Brazilian Nights

“You liked them,” she said stiffly, “I preferred simpler places.”

He felt a stir of anticipation in his blood. Her accent had just thickened. She had only the slightest accent. She’d told him once, in a rare moment when they’d talked about their lives, that she’d been tutored in English from childhood—but her accent always grew more pronounced when she was trying to contain her emotions.

In bed, for example.

When they’d been making love. Her whispered words would take on the soft sounds of her native tongue. Sometimes she’d say things to him in Portuguese. Things he had not understood but his body, his mouth, his hands had known their meaning.

He looked down at her, his muscles tense.

“But you liked what we did when we went back to your apartment or mine,” he said, his voice low and rough. “What we did in bed.”

Her color deepened. Or maybe the rest of her face turned pale. He didn’t give a damn. If she thought she was going to control the situation the way she’d controlled it this morning, she was in for a hell of a surprise.

She took a deep breath that lifted her breasts. They seemed larger than in the past. Fuller. But then, he hadn’t seen her breasts in a very long time.

Too long, he thought, and a surge of hot lust rolled deep in his belly.

Lust? For a woman with no makeup on her face? A woman wearing a loose cotton top over baggy jeans? Hell, she looked beautiful anyway, though he had never seen her dressed like this before. She’d always worn chic designer clothes when they were together. Her own clothes, though he’d often tried to buy things for her.

“I prefer to pay for my own things,” she’d always said with a polite smile. She’d used that same line when he tried to buy her any but the simplest of gifts.

She didn’t need convincing anymore, he thought coldly. She hadn’t blinked an eye at his dropping five million bucks on her this morning.

“Whatever we did in New York is over, senhor.”

“Such formality, sweetheart. After all we’ve been to each other?”

“The past,” she said stiffly, ignoring his remark, “has no bearing on this matter.”

“But it does,” he said softly. “After all, I bought this house today.”

She nodded, folded her arms over her breasts. “Yes. And…and it was a very kind thing for you to—”

“Based on the way you looked at your boyfriend, I have to assume you were glad I did.”

“Sim. I was. But Ferrantes is not—”

“Your lover.” He shrugged his shoulders. “Whatever you want to call him.”

He watched the tip of her tongue peep out, watched it sweep across her lips and hated himself for the way it made him feel, hated her for doing it. It was deliberate; everything she’d done from the second she’d set eyes on him this morning had been deliberate.

“Must have been hell, a woman as fastidious as you, sleeping with a man like—”

She slapped him. Her hand moved so fast he never really saw the blow coming. The best he could do was jerk back, grab her wrist, twist it behind her as he tugged her toward him.

“What’s the matter, baby? Does the truth hurt?”

“Get out,” she hissed. “Get out of my house!”

“This isn’t your house. Not anymore.”

Tears filled her eyes. Angry tears, phony tears. One of the two. He knew damned well they couldn’t be any other kind.

“I bought it. Just as you assumed I would.”

She looked at him as if he’d lost his mind. “Assumed?” A choked laugh burst from her throat. “I didn’t even know you were in Brazil! Come to think of it, why are you in my country?”

“Don’t flatter yourself, sweetheart. I didn’t come looking for you.”

She knew that. Still, hearing it hurt. It was time to hurt him back.

“I came on business. Family business.”

“Ah, yes,” she said, tossing her head. “The famous famiglia Orsini. How could I have forgotten?”

She gasped as his hold on her tightened. In the few months they’d been together, they had never discussed his family, his father’s underworld connections. She’d have known about it, of course. That the Orsini brothers were sons of Cesare Orsini was favorite gossip-column fodder.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Only that perhaps the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Dammit, you’re hurting me!”

She was twisting against his hand, trying to get free, but each jerk of her body only brought her more closely against him.

It was agony.

Exquisite agony.

The soft brush of her breasts against the hardness of his chest. The whisper of her belly against his. The feel of her thighs rubbing lightly over his. Just the sight of her, all that sun-streaked hair tumbling around her face, that lush mouth, the eyes deep enough for a man to get lost in.

Memories swept through him.

The feel of her, moving beneath him.

The scent of her, when he brought her to climax.

The taste of her mouth, her skin, her clitoris.

Desire, wild, hot and dangerous, took fire. It thickened his blood, ignited nerve endings, brought him to full, rampant arousal. Maybe she was right. Maybe the apple didn’t fall far from the tree. Go back a couple of generations, to the land of his ancestors, a woman would not have dared make a fool of an Orsini as this woman had done this morning.

On a low growl, Dante clasped Gabriella’s shoulders, lifted her to him and claimed her mouth.

She fought. It didn’t matter. Kissing her, subduing her, taking her was everything.

This morning she had told him what she wanted. Now, it was his turn to tell her what he wanted.

Her. Her, in his bed, again. For as long as he chose to keep her there. He’d never wanted another man’s leavings but this—this was different.

He would wipe Ferrantes’s possession away. Replace it with his own demands. His own pleasure. Her pleasure, too, because that would happen, she would soften under his touch as she had earlier today, she would moan against his lips, run her hands up his chest, press herself to him, yes, as she was doing now, moving her hips against his, making those sexy little whimpers that could raise the temperature a hundred degrees.

He groaned her name. Slid his hands under her bulky shirt. Cupped her breasts and groaned again at the feel of them in his hands, all warm, sweet silky flesh straining against her bra, filling his palms, the nipples lifting to the caressing sweep of his thumbs.

“Gabriella,” he said, his voice urgent, and she wound her arms around his neck, sucked his tongue into the heat of her mouth…

Merda! What in hell was he doing?

Cursing, he pushed her from him. She stumbled back, shoulders hitting the wall, eyes flying open and fixing on his. She looked shocked, on the verge of tears, but he wasn’t fooled. He was letting her do it all over again, blinding him to reality, using sex to turn his body on and his brain off as if she were a sorceress and he a fool she could enchant.

But he wasn’t.

“Nice,” he said, as if he’d been in control all the time. “Very nice. We’re going to get along just fine.”

“Get out,” she said, her voice trembling.

“Come on, sweetheart. Don’t take it so hard. And, what the hell, it’ll be easier with me than it was with Ferrantes, we both know that.”

She swung at him again but he was ready this time. He caught her hand, dragged her against him.

“You said—you said you would give my home to me. No strings, you said.”

“That was before I knew you’d already made a deal with good old Andre.”

She spat a word at him and he laughed. Turned out, some obscenities sounded pretty much the same whether they were said in the Sicilian of his youth or the Portuguese of hers.

“You think this is amusing?”

Dante lowered his head until his eyes were almost even with hers.

“What I think,” he said in a cold whisper, “is that you get to have a choice.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“It means I’ll sell the place to Ferrantes in the blink of an eye.”

“He wouldn’t pay five million dollars.”

“My accountant keeps telling me I can use a couple more nonperforming assets.”

Her mouth trembled. Her eyes filled. It was hard not to feel sorry for her. Hard—but not impossible.

“I hate you, Dante Orsini!”

“I guess the question is, who do you hate more? Me or Ferrantes? Of course, you can always turn us both down. Pack up, move out—”

A thin cry drifted into the room. Gabriella stiffened, jerked back in his arms.

“What’s that?”

“A…a fox,” she said quickly.

She was lying. He could see it in her face. The cry came again. Dante narrowed his eyes.

“A fox in the house?”

“A monkey, then,” Gabriella said, rushing the words together. “Sometimes they get into the attic.”

The hell it was. You didn’t have to grow up in the country to know whatever was making that sound was not a monkey or a fox. Dante thrust her aside and started for the stairs. She ran in front of him and held out her hands.

“Get out of my way,” he growled.

“Dante. Please. Just leave. I’ll pack tonight. I’ll be out by morning. I promise—”

He lifted her as if she were a feather, set her aside, took the stairs two at a time, following what were now steady sobs down a long hall, through an open door, into a softly lit room…

And saw a crib, a blue blanket, a blue teddy bear…

And a baby, kicking its arms and legs and sobbing its heart out.

Dante stopped on a dime. Gabriella rushed past him and lifted the child into her arms. Say something, Dante thought furiously…but no words would come. He didn’t seem capable of anything besides looking at her and at the baby.

“Meu querido,” she crooned, “dearest one, don’t cry!”

The baby’s cries changed to sad little hiccups; Gabriella held the small body against her so that the baby’s face was against her shoulder. A pair of eyes—pale-blue eyes fringed by long, dark lashes—peered at Dante.

The room filled with silence. After a very long time, Dante cleared his throat.

“Yours?” It was not a brilliant comment but it was all he could think of saying.

Gabriella looked at him. He could read nothing in her face.

“I said, is the child—”

“I heard your question.” Her eyes were bright with what he could only assume was defiance. “Yes. The child is mine.”

He felt as if someone had dropped a weight onto his heart.

“Yours,” he said thickly. “And Ferrantes’s.”

Gabriella made a choked sound, neither a laugh or a sob, then lowered her face to the baby’s. Dante stared at her. At the child. He knew he should say something…or maybe he should just smash his fist through the wall.

He did neither. If life lesson number one was that what was over was over, number two was the importance of maintaining self-control.

Dante turned and walked out.

Chapter Five

HE DROVE like a man possessed by demons, a hot fist of rage twisting in his belly.

That Gabriella should have slept with a pig like Ferrantes, that she’d carried his child in her womb…

Dante slammed the heel of his hand against the steering wheel.

“Come on,” he muttered, “come on, dammit!” Couldn’t this freaking car go any faster? He couldn’t wait to get back to the hotel, toss his stuff in his suitcase and get the hell out of Brazil.

He had to phone his old man eventually, but what would he tell him? That he’d gotten it all wrong, there was no dissolute Viera son inheriting the ranch…

Only a dissolute daughter.

A woman who’d warmed his bed every night for, what, a few weeks? Okay. For three months. He’d taken her the first night they’d gone out, in an explosion of mutual passion like nothing he’d ever known before, taken her night after night, and the intensity of that passion had never diminished, not even when it had begun a subtle change to something he hadn’t been able to define except to know that it made him uncomfortable.

Was that the reason he’d ended their affair?

Not that it mattered. There were more important things to consider.

Like what in hell he was going to do with a ranch.

He’d bought it for a woman who’d never existed, a woman who’d walked away from him and never looked back, who’d gone from his arms to another’s without missing a beat, and who gave a damn? God knew, he hadn’t been celibate these past months. There’d been a parade of women in and out of his life. So what if there’d been a parade of men in and out of hers?

What mattered now was that he was stuck with five million bucks’ worth of absolutely nothing.

He’d been scammed, and scammed good—and now he was the unfortunate owner of a place he didn’t want, all his until he could unload it.

Note to self, Dante thought grimly. Phone de Souza. Instruct him to sell the fazenda and never mind the price. Forget how much money he’d lose on the deal. Just find a buyer, he’d say. Any buyer and, yeah, that included Ferrantes. In fact, selling the ranch to Ferrantes was a great idea.

Until he’d shown up, Gabriella had been more than willing to pay the price Ferrantes demanded. She could damned well go on paying it now.

He wasn’t the Sir Galahad type. Sir Stupid, was more like it, a Don Quixote tilting at windmills. Well, that was over. Yeah, definitely, let Ferrantes buy the damned ranch. It was what Gabriella deserved, the perfect payback. Let her spend the next hundred years in the pig’s bed. It didn’t matter to him. She was just someone he’d been with for a while.

Nothing special. Just like seeing her with another man’s kid was nothing special…

A kid with a solemn expression and pale-blue eyes.

Dante cursed and pulled onto the shoulder of the road, put the engine in neutral and sat gripping the steering wheel hard enough to turn his knuckles white.

You could put what he knew about kids in a teacup and have room left. Why would he know anything about them? His brothers, his sisters, were all unmarried. If the guys he played touch football with Sundays in Central Park had kids, he never saw them. Children were aliens from a planet he’d never had any interest in inhabiting.

The only children he ever saw were being pushed through the park in strollers. And, yeah, there were people with kids living in his condo building, now that he thought about it. Like a woman he’d met in the lobby a couple of weeks ago. He’d been heading out, so had she, both of them waiting for taxis in a driving rainstorm, except she’d had a pink-swathed bundle in her arms.

“Nasty weather,” he’d said, because she’d kept looking at him as if she expected him to make conversation.

“Uh-huh,” she’d replied, but she’d seemed to be waiting for something more. Finally he’d caught on.

“Cute,” he’d said, nodding at the bundle. It wasn’t. Not particularly. It was just a baby, but evidently he’d said the right thing because the mom beamed.

“Isn’t she?” she’d said, and then she’d added, proudly, as if the information rated applause, “She’s four months old today.”

Four months.

And about the same size as the baby he’d just seen. The difference was that Gabriella’s kid had those blue eyes, that solemn I’m-an-adult-in-miniature look he’d seen before….

The realization almost stole his breath away.

He saw those eyes, that expression in the mirror each morning when he shaved.

“No,” he said aloud. “No! Impossible.”

But it was adding up. The eyes. The expression. The dark hair. Figure the child’s age at four months, add on nine more…His head did the calculations no single, unattached, contented male wanted to do and reached an inescapable possibility.

Gabriella might have become pregnant in New York. And if she had…

Dante sat back. No. He couldn’t go there. All those years ago, Teresa D’Angelo’s monumental lie. He’d never had sex with her, with any woman without using a condom.

Gabriella could be lying, too.

Except she hadn’t lied. She hadn’t said the child was his. And she’d have told him. “Dante,” she’d have said, “I’m pregnant with your baby.” Teresa damned well had. There were times he could still hear her voice whining that he had to marry her.

Surely, Gabriella, any woman, would have made the same demand.

Which meant, he thought, on a relieved rush of exhaled breath, which meant the kid was not his. Forget the eye color. The face. The time frame. Babies were babies. They all looked alike…

“Merda,” he hissed, and he turned the key, put the car in gear, and drove back to the fazenda for the second time that night.

Daniel had finally fallen asleep.

He’d fussed for the last half hour. Unusual for him. He was generally an easy baby to deal with. He ate, he slept, he kicked his tiny legs, pumped his arms and grinned. The grin, especially, was a delight because his usual expression was thoughtful, almost solemn, so that when he grinned, his whole face lit.

Just like his—

Gabriella blinked. No. She was not going there. It had taken her weeks and weeks not to look at her son and see the man who’d once been her lover. She was not going to permit the events of one day to start her on that path again.

Carefully she lowered her baby into his crib, drew a light blanket to his chin, then bent and kissed his forehead, inhaling his sweet, baby scent. Her lips curved in a smile. Deus, how she adored her little boy. She’d been terrified when she’d realized she was carrying him. Now he was the focal point of her life.

Everything she did, she did for him.

It was why she’d wanted to save the fazenda.

Sighing, she turned out the light, went to her own room and undressed.

If only she could have done it. For Daniel. For his connection to a place that was in the Viera blood. And for the memory of her brother. She had loved Arturo with all her heart, just as he had loved her. No one else ever had, surely not Dante. She’d been his plaything. His toy.

And she had let him hurt her for the last time today.

Gabriella turned on the shower and stepped under the spray.

Dante was history. Her son was the future. She had to plan what she would do next, now that the ranch was truly gone. She’d harbored hope until the last minute, even though she’d known, in her heart, that the small amount of money she still possessed would not be sufficient to save it. The amount owed on it was too big. Her father had mortgaged and remortgaged the fazenda so often she’d lost count, frittering the money away on women, horses and cards. By the time Arturo had inherited it, the bank stood ready to foreclose.

And then, despite the doctors, the treatments, virtually all her savings from modeling, he had died.

The bank had moved in for the kill. She’d made her pathetic financial offer, they’d turned it down, and Ferrantes had come sniffing at her heels. She’d told him what he could do with his disgusting suggestions. He’d laughed and said she would change her mind after the auction. She told him she would never do that; in fact, she had not even intended to go to the auction—why break her heart even more by seeing a pig such as him take what should have been her son’s inheritance?

Then she’d heard Dante’s voice.

She could not have kept from going to him any more than the big, beautiful hawk moths could keep from beating themselves to death against the lit windows of the house at night.

Why had she believed he’d buy the fazenda for her? Worse, why had she let him kiss her? To let that happen…to give in to the kiss, to respond like a wanton to the feel of his arms, the heat of his body, the never-forgotten taste of his mouth and then to have him show how little he thought of her by believing she would have slept with Ferrantes…

That she would have slept with any man after having been with him and, Deus, she hated him for that, for leaving his mark on her lips, her skin, her stupid heart.

Gabriella froze.

Someone was ringing the doorbell. Banging on the door. She could hear it all the way up here, even with the water running. It would wake Daniel, but how could she let Ferrantes in?

Because, this time it would be him.

She didn’t take the time to towel off. Instead, she flung on her robe, tied the sash and ran downstairs. Her heart was racing. She needed a weapon. Her father had kept guns but she didn’t know where they’d be. Arturo, who’d despised killing things, had probably disposed of them.

“Gabriella! Open this door.”

She blinked. Dante? Why had he returned? It couldn’t be him. But when she turned on the outside lights and peered out the window, it was his rental car she saw parked before the house, not Ferrantes’s obscenely extravagant SUV.

What did he want now? There was only one way to find out. She took a steadying breath and cracked the door an inch.

“I don’t know why you came back,” she said, or started to say. But just as he’d done a little while ago, Dante brushed past her as if she were nothing. His easy arrogance was infuriating.

A good thing, because it swept away the sudden ache in her heart the unexpected sight of him provoked.

“Excuse me,” she said coldly, “but I did not invite you in. It is very late, and—”

He swung toward her, eyes bright and hard as diamonds.

“Yes,” he said coldly, “it is definitely very late.”

His gaze swept over her, lingering on the rise of her breasts, the length of her thighs. She thought of how the thin cotton robe must be clinging to her damp body and she flushed and folded her arms.

His smile was thin and dangerous. “Dressed for company?” he said softly.

She could feel her color deepen. “Dressed for bed,” she said coolly. “My days have an early start.”

His smile vanished.

“Taking care of a kid must cut down on your social life.”

Her chin lifted. “What do you want?”

“It’s hard to imagine a city girl like you enjoying this kind of life.”

“That only shows how little you know about me.”

A muscle jumped in his cheek. What was she talking about? He knew a lot about her. She preferred white wine. She didn’t eat red meat. She wore clothes by big-time designers.

Those things constituted knowing a woman, didn’t they? Sure they did. It meant he knew what restaurants she preferred, what to choose on a menu, what to tell his PA to buy her whenever he decided it was time to give a woman a gift.

“Dante. I asked you a question. Why did you come back? We said all we had to say an hour ago.”

He dragged his thoughts together. She was wrong; they hadn’t said all there was to say an hour ago and he damned well wasn’t leaving this time until they had.

“That’s just the point,” he said slowly. “I’m not sure we did.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You never answered the one question that matters.”

She kept her eyes on his, but her face lost a little color. “What question?”

“Gabriella. No games.” He took a step toward her; his eyes grew suddenly dark. “Is the child his?” He paused. “Or is it mine?”

His words hit her with an almost physical force. When she’d first realized she was pregnant, she’d imagined this scene endless times.

It had never ended well.

That was the reason she hadn’t fallen apart that terrible night Dante had taken her to dinner and told her he didn’t want her anymore, just seconds before she’d been about to tell him she was carrying his child.

He had not wanted her then. He did not want her now. So, why was he asking the question?

Better still, how should she answer it?

He came closer, close enough so she had to tilt her head back to look at him.

“It’s a simple question, Gabriella. Whose kid is it?”

Her heart was pounding. His voice was hard. So was his face. Hard and threatening. What did he want? If only she knew.