Читать книгу Modern Romance January 2020 Books 1-4 - Кейт Хьюит - Страница 17

MIA STARED AT ALESSANDRO, a feeling of dread surging along with the anger that had been her instinctive response, even though she knew he had a point. For the last year she’d been fighting a sense of guilt over the fact that she hadn’t tried harder to tell him, but she’d always justified it to herself, telling herself at least she had tried to give him a message, and in any case he wouldn’t have cared anyway. Presumptions, she realised now, that were utterly wrong, because Alessandro looked as if he cared very much indeed.

Now he was standing there in front of her, she felt overwhelmed by the sheer presence of him, too dazed to hold on to a single coherent thought. When she’d seen him at her door, she’d felt the blood rush from her head, and she’d had to clutch the doorframe to keep herself upright.

She’d never thought she’d see Alessandro again. She’d convinced herself that he would never find out, that he’d never look for her, that he’d never care. Clearly she’d been wrong.

Several times she’d wondered about making more of an effort to let him know he was going to be a father, but she’d never felt brave enough, and as the months had gone on and on it had felt harder and harder to do.

Once Ella had been born, she’d been too tired and overwhelmed to think about Alessandro at all, much less worry about him.

But now he was here, looking furious and wronged, and she had no idea what to do about it. After everything she’d been through—terrible morning sickness, a difficult labour and delivery, and Ella’s colicky start to life—she didn’t think she could handle Alessandro’s outrage on top of it.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said as she did her best to stand her ground and meet his stony gaze. ‘But I did try to reach you.’

‘So what are you saying?’ Alessandro demanded. ‘You left a message with the switchboard saying you were having my baby?’ He sounded scathing.

‘No, of course not,’ Mia answered with dignity. ‘I would never be so indiscreet, especially concerning a matter so personal to both of us. I simply said it was urgent and very important that you receive my message, and I asked you to return my call. Which you never did.’

‘Because I never got the message!’ Alessandro exploded. ‘As you very well should have been able to guess.’

Mia drew a steadying breath. ‘That is not my fault, Alessandro.’

‘No?’ Alessandro shook his head slowly. ‘Surely there were other ways, Mia. You could have told your boss, Eric Foster. He has my details. You could have got them from him, and contacted me directly.’

Mia looked away, knowing she could have done exactly that. Guilt needled her again, sharp, painful pricks. ‘To be honest, Alessandro, I didn’t think you’d care.’

The silence that met this statement was thunderous. Alessandro stared at her, his mouth open, his eyes flinty, before he folded his arms across his impressive chest and raked her with a single, scathing glare. ‘You didn’t think? Or you didn’t want to know? You hid my own child from me—’

‘Yes, I did,’ Mia cried. ‘I felt I had to.’

‘Why?’

‘Because…because I was scared.’ She hated admitting it, but she didn’t know what else to do.

‘What were you scared of?’

‘You. Sweeping into my life, making demands.’

‘Like seeing my own child? Is that such an outrageous demand?’

‘I was afraid you might ask for something else,’ Mia admitted in a low voice. Alessandro’s eyes narrowed to deadly slits.

‘Ask for something else…?’

‘A termination,’ she admitted, unable to look at him as she said it. ‘You didn’t seem thrilled about a potential pregnancy when you mentioned it to me…’ She trailed off, because the absolutely outraged look on Alessandro’s face kept her from any speech or thought. She shrank beneath his anger, hating that she was doing so.

She’d promised herself never to cower or cringe, and yet here she was, doing both.

‘A termination,’ Alessandro said, and then swore. ‘How dare you make such decisions for me?’

It seemed a strange twist of irony that in trying not to be controlled, she had come across as controlling. Mia sank onto the sofa, overwhelmed by Alessandro’s anger, by the way everything had been turned upside down.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said in a low voice. ‘I see now that I shouldn’t have. You just seemed so alarmed by the possibility of a pregnancy…’

‘And you assured me you couldn’t be pregnant! You were on the pill.’

‘I was, but I missed two, because of…well, because of everything.’

‘And you didn’t think to tell me that? To alert me to the possibility?’

‘It seemed such a tiny risk…’

‘Obviously not.’ He wheeled away from her, his anger making him need to move. ‘You made decisions you had no right to make.’

‘I thought I was doing what was best. And it isn’t as if you were checking up or even thinking of me all year, were you?’ she flung at him, tired of being on the defensive. ‘I did an internet search on you, you know. And I have to tell you, Alessandro, what I saw made me less inclined to search you out.’

Alessandro turned back to her, his powerful body taut and still. ‘What you saw?’

‘It looked like you were with a different woman every night.’ Mia lifted her chin. ‘Supermodels and socialites, by the look of them. Your bedroom must have a revolving door.’

‘You almost sound jealous,’ Alessandro remarked in a low, dangerous tone.

‘Hardly,’ Mia scoffed. ‘But from what I saw, you didn’t seem like father material.’ As soon as she said the words, she knew she’d gone too far. Something dark and deadly thrummed through Alessandro, tautening his body, flaring in his eyes.

‘You are not in a position to judge my parenting skills,’ he said in a voice that was all the more frightening in its quiet intensity. ‘That was not your right, just as it was not your right to keep this information—and my own child—from me.’ Mia opened her mouth, trying to frame a response that was not quite an apology, but Alessandro cut across her before she’d barely drawn a breath. ‘In any case, whatever you saw online…those were nothing more than social engagements.’

‘Are you saying it never went further?’ she scoffed. ‘I have trouble believing—’

‘I’m not saying one thing or the other,’ Alessandro replied, his voice rising, edged with ire. ‘It has no relevance. We weren’t a couple. I didn’t know.’ He took a step towards her, menacing in his stature, his pure physical presence. Mia held her ground, but only just. ‘No matter what photos you saw of me online, you should have told me I was going to be a father. End of.’

‘Fine.’ Her voice quavered as her hands once more bunched into helpless fists at her sides. ‘Fine, I should have. I admit that. But…can’t you admit your part in this? Getting rid of me the day after…’ Her voice trembled and broke. ‘The very next day, Alessandro. Can’t you realise how that made me feel?’

Colour slashed his cheekbones as he jerked his head in a brief nod. ‘It would have happened eventually, but I admit, our…liaison precipitated it. I thought working together would be a distraction. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been quite so…abrupt.’

‘So that was you making a unilateral decision,’ Mia returned, her voice shaking, ‘while calling me to account for doing the same.’

‘They’re entirely different situations, Mia. A job versus a baby. You cannot compare,’ Alessandro fired back, taking another step towards her so they were nearly standing toe to toe. Mia felt exhausted by his anger; her daughter was three months old, she’d been going it alone the entire time, and she was hormonal and sleep deprived and very near tears. Still, she took a steadying breath and met his furious, narrowed gaze with a challenging one of her own.

‘I’m not comparing, I’m only asking you to understand where I was coming from.’

‘I can’t understand at all where you’re coming from,’ he snapped. ‘What you did was inexcusable—’

‘Did you come here to blame me, Alessandro, for everything? Because I get it. This is all my fault. Message received. Now you can go home.’ Her voice trembled and tears she was desperate for him not to see stung her eyes. She turned away from him, too tired to keep battling.

She flopped onto the sofa, tucking her knees up to her chest. She’d just put Ella down for a nap and she’d been hoping for a little sleep herself. Clearly that was now an impossibility, which alone was enough to make her cry.

‘I’m not going home.’ Alessandro came to sit on the sofa opposite her, his hands resting on his knees. He gave her a level look that Mia could barely summon the energy to return.

‘What do you want, then?’ she asked tiredly, only to realise how open and dangerous that question was.

Now that she could think about it all properly, the shock of seeing him finally starting to fade, she realised he’d flown a long way for nothing more than a confrontation. He couldn’t have come simply for that. He had to want more. A lot more. But what?

‘I want my daughter,’ Alessandro stated simply, the words icing the blood in her veins and freezing her soul. She stared at him, as trapped as an animal in a snare, as his iron-hard gaze slammed into hers. ‘And I’m not leaving without her.’

Alessandro hadn’t meant the words as a threat, but he recognised that they sounded like one. He saw it in the flare of Mia’s eyes, the pulse that beat in her throat, as her hand crept up to press against her chest as if to still her fast-thudding heart. No, it wasn’t a threat. It was a promise.

‘Alessandro, be reasonable…’

‘Reasonable? What is reasonable about having my child hidden from me for three months—?’

‘I didn’t hide.’ Her voice trembled but he still heard a note of quiet dignity in it that struck an emotional chord within him. ‘Please, Alessandro, for…for our daughter’s sake, can we not play the blame game? Surely we can reach some kind of…of arrangement…’

An arrangement?

Was she hoping to fob him off with some half-baked idea of shared custody, parental visitations? ‘The only arrangement I’m interested in,’ Alessandro told her curtly, ‘is to take my daughter back to where she belongs.’

Mia’s eyes looked huge and dark in her face. ‘Which is where?’

‘Home. My villa in Tuscany. It is the perfect place to raise a child.’ As he said the words, he knew how much he meant them. His daughter would not have the kind of chaotic, unstable childhood he’d had, filled with strangers and strange places. She would have every need provided for, emotional and physical. And that required a home, with two parents fully involved in her life. He would not negotiate on any of those points, as a matter of principle and honour.

Mia pressed her lips together; Alessandro saw the sheen of tears in her eyes, giving them a luminous quality. ‘And what are you expecting me to do? Just…just hand her over?’

It took Alessandro a moment to realise what she thought, what she’d assumed—that he would take their daughter, and leave her here. Did she really think him such a monster? Had she thought he’d been threatening that? He felt both hurt and shamed by the idea.

‘No, of course not. I would never ask or expect such a thing. A child belongs with her mother as well as her father, especially one as young as ours.’ Ours. A ripple of shock went through him at the thought; he had a child. They did. He still couldn’t grasp it fully, the implications crashing over him in endless waves.

‘Then…’ Mia’s worried gaze scanned his face. ‘You want me to go with you?’ She sounded as if she could scarcely credit such a possibility.

‘Yes, of course I do.’ It had been obvious to Alessandro from the beginning, considering his own unfortunate background, and one he would never, ever wish on a child of his own. A child belonged with his or her parents. Always.

He could see now from Mia’s stunned expression that she had not considered that. No wonder she’d been so hostile; she thought he’d been going to steal their child, as if he’d ever do such a despicable thing.

Mia shook her head slowly. ‘Go with you…to Tuscany?’ she clarified, as if she still couldn’t believe it.

‘Yes.’

‘But…’ Mia continued to shake her head, as if she could not imagine such a thing coming to pass.

‘There is surely nothing keeping you here,’ Alessandro observed. ‘You’ve only lived here a year.’

‘As you know so well,’ she returned.

‘So I fail to see any problem.’

‘You just expect me to—to uproot myself yet again…’

‘For our child.’ As if on cue, a faint cry sounded through the flat, making them both still and stare at each other. The moment spun on, both of them frozen, and then she cried again. His daughter. ‘Where…where is she…?’ Alessandro began, barely able to form the words.

Wordlessly Mia rose from the sofa and went down the hallway to the flat’s bedrooms. Alessandro followed, his heart starting to thud. His daughter.

‘Hello, darling.’ Mia’s voice had softened into an unfamiliar coo as she opened the door to a small bedroom decked out in pale grey and mint green. Alessandro stood in the doorway, transfixed, as Mia went to the cot and bent over it, then scooped up the tiny form that had been inside.

She turned to Alessandro, the baby pressed to her shoulder, one hand cradling her head possessively. She was tiny, a mere scrap of humanity, and so very precious, bundled in a white velveteen sleepsuit.

‘This is Ella.’ Mia’s voice trembled. ‘Do you…do you want to hold her?’

Hold her?

Alarm warred with a deep longing. Alessandro stared at her for a moment, speechless and uncertain for what felt like the first time in his life.

Did he want to hold her? Yes.

Was he terrified? Yes.

He nodded, not trusting himself to speak, not sure what to do. How did one hold a baby? He had no idea. He had never held one before.

Mia walked towards him, still cradling their daughter. Ella. She came to stand in front of him, close enough that Alessandro was able to breathe in her achingly familiar scent of understated citrus. It assaulted his senses and made him remember far too many things.

‘Hold your arms out,’ Mia instructed, and Alessandro thrust both arms out stiffly in front of him. ‘Not like that,’ she said with a small smile, a surprising and strangely gratifying trace of laughter in her voice.

‘How?’ Alessandro demanded. ‘I don’t know what to do.’ This was a vulnerability he couldn’t hide. Knowledge he had never possessed.

‘Like this.’ Gently, holding Ella with one arm, she guided Alessandro’s own, manipulating his limbs as if he were a mannequin, until one arm was bent as if to cradle a football, the other arm to support it. ‘Now we just add the baby,’ she said softly, and before he knew what she was doing, she put Ella into his arms.

He cradled her to him instinctively, pressing her tiny body gently against his chest as she snuffled into his neck. He breathed in the sweet, milky warmth of her as his heart contracted, expanded, and contracted again. He felt. It hurt.

‘That’s the way,’ Mia encouraged him. ‘You’ve got the hang of it now.’

He felt like a complete novice, inexperienced, incapable, and if he were holding the most fragile and yet explosive thing possible—a cross between a stick of dynamite and a Ming vase.

‘I don’t want to hurt her,’ he confessed, undone by this child in his arms, this fragile, precious, impossible human being.

‘You aren’t hurting her,’ Mia assured him. Tears sparkled in her eyes and she blinked them back rapidly. ‘Trust me, she would let you know if you were.’

‘Does she cry? Is she…is she a good baby?’ He realised how much he wanted to know—all the details, all he’d missed. It didn’t matter now that he’d missed them or why he had, he just wanted to know.

‘She’s a wonderful baby, but she’s had her moments.’ The smile Mia gave him was weary, and he suddenly noticed how tired she looked. Realised how hard it must have been, to parent alone all these months…which was all the more reason for her to come to Tuscany with him, where she could have help, and comfort, and space.

‘You’ll come to Tuscany,’ he said, and it sounded like an order. Mia’s gentle, tired smile faltered as a familiar fire sparked in her eyes.

‘Alessandro, you can’t order me about…’

‘You’ll come,’ he insisted. ‘And Ella, too. You must.’ His voice was too strident, his manner too abrupt and autocratic. He knew that, and yet he couldn’t keep himself from it, because it was so very important. It was everything.

He saw the remoteness enter Mia’s eyes, felt her coolness as she took Ella out of his arms, pressing her against her shoulder as she half turned away from him.

‘She needs a feed,’ she murmured, but it felt like an excuse. She slipped past him and went back to the main living area, leaving Alessandro no choice but to follow.

When he came into the room, Mia was sitting back on the sofa, Ella brought to her breast, one tiny fist clutching a tendril of golden hair. Shock jolted through him at the sight of her feeding their daughter, the simple, pure rightness of it, followed by a rush of primal possessiveness that nearly felled him with its intensity, its sureness.

This was his family. The family he’d never had himself, the family he hadn’t even realised he wanted. And he was never letting them go.