The Italians: Franco, Dominic and Valentino: The Man Who Risked It All / The Moretti Arrangement / Valentino's Pregnancy Bombshell

‘N-no problem.’ Having been stopped from saying what she would have liked to say to him, Lexi left her response at that.

Another knock sounded on the door, and this time it was her breakfast. Glad of the diversion, because Salvatore had always scared the life out of her, Lexi allowed the waiter entry and watched mutely as he crossed the room to place the tray down on a small table set by the window.

‘Can—can I offer you a cup of tea?’ she enquired politely, once the waiter had left them again.

‘Grazie, no,’ Salvatore responded. ‘However, please—sit down and enjoy your breakfast, ‘he insisted.

Lexi sat down at the small table, but the thought of eating or drinking anything in front of him just closed up her throat.

‘Please tell me why you’re here,’ she urged, hearing the strain in her own voice. ‘It’s not Franco, is it? He hasn’t—?’

‘Francesco is fine,’ came the quick assurance. ‘If fine accurately describes the injuries he endured,’ he added bleakly. ‘I have come here directly from visiting with him.’

‘Oh, that’s …’ Good, Lexi had been about to say, but held it back by biting down on her tense lower lip.

‘Francesco does not know I am here, you understand?’ he informed her then. ‘He has forbidden me from approaching you, so my relationship with my son is in your hands once again, Alexia.’ The rueful smile he offered her almost melted her wariness. ‘However, there is a matter I need to discuss with you.’

‘Will you at least sit down first?’ Feeling pretty uncomfortable sitting there, while he stood tall and straight several metres away, Lexi indicated the vacant chair placed at the table.

He really looked as if he was actually going to take her up on her offer, too; but then he glanced at his wristwatch, frowned, and shook his head. ‘I have to leave in a few minutes to catch my flight to New York. We are very close to procuring a large contract there, which will keep our New York shipyard busy for the next four years. Francesco was dealing with the details. Of course now that he cannot I must go in his place …’

Lexi pressed her lips together and nodded her head in understanding. She found she needed something to do with her restless fingers and picked up a glass of juice.

‘I must, therefore, ask you to do me another favour,’ Salvatore went on. ‘Leaving my son without my support at this time is unacceptable. I will be back in time to attend Marco’s funeral next week of course,’ he assured her quickly, having no idea that she did not already know when Marco’s funeral would be. ‘However, I will have to return to New York almost immediately afterwards. The thing is, Alexia, all being well, Francesco will be released from hospital in the next few days. Since he has decided to place his complete trust in you, I must ask if you would continue to support him in my place through the coming few weeks.’

Unable to sit still any longer, Lexi got to her feet, feeling very tense now, because she wasn’t sure how much of Franco’s close company she was going to be able to take without—

‘How long are we talking about? I have a job in London, you see, and—and other commitments.’

‘I feel that a month’s compassionate leave is not too much to ask of your employer.’

He felt that because he didn’t know Bruce, thought Lexi, not at all looking forward to that conversation.

‘Since Francesco is still refusing to allow anyone else to come near him, I am hoping that you will be able to convince him to bypass his apartment here in Livorno and go directly to Monfalcone, where Pietro and Zeta will be on hand to help you with his convalescence.’

He was referring to the private estate just outside Livorno, where she’d stayed during her mess of a brief marriage. Monfalcone was a beautiful castello built of golden stone that had mellowed over centuries. It was also the place where she and Franco had been married. A day she would much rather not think back on, because her welcome from the rest of the Tolle family had been so disapproving. In a cold fury Franco had whipped them away from there before the first waltz had been announced and taken her to his apartment in the city for a week. Continuing hostilities between the two of them had prompted a return to Monfalcone, because the castello was big enough for the two of them to avoid each other for most of the time.

‘He will not go to Monfalcone without you,’ Salvatore imparted flatly. ‘He is determined to follow you to London if you decide not to stay here. I do not pretend to understand this fixation he has developed about your marriage, but I do know that it is paramount in his thoughts.’

Guilt, Lexi wanted to say—but didn’t. She’d been thinking about it since she’d left the hospital, and she’d decided that his guilt over Marco’s death had stirred up guilty feelings over the way he’d behaved during their short time together as a married couple—though she was not so self-pitying as to think that she had treated him any better than he had treated her.

Every time she’d looked at him she’d seen the lazily complacent smile on his handsome tanned face when he’d accepted his winnings from that rotten bet. Every time he’d made an attempt to mend fences between them, she’d struck out at him like a whip. When he stalked out of the castello and hadn’t come back for two whole weeks she’d been heartily glad to see the back of him. She’d worn her disillusionment and bitterness like a suit of armour that contained the aching throb of raw, broken-hearted hurt, and she’d hugged it to her for long, lonely months until …

‘Am I asking too much of you?’

Without knowing she’d sat down again, Lexi blinked her eyes and realised she been lost in her own thoughts for too long. Looking up at her father-in-law, she saw an expression she never would have expected to see score Salvatore’s coldly impassive features. It hinted strongly at despair.

He didn’t know what he was going to do if she refused to stay with Franco. Salvatore had a large multinational ship building company to run, whether or not he wanted to go and do it right now.

‘I will stay,’ she said, and smiled a crooked smile when she counted how many times she’d used those words recently.

CHAPTER FOUR

LEXI pulled to a stop in the doorway. The monitors had gone, and plump snowy-white pillows now lay stacked on the bed, but there was no Franco resting against them. Swivelling around, she found him seated in a comfortable chair by the window, with a rolling table lowered so it skimmed across his legs, a laptop computer standing open on its top.

‘Oh, you’re out of bed!’ Lexi exclaimed brightly. ‘That’s great.’

‘I am not a kid. Don’t talk to me as if I am,’ Franco responded, with enough sizzling antagonism to put Lexi on her guard as she stepped further into the room so she could close the door behind her. ‘You are late. Where have you been?’

‘Sorry, I had some stuff to do.’ Dumping her collection of bags down against the wall, she walked over to him. ‘When did they let you get up?’

‘They didn’t let me do anything. I got up.’

‘Was that wise?’

‘I’m still breathing.’

Lexi almost responded with something very sarcastic, then thought better of it and removed her jacket instead. Moving to drape it over a chair, she looked at him again. He was wearing a white bathrobe and nothing else as far she could tell. His hair wore a damp sheen to it, and yesterday’s rakish five o’clock shadow had disappeared. So, thankfully, had the sickly pallor from his face. His eyes were veiled, because he was concentrating on the computer screen, and his lips were flattened tight. For Lexi, his manner was a good reminder of what it felt like when Franco turned on his cold side. Words became lethal weapons.

‘Well, at least you smell nice anyway,’ she murmured idly, determined not to rise to his provoking bait.

A hint of a flash speared out from behind his eyelashes. With the use of only one hand—the strapping around his right shoulder impeded the other—he continued to tap away on the keyboard with a five fingered efficiency that was impressive.

‘You left the hotel by taxi at nine o’clock this morning. That was three hours ago. Have you forgotten how to wear a skirt?’

Blinking her eyes at that blunt-ended bombardment, Lexi glanced down at her legs, still encased in stretchy black fabric, and her ankle boots—which were making her feet ache because she’d done too much walking in them and it was too hot outside for boots.

‘What kind of skirt would you like me to wear?’ she questioned innocently. ‘Short and tight? Flared and flirty? Long and floaty?’ Strolling back to her bags, she picked them up and hauled them over to the window to dump them down beside his chair, then dropped down into a squat. ‘I’ve bought all three, just in case you have a preference, plus a couple of dresses—mainly because I fell in love with them. Two nighties, some underwear …’ As she listed her purchases Lexi scooped the items out of their bags and dropped them on top of his laptop without a single care as to whether she was messing up his five fingered prose. ‘It really shocked me what I’d thrown in my case in London because I was in a hurry. I mean, what can a girl do with one pair of jeans, no spare tops, no fresh underwear and no shoes?’

He caught the shoes before they landed, his long fingers closing around the pair of strappy flats.

‘Oh, and these.’ Dipping into a bag, she came out with a clutch of cosmetics and a hairbrush.

‘Don’t,’ he warned softly, when she went to drop them onto his laptop too.

‘OK, so you’re not impressed with girly necessities. How about this, then … ?’ Her next dip produced a stuffed pearl-grey floppy-eared rabbit, which she ever so gently laid against his chest. ‘Present for you,’ she told him sweetly.

Still squatting there, she watched his lean, hard and handsome face as he stared down at the furry rabbit. A tingling sensation caught hold of her solar plexus as she watched the tension relax from his lips so they could shift into a reluctant smile, and at last he looked at her. What she saw glinting in his eyes made her so glad she’d taken the flippancy route.

‘I thought you’d done another runner,’ he admitted.

It took Lexi a second or two to work out why he’d said another runner—until she remembered how she’d run back to England three years ago. No note, not even a spitting I hate you note. She’d just walked out of this very hospital, climbed into a taxi, and left.

‘Nope.’ Still she kept it light. ‘I went shopping.’ She waved a hand at the rabbit. ‘Well, at least say hello to him.’

Silently he passed her back the shoes, then picked the rabbit off his chest and looked at it. ‘He’s wearing a pink bow round his neck.’

‘They didn’t have a blue one.’

‘Does he have a name?’

‘Yes. William,’ she announced decisively. ‘William Wabbit—because the young man that served me couldn’t sound his “r” and his wabbit sounded kind of cute.’

‘Rabbit in Italian is coniglio.’

‘Ah, yes, but the guy was trying out his best English to impress me,’ Lexi explained.

‘Flirting with you?’

‘Of course.’ She put the shoes back in the bag. ‘He was Italian.’

Instead of plucking all her other purchases off his lap, Franco caught hold of her hand. Even as she glanced up and saw the darkening look in his eyes she sort of knew what was coming next and tried to pull against it. But by then he’d already set her moving forward, her soft gasp the barest protest before her lips made contact with his. Warmth flooded her senses, and the feel of their mouths fused together was so natural already that she almost sank more deeply into the kiss—until she realised what she was doing and pulled back.

‘Grazie,’ he husked. ‘For the wabbit.’

Dragging her gaze down to where the rabbit rested against his chest, she murmured, ‘You’re welcome,’ a bit too huskily for her liking, and quickly returned her attention to jumbling her purchases back into the bags.

‘How did you know what time I left the hotel?’ she asked curiously, fighting to keep her tone light.

This kissing thing had to stop, she was telling herself. OK, so she’d started it. And the kiss just now had only been a typical Italian thank you kiss … But it still had to stop.

She was unaware that Franco was watching her narrowly.

‘Pietro arrived to collect you five minutes after you left.’

It was only when he picked it up that she saw his Blackberry had been lying next to the laptop. He handed it to her. ‘Put your number in it.’

‘So you can keep tabs on me?’

‘It’s a communication tool not a tracker.’

Pulling a face, she took the phone from him and did as he asked without further comment. While spending the last three hours shopping, she had also been contemplating the current situation she had committed herself to with Franco, and decided that, his having lost the closest friend a man could ever have, she would try her best to fill a small part of the gap Marco had left in Franco’s life until he was ready to face up to his loss.

A friend—but not a kissing friend, she determined with a frown as she handed the phone back, aware that her lips still wore the warm impression of his against them.

As he took back the phone, Franco wished he knew what was going on inside her head. Her frown was pensive, the complacent way she had been treating him told him she’d come to some decisions over the night about how she was going to treat being back in his life. The rabbit spoke volumes. The summer they were together she used to produce all kinds of cheap and wacky gifts for him, like the tiny plastic camel on a plinth that gyrated when you pressed the bottom, which she’d insisted looked just like him when he danced. And the set of three little yellow ducks she’d dropped into his bathwater then laughed herself double when they started paddling towards a certain part of his body with a speed that made him stand up fast. Then there was the whole row of frogs in all different sizes and materials, she’d lined up on the shelf above their bed and insisted on kissing each one every night because, she told him, she was convinced at least one of them was going to turn into her handsome Prince.

He had never met anyone like her. She’d been part child and part extraordinarily passionate and deeply sensual woman. And she’d trusted him so totally she did not hold anything back. She’d pinched his clothes, used his toothbrush, and thrown his friends off the Miranda when she’d had enough of their company without bothering to ask him if it was OK. If they went out clubbing she would ignore him to dance the night away in the middle of the heaving crush of bodies, laughing, flirting, completely uninhibited, but when she tired of dancing she would locate him like a homing pigeon and drag him away from whatever he was doing, whoever he was with, without apology or even a scant goodnight.

It had never occurred to her that he might tire of her. She’d refused to listen to sly comments about his staying power in a relationship. She’d simply loved him, and believed without question that he was in love with her, so when it had all gone sour she’d been left floundering in a sea of hurt disillusionment that had turned so cold and bitter she’d become a tragically lost stranger to him almost overnight.

He picked up the rabbit and looked at it, grimacing, because he did not doubt that this was Lexi’s way of turning back the clock—but only in as far as she was attempting to ease his pain over Marco by reminding him of the time they had spent together without Marco around, he discerned. That kiss, that brief coming together of their mouths, was still burning on his lips; but all he’d seen on Lexi’s lips was their faint downturn, and her face showed withdrawal—as if she’d been embarrassed but was valiantly determined to keep the atmosphere light.

Not so for last night’s kiss, though, Franco reminded himself grimly. Last night’s kiss had been the other Lexi bursting out from behind this one—urgent, passionate and compassionate. That was the woman he was determined to get back again.

Glancing up from the rabbit when she stood with her bags and moved over to his bed, he watched as she proceeded to tip everything back out again so she could refold them. Franco slid his eyes down the length of her slender legs and wondered why he’d complained about what she was wearing when the moulding of the black leggings sparked a groin heating flashback to how it felt when those long slender legs were wrapped tightly around his waist. The striped top hugged her slender curves, and she’d tied back her hair this morning, twisting its shiny length into a casual knot that rested low, just above her creamy nape. It would take him one second flat to loosen that hair again, bring it floating down through his waiting fingers. Give him another few seconds and he would—

A phone started ringing. He glanced down at his phone, only realising it wasn’t ringing when Lexi made a dive across his bed to grab her handbag. Plucking out her mobile, she frowned down at the screen for a couple of seconds. He watched her lips crush into a brooding pout.

‘Sorry, but I have to take this,’ she mumbled, and walked quickly out of the room.

Franco heard her murmur, ‘Hi, Bruce,’ as the door swung shut behind her, and just like that his mellowing mood turned stark.

Rolling the table away from his legs, he let the steely grip of cold hard anger give him the strength to rise to his feet, wincing when everything hurt, then cursing because it did. Outside the window Livorno was shimmering in the noonday heat. Below him he could see his father’s black limo standing in the car park, with Pietro leaning against the bonnet chatting to one of the security men his father had put in place to keep out the intrusive press. Beyond the hospital perimeter he could see a small clutch of camera toting paparazzi, loitering like lazy lizards by the gates. Lexi hadn’t mentioned them. He wondered if she’d been hassled by them when she’d arrived today. He knew they were curious—the internet was full of stories about the crash and Marco’s tragic death. They’d gone hunting for older stories and dragged out his and Lexi’s hasty marriage and even hastier break-up.

There had even been a comment from Bruce Dayton and a photo of him, looking smooth and slick as always, standing outside his agency. ‘Lexi Hamilton is naturally devastated by Marco Clemente’s death. Of course she is supporting her husband at this tragic time. That is all I am going to say.’

There was no quote from Lexi knocking about on the internet. She had not felt compelled to speak to the press. When Dayton had done so he’d made sure he was standing beside the name of his agency. Nothing like a bit of free publicity if you could get it, the calculating bastard.

And her last name was Tolle—no matter how much Dayton ignored that fact. Why was he calling her? Did he fear he was about to lose control of her once again? Bruce Dayton was a dangerous control freak where Lexi was concerned. His silvery eyes had used to glint with possessiveness every time he looked at her. When she’d run away from here she’d gone directly to Dayton, who must have been celebrating beneath the caring concern he would have shown her. That Dayton had managed to achieve his goal and get her into his bed with him burned like poison in Franco’s blood. Were they still lovers? Was Dayton laying on the pressure right now to bring Lexi back to heel?

Franco picked up his mobile. From the window he watched Pietro accepting his call. Five minutes later he was limping painfully over to the clothes closet and opening the door.

Lexi, meanwhile, was pacing the quiet corridor well away from listening ears. ‘Please, listen to me, Bruce—’

‘You don’t plan to come back here to work, do you?’ he challenged harshly.

Lexi winced at his icily accusing tone. ‘I haven’t said that,’ she denied. ‘But I do think it’s time that you and I took a step back from each other,’ she admitted, as gently as she could. ‘You said yourself that I need to take a good look at where my life is heading.’

‘Right now Lexi, I can see you heading for another big fall.’

‘You and I … we were becoming too close for the wrong reasons.’

‘Explain that,’ Bruce clipped out. ‘Are you saying you don’t feel anything for me?’

‘I care for you deeply, but—’

‘You’re still in love with that Italian swine,’ he said. ‘Has it occurred to you that he’s plucking on your heartstrings because he’s ill and probably looks endearingly pathetic?’

‘This conversation has nothing to do with Franco,’ she contended.

‘Of course it’s about Franco,’ Bruce sliced back. ‘He crooks his finger and you go running—’

‘No, this is about you opening my eyes to the kind of relationship that has been developing between us, and I think I’ve always known deep down that it’s not going to work.’ Lexi pressed home, even though she knew it was going to hurt. ‘You recognised that too, Bruce,’ she reminded him gently. ‘I saw it in your expression and heard it in your voice. You’ve been the most wonderful friend to me—the very best. But somewhere along the line our feelings for each other became confused.’

‘Thanks, Lexi, for telling me that you think I’m such a limp-brained fool.’

She gripped the phone more tightly. ‘I didn’t mean that—’

‘Good. Because I am not the one who’s confused about my feelings. I can accept that you might need more time to make up your mind about us, but what I can’t take is you doing it while hanging around him. He’s like poison to you, Lexi. He always was and always will be. I will give you until after Clemente’s funeral, then you had better be back here pronto or I’m coming to get you—because I am not giving up on us!’

He cut her off. Lexi leant back against the wall and closed her eyes. She should have dealt with this. She should have dealt with it months ago. Now she felt he had every right to be angry with her. The problem was she didn’t like hurting people. She knew what it felt like, having been so badly hurt herself. And the worst part was Bruce was not her enemy. Franco was her enemy. If only because of the way he could still make her feel.

Re-entering Franco’s room, she found he wasn’t there. A glance at the closed bathroom door and she pulled in a deep breath and went back to sorting out the things she’d piled on his bed, glad of the few minutes’ respite while she tried to put her conversation with Bruce to one side.

The door to the bathroom opened. Turning around, Lexi almost dropped down onto the bed when a fully dressed Franco stepped out—a Franco she never had grown used to seeing like this. It felt as if someone had stuck a live wire in between her ribs, and the electric sensation tingled all the way down to her toes.

He was wearing a dark pinstriped suit of such amazing quality it seemed to glide over his long, lean physique like a living, moving thing.

‘You can’t get dressed,’ she breathed out in trembling objection. ‘Why have you got dressed?’

Managing to drag her gaze away from its mesmerised stare at the neat red tie knotted against the pristine white shirt collar that showed off the deep golden skin beneath his chin, she felt it clash with a set of rock-hard handsome features that bore little resemblance to the man she’d been looking at ten minutes before—the man she remembered as the Franco she’d used to know.

Not this one, though. This one was the married version—the one she’d learnt was a horribly cold, distant stranger who could look at her through the impassive dark eyes of a ruthless decision maker, as he was doing right now. She wrapped her arms around herself, shivering in response to the look.

‘We are leaving,’ he said. No embroidery to that declaration. He simply stepped over to the table with barely a limp on show and closed down his laptop, then picked up his phone.

‘I—I don’t understand.’ Flicking a glance at the bell push dangling over the pillows on the bed, she wondered anxiously if this was another one of his agitated moments and if she needed to bring someone in here fast, before he did himself some damage.