her fierce stubbornness, her unerring resolve fascinated and frustrated him in equal measure.

  Any other woman of his acquaintance would have shredded him in front of the curious guests, or lost a bit of that composure at being told that the man she’d dallied with long ago, the man who was the father of her child was engaged to be married.

  Not Alexis.

  The only time she’d lost her control had been at Antonio’s disgusting words.

  She was not the girl he had kissed so violently that night. On the cusp of womanhood, that Alexis had been an open canvas, her unflinching attraction to him utterly arousing, her languid, interested glances without artifice.

  A temptation he’d failed to resist.

  Now, this woman who faced him so calmly, so unwavering in her plans for his role in their daughter’s life, without betraying the merest thought, even the merest hint of reaction at seeing him after all these years...she was a mystery.

  Which meant he couldn’t betray his hand either.

  Only now, at the thought of him accompanying her, at his changing his plans, did she show a reaction.

  “You look very pale, Alexis. Is something wrong?” he probed softly.

  “It’s not necessary that you come immediately,” she said sharply. The T-shirt that he’d had the staff deliver hugged her round breasts as her chest fell and rose. “I mean, it’s not a quick drive away and I can only imagine how...” she cast a glance behind her, as she continued, “occupied you must be with everything.”

  “Let me understand this. Are you discouraging me now?”

  “No, I just...” Her unease was written in her pinched mouth.

  Dark shadows cradled her brown eyes, and tenderness he didn’t want to feel pierced Leandro.

  He hadn’t noticed it last night, but today he saw it clearly.

  She was a wreck physically. That same instinct that had driven him to hold his brother and sister through the knocks they’d received, rode him now to hold her.

  Fisting his hands, he waited for the urge to pass.

  She wasn’t his to care for.

  “Is this not why you came? So that I could acknowledge Isabella and give you security about her future and then we continue in our merry ways?” Somehow, he managed to sound disinterested and unemotional at the whole prospect.

  The pinched look instantly faded from her face. And Leandro had the answer to the question hadn’t quite known to ask.

  She wasn’t going to fall in with his plans easily.

  “Of course it is,” she managed with a polite smile and walked away.

  “This sneaky subterfuge is unlike you,” Luca said at his side. Contempt sharpened his brother’s usually laid-back tone. “Anyone who knows you can guess your intentions.”

  “Alexis does not.” Trust his reckless brother to make him defensive.

  “I would argue that she probably knows the true you,” Luca smoothly interjected. “The man beneath the saint’s skin.”

  Leandro flinched. The specter of his behavior toward Alexis seven years ago loomed large and loud in his mind. Demanding explanation and insight that he didn’t want to give it. “If you expect elaboration on the event of seven years ago, no.”

  Scowling, Luca faced him. “Event of seven years ago...can you hear yourself? You seduced an innocent, and apparently, kicked her out the moment you zipped up. That is expected of me, not you.”

  Leandro cursed violently, Luca’s crude words piercing him. Despite knowing that that’s what Luca intended.

  Innocent—that’s what Alexis had been. And without meaning to, she had wielded it so well.

  “Knowing the state you were in,” Luca was relentless, saying, “you shouldn’t have touched her.”

  “I know that.”

  “You used her, plain and simple.”

  Just like our father, his unsaid accusation hung heavy in the air. For Luca loathed even mentioning their father’s name.

  “No,” his hoarse refusal rang in the silence. He saw Alexis tense at the balcony and gritted his teeth. “I never made any false promises to her. Cristo, I didn’t even...”

  He couldn’t put into words how alive he had felt every time Alexis had looked at him with those innocent brown eyes. How acute and agonizing the thrill had been when he touched her.

  How much he’d needed to be needed, wanted like that after Rosa’s death. Only when he had seen the look in her eyes had he realized how much he craved to lose himself.

  How vulnerable he’d been in the face of such honest attraction as hers.

  Not her, him.

  He’d been the vulnerable one, he’d been the one who’d been seduced so easily and she hadn’t even been trying.

  No, even if he found the words, he couldn’t tell Luca.

  It was much too private, much too raw. Just remembering that night—the out-of-control, desperate desire, the stingingly sharp awareness made his muscles curl in memory. “It w
as not as dirty as you make it out to be, Luca.”

  “It seems so from where I stand. And from where she does, more importantly. She’s the mother of your child, Leandro. At least now, treat her with respect. Aren’t you the one always carping about the Conti legacy?

  “Do not continue what he started, do not let this become our legacy.”

  Last night had been shock. Today, shame pounded through him. His whole life, he’d never treated another person, man or woman, the way he had Alexis.

  All because first he’d weakened and then walked away from the consequences.

  The very same traits that he’d despised in the man who’d fathered Luca and him.

  “Whatever poison Antonio might spout, tell me you don’t distrust her motives?”

  “I trust every word she said last night.” The thing that had kept him up all night was how telling what Alexis hadn’t said was.

  Last night and this morning...

  If only she’d betrayed a spark of jealousy, or insecurity, if only she was like any other woman he’d known who would have thrown a reckless tantrum in the situation he’d put her in...but no!

  Even then, he’d known she was different. Even then, he’d known the core of steel she possessed beneath that innocence.

  And what an enticing contrast it made...

  Which was also why he’d been so violently attracted to her, a voice whispered. Why he had reached out to her in a way he hadn’t done even with Rosa.

  “Then you deceive her on purpose. You have Salvatore dangling on the line like a dog, Antonio threatening to hurt Valentina—”

  “Will you marry Sophia Rossi then, Luca? Will you take her off my hands so that I don’t worry about Valentina and can focus on my daughter instead?”

  Luca’s stinging silence was answer enough.

  “Trust me,” Leandro gritted through his teeth. “I’m ensuring that I do right by everyone involved.”

  “And her, Leandro? What about Alexis?”

  Leandro ran a hand over his nape. What was right and what he wanted instead had always diverged when it came to this woman. And that he couldn’t immediately seize control of the whole situation, that he couldn’t make it right by any means available to him had kept him pacing to the first light of dawn.

  He’d always thrived on being in control—of himself and his emotions and his situations, to beat circumstances into creating peace.

  He and Luca and later, Valentina, wouldn’t have found peace or even the merest happiness if he hadn’t been able to count on his emotional invulnerability.

  But Alexis, then and now, made him flounder like an impulsive, hormone-driven teenager.

  “She has nothing to fear from me.”

  His brother’s silence sent the most irrational surge of unease through him. Luca had the wickedest sense of humor Leandro had ever known. Not to mention carefree charm and the knack of making everyone feel at ease with him. Everything Leandro lacked and had never coveted.

  Dio, he was thirty-five. Too late to acquire new qualities or affect a personality change. Not to mention he wouldn’t be of use to his family if he did.

  “Stay away from her, Luca. Your particular brand of friendship will only make it harder for me to—”

  A roaring laugh fell from his brother’s lips. “You know better than to wave a warning in my face. Also how I like to even the scales.”

  “This is far too important to me.” He wanted to growl at his brother like an animal, he wanted to banish Luca to some Neverland until he had it all sorted with Alexis.

  The thought of losing a daughter now that he’d found her was unacceptable.

  “Then why not tell her that? Why not put your cards on the table?” Luca countered.

  “You think she’ll meekly agree to what I want after my behavior in the past?” Leandro said softly as Alexis came down the stairs and waited at a distance for Luca and him to finish talking. “Or would you instead advise me to take the small place she offers in my own daughter’s life?

  “Alexis is unlike any woman you or I have ever known.”

  For the first time since the blasted conversation began, Luca smiled that trademark devilish smile of his. Wide and reckless, his gaze took in Leandro leisurely, right down to his fisted hands.

  Leandro had never, in his thirty-five years, felt the urge to punch the smile off his brother’s face as he did then.

  “Your saintly nature could stand to be tested now and then, Leandro.”

  While Leandro fumed in silence, and awash in an increasingly frequent stinging bitterness in his throat, his reckless brother reached her and enfolded Alexis in his arms, kissed her cheeks, made excited sounds over the picture of Isabella on her phone and whispered God knew what with that easy camaraderie Leandro would never achieve with her.

  Nor did he need to, he assured himself.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  IT TOOK ALEX almost half the duration of the long flight to New York to get her head screwed on normally again. Between the flight, her headache and the effect Leandro had on her, she was going to have a nervous breakdown soon.

  On top of the shock that he was coming with her had been the private airstrip the tinted-windowed Maserati had dropped them off at.

  No uncomfortable economy seating purchased on Cheap-O-Fare for Leandro Conti or painfully long stopovers. The sleek Lear jet with its beige-and-black interior and wide, reclining-like-a-bed seats, the barely discernible hum as they took off had numbed her senses for a long while.

  In lieu of this spectacular reminder of his wealth, all she’d been able to think of was what it said about him that he’d readily believed that she wasn’t after his money.

  He’d claimed to believe her seven years ago, too. Then why dismiss her so cruelly? Why hadn’t he returned a single phone call?

  I have to work, he’d told her once they had taken off, his mind clearly on other matters. He’d been on several calls since then, his attention on his laptop, Alex easily dismissed.

  As always, a small resentful voice whispered. But then, there had never been anything remarkable about her, had there?

  But once she’d settled in for the long flight, unease fluttered down her spine like a line of ants. It was clear that he’d postponed or canceled several meetings for this trip. Not to mention leaving his new fiancée behind, whose name she’d heard him mention more than once on his phone calls.

  His actions didn’t speak of a man who wanted to get an unwanted, distasteful complication out of the way so that he could go back to his pleasant life. Even as he’d claimed that was exactly why.

  The continual, round-and-round, inconclusive thoughts all focused on the one man who’d always remained hurtfully elusive to her understanding on the heels of another sleepless night and the stress of the past few weeks made Alex’s head pound in earnest.

  Leaning her head back, she pressed her fingers onto her temples.

  “Alexis, are you unwell?”

  “I’m fine.” Prickly, defensive and far too revealing than she wanted.

  “Are we at war, bella? Because if so, I would like some notice.”

  The crisp scent of the ocean filled her nostrils and her eyes flicked open. He stood behind her seat, tall and broad, filling her vision. The stark, intensely masculine lines of his face were a sensual feast.

  Before she could say no, his long fingers descended on her temples. “Here?”

  His touch was cold.

  Or was her skin unbearably hot?

  With feathery lightness, he traced the width and length of the scar and the rucked tissue, again and again.

  “Did they say if this would heal completely?”

  “Years for the scar to disappear. I could have a skin graft, they said.” She closed her eyes. “But I decided against
it.”

  “You would rather bear the scar to remind you what you almost lost?”

  Heart thudding at his perceptiveness, Alexis nodded weakly.

  Her parents, even her friend Emma thought she should have the graft done. Put the accident behind her and move on. Count her blessings, they’d said.

  She did count her blessings, but she wasn’t the same person anymore. Whether in a good way or not, she didn’t know.

  Yet Leandro understood her so easily. “My mom thought it ruined my face,” she said, hating herself for the insecurity she couldn’t seem to squash.

  Fingers resting on her chin, he tilted her up to face him. Amusement glittered in his eyes. Yet Alex didn’t think he was laughing at her. “I didn’t think you were the type to angle for a compliment.”

  “I’m not angling. I’m asking,” she said, cursing the stubborn man.

  Fingers tracing her cheekbones up and down, he tilted her face up so that she looked right into his eyes. His gaze touched her forehead, her brows, eyes, nose, mouth, chin, and swept upward again. “The scar detracts nothing from what beauty you possess, Alexis.”

  A curse flew from her mouth then. God, the man couldn’t even hand out a pity compliment, could he?

  “I hope you don’t speak like that in front of Isabella.”

  “Did anyone tell you you’re an arrogant jackass, Leandro?”

  Amusement sharpened those cheeks of his. “Luca does, quite frequently. Although I have to say it feels especially satisfactory to hear it from your mouth, Alexis.”

  She was still struggling with that when his fingers moved over her forehead again, quick and firm, exerting just the right amount of pressure.

  She groaned at the sweet relief, the sound wrenching from the depths of her. It was no different from the nurse or doctors who had checked her relentlessly those first few weeks after the accident, she tried to convince herself.

  “Thanks.” She held his wrists, intending to push him away. And felt muscled sinew, the hair rasping against her palm. Innocent touch turned to searing awareness in a breath. “I’m okay now.”

  When he spoke, steel edged his silky, smooth tone. “Alexis, if you tell me where it hurts precisely and why you whimper with such pain, then maybe I can relieve it a little. If you, however, insist on this prickly attitude, I will touch and prod you everywhere until I can figure it out. And I’m sure neither of us wants that.”