Claiming His Secret Love-Child: The Marciano Love-Child / The Italian Billionaire's Secret Love-Child / The Rich Man's Love-Child

He cocked one dark brow at her. ‘You were expecting someone else?’

‘No, but you said you’d send a car for me. I thought it would be a limo driver or…or something.’

‘I was not prepared to take the risk that you would refuse to be transported to my house by my driver, or indeed not turn up at all.’

She glowered at him. ‘I’m not that much of a coward.’

Alessandro cast his gaze around the small flat, and encountered Roxanne sitting on the sofa with a bemused expression on her face. ‘Good evening, Miss Hartley,’ he said. ‘Are you babysitting for Scarlett?’

‘Yes, but don’t hurry back,’ she said. ‘I’ve brought a good book, and there’s a late-night movie on the TV I’ve been dying to see.’

Scarlett sent her a ‘what do you think you’re doing?’ glare, but Roxanne deflected it by sending a beaming smile in Alessandro’s direction.

‘That is indeed very kind of you, but I will not keep Scarlett out too long,’ he said. ‘I have an early flight to catch in the morning.’

‘Milan?’ Scarlett couldn’t quite remove the trace of hopefulness from her voice.

His eyes collided with hers. ‘Melbourne, actually.’

‘Another hotel makeover?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘But I will make some time for pleasure as well.’

Scarlett wished she hadn’t asked. She followed him out to his car with her stomach churning with jealousy all over again, imagining him with yet another glamorous starlet hanging off his arm. She sat stiffly and silently in the passenger seat as he drove the short distance to the exclusive suburb of Double Bay, but her eyes couldn’t help but widen when he turned the powerful car into a driveway she was all too familiar with.

She swung her gaze to look at him. ‘You knew I redecorated this property, didn’t you?’ she asked.

‘Yes. I like what you have done to the place. That was one of the reasons I thought I would use you for the Arlington makeover.’

Scarlett didn’t give him time to come around to her door, but leapt out clutching her portfolio to her chest like a shield. Her brow was furrowed as she followed him into the house, her thoughts going off in all directions like a box of out-of-control fireworks.

‘What would you like to drink?’ he asked as he led her into the huge living area she had designed with meticulous attention. ‘I have white wine, champagne, and all the usual aperitifs.’

‘White wine, thank you…’ she said, still trying to get her head around things.

She had spent a lot of time on this house; the makeover had been total, and she had felt so thrilled with the results. It had gone from being a large but tired 1930’s house to a luxury mansion with every modern fixture and appliance. The kitchen and walk-in pantry were huge, the living area twice the size of her flat. Each of the six bedrooms had an en suite done in Italian marble, and the main bathroom was second to none in terms of opulence. It had been one of the biggest projects she had ever done, and the payment she had received had helped her and Roxanne move out of the cramped office they had rented in the outer suburbs to their current studio in trendy, upmarket Woollahra.

Alessandro walked to where she was standing, and handed her a glass of white wine as he raised his glass in a toast. ‘To a successful completion of our contract,’ he said.

A little hammer of suspicion was tapping away inside her head as she held his inscrutable look. ‘What’s going on, Alessandro?’ she asked.

‘We are having a drink, are we not?’

‘I mean about you happening to be the owner of this house,’ she said. ‘It wasn’t just a coincidence, was it?’

He gave her one of his enigmatic smiles. ‘I had one of my employees oversee the work. He spoke very highly of your professionalism and meticulous attention to detail.’

‘That would be Mr Rossi, wouldn’t it?’ she asked, her mouth pulled tight. ‘So, he was acting for you.’

‘I trusted him to see that the house was brought to a satisfactory standard.’

Her fingers tightened around the stem of her glass. ‘I hope you’re happy with what I’ve done.’

His eyes glinted. ‘Very. The master bedroom in particular is pure sensual indulgence. I can see your touch everywhere.’

Scarlett could feel a blush rising from the soles of her feet to pool in her cheeks. ‘I only did what I was asked to do,’ she said, with a white-tipped set to her mouth.

‘Yes, but you did it with your own personal flair,’ he said. ‘It is like making love, no? You have moves and touches no one else can even imitate.’

She gripped her glass even tighter, trying not to be pulled into his force field. She could feel the magnetism of his presence: the way his eyes held hers, the way his too-close body radiated its warmth and very male scent, so that her nostrils flared of their own volition to take more of him in.

He put his wine glass down and stepped closer, tipping up her chin with a lazy finger. ‘Just like the properties you have designed, you have left your indelible mark on me, Scarlett,’ he said softly. ‘No one has ever been able to erase it.’

Scarlett could feel herself drowning in the deep green and brown of his eyes, her whole body on high alert. The blood rushed through her veins, her skin prickled, her breasts felt tight, and her stomach began kicking with excitement as he took the glass from her nerveless fingers and set it down right next to his, all without once releasing her gaze.

Her tongue sneaked out to moisten her lips. ‘Alessandro… I can’t do this.’

His thumb stroked the side of her mouth, close but not quite touching her pulsing lips. ‘But you want to, don’t you, cara? You want to as much as I do.’

She couldn’t stop staring at his mouth, her heart going like an out-of-control jackhammer in her chest. ‘It…it doesn’t make it right,’ she said. ‘You already have a mistress, and I have—’

His hands came down on her shoulders and held her fast. ‘Do not play games with me, Scarlett. I will have what I want, no matter what hurdles or obstacles you put in the way. We have unfinished business between us.’

‘Yes, the birth of your son being one of them,’ she threw back.

His jaw was set in taut lines. ‘Why do you persist with this? I told you, he cannot possibly be mine.’

‘There are ways of finding out for sure.’

His fingers tightened momentarily before he released her, using one of his hands to bring back the hair that had fallen forward over his frowning forehead. ‘I do not need to find out anything. I know everything I need to know. I saw you with Kirby; there is an easy familiarity between you. Anyone can see you are intimately involved. I am not surprised he is still on the scene. He never really went away, did he? In fact, it would not surprise me if you cooked the whole scheme up between you.’

She looked at him with contempt. ‘What?’

‘Money was your motive,’ he said, holding her glare with consummate ease. ‘Your job was to land yourself a billionaire so you could get your hands on half of the assets and split them with your lover. It has been done before, and no doubt will be done again.’

‘Will you agree to have a paternity test done?’ she asked, ignoring his insulting summation of her character.

He looked at her in silence for what seemed a very long time, his expression as closed as a clenched fist. ‘If that is the only thing that will stop you going on with this nonsense, then yes, I will agree to it.’

Scarlett suddenly felt suspended between relief and worry. What if on finding out the truth he decided he wanted full custody of his son? What if he insisted on Matthew spending up to half a year in Milan? Matthew was generally a secure little boy, but he was still a toddler, and the slightest change in routine would be enough to make him have nightmares or set him back developmentally. She might very well have started a chain of events that, once in motion, would not be easily halted.

Alessandro was a determined and no-nonsense man. Once he found out the truth, he would want control, and she had virtually handed it to him by pressing the issue so persistently.

‘We don’t have to rush into things…’ she said, knowing it sounded as if she was backtracking.

His lip curled. ‘Having second thoughts, Scarlett?’

She forced herself to hold his gaze. ‘No, but I’m concerned about the effect on my son. I’ve always told him his father is dead.’

‘He is very young to understand the concept of death,’ he commented. ‘He must be a very intelligent child.’

‘He is,’ she said, lifting her chin. ‘But then, so is his father.’

He picked up their glasses, handing her the one she hadn’t yet tasted. ‘Dinner is ready,’ he said. ‘I had my housekeeper prepare it earlier.’

Scarlett followed him to the dining area she had designed for a happy family gathering, never once at the time imagining that a few months later she would be sitting in it in a stony silence, opposite the man who had so ruthlessly broken her heart.

She sat, staring at the food on her plate, wondering how on earth she was going to get it past the aching lump in her throat.

‘You are not eating,’ Alessandro said after a few moments. ‘Is the food not to your liking?’

She picked up her knife and fork. ‘It’s fine…lovely, in fact. You must have a very good housekeeper.’

‘Yes, I have,’ he said. ‘She only comes in twice a week, however.’

Scarlett looked up in surprise from rearranging the food on her plate. ‘Is that all? I thought you’d have a daily, if not fulltime help.’

He picked up his wine glass and met her gaze. ‘I do not like sharing my living space with people who are virtually strangers. I thought you would have remembered that about me.’

Scarlett did, but she thought with his billionaire status it might have changed. Alessandro had always been very particular about his privacy. She hadn’t met any member of his extended family in the whole time she had lived with him. When she had asked about his parents, whether they were coming to visit or if they could visit them, he had told her they were on an extended cruise and wouldn’t be back for months. All he had told her was that he was an only child, but now she wondered if there was more to his background than he was prepared to reveal.

‘How are your parents?’ she asked after a slight pause.

‘Fine.’

‘Where are they based now?’ she asked. ‘Do they live in Milan close to you?’

‘No, in Sorrento,’ he answered. ‘They have a nice place overlooking the sea.’

‘So you see them often?’

‘No.’

‘They must miss you,’ she offered into the ensuing lengthy silence.

His eyes fell away from hers. ‘Yes…’he said, with a slight frown pleating his brow. ‘I imagine they do.’

Scarlett picked up her glass and took a tiny sip. ‘Will they come out to visit you while you’re here in Australia?’ she asked.

‘They have talked about it once or twice, but nothing has been confirmed.’

‘Do you have a photograph of them?’ she asked.

His eyes were shadowed as they met hers. ‘No, I do not.’

‘Are you close to them?’

‘Yes and no.’

‘What does that mean?’ she asked.

He let out a frustrated sigh. ‘Look, my parents do not have a particularly happy marriage. I do not spend much time with them for the simple reason I do not like hearing them bicker with each other all the time. It grates on me.’

‘Why don’t they get divorced?’

‘They do not believe in divorce.’

‘How ironic,’ she said with an ironic twist to her mouth, ‘That you—their only son—doesn’t believe in marriage.’

‘It is not that I have anything against marriage, Scarlett. I know of several very happy marriages where both parties love and respect each other.’

‘But you don’t want that for yourself.’

‘No.’

Scarlett let her gaze fall away from the determined depths of his. ‘I told you four years ago you’ll end up a lonely old man.’

‘I am prepared to risk a bit of late-life loneliness to have my freedom now.’

She brought her eyes back to his. ‘So you go from one relationship to the other, a month with one woman, a week or two with another? That’s such a shallow way to live.’

‘You are entitled to your opinion, but it is not the way I see things.’

She threw him a disgusted look and said, ‘Go on, tell me—what’s the longest relationship you’ve ever had?’

His gaze meshed with hers for several heart-chugging seconds. The silence was so intense, Scarlett could hear the sound of her own breathing.

‘It was the one I had with you, cara,’ he said with a little smile. ‘Three months, two days and nine-and-a-half hours.’

Scarlett’s mouth went completely dry. ‘You…you counted the days and hours?’

She wasn’t completely sure, but she thought his crooked smile contained a hint of sadness. ‘I missed you after you had gone,’ he said. ‘I was angry at first. Angry for days, weeks even, but then I kept finding things you had left behind—an earring or a little souvenir you had bought, and forgotten to put away with the rest of your things.’

She ran her tongue over her lips. ‘What did you do with them?’

‘I kept them.’

She frowned at him as he rose from the table. ‘But…but why?’

He came around to help her to her feet, his fingers warm and vibrant on the bare skin of her arms. ‘Do you know, that to this day I am still not sure,’ he said, turning her to face him, his hands going to her waist, his fathomless gaze holding hers. ‘Perhaps I always hoped we would see each other again.’

Scarlett felt her breath catch like a tiny fish-hook at the back of her throat. ‘Did-did you feel anything for me back then, Alessandro, anything at all other than desire?’

He lifted one hand from her waist and brushed the back of his bent knuckles over the curve of her cheek, his eyes now more brown than green. ‘Why do you ask? You do not still have feelings for me, do you, cara?’

She didn’t answer for the simple reason she couldn’t get her voice to work. She had locked away her feelings for him four years ago, but her chest felt like it was going to explode with the effort of keeping them back.

His thumb stroked over the teeth marks on her lip in a tender caress. ‘You are wavering, are you not?’

Her startled gaze flicked back to his. ‘No…’

He smiled a sexy blood-heating-to-boiling-point smile. ‘That did not sound very convincing, tesore mio.’

‘No,’ she said more stridently this time, although she shivered all over when he brought her hips up against his.

‘Can you feel the effect you have on me?’ he asked in a husky tone. ‘How we still affect each other?’

Scarlett could, but she didn’t want to admit it. She tried to put some space between their bodies, but his hold was both gentle and determined. She was breathing too hard and too shallowly to get her brain to work. Her body was taking over, just like it had all those years ago. One touch from him and she was going weak at the knees, her heart racing with excitement, her blood surging to all her pleasure points in preparation for the exquisite torture of his touch.

His head came down, and she did nothing to stop his lips making contact with hers. Instead she closed her eyes, a soft sigh escaping from her mouth into the warm, dark cavern of his as he held her captive under the searing pressure of his kiss.

His tongue searched for hers in a single commanding thrust that sent an earthquake-like reaction right through her. Aftershocks of pleasure reverberated throughout her body, each of her limbs beginning to tremble with the sheer force of being in his arms again.

His hands shaped her with the confidence of a lover who knew her body well and desired it greatly. She revelled in the possessive clamp of his teeth against her breast as he roughly freed it from the barrier of her clothes, the almost primitive action sending hot sparks of desire to every part of her body. His mouth suckled on her hotly, his tongue laving her nipple, his teeth grazing her again.

Somewhere at the blurry back of her conscience she knew she should be pushing him away, not clutching at him in passionate desperation, but there was nothing she could do to hold back her response. It was as if it was hard-wired into her system; every time he touched her he set her alight with burning need, just as he had done four years ago. One kiss had started something that was way beyond her capability to withstand.

When he lifted her skirt to her waist and searched for her hot, melting core she did nothing to resist him. Instead she gasped with mind-blowing pleasure as his fingers pushed aside the lace of her knickers to find their honeyed target, the movement so sensual, so devastatingly sexy, she arched upwards to have more of him.

‘Please…oh, please…’ she begged as he teased her mercilessly.

‘You want me, cara?’

‘Y-yes…’ she panted as he brushed against the swollen pearl of her need.

He smiled a victor’s smile as he cupped her face with his hand. ‘I knew you would not be able to resist,’ he said. ‘You are the same as you were four years ago—wanton and shameless in your quest for fulfilment.’

His words were enough to bring Scarlett back to earth with a jarring thud. She stepped out of his hold and smoothed down her skirt with what precious little dignity she had left. ‘As far as I recall, this wasn’t part of the contract,’ she said with a cutting edge to her voice.

‘I am prepared to pay double time for out-of-hours work,’ he put in with suave smoothness.

She glared at him, affronted. ‘You think you can afford me, Alessandro?’

His cynical smile cut through her like a scalpel. ‘You can name your price, Scarlett. I will pay it to have you in my arms again. And, yes, I can afford you.’ The dark gaze raked her mercilessly. ‘Easily.’

She folded her arms across her body, more to stop one of them slapping that arrogant look off his face. She couldn’t believe his audacity, to think he could buy her like the whore he thought she was. ‘I want to go home,’ she said with a petulant toss of her head. ‘Now.’

‘You will go home when I say you can go home.’

She sent him a glowering look. ‘You can’t hold me here against my will.’

He stepped towards her, backing her against the wall as he stroked his hands down the length of her bare arms, his touch like silk sliding over a warm, smooth surface. ‘But it will not be against your will, will it, cara?’ he asked. ‘I can see the longing in your eyes. You would be on that floor flat on your back by now, if your pride had not got in the way.’

Scarlett wanted to deny it, but knew he would never believe her, not when she had allowed him to touch her so intimately just moments earlier.

She mentally cringed in shame. How could she have allowed herself to succumb to his lethal charm in such a degrading way? It confirmed all his misguided opinions of her as a shallow, money-hungry tart who would open her legs for the highest bidder.

‘At least I have some measure of pride,’ she tossed back after a tense pause.

His hazel gaze pinned hers. ‘How much do you want to be my lover again?’

She flattened her spine against the wall. ‘I told you, Alessandro, you can’t afford me.’

His eyes hardened with chips of cold-green purpose. ‘How much, Scarlett? How much to have you in my bed again for the time I am in Sydney?’

CHAPTER SEVEN

SCARLETT eyeballed him with gritty determination. ‘It may have escaped your notice, but I don’t have a “for sale” sign stamped on my forehead.’

His mouth tipped up at one corner. ‘Like a lot of women I know, Scarlett, you have a price. But what you are doing by these delaying tactics is trying to drive up the price a little further, is it not?’

She sent him a caustic glare. ‘I am not going to be used by you, not for any price.’

‘It is a very clever manoeuvre,’ he said as if she hadn’t spoken. ‘And well known in the circles I move in.’

‘Yes, well, I don’t care for the circles you move in,’ she said primly. ‘Your model friend is a case in point. She’s looking for prestige and notoriety by hanging off your arm. I would have thought by now you would have been able to pick it up a mile off. She’s after money and nothing else.’

‘Velika has nothing to do with the arrangement we have made between ourselves,’ he said.

Scarlett felt like stamping her foot. ‘There is no arrangement between us!’ she insisted.

He lifted one dark brow meaningfully. ‘Aren’t you forgetting something, Scarlett?’

She swallowed convulsively as she saw the flecks of brown in his eyes darken, her stomach turning over itself as he tilted her chin up with the point of one finger. ‘You signed a contract, Scarlett, remember?’ he said, his eyes locking on hers. ‘Your business will fall over if you have to pay your way out of your contract with me.’

She ran the tip of her tongue over the dryness of her lips, her heart beginning to pick up its pace alarmingly. ‘Are you…?’ She cleared her throat when her voice dried up and began again. ‘B-blackmailing me into your bed?’

His smile was slanted at a devastatingly sexy angle. ‘Blackmail is rather a distasteful term, is it not? I was hoping you would agree to resume our affair without having to resort to using such underhand tactics,’ he said. ‘After all, you have made it very clear you are still attracted to me.’

‘That’s totally irrelevant!’ she argued. ‘Physical attraction to someone doesn’t give automatic licence to have an affair with them. There’s such a thing as self-control, you know.’

He ran his hands down her arms to encircle her wrists again, his long, strong fingers like twin bracelets of velvet-covered steel. ‘I do not feel any self-control when I am around you, cara,’ he said as his eyes held hers in the magnetic force-field of his gaze. ‘I never did, and I sometimes wonder if I ever will.’

Scarlett could feel the slow melt of her bones under his touch, her belly doing tiny, jerky somersaults as each of his thumbs began stroking the sensitive undersides of her wrists. Desire pulsed hot and thickly through her bloodstream, her skin tingling in response to his drugging caresses. Her legs were weakening beneath her, and she felt the involuntary loosening of her spine as one of his hands went to the lower curve of her back and brought her up against his hardness.

‘Kiss me, Scarlett,’ he commanded softly. ‘Kiss me the way you used to do, with your whole body and soul.’

Scarlett’s gaze dropped to his mouth and her belly did another sudden flip-turn. ‘I-I don’t think—’

His hand at her back pressed her even closer. ‘What are you frightened of, tesore mio?’ he asked.

She moistened her lips with a tentative movement of her tongue, in case it accidentally brushed his mouth hovering so close to hers. ‘I-I’m not frightened,’ she said, even though fear had already thickened her throat so she could barely swallow.

His lips nibbled at the side of her mouth, so close to the tingling fullness of her bottom lip she felt her legs begin to tremble, his warm breath dancing over her face and mouth tantalisingly. She felt the brush of his tongue against her cheek, and then along the seam of her mouth, the sensual movement making all hope of resisting him impossible.

She gave a little whimper and opened her mouth under the next sweep of his tongue, taking him inside to her moist warmth, mating with him in a dancing duel that mimicked what their bodies had done so well together in the past. Passion flared like a bush fire, the hot, licking flames sending Scarlett’s heart-rate soaring as his pelvis ground against hers, his hardness against her velvet softness making every scrap of sense she possessed move even further out of reach of reason and rationality. She clung to him, her mouth on fire beneath the passionate onslaught of his, her teeth nipping at him as he nipped at her, her tongue flicking as his thrust, her body turning to liquid as his grew rock-hard and insistent.