“A woman is of very little use to me when she’s behind me. Bent over in front of me is another matter, as you well know.”
Her cheeks turned dark with color, and not all of it was from embarrassment. He’d made her angry, as he’d intended to do. He didn’t know what it was about her that pushed him so. That made him say things like that.
That made him show anything beyond the unreadable mask he preferred to present to the world.
She was angry, but she didn’t say another word. She simply stepped into the elevator, her eyes fixed to the digital readout on the wall. The doors slid closed behind them, and still she didn’t look at him.
“If you brought me here to abuse me perhaps I should simply go back to my father’s house and take my chances with him.”
“That’s what you call abuse? You didn’t seem to find it so abhorrent the night you let me do it.”
“But you weren’t being a bastard that night. Had you approached me at the bar and used it as a pickup line I would have told you to go to hell.”
“Would you have, Alessia?” he asked, anger, heat, firing in his blood. “Somehow I don’t think that’s true.”
“No?”
“No.” He turned to her, put his hand, palm flat, on the glossy marble wall behind her, drawing closer, drawing in the scent of her. Dio. Like lilac and sun. She was Spring standing before him, new life, new hope.
He pushed away from her, shut down the feeling.
“Shows what you know.”
“I know a great deal about you.”
“Stop with the you-know-me stuff. Just because we slept together—”
“You have a dimple on your right cheek. It doesn’t show every time you smile, only when you’re really, really smiling. You dance by yourself in the sun, you don’t like to wear shoes. You’ve bandaged every scraped knee your brothers and sisters ever had. And whenever you see me, you can’t help yourself, you have to stare. I know you, Alessia Battaglia, don’t tell me otherwise.”
“You knew me, Matteo. You knew a child. I’m not the same person now.”
“Then how is it you ended up in my bed the night of your bachelorette party?”
Her eyes met his for the first time all morning, for the first time since his private plane had touched down in Sicily. “Because I wanted to make a choice, Matteo. Every other choice was being made for me. I wanted to … I wanted to at least make the choice about who my first lover should be.”
“Haven’t you had a lot of time to make that choice?”
“When? With all of my free time? I’ve spent my life making sure my brothers and sisters were cared for, really cared for, not just given the bare necessities by staff. I spent my life making sure they never bore the full brunt of my father’s rage. I’ve spent my life being the perfect daughter, the hostess for his functions, standing and smiling next to him when he got reelected for a position that he abuses.”
“Why?” he asked.
“Because of my siblings. Because no matter that my father is a tyrant, he is our father. We’re Battaglias. I hoped … I’ve always hoped I could make that mean something good. That I could make sure my brothers and sisters learned to do the right things, learned to want the right things. If I didn’t make sure, they would only have my father as a guiding influence and I think we both know Antonioni Battaglia shouldn’t be anyone’s guiding influence.”
“And what about you?”
“What about me?”
The elevator doors slid open and they stepped out into the empty hall on the top floor.
“You live your whole life for other people?”
She shook her head. “No. I live my life in the way that lets me sleep at night. Abandoning my brothers and sisters to our father would have hurt me. So it’s not like I’m a martyr. I do it because I love them.”
“But you ran out on the wedding.”
She didn’t say anything, she simply started walking down the hall, her heels clicking on the marble floor. He stood and watched her, his eyes drifting over her curves, over that gorgeous, heart-shaped backside, outlined so perfectly by her pencil skirt.
It looked like something from the Corretti clothing line. One thing he might have to thank his damn brother Luca for. But it was the only thing.
Especially since the rumor was that in his absence the other man was attempting to take Matteo’s share in the Corretti family hotels. A complete mess since that bastard Angelo had his hands in it, as well.
A total mess. And one he should have anticipated. He’d dropped out of the dealings with Corretti Enterprises completely since the day of Alessia and Alessandro’s aborted wedding. And the vultures had moved in. He should try to stop them, he knew that. And he could, frankly. He had his own fortune, his own power, independent of the Corretti machine, but at the moment, the most pressing issue was tied to the tall, willowy brunette who was currently sauntering in the wrong direction.
“The suite is this way,” he said.
She stopped, turned sharply on her heel and started walking back toward him, past him and down the hall.
He nearly laughed at the haughty look on her face. In fact, he found he wanted to, but wasn’t capable of it. It stuck in his throat, his control too tight to let it out.
He walked past her, to the door of the suite, and took a key card out of his wallet, tapping it against the reader. “My key opens all of them.”
“Careful, caro, that sounds like a bad euphemism.” She shot him a deadly look before entering the suite.
“So prickly, Alessia.”
“I told you you didn’t know me.”
“Then help me get to know you.”
“You first, Matteo.”
He straightened. “I’m Matteo Corretti, oldest son of Benito Corretti. I’m sure you know all about him. My criminal father who died in a fire, locked in an endless rivalry with his brother, Carlo. You ought to know about him, too, as you were going to marry Carlo’s son. I run the hotel arm of my family corporation, and I deal with my own privately owned line of boutique hotels, one of which you’re standing in.”
She crossed her arms and cocked her hip out to the side. “I think I read that in your online bio. And it’s nothing I don’t already know.”
“That’s all there is to know.”
She didn’t believe that. Not for a moment. She knew there was more to him than that. Knew it because she’d seen it. Seen his blind rage as he’d done everything in his power to protect her from a fate she didn’t even like to imagine.
But he didn’t speak of it. So neither did she.
“Tell me about you,” he said.
“Alessia Battaglia, Pisces, oldest daughter of Antonioni. My father is a politician who does under-the-table dealings with organized-crime families. It’s the thing that keeps him in power. But it doesn’t make him rich. It’s why he needs the Correttis.” She returned his style of disclosure neatly, tartly.
“The Correttis are no longer in the organized-crime business. In that regard, my cousins, my brothers and I have done well, no matter our personal feelings for each other.”
“You might not be criminals but you are rich. That’s why you’re so attractive. In my father’s estimation at least.”
“Attractive enough to trade us his daughter.”
She nodded. She looked tired suddenly. Defeated. He didn’t like that. He would rather have her spitting venom at him.
“You could walk away, Alessia,” he said. “Even now you could. I cannot keep you here. Your father cannot hold you. You’re twenty-seven. You have the freedom to do whatever you like. Hell, you could do it on my dime since I’ll be supporting my child regardless of what you do.”
He didn’t know why he was saying it, why he was giving her the out. But part of him wished she would take it. Wished she would leave him alone, take her beauty, the temptation, the ache that seemed to lodge in his chest whenever she was around, with her. The danger she presented to the walls of protection he’d built around his life.
She didn’t say anything. She didn’t move. She was frozen to the spot, her lips parted slightly, her breath shallow, fast.
“Alessia, you have the freedom to walk out that door if you want. Right now.”
He took a step toward her, compelled, driven by something he didn’t understand. Didn’t want to understand. The beast in him was roaring now and he wanted it to shut up. Wanted his control back.
He’d had a handle on it again. Had moved forward from the events of his past. Until Alessia had come back into his life, and at the moment all he wanted was for her to be gone, and for his life to go back to the way it had been.
He cupped her chin, tilted her face up so that her eyes met his. “I am not holding you here. I am not your father and I am not your jailer.”
Dark eyes met his, the steel in them shocking. “No, you aren’t. But you are the father of my baby. Our baby. I’m not going to walk away, Matteo. If you want an out, you’ll have to take it yourself. Don’t think that I will. I’m strong enough to face this. To try to make this work.”
“It would be better if you would.”
“Do you really think that?”
“You think I will be a hands-on father? That I will somehow … be an influence in our child’s life?” The very thought made him sick. What could he offer a child but a legacy of violence and abuse? But he couldn’t walk away, either. Couldn’t leave Alessia on her own. But he feared his touch would only poison a child. His baby would be born innocent, unspoiled by the world, and Matteo was supposed to hold him? With his hands? Hands that were stained with blood.