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“The only thing I would worry about in this whole scenario is...how the both of you will make it work.” Massimo grinned. “Nat and I will watch from the sidelines, popcorn in hands. She’s going to love seeing Neha bring you down a notch.”
Leo smiled. His sister-in-law was determined to see him defeated. In something, anything. “All Neha literally wants is to put me to stud, Massimo.”
Massimo burst out laughing, then sobered up when he realized Leo was serious. “What?”
“She wants the child because if I’m the father, Mario will think twice before he comes near the child. He’s got her all twisted inside out. She doesn’t want a coparent. Much less a relationship.”
“You’re okay with that?”
Leo didn’t answer, his gaze caught on the beautiful woman who had turned his life upside down with a simple request.
He was going to be a father, yes, but he wasn’t going to do it all by her rules.
Neither was he going to be tempted into a relationship with a woman he’d share a child with, with his history of relationships. Agreeing to Neha’s request meant he could never satisfy the deep hunger she evoked in him.
CHAPTER THREE (#u889943fb-df08-59b4-8ebc-6409954c7424)
NEHA KNOCKED ON the thick wooden door. When there was no answer, she turned the gleaming metal handle and stepped into Leonardo’s bedroom. Uninvited.
The suite was twice the size of hers. Hers was thoroughly feminine with soft pink walls and bedspreads; this was a thoroughly masculine domain.
A dark oak desk sat in one corner of the room with a large monitor and papers neatly filed while comfy sofas and a recliner made up a cozy sitting area around a giant fireplace. Original, priceless artwork hung on the cream walls, a casual display of the Brunetti wealth—an overarching theme over the entire villa.
Dusk hadn’t fallen completely yet and the high windows filled the room with an orange glow. One portrait hung on the wall—Silvio sitting in a vintage armchair while Leo, no more than six or seven, stood next to his father, dressed in a matching three-piece dark gray suit, his thick curly hair slicked back, his baby-blue gaze full of grief and an ache he hadn’t learned to hide yet.
A jarring contrast to the powerful, impenetrable man he was today. Neha traced her finger over the little boy’s face, a host of emotions running through her.
She called out Leo’s name a couple of times and heard nothing back. Drawing a deep breath, she ventured farther in. There wasn’t so much sunlight in the bedroom and there was a coolness to the room, the air filled with that masculine tone she associated with him. The walls were a light gray with light blocking shades on the windows while a massive king bed sat against a high-ceilinged wall.
A huge upholstered headboard and pristine white sheets made the bed look like an ocean of welcoming comfort and warmth.
She could picture Leonardo sprawled in the middle of that bed, taut muscles relaxing after a long day, languid mouth stretched into an inviting smile, waiting for her. Her breaths came shallow, her fingers reaching out as if she could...
Leo walked in through a large door she hadn’t noticed, rows and rows of expensive, tailored clothes behind him.
Any sense she did possess before, any air left in her lungs, rushed out.
His magnificent chest was bare, tailored black trousers hung low on his hips. His jet-black hair, thick and wavy, was damp from the shower.
Neha couldn’t even pretend to look away. Every inch of him was chiseled to perfection like one of the life-size statues littered throughout the estate. She knew he worked out with that same ruthless discipline he applied to everything else in life, but dear God, she could spend hours just looking at his body, imagining all the things she would love to do to it.
Miles and miles of tautly stretched skin beckoned her touch. The broad sweep of his shoulders, the jut of his collarbones, the solid musculature of his chest, the slab of rock-hard abdomen...he was intensely male, an utter contrast to her soft curves.
His chest was liberally sprinkled with hair, and she imagined the sensation of that rough hair abrading her silky skin, over her sensitive nipples... An ache filled her breasts, narrowing down into her lower belly.
Every inch of him was defined and all she wanted to do was test the give of all that toned muscle with her teeth.
A single drop of water plunked onto his chest from his wet hair and she followed its trail from one neatly defined pectoral to the dip, through the tight planes of his abdomen and into the line of hair below his navel and into the band of his trousers.
“Should I wait a little longer before I put on the shirt?”
His voice—ringing with a husky wickedness—jerked Neha out of her greedy feasting. Heat rushed up her neck and into her cheeks.
Blue eyes danced with a roguish glint she’d never seen in him before. His sculpted mouth was turned up at the corners, his smile—a rare, genuine flash of teeth digging a groove in one cheek—a beautiful thing that could pull her out of the darkest of pits any day.
She looked away and then back, utterly incapable of coming up with a reply that wasn’t a yes, please. He was flirting with her and how she wanted to retort in kind. But it could lead everywhere and nowhere...
“Massimo said you’re leaving for Milan again. That you’re off to Paris from there. I didn’t want to miss seeing you,” she babbled, trying to gather a little sense. “We hadn’t talked again and I thought I should...”
He waited silently. And that bubble of intimacy pulled her, deeper and deeper.
“I’ll wait outside. Can we talk while you walk to the helicopter?”
He leaned against the big bed, his shirt thrown casually onto it. His glorious chest still bare. “I wasn’t going to leave without talking to you.”
“Oh, okay,” she said, suddenly feeling superconscious of her own attire. The see-through cover-up she’d pulled on in a hurry stuck to her damp skin while barely skimming the tops of her thighs. She pulled the sheer fabric away from her skin and his attention, arrested on every breath and movement of hers, made her shaky all over.
“I just wanted to reiterate that—”
“I have made a decision.”
She swayed, her knees refusing to prop her up. He reached for her immediately, his long fingers grasping her elbow in a firm grip.
“I’m fine,” she said, snatching back her arm. Forcing herself to breathe in long, deep gulps. “I’ll let you finish dressing.” She’d barged into his room and now she couldn’t wait to escape. If he said no...
“I’d prefer to talk here,” he said, pushing off from the bed. “And I’ll put on the shirt if it makes you uncomfortable.”
“Not uncomfortable, no. After all, it’s your bedroom. Just distracting,” she said in a half-snorting, high voice, panic letting her thoughts out in a rush.
His laughter was delicious, sexy, rubbing against her skin, winding her up. Heat washed over every inch of her, the very idea of licking up that hard chest sending a rush of desire through her.
“As you wish,” he said with a devilish smile, and reached for his white shirt.
Neha watched, shameless and bold and greedy, as he raised his arms and let the shirtsleeves slide down his corded arms. A mole on the underside of his right bicep, a small scar under his left pectoral—details she didn’t need to know about him and would never forget.
She followed him into the seating area, too agitated to sit.
He took mercy on her and said, “We need to set expectations.”
She nodded. “I’ll sign any document you put in front of me that I’ll never seek financial assistance. I’ll never hint, twist or manipulate you for marriage. Or demand that you be involved in the child’s life. I—”
He leaned forward in the sofa, all the humor gone from his face. “That’s not what I meant.”
“I just want to make it clear that I won’t be a headache for you, Leo.”
He pressed a finger to his forehead, as if he was exercising patience he didn’t have. “In doing so, you’re insulting me.”
“What? How?”
“You want me to father a child, face off Mario, all the while offering no emotional or financial or even moral support?” His taut expression highlighted the rugged beauty of his features. “That makes me such a shining example of what a man should be, sì?”
“I’m not sure I follow.”
He sighed. “It’s a little...disturbing to be thought a man who thinks nothing of fathering a child as a favor and moves on.”
Shock rendered Neha silent for long minutes. That was the last objection she’d expected. “You told me once that you innately don’t trust women, and when I said that that was horribly sexist, you said you didn’t have the slightest inclination to examine it, much less fix it.
“You said...love was for fools who willingly bought into a bunch of compromises and then glorified it. You told that reporter you were ecstatic to let Massimo propagate the great Brunetti line further.
“I assumed from our long association that being tied down isn’t in your future plans.”
He ran a hand over his jaw. “Being tied down to a woman is one thing, a child, completely another.”
“What does that mean?”
“If I father a child, I will damn well be involved in that child’s life. Our long association should have told you that.”
His softly spoken words packed a punch. Neha swallowed the defense that rose to her lips, slowly realizing that this wasn’t about her.
It was about him, his...feelings. And he was right—in all the myriad scenarios she’d foreseen she hadn’t considered his feelings at all. “It wasn’t meant as a statement on what kind of a man you are.
“I chose you because you’re the one man I know who’d do anything to protect an innocent in your sphere.”
His gaze held hers, as if to see through to the truth of that.
After a long time, he nodded and she let a breath out. “What does this mean, then?”
“The child and its well-being is the most important thing in all of this, sì?”
“I’ll love my child more than anything in the world. I’d do anything for her or him.”
The hardness edged away from his eyes. “That’s the only reason I’ve come this far, bella. But you need to accept that I will never be an absent parent or a stranger.
“I know what goes through a child’s mind when a parent abandons him or her. I can imagine what this child will hear from friends, well-wishers, every cruel, hard word and taunt. I will not willingly put any child of mine through that.”
He had every scenario their child would face covered so thoroughly that Neha stared.
How could she have forgotten that Leonardo’s mother had left in the middle of one night, leaving her five-year-old son to his father? How could she have forgotten the fact that she knew better than anyone what a wound that had left in Leo’s life?
If Leonardo was a father in the true sense of the word...
Mario’s shadow wouldn’t touch her child. He or she would have Leo’s guidance and support, Natalie and Massimo’s affection, be a part of a family. Everything she’d always wanted would be her child’s.
The prospect of his involvement was such a tempting offer that Neha had to force herself to think of other implications. “Our relationship—”
“Will be defined by the fact that we want what’s best for our child.”
She nodded, the confidence in his tone building her own. They were rational adults, they knew each other’s strengths and weaknesses—they could handle this rationally.
“You said conditions. What else?”
“I want you to postpone the announcement about your retirement. And, if required, your retirement itself. By a few months.”
“No, absolutely not.”
Her refusal rang around the room. It knocked Leo off axis to see the sudden fear and distrust in her eyes. Addressed toward him when he’d only ever seen respect.
“Neha,” he started softly, reminding himself that, for whatever reason, she was fragile right now, “hear me out.”
She stayed at the window, the waning sunlight from the skylight gilding her body in a golden outline.
Even in the tense situation, he felt the tug of awareness on his senses that she so easily provoked.
The loose white sheer tunic had a low neckline that presented him tantalizing glimpses of the upper curves of her lush breasts. The sheer fabric showed silky brown skin, and the shadow of her orange bikini, skimming the tops of her long, toned thighs. Pink nails peeked through the sandals she wore, completing a picture of such sheer sensuality that she took his breath away.
From the moment he’d found her standing inside his bedroom—staring at his bed—he’d had the most overwhelming urge to pull that tunic up and away from her body until he could feast on the sexy curves underneath. With his eyes, hands and mouth.
Damp hair stuck to her scalp, highlighting the classical bone structure of her face. He wanted to run his hands all over her, learn if she was as soft and silky as he imagined.
She stood up from the sofa, walked to the door and back, to the windows and then back again, every step conveying restless energy. Without that elegant facade she put on like a second skin, he could see now what Massimo had seen. Shadows hung like dark bruises under her eyes and there was a pinched look to her mouth.
When he went to her, she turned, her entire body trembling. He wrapped his hands over her palms, keeping the distance between them. She smelled like vanilla and sunlight and an intoxicating mixture of both. Against his abrasive fingers, she was silky soft. “Neha, look at me. I would not ask something of you unless it was important.”
Her expression cleared. “You’re right.” She sat down on the coffee table, her knees tucked between his own. “Tell me.”
“You already know a little about the cyber-attacks on BCS, right?” He waited for her to follow along. “But the cyber-attacks on Massimo’s firm were just the tip of the iceberg.
“We had three deals in our pocket that fell through. Sylvio’s colorful, abusive past keeps being recycled by the media and the press, dragging news of his embezzlement, and how he evaded incarceration because I bribed the pertinent officials.
“Alessandra’s personal life, her past, her family—they keep getting exposure in trashy tabloids,” he said, mentioning his grandmother’s stepdaughter. Neha had met the beautiful top supermodel Alessandra Giovanni a couple of times during her long acquaintance with Leo. And for all her harshness and rough edges, Greta was a different woman with her second husband’s daughter. Carlo had been gone for a long time, but Alex had become a part of the family.
“But Alex isn’t even a Brunetti,” Neha said, frowning.
“Massimo and I think she’s been attacked because Greta is close to her. All of us have been featured in the news cycles over the past few months—always some sort of scandal or sensationalism attached to our names. Reputations have crumbled, businesses been ruined, for less in the finance industry.”
“So everything is connected?”
He nodded. “Natalie was hired to bring down Massimo’s security design. The clients’ information was left vulnerable to attack, but she didn’t steal it.”
“That’s how Massimo met her?”
“Sì. And thanks to the fact that she’s crazy about Massimo, she’s given us a name. Vincenzo Cavalli. He’s bent upon a revenge scheme, determined to cause as much harm as possible to the Brunettis.
“When Massimo’s design was hit, only four of us knew. Massimo, me, Natalie—who’d attacked the system—and the man who’d orchestrated it.
“Yet somehow Mario leaked the news of the attack to the BFI board. He’s been riling them up, calling for my resignation. That I’m not unlike my father, that in the end, I will bring ruin to BFI like Silvio had done once. Most of the board members remember the destruction Silvio caused.”
A shadow of fear crossed Neha’s eyes. “So Mario is involved with this man?”
