Happy Mother's Day! (25 page)

‘I wouldn’t have been pretending.’

‘But …’

‘I didn’t think I had to spell out what you do to me, Erin, but I can if you like.’

Erin swallowed as the liquid warmth in the pit of her stomach pooled hotly. ‘I’ll pass,’ she gritted huskily.

‘You never used to be so prissy. Why are you uncomfortable talking about sex? Your candour used to be quite a turn-on.’

She maintained eye contact, but it took every ounce of self-control she had to do so. The tide of warm colour rising up her neck she could do nothing about.

‘I’m fine talking about sex.’ Though from his previous observations clearly she had lost her edge when it came to doing it! ‘I’m just not obsessed with the subject like you.’

He gave a grin that was sinfully attractive as he ran a hand along his jaw. ‘I must shave before we land. You are adorable.’

Hearing the raw, driven note in this disconnected addition made her study him more closely. She immediately saw that he was not nearly as composed as she had first supposed.

She watched the nerve that ticked away like a time bomb in his sexily hollow cheek and was glad that she wasn’t the only one suffering.

‘Dio!’
he groaned, letting his head fall back and sighing. ‘You always were the best sex ever.’

It was remarkable how one slurred comment could totally obliterate the warm romantic glow. What had seemed unique and beautiful now felt crude and coarse.

I suppose,
she reflected grimly,
I ought to be grateful that he didn’t pretend to feel something that he clearly didn’t.

Erin lifted her chin and smiled. ‘It’s always gratifying to be told you’re the best sex someone has ever had.’

He lifted his head and surveyed her smiling face with bafflement.

Erin could see why he might be confused. Tell the average male that he was the best sex you’d ever had and he would be preening himself, say the self-same thing to most women and they would be insulted, though it did kind of depend on the
setting. There were some situations where she could imagine not finding such a comment tacky at all.

‘Have I done something wrong?’

‘Not a thing.’

Her gaze swivelled to his; the intense blue hit him just as strongly now as it had done the very first time he had seen her.

Francesco stretched his long legs out in front of him and crossed one foot over the other.

Erin was almost as surprised as Francesco appeared to be to hear herself say, ‘I should have told you about the baby.’

‘We don’t need to talk about that now.’

‘I need to. I knew I ought to have told you straight away, but I was kind of in shock … and …’ she closed her eyes ‘.I know you think I was a quitter to walk away from our marriage. I know you think that I took the easy way out, but it
wasn’t …’

‘Wasn’t?’ He studied her downcast features with a frown. ‘I don’t understand what you’re saying, Erin.’

She shook her head, her luminous eyes starting to feel tired as she looked at him. ‘No,’ she agreed, ‘you
don’t see
at all. Walking away wasn’t
easy,
it was the
hardest
thing I have ever done in my life,’ she told him in a voice that shook with the strength of her feelings. ‘It …’ she swallowed and expelled a long shaky sigh ‘.it was painful,’ she explained with admirable understatement. ‘If I had to do it again I’d … I simply don’t think I could bear it.’

Francesco’s expression was stunned as Erin absently dabbed the back of her hand to her cheek to blot a tear running down her face. ‘You won’t need to. We will make it work,’ he promised thickly.

She expelled a deep gusty sigh. ‘We don’t really have much choice, do we?’ she said, struggling to sound pragmatic.

‘Did you ever consider raising the baby alone?’

The question drew a shaky laugh from her.

‘What,’ he asked, looking considerably taken aback by her response, ‘is so funny?’

‘I suppose the big worry for some women in my situation might have been whether the father would want to know, or if he would question the baby was his. That was never my problem. Don’t you think, Francesco, that I haven’t always known that there was no way you’d allow your child … a Romanelli … to be brought up without his father?’

‘But of course a child should be brought up with two parents within the safety of—’

Shaking her head, Erin cut across him. ‘Any child would be a hell of a lot better brought up in a single-parent situation than in a home where the parents have a relationship based on lies and deceit. Believe me, I know … oh, God.’ She covered her mouth with both hands. ‘My parents’ marriage has really messed me up, hasn’t it?’

‘Was it very bad?’

Erin looked at him, gave a twisted little smile that just about broke his heart, and then with a faraway look in her eyes began to recount a story.

‘I was walking to school one day and I saw my father, which was strange because he had promised me the night before that he would bring me back a nice present from his trip to York. Anyway, there he was standing on the doorstep of a house not half a mile from ours kissing a blonde. Half my class saw him, too—kids are not kind,’ she said with massive understatement.

Francesco growled a violent epithet in his own tongue.

‘How old were you?’

‘About six or seven, I should think.’

He shook his head, his face creased in a grimace of disgust. ‘Dio! Did you tell your mother?’

‘I did. She got hysterical; my father was there. There was a lot of shouting and he packed a bag and walked out. Mum turned to me and screamed, “Look what you’ve done!”

‘I thought it was my fault. I didn’t realise until much later that she already knew. She always had known; she had chosen to turn a blind eye.’

Francesco would have done anything in that moment to assuage the pain he saw in her eyes. He would also have liked to throttle the selfish couple who had used her like a bit-part player in the long-running soap that was their marriage.

He might have to tolerate them because he was married to their daughter, but he was determined that he would let them know his feelings on the subject. And let them know also that he would no longer tolerate the situation.

‘I suppose you could say that I was conditioned from an early age to expect men to cheat.’

‘People make mistakes.’

Puzzled by the odd intensity of his gaze, she nodded. ‘Sure they do; it’s part of being human.’

‘If they are genuinely sorry and regret that mistake, should they not be given a second chance?’

The colour seeped from her face. ‘Was that a confession?’ she asked.

‘
I
have nothing to confess to.’

Shocked by the discovery that she believed him Erin expelled a long, shaky sigh.

‘I know.’ The relief of being freed from all those doubts was incredible. If Francesco ever cheated he would tell her. He just wasn’t a sneak-around sort of guy.

‘What did you say?’

‘I said that I believe you.’

Francesco searched her face. What he saw there caused his shoulder to relax. Their eyes clung until finally he nodded.

‘Thank you,’ she said, heaving a sigh of relief. ‘God, you must think I’m a real head case.’

When he finally spoke his voice was pitched seductively low and his accent was more strongly defined than usual. ‘No, I don’t think that. I think you are a perfect fit. I would call you a perfect fit.’

Erin drew a shuddery breath as images conjured by his throaty words floated through her head of sweat-coated bodies intimately entwined. As the heat flooded through her body she closed her eyes and thought about him hard inside her, moving. She gritted her teeth and ejected the image forcibly from her mind.

When she opened her eyes he was still looking at her, his expression only marginally less seductive than his velvettoned voice had been—if ever a man had been given a voice designed for making indecent suggestions it was Francesco, she reflected with an inward sigh.

She tried to inject a note of levity to lower the tension. ‘How many times have you used that line?’

‘You seem to find the truth difficult to cope with, Erin.’

‘You wouldn’t recognise the truth if it bit you,’ she snapped back crankily.

‘The only person who has ever bitten me is you,
cara.’
His laugh deepened as the colour flew to her cheeks. ‘You remember the occasion, too, I see.’

‘Dear God, no wonder we never get to work through our issues. It always ends up with us trying to rip each other’s clothes off.’

‘You say that as though it is a problem. And I have no issues.’

She regarded him with frustration. ‘That sort of attitude is why we. Don’t you realise that our marriage has been based on a tissue of lies. Oh, I know lies of omission for the most part, but it amounts to the same thing.

‘First you don’t tell me who you really are, then you don’t even mention Rafe …’ She saw Francesco stiffen at the mention of his brother’s name.

‘I can see why you didn’t tell me about him,’ she admitted. ‘But when you marry someone you can’t be selective about what you tell them and what you don’t. I know that I have my own issues, but can’t you see that knowing you have no problem lying to me when it suits you makes it hard for me to believe you when something happens … and, well … I think I’ve said enough.’

And none of it, she suspected, had been very lucid, but she just hoped she had got her point across.

‘So,’ he said slowly, ‘what you want off me is honesty and straight-talking?’

What I want off you is love.
Her eyes fell from his. ‘It would be a start.’

‘That,’ he conceded, ‘does not seem an excessive request.’ He arched a brow. ‘If I don’t deliver on your demands …?’

She was about to say that they weren’t really demands when the plane dropped like a stone for what felt like several thousand feet, but had been, she later learned, less. Erin screamed, and grabbed the side of her chair.

We’re going to die! I’ll never get the chance to see my baby. Never get the chance to lie next to Francesco and feel the friction of his skin against my skin, smell the warm scent of his body and enjoy the touch of his lips on my skin, taste him …

‘Erin, it’s fine, we’ll be fine.’

She opened her eyes and found that the plane had levelled
off and during the interminable time that it had been bounced around like a cork in a stream, somehow, even though it seemed a physical impossibility, Francesco had moved around to her side of the table.

She presumed that the arm resembling a steel bar that was clamped across her was the reason she had not been thrown from her seat.

A voice, presumably the pilot, came over the loud-speaker system. ‘Mr Romanelli, would you like to come up front? There could be a bit more of that.’

‘What does he think you can do about it?’ she demanded indignantly.

‘An extra pair of hands on these occasions does not come amiss,’ Francesco said, strapping her into her seat and giving a thumbs-up sign to the shaken-looking female attendant who was strapping herself into the seat beside her. Erin would have thought that any pilot would have wanted to keep nonessential people clear of the cockpit on such occasions, but she kept this opinion to herself.

When he bent down to brush his lips against hers and promised that there was no need to worry, she saw the gleam of exhilaration in his eyes and realised that, far from being terrified, her husband was enjoying this.

It wasn’t the best time in the world to learn you had married a madman, the sort of crazy who got a kick out of situations that would turn normal people into quivering lumps of jelly.

Her expression was indignant as she watched him stride away. ‘I don’t see why they want him. It’s not as if he’d be much use if the copilot falls out of the window or something.’

‘Well, actually,’ said the girl beside her, ‘he would. He’s licensed to fly this baby.’

‘Francesco has a pilot’s licence?’

She could see the girl thought it a bit odd that his wife wouldn’t have this piece of information, but she was too polite to say so.

‘He flies himself occasionally.’

Erin was spared the need to respond because they encountered some more turbulence. She never did ask Francesco if he had been in control while they endured the next ten minutes.

He finally joined her as they were circling the airport. He studied her face with concern.

‘You look shattered.’

‘You don’t.’ Obviously cheating death at twenty thousand feet was something that he found relaxing. ‘Guess which one of us is the normal one?’

He grinned and said she could nap on the drive out of the city.

A
ND
Erin did just that. She slept most of the way from the airport and woke as they turned onto the last mile of track that led to the home she had once shared with Francesco.

She felt her excitement mount as she picked out familiar landmarks.

‘You’ve resurfaced the road.’

He nodded. ‘I think you’ll find I have made quite a few changes.’

The location hadn’t changed—it was still simply stunning. It enjoyed total privacy, and mouth-watering far-reaching views over the hills and forests of the estate and beyond.

‘You’ve been doing some landscaping,’ she began, assuming the cleared section filled now with rows of olive tress were the changes he had referred to, when the house came into view and she knew she’d been wrong.

She caught her breath.

No matter what your taste architecturally, Erin doubted anyone arriving here would not gasp. ‘You’ve finished it!’

He pulled up on the cobbled area in front of the building and nodded. He held out his hands palm up for her inspection.

‘How do you think I got these?’ he asked, revealing a set of workmanlike calluses, which she duly admired.

Head tilted back to get the full effect of the structure as she got out of the car, she shook her head in silent wonder as she walked towards the building.

Placing her hand palm flat against the ancient stone wall, which looked solid enough to withstand just about anything you threw at it including the odd earthquake, she turned back to Francesco.

‘This is incredible—when did it happen?’ Without waiting for his response, she stepped back to admire once more the stunning building.

The two wings of the house were now connected. The glass corridor linking them looked exactly as Francesco had described. A glass gable end stood where there had once been rubble.

‘I don’t know what to say, Francesco. It’s magnificent. I’m breathless.’

‘So am I. You’re beautiful.’

Erin spun around, her eyes colliding with his. She shivered in response to the raw heat in his midnight eyes. ‘So you like what I have done?’

She nodded, feeling suddenly and inexplicably shy. ‘I love it. When did …?’

‘I was at something of a loose end when you left. I could not work.’

‘You couldn’t work?’

‘Perhaps I should have said didn’t want to work. A list of figures no longer provided me with the fulfilment it once had, Actually I was pretty much a wreck,’ he confessed wryly.

Looking at his lean and lithe body, it was hard to think of Francesco and wreck in the same sentence. The shock revelations continued to come thick and fast.

‘Once I sobered up …’ ‘You got
drunk?’

‘It was the bender to end all benders. I discovered that I am not an interesting drunk so I sobered up.’ He paused and angled an enquiring look at her face. ‘I know you wanted honesty and openness, but is this too much information?’

Erin laughed. ‘Is that what this is about?’

The laughter died from his face.

‘This is about being someone you believe will love and care for you and our baby for the rest of your life. You shared your thoughts and feelings with me. I am simply returning the compliment.’

There were several thoughts and feelings that she had not been brave enough to share with him.

Erin knew the message in his dark eyes wasn’t really there. She knew her brain was playing cruel tricks, making her see what she wanted to.

But what if it was really there? Her heart began to beat faster.

‘Now where had I got to? Of course, I was filling in the gaps—it was at that point, I realised that the biggest favour I could do to the bank was to stay away.’

‘Can you do that?’

He gave one of his inimitable shrugs. ‘I’m the boss,
cara.
I can do anything I like and,’ he admitted, his lips curling into a sardonic smile, ‘I am very good at delegating. I hope you understand that during this time I was very angry with you.’

‘What did you do next, other than be angry with me?’

‘I came back here and I thought when Erin comes back our home will be finished.’

‘You thought I would come back?’

‘I could not allow myself to think anything else,’ he said simply. ‘That night in Venice, the night of the ball, your
obvious distrust of me, the things you accused me of—I cannot lie, I was very,
very
angry. My pride was hurt … I walked … God knows where. I knew if I came back I would say things that I would regret.

‘And part of me, a not very nice part of me, took pleasure from the possibility you might think I was with another woman. It was petty and contemptible.’ He looked with pained anguish into her blue eyes. ‘But my plan backfired. When I came back to find you leaving me I was shocked. I think I was
in
shock.

‘I didn’t really think you would do it. My pride would not let me believe that a woman would reject Francesco Romanelli.’ He gave a snort of self-derision at his arrogance. ‘But you did. I let you go. I can’t believe how stupid I was!’ he admitted with a groan. ‘I actually sat and watched while you, my one chance of happiness, walked out of my life.’

Is he talking about me? Am I his one chance at happiness?

‘After you had gone I just sat there on the bed expecting that you would walk in any moment.

‘It was a crushing blow when you didn’t and … well, I have told you how I spent our time apart.’

‘That night in Venice, when I went back to the room I recognised even then that my jealousy was the cause of the problem. I planned to discuss it with you, but when the minutes ticked by, well … it felt that something was dying inside me.’ She gave a great gulp and covered her mouth with her hand. ‘I thought you didn’t care,’ she admitted, her voice cracking. ‘That I’d pushed you into another woman’s arms.’

With a cry, Francesco reached for her own hand resting in the hollow of her back, the other cradling the back of her head. ‘I felt the same way,’ he admitted, brushing her hair back from her brow and raining reverent kisses on the smooth skin he had exposed.

‘But if I had trusted you, if I hadn’t let my wretched imagination go wild … we would never …’

He silenced her protest with a kiss so achingly tender that it brought fresh tears to Erin’s eyes. With a sigh she sagged against him, her face pressed into his chest while he murmured soft endearments and kissed her hair. It was some time later that they moved by mutual consent towards the big metal-studded door.

‘I hope you’ll approve of what I’ve done to our home, Erin.’

Her ability to think straight blasted into oblivion by the amazing things he had just said, she nodded. Her legs felt so weak with reaction to the revelations of the last few minutes that she needed the support of the hand in the small of her back that guided her towards the massive front door.

‘You know how you said a baby grand would look good in the summer sitting room when it had a roof?’

She tilted an enquiring look up at him.

‘Well, it now has a roof and a baby grand.’

She was laughing when she walked through the door. She was laughing all the way up to the point someone screamed ‘Surprise!’ and what seemed like hundreds of people leapt out laughing and shouting and in some cases waving banners.

‘Dio
mio …!’
Francesco gritted through clenched teeth as he pulled her into his side. ‘I swear to you,
cara
I had no idea. If I had I would have hired stunt doubles for the occasion.’

‘Don’t scowl,’ she said, sticking a warning elbow in his side and hiding her own dismay and frustration behind a smile. ‘They’re trying to be nice.’

‘Best not to mention the rough flight to my mother,’ Francesco said as a middle-aged couple approached.

Looking curiously at the distinguished-looking man with the mane of white hair, Erin knew exactly what her husband
would look like in thirty years’ time. The woman with the gentle eyes and a sweet smile was leaning lightly on a cane. There were tears in her eyes as she embraced first Erin and then Francesco.

‘At last we meet. She is so lovely, Francesco, and that hair … we are so happy about the baby.’

‘I want you both to know,’ Alberto said, clapping his son warmly on the shoulder, ‘that
this
was not my idea.’ His grimace took in the entire heaving room. ‘If anyone ever thinks about doing this to me.’

‘Do not be tiresome, Alberto,’ recommended Sabina Romanelli. ‘Livia thought it would be nice for Erin to meet the family.’

‘Because she got out of hospital and it would be so restful,’ said Francesco at his most sardonic.

‘I think it’s a lovely idea,’ Erin said.

‘You’re lying through your lovely teeth, but, if that’s the way you want to play it, fine—I’m throwing you to the wolves. I warn you, Erin, not everyone survives the Romanelli initiation ritual. She thinks I’m joking,’ he said to his father.

‘They’ll suck you dry and spit you out,’ the elder Romanelli said straight-faced.

It was easy to see where Francesco got his sense of humour from.

‘Good luck,
cara!’
Francesco whispered in her ear the moment before she was whisked away.

It was a good hour later before she saw Francesco again. The smile of welcome on her face faded when she saw his expression.

‘What,’ he demanded, ‘do you think you’re doing?’ ‘Doing?’ Erin said, mystified by his attitude. ‘I’m not doing anything.’

He shook his dark head in disbelief. ‘You really are unbelievable,’ he said, forcibly removing the fretful toddler she was jiggling on one hip from her arms. ‘You had surgery a few days ago and you’re pregnant. Lugging a little monster like this around is not what I’d call
lots of rest and relaxation.’

‘He’s not heavy,’ Erin protested.

‘Yes, he is, and he is also,’ Francesco discovered, angling a critical look at the toddler’s face, ‘extremely dirty. I’m taking him back to his mother.’

‘You know, I think I’ve had enough of this, and you,’ he added, glancing at her face, ‘have definitely had enough.’

‘What are you doing, Francesco?’ she asked as he began to bang his hand on the table.

‘I’m getting rid of this lot.’

‘You can’t do that!’ she protested. ‘It would be incredibly rude.’

Actually Francesco was rude and charming in equal parts as he basically told his family they had outstayed their welcome and fortunately nobody seemed particularly offended.