Secret Heirs And A Forever Family

‘My mother was.’ The information slipped out, as he recalled the woman who had been so proud of her heritage, despite the hovel they’d lived in.

‘She was?’ Sympathy and compassion clouded Megan’s eyes, making the antipasti in his stomach threaten to revolt. ‘I’m so sorry, Dario. Is your mother dead?’

For a moment, the memories threatened to flood in on him. Memories he had spent a lifetime forgetting. ‘Yes, but it was a long time ago.’

‘Oh, no, were you a child?’

‘No,’ he said, because he had never been a child, not in the sense she meant. Grasping his fork in stiff fingers, he scooped up a mouthful of Sofia’s grilled aubergine. It tasted like chalk as he swallowed.

‘What about your father?’ she asked.

‘I never knew him,’ he said, the lie coming much more easily this time.

He heard a groan, and looked up to see Megan digging a knuckle into her temple as if trying to erase something from her mind.

‘Are you okay?’

‘Yes, but… It’s like there’s a darkness lurking at the edge of my consciousness and I don’t want to let it in.’ Had the question about his father made her think of her own? And all the things she was trying so hard to forget?

He got out of his chair. ‘Then don’t.’ Smoothing the unruly hair back from her brow, he took her other hand, and tugged her out of the chair. ‘It has been a long day. You must get some rest now.’

‘Really, it’s nothing. I’m fine.’ She dropped her hand. ‘It’s gone now.’

‘I insist. You must rest.’ Despite her protests, he scooped her into his arms, the desire to protect her from the demons that might be chasing her foolish in the circumstances, but there nonetheless. He needed her to remember, but if remembering still caused her pain…

She gripped his neck, looking a little perturbed. ‘Put me down, Dario,’ she said. ‘You’re overreacting. I can walk.’

He tightened his grip, taking her into the house. ‘Let me carry you. It is my fault you are over-tired.’

She held on to his neck and stopped struggling, but the look she sent him was one of frustration. He didn’t care. He was right. They had overdone things because where she was concerned he was incapable of keeping his libido in check.

‘I don’t see how it’s your fault when I seduced you,’ she said, indignant now.

‘That is debatable,’ he said, but he couldn’t help smiling at the stubborn lift of her chin, or the combative light in her eyes. He was beginning to discover how brave and spirited she could be, for a woman who had been brutalised. Unfortunately, it only turned him on more.

He felt the familiar response in his groin and took a turn once he’d mounted the stairs towards her suite of rooms.

‘Stop right there. I’m not going to my own rooms,’ she shouted, and all but threw herself out of his arms—a bit too brave and spirited for his liking.

He swore as he scrambled to gather her back up. ‘Come back here.’

‘No.’ She batted his hands away.

‘You need to sleep. You must do as I tell you.’

‘I’ll do no such thing. You have to stop treating me like a child, Dario. I’m a grown woman. I can make decisions for myself.’

He could feel his own frustration kicking in. ‘Not when you make the wrong ones.’

Like believing even for a second you could have fallen in love with a man like me.

‘Will you listen to yourself?’ Megan propped her hands on her hips.

How could she want to kiss him and strangle him at the same time? Seriously though, they were getting this straight once and for all. No more excuses and no more distractions.

‘This is not the nineteenth century and you are not in charge of me.’

‘You need rest. It is past midnight and you have reached orgasm six times today,’ he shot back.

So he’d been counting. Why did that make her feel so much better?

He crossed his arms over his chest, looking like the poster boy for stubborn manhood, strong and indomitable. He who should be obeyed at all costs.

Well, not by me, buster.

His biceps bulged deliciously beneath the short sleeves of his T-shirt.

Her sex clenched.

Fine, maybe some distractions were going to be impossible to ignore. But that didn’t mean she was going to let him get away with his high-handed attitude a moment longer. They’d come so far this evening.

The sex had been awesome, but the tantalising glimpse of intimacy had been even more so. Because the few things she had discovered about him tonight had intrigued and moved her in ways she couldn’t explain.

Who would have believed that beneath the charming, charismatic sex god lurked a man who could look stricken when he was asked about his mother? He’d masked it quickly, but she’d seen enough to be touched—and compelled to wonder about so many things. Things she hoped to be able to discover about him in the days ahead. But she couldn’t do that if she allowed him to push her away again—to compartmentalise their time together and keep her at arm’s length.

‘And I enjoyed every single one of those orgasms,’ she said, something rich and empowering surging through her when his face flushed with aggravation. Sex was the key.

She knew sex, even great sex, didn’t necessarily translate into emotional intimacy—especially with a man who was so adept at hiding his feelings. But it was a very good start. Not to mention rewarding in its own right.

‘But we wouldn’t have been at it for six hours straight if you hadn’t denied us both the pleasure of sleeping together for a whole week,’ she added.

‘You were recovering from your accident,’ he said.

‘And now I’m not recovering any more. I’m recovered. I think we proved that comprehensively this evening.’

Something flickered across his face again, before he looked away. She touched his forearm, felt it tense beneath her fingers.

‘How about a compromise?’ she murmured. She didn’t want to argue with him.

‘What compromise?’ he said grudgingly.

She smiled, amused by the muscle bunching in his jaw. For a moment he reminded her of a petulant child, so used to getting his own way he had forgotten how to bend. Only he wasn’t a child, not in any sense of the word. Because…biceps.

‘This is funny somehow?’ The muscle in his jaw started to throb.

She bit down on her lip, trying not to let loose the smile that wanted to burst over her face.

Because instead of finding his taciturn show of temper intimidating, she found it exhilarating…and unbearably arousing.

His gaze glided down to her mouth, and she felt the spark of awareness leap between them.

‘Here’s what I suggest,’ she said, deciding to ignore his rhetorical question. ‘I’ll consider taking your advice about my welfare, if I think it’s warranted, but only if you agree to let us start behaving like a couple.’

No way was she letting him confine her to her own bedroom again.

‘What does that mean? We are already together here.’

‘I want to share a bed with you.’

His eyes narrowed and she could see he was about to refuse, so she jumped in before he could.

‘I want us to sleep together…’ She hesitated. Would this make her sound too needy? She frowned. How could it when they were engaged? Since when did engaged couples sleep in separate rooms? ‘I like being in your arms. I want to go to sleep with you and to wake up with you. It’s important to me.’

Dario knew he should refuse. She did not know what she was asking. They weren’t a couple.

But before he could force the words out, she said, ‘You make me feel safe, Dario. I don’t want there to be so much distance between us. Or why are we even considering getting married?’

The plea in her voice made him feel like a bastard. He should tell her now that the engagement had been a ruse. A ruse that had got out of control. But somehow, he couldn’t bring himself to do it. Something about the way she was looking at him, as if he could harness the moon and the stars for her if she asked him to, made him want to say yes.

She trusted him. When she learned the truth, it would crush that trust. But until then, he wanted her to feel safe and secure.

He cupped her cheek, his heart thundering in his chest when she leant into the caress and smiled.

‘I can accept that compromise…’ he said, touching his thumb to her bottom lip. ‘But only if you promise to let me seduce you when we get to my bed?’

Maybe it had been a mistake to deny them both the physical pleasure that flared so easily between them? Perhaps this physical closeness was what she needed to find the strength to battle the darkness lurking at the edges of her consciousness. And really, what better way was there to distract her from her foolish desire to get to know him better? Which was all part and parcel of her foolish delusions that she loved him—or had ever loved him.

She smiled, the quick grin captivating and full of mischief. ‘Absolutely—assuming of course I don’t seduce you first,’ she said, batting her eyelashes outrageously.

‘Dio!’ He reached for her hand and marched towards his own bedroom. Her seductive chuckles spurred the aching hunger in his groin.

Somehow or other he’d completely lost the upper hand in this negotiation, but the feel of her hand in his—and the thought of having her in his bed tonight, all night—was like a heady drug, making it hard for him to remember why exactly he had ever insisted on keeping her out of it.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

MEGAN SQUINTED AT the sun shining through the shutters and stretched, disappointed to find Dario’s side of the bed empty. Again. After over a week of waking up in Dario’s bed she still hadn’t managed to wake up before him. Her body protested, the desire to slip back into sleep almost overwhelming. She yawned, forcing the tiredness back. And grinned. Too much spectacular sex could be exhausting.

As she rolled over onto her belly, her grin widened at the sight of Dario’s smartphone on the bedside table. He couldn’t be far, probably in his study next door catching up on emails while she slept the day away.

Thank goodness he hadn’t left without her. He’d mentioned a speedboat trip to the lagoon on the other side of the island today—one of the many trips and excursions they’d been on ever since she’d moved into his suite of rooms.

She’d used her newfound boldness to insist he start taking her with him each day on his different trips. And although he’d been reluctant at first, she was so glad she had insisted—because she’d discovered so many amazing things, not just about the island but about Dario, too.

Isadora had only a small fishing village on the other side of the peninsula on which the villa sat, many of whose inhabitants had to commute to the mainland to find work. Dario had invested a lot in rejuvenating the island’s once thriving community—building a new dock, constructing the villa itself and resurrecting the old olive, lemon and blood orange groves that had once thrived in the volcanic soil and had been a mainstay of the island’s economy.

Each day, Megan would discover a new aspect to everything he was doing on the island, as he oversaw those projects with her in tow.

For a billionaire with a portfolio of international companies and investments, Dario had no qualms about getting his hands dirty. And the islanders hero-worshipped him, while also being comfortable treating him like one of their own.

Maybe she hadn’t made much headway getting him to talk more about himself, or his past, but everything else she’d discovered had only made her fascination with him increase.

He was still bossy, but she had begun to realise that was all part of how focused and intense he was. He would never ask something of someone he wasn’t prepared to do himself. And maybe he was still guarded about personal information. But his focus and intensity each night in bed—and on the occasions when they snatched a chance to make love in the daylight—showed a care and concern for her pleasure that made her sure what they were forging together was much more than just a physical connection.

She could make him laugh, lighten that dark, brooding quality that had once intimidated her, but now made her love him all the more.

And today she had a plan. To make a much bigger dent in that wall he seemed determined to keep erected around his emotions. And her plan was simple. Today was the first day they would be alone for one of their excursions. She would seduce him into a puddle and then pounce on him while he was floating on a cloud of afterglow—unable to resist her brilliantly subtle interrogation.

Of course, her plan was a risky one, because up until now she’d been the one who could barely remember her own name after they made love. But today she planned to get sneaky.

She’d asked Sofia to provide a picnic for their trip—to lull Dario into a false sense of security and satisfy his boundless appetite for food—and she was going to wear her scarlet bikini—to torture him with his boundless appetite for her.

She picked up the phone on the table to check the time.

Nearly noon? She frowned. How could she have slept so late when she had something so important to do today?

Throwing back the cover, she sat up.

Mission: Puddle of Lust, here I come.

The nausea came in a rush, the wave heaving up from her stomach so suddenly she was already gagging as she raced into the bathroom. She made it just in time before she lost last night’s dinner in the toilet bowl.

Finally empty, her stomach settled into an uneasy truce as she sat on the cool tiles. Her whole body ached as she reached to push the flush button.

‘Cara, what happened? Were you sick?’

Dario knelt down beside her and wrapped her robe around her shoulders to cover her nakedness.

‘Yes, I think I must have picked up some kind of bug.’ She placed a hand on her stomach. ‘Although it feels a bit better now I’ve been sick.’

‘Has this happened before?’ The fierce expression made her heart bobble in her chest. Why did he look so disturbed? She hoped he wasn’t going to use a little bit of nausea as an excuse to start treating her like an invalid again.

‘No, not really.’

‘No or not really?’ he said.

Her stomach had been a bit queasy yesterday, and the day before when she’d woken up. But she hadn’t been sick. And it had soon gone away. His brows drew down as he waited for an answer and she decided a white lie might be in order.

‘No, it hasn’t happened before.’ Using the toilet bowl, she pushed herself to her feet, steadfastly ignoring the pitch and roll of her not-completely-calm belly.

She tied the robe around herself and brushed her teeth, before walking past Dario, who still looked concerned.

She escaped into the walk-in closet.

‘I’ll be fine,’ she said, her voice deliberately light and cheery. ‘All I need is a swim in the lagoon to make me feel better. I’m sorry I slept in so long.’

But when she came out of the closet, he’d disappeared into his office. She heard him talking in rapid Italian on his smartphone. She tuned it out. Thank goodness, he’d found some business thing to keep him occupied. She slipped on a summer dress and sat at the dressing table to slick on sun cream and a touch of lip gloss.

But when Dario returned to the bedroom, his face was still set in the same unforgiving lines. ‘How is your stomach?’

‘It’s wonderful. Really, I’m great now. How long will it take to get to the cove?’ she asked, still trying to inject as much brightness into her voice as she could, while subtly changing the subject.

‘We’re not going to the cove. The helicopter will be ready in ten minutes, to take us to the hospital in Palermo.’

The forbidding expression had her already dodgy tummy jitterbugging. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. I’m not going to hospital over a bit of nausea.’ Why was he overreacting?

‘Tell me, Megan,’ he said, his jaw so tense she wondered he didn’t break a tooth. ‘Have you had a period since we arrived?’

‘No,’ she replied.

‘Then we must go to the hospital for a pregnancy test.’

Shock came first, her stomach jumping right into her throat. ‘But I can’t be pregnant, we’ve used condoms the whole time. It’s not possible.’ It couldn’t be possible. Except… The evidence started to reel off in her mind: her increased bust size, the tiredness and now her upset tummy. But more than that, something else niggled her memory.

Sofia tapped on the bedroom door. ‘The helicopter is waiting, signor. Do you still want the picnic?’

The nausea charged back up Megan’s throat at the mention of food.

‘No, grazie, Sofia,’ she heard Dario murmur as she shot back into the bathroom.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

‘YOU ARE INDEED pregnant, signora.’ Dr Mascati smiled benignly at Megan. Dario tensed beside her, his expression as guarded as it had been throughout the never-ending helicopter ride from Isadora to the heliport on the roof of the exclusive private maternity centre.

‘Are you sure?’ Dario said, his voice curt. Not angry but not happy either.

Megan understood. This was shocking news. No wonder he’d hardly said a word to her since they’d boarded the helicopter. She hadn’t known what to say either. However whirlwind their engagement, they hadn’t even talked about their wedding yet, so introducing a pregnancy into that was bound to put huge pressure on them both.

But after the last week, the last two weeks, ever since waking up in the hospital, she’d come to terms with why she had agreed to marry him in only one night. Maybe it was mad. But the more she discovered about him, the more she got to know him, the more sure she was that she could love this man.

‘The test is unequivocal,’ the doctor said in his perfect English. ‘There can be no doubt. We can do a scan in a couple of weeks so you can see your baby for yourself.’

‘Okay,’ she murmured, acknowledging the leap of joy despite her shock.

She placed a hand on her stomach, imagining the tiny life growing inside her. However unprepared for this they both were, this pregnancy felt so positive on some elemental level.

Perhaps it was her hormones talking. Or the endorphin high she’d been riding on for the last seven days. But whatever it was, she knew instinctively that despite the challenges and problems ahead they would be able to deal with them.

Maybe it had only been a few weeks, but Dario—so protective, so caring, so solid and sure of himself—would make an amazing father, and she… She would do everything within her power to be the mother this tiny life deserved.

Dario spoke to the doctor in rapid Italian, but the conversation floated somewhere over Megan’s head as she caressed her invisible baby bump. And tried to contain the secret smile in her heart.

Dario was obviously unsure about this development; she could tell that already from his reaction to her sickness, which she realised now had been panic. Pure and simple. She just hadn’t recognised it as such, because he always seemed so confident and commanding. But once they were alone together, they could talk about his misgivings. This pregnancy didn’t have to be a bad thing.

‘Megan, we must go now.’ Dario’s words jolted Megan out of her reverie.

‘Oh, yes, thank you, Dr Mascati,’ she said, trying not to sound too spacey. Even if she felt as if she were flying somewhere above the cosmos at the moment.

Dario rested an arm around her waist to guide her out of the doctor’s office. They made their way back up to the roof, Dario gripping her hand as they crossed the heliport to the waiting chopper. He said nothing, his face now an implacable mask.

She stared out of the window on the flight back. The noise of the chopper’s blades made it impossible to speak and she was grateful for that, because she wanted to get her thoughts together. He would need reassurance. Understanding.

But she was confident he would come around to the idea given time and encouragement. If he was sure enough of his feelings to ask her to marry him after only one night, no way would he be too scared to take on this responsibility once he knew how positive she was about it.

The sun dipped towards the horizon as they swooped over the villa and came into land on the cliff-top heliport.

Dario led her back to their suite of rooms in silence. Sofia arrived to lay out a meal for them on the terrace. The housekeeper sent her a gentle smile and Megan smiled back at her. Did she know already?

She stared out at the sea, the sky lit in a redolent array of red and gold and deep darkening blues. Isadora was such a beautiful place. What a wonderful place this would be to bring up a child.

No, that was silly, Dario had a life in New York, and so did she. But surely they could spend summers here—with their baby. She had to tell Katie. Her sister would be an auntie.

‘Eat, Megan. You must be hungry.’ She glanced back to find Dario watching her. She dialled down her excitement.

She was getting way ahead of herself. There was still so much to talk about. So much to discuss. She mustn’t try and second-guess Dario’s feelings. The doctor had said the pregnancy was still in the very early stages.

‘Yes, of course,’ she said, although the truth was she was far too nervous to eat. ‘This looks delicious.’ She picked up her fork and forced down a few bites of the aubergine and cherry tomato pasta she was sure Sofia had produced for her delicate stomach on Dario’s orders.

‘Do you want to talk about the baby?’ she asked, as nonchalantly as she could, while she watched him closely, to gauge his reaction.

The impassive mask cracked, revealing something she didn’t understand until he said, ‘It is not a baby yet. It is a collection of cells.’

The flat words tore into the excitement that had buoyed her up through the helicopter ride.

Her fork clattered onto the plate. ‘I know I’m only a few weeks pregnant, but…’ She stalled, suddenly scared to say what she thought.

‘But what?’ he asked, not unkindly.

‘It feels like a baby to me,’ she managed around the feeling of dread suddenly pushing against her throat.

What would she do if he wanted her to have a termination? She hadn’t even considered that option. Wasn’t sure she could go through with it even if that was what he wanted. Had she been foolish, expecting him to be as happy about this unexpected event as she was? Probably, yes.

‘Don’t you want this baby?’ she managed to say. Prepared for the worst, but desperately hoping for the best.

He looked away, across the terrace towards the sea, the breeze lifting the thick waves of his hair, lost in thought for a moment. But when he turned towards her, his gaze was shadowed and unreadable. ‘That is not my decision. It is yours.’

The bright bubble of hope burst at the pragmatic tone.

Her hand strayed back to her tummy, and she looked down at the still invisible bump. Tears stung her eyes. She blinked furiously, desperate not to let them fall. It was just all so overwhelming. Not only the news about the baby, but how she felt about Dario. If she chose to have it, would it tear them apart? And if she chose not to, would it tear her apart?

Courage, Megan.

Dario was right: this was her choice to make and she’d already made it. She had to stand up for this child, and hope that, however early it was, this pregnancy wouldn’t destroy what she was just starting to build with Dario.

Wiping away the errant tear that had slipped over her lid, she forced her gaze to his and smiled at him. ‘I want to have your baby, Dario. Very much.’

He stiffened, and for once she could see his feelings written plainly on his face. He didn’t look upset by her response—or particularly pleased either. He simply looked stunned.