You’ve had some of the fantasies.
Oh, yes, she had. But one night of passion wasn’t the sum total of her life’s desires.
“All of this,” he said. “And still you want this child?”
“Yes, Matteo. I do. Because babies are a lot of work. But the love you feel for them … it’s stronger than anything, than any fear. It doesn’t mean I’m not afraid, only that I know in the end the love will win.”
“Well, we can be terrified together,” he said.
“You’re terrified?”
“Babies are tiny. They look very easily broken.”
“I’ll teach you how to hold one.”
Their eyes met, heat arching between them, and this time her pregnancy hormones were making her feel something other than anger.
She looked back down at her breakfast. “How’s your head?”
“I feel like someone put a woodpecker in my skull.”
“It’s no less than you deserve.”
“I will treat you better than I did last night. That I promise you. I’m not sure what other promises I can make, but that one … that one I will keep.”
She thought of him last night. Broken. Passionate. Needy. She wondered how much of that was the real Matteo. How much he kept hidden beneath a facade.
How much he kept from escaping. And she knew just how he felt in some ways. Knew what it was like to hide everything behind a mask. It was just that her mask was smiling, and his hardly made an expression at all.
“Will you be faithful to me?” she asked, the words catching in her throat.
Matteo looked down into his coffee for a moment, then stood, his cup in his hand. “I have some work to see to this morning, and my head is killing me. We can talk more later.”
Alessia’s heart squeezed tight, nausea rolling through her. “Later?”
“My head, Alessia.”
My heart, you jackass. “Great. Well, perhaps we can have a meeting tonight, or something.”
“We’re busy tonight.”
“Oh. Doing what?”
“Celebrating our marriage, quite publicly, at a charity event.”
“What?” She felt far too raw to be in public.
“After what happened with Alessandro, we have to present a united front. Your not-quite wedding to him was very public, as was your announcement of your pregnancy. The entire world is very likely scratching their heads over the spectacle we’ve created, and now it’s time to show a little bit of normal.”
“But we don’t have a normal marriage—I mean, so I’ve been told.”
“As far as the media is concerned we do.”
“Why? Afraid of a little scandal? You’re a Corretti.”
“What do you want our child to grow up and read? Because thanks to the internet, this stuff doesn’t die. It’s going to linger, scandal following him wherever he goes. You and I both know what that’s like. To have all the other kids whisper about your parents. For our part, we aren’t criminals, but we’ve hardly given our child a clean start.”
“So we go out and look pretty and sparkly and together, and what? The press just forgets about what happened?”
“No, but perhaps they will continue on in the vein that they’ve started in.”
“What’s that?” She’d, frankly, spent a lot of energy avoiding the stories that the media had written about the wedding.
“That we were forbidden lovers, who risked it all to be together.”
It wasn’t far from the truth, although Matteo hadn’t truly known the risk they’d been taking their night together. But she had. And she’d risked it all for the chance to be with him.
Looking at him now, dealing with all the bruises he’d inflicted on her heart, she knew she would make the same choice now. Because at least it had been her choice. Her mistake. Her very first big one. It was like a rite of passage in a way.
“Well, then, I suppose we had better get ready to put on a show. I’m not sure I have the appropriate costume, though.”
“I’m sure I can come up with something.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
“SOMETHING” TURNED OUT to be an evening gown from the Corretti fashion line. It was gorgeous, and it was very slinky, with silky gold fabric that molded to her curves and showed the emerging baby bump that she almost hadn’t noticed until she’d put on the formfitting garment.
Of course, there was no point in hiding her pregnancy. She’d announced it on television, for heaven’s sake. But even so, since she hadn’t really dealt with it yet, she felt nervous about sharing it with the public like this.
She put her hand on her stomach, smoothing her palm over the small bump. She was going to be a mother. Such a frightening, amazing thing to realize. She’d been tangled up in finding Matteo, and then in the days since—had it really only been days?—she’d been dealing with having him back in her life. With marrying him. She hadn’t had a chance to really think of the baby in concrete terms.
Alessia looked at herself in the mirror one more time, at her stomach, and then back at her face. Her looks had never mattered very much to her. She was comfortable with them, more or less. She was taller than almost every other woman she knew, and a good portion of the men, at an Amazonian six feet, but Matteo was taller.
He managed to make her feel small. Feminine. Beautiful.
That night they were together he’d made her feel especially beautiful. And then last night he’d made her feel especially undesirable. Funny how that worked.
She turned away from the mirror and walked out of the bedroom. Matteo was standing in the hall waiting for her, looking so handsome in his black suit she went a little weak-kneed. He was a man who had a strong effect, that was for sure.
“Don’t you clean up nice,” she said. “You almost look civilized.”
“Appearances can be deceiving,” he said.
“The devil wore Armani?”
“Something like that.” He held his hand out and she hesitated for a moment before taking it and allowing him to lead her down the curved staircase and into the foyer. He opened the door for her, his actions that of a perfectly solicitous husband.
Matteo’s sports car was waiting for them, the keys in the ignition.
Alessia waited until they were on the road before speaking again. “So, what’s the charity?”
He shifted gears, his shoulders bunched up, muscles tense. “It’s one of mine.”
“You have charities?”
“Yes.”
“I didn’t realize.”
“I thought you knew me.”
“We’re filled with surprises for each other, aren’t we? It’s a good thing we have a whole lifetime together to look forward to,” she said drily.
“Yes,” he said, his voice rough, unconvincing.
And she was reminded of their earlier conversation in the dining room. She’d asked him point-blank if he would be faithful, and he’d sidestepped her. She had a feeling he was doing it again.
She gritted her teeth to keep from saying anything more. To keep from asking him anything, or pressing the issue. She had some pride. She did. She was sure she did, and she was going to do everything she could to hold on to her last little bit of it.
“Well, what is your charity for, then?”
“This is an education fund. For the schools here.”
“That’s … great,” she said. “I didn’t get to do any higher education.”
“Did you want to?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so. I mean … I didn’t really have anything I wanted to be when I grew up.”
“Nothing?”
“There weren’t a lot of options on the table. Though I did always think I would like to be a mother.” A wife and a mother. That she would like to have someone who loved her, cherished her like the men in her much-loved books cherished their heroines. It was a small dream, one that should have been somewhat manageable.
Instead, she’d gone off and traded it in for a night of wild sex.
And darn it, she still didn’t regret it. Mainly. “Mission accomplished.”
“Why, yes, Matteo, I am, as they say, living the dream.”
“There’s no need to be—”
“There is every need to be,” she said. “Don’t act like I should thank you for any of this.”
“I wasn’t going to,” he said, his tone biting.
“You were headed there. This is not my dream.” But it was close. So close that it hurt worse in some ways than not getting anywhere near it at all. Because this was proving that her dream didn’t exist. That it wasn’t possible.
“My apologies, cara, for not being your dream.” His voice was rough, angry, and she wanted to know where he got off being mad after the way he’d been treating her.
“And my apologies for not being yours. I imagine if I had a room number stapled to my forehead and a bag of money in my hand I’d come a little closer.”
“Now you’re being absurd.”
“I don’t think so.”
Matteo maneuvered his car through the narrow city streets, not bothering with nice things like braking before turning, and pulled up to the front of his hotel.
“It’s at your hotel,” she said.
“Naturally.” He threw the car into Park, then got out, rounding to the passenger side and opening the door for her. “Come, my darling wife, we have a public to impress.”