Brunetti's Secret Son Read online

  ‘I thought our pasts were out of bounds?’

  Reaching for the chilling bottle, he poured her a drink before serving himself. ‘They are, but I seem to have shared a lot of mine with you without meaning to. I think it’s time we address the imbalance.’

  Looking away from him for a moment, she contemplated the last of the lingering orange-and-purple sunset and the stars already beginning to make an appearance.

  She didn’t want to talk about her parents, or the single-minded ambition that drove them and had made her childhood an endless drudge of trying, and failing, to please them.

  And yet, she found herself nodding.

  CHAPTER NINE

  SHE PICKED UP her fork and tasted the exotic fruit and prawn salad, and busied herself with chewing while pushing her food around on her plate as she struggled to find the right words.

  ‘My parents knew very early on that I wasn’t academically gifted as they were—they’re both Fulbright scholars and prize academic excellence above everything else.’

  ‘Including you?’ he asked astutely.

  She swallowed and answered without looking up. ‘Including me. I was an accident, who turned even more burdensome when I was unable to fulfil my full potential in their eyes.’ When he didn’t respond, she risked a glance.

  His face was set in a carefully blank expression, but she glimpsed a look in his eyes, a kinship, that made her throat clog.

  Clearing it, she continued. ‘To say they were stunned their genius hadn’t been replicated in me was an understatement. I was five when they made me take my first IQ test. They refused to believe the result. I took one every year until I was fifteen, when they finally accepted that I wouldn’t be anything more than slightly above average.’

  She sipped her champagne, let it wash away the bitter knowledge that she would always be a disappointment in her parents’ eyes.

  ‘Did they stop pushing you at this point?’ he enquired sharply after helping himself to the last morsel on his plate.

  Her mouth twisted. ‘On the contrary. They pushed me harder with the belief that as long as they continued to polish me I would turn into the diamond they wanted instead of the unacceptable cubic zirconia.’

  ‘I disagree with that description of yourself, and the assessment that you’re average, but go on,’ he encouraged, lounging back, all drop-dead-gorgeous danger, to nurse his drink as their first course was cleared away.

  She shrugged. ‘There’s nothing much to add to that. They were indifferent to everything in my life besides my academic achievements, such as they were. When I told them I wanted to be a lawyer, they grudgingly accepted my decision, then immediately started pulling strings for me to be hired by one of the Magic Circle law firms in the country. When I told them I was taking three months off and then returning to take a position at a firm in Dublin, our relationship strained even more.’

  ‘But you didn’t back down?’

  She laughed bitterly. ‘It’s hard being an average child of two geniuses, who hadn’t wanted a child in the first place. I guess I’d reached a point where I’d had enough.’ She’d wanted to lash out, rebel against the oppressive weight of her parents’ indifference. Palermo had been her moment of rebellion. And while she would never regret having Lucca, she was beginning to be afraid that the one man she’d rebelled with had set a benchmark for all other men to come. And that each and every one of them would be found wanting.

  She drank some more, felt the bubbles buzz through her veins and loosen her tongue. She even managed a less strained smile when Mahina delivered their second course.

  ‘I presume that three-month vacation included your stop in Palermo?’ he asked when they were alone again.

  With the unburdening of her past came an unexpected increase in appetite. Or it could’ve been the alcohol.

  Shrugging inwardly, Maisie tucked into the grilled mahi mahi and gave an appreciative moan. ‘Yes. I’d always been fascinated with all things Italian.’ She paused, glanced at him and saw the mildly mocking brow he lifted in her direction. Flushing, she returned her attention to her plate. ‘I had some money saved from when I worked part-time at uni, and toured the whole of Italy. Palermo was my third stop.’

  ‘And did your relationship improve once you resumed your career?’ he asked. His questions weren’t prying, as she supposed hers had been. He seemed to be interested in her life, her past, and not just as a means of passing time at the dinner table.

  So she found herself recounting the one painful event in her life she’d sworn never to revisit again. ‘Not once they found out I was pregnant by a man whose last name I didn’t even know. Both my mother and father came from broken homes. They were estranged from their parents by the time I grew up. I know they hadn’t planned on getting married, but they did because my mother fell pregnant with me. When I in turn got pregnant, the confirmation that the apple truly didn’t fall far from the tree was too much for them to stomach.’ The words fell from her lips in sharp bursts, the pain she’d smothered away in her heart rising to stab her once again.

  She chanced a glance at Romeo and saw that he had frozen, his face a taut, forbidding mask.

  ‘So they severed ties with you?’ he asked in a chilling voice.

  ‘Not exactly. But they had views on how to bring up Lucca that I didn’t welcome.’

  ‘What views?’

  ‘They wanted me to put him in the care of nannies to start, and then boarding school when he was four—’

  Romeo’s curse stemmed the flow of her narrative. ‘So he wouldn’t get in the way of your career?’ he bit out.

  ‘Yes,’ she replied, her throat painful with the admission that no matter what she achieved, she wouldn’t be worthy in her parents’ eyes.

  His breath hissed out in pure rage. ‘Madonna mia,’ he sliced out, his nostrils flaring as he struggled to control himself. ‘Did you consider it?’ he asked with a narrow-eyed stare.

  ‘No. I gave up my job, enrolled in a gourmet cooking course, then moved to Ranelagh to open the restaurant.’

  A morose silence fell over the table, their half-eaten meal growing cold as the sharp cries of cicadas pierced the night.

  ‘This wasn’t how I planned this evening unfolding,’ Romeo said several minutes later after he’d refilled her glass.

  Maisie laughed self-deprecatingly, that buzz in her veins somehow making the pain throbbing in her chest sharper. She was sure it was light-headedness that made her enquire breezily, ‘So how had you planned this evening going, then?’

  He didn’t answer for a long time. Then he stood, tall, imposing, breathtaking. ‘Come, we’ll walk on the beach for a while.’ He grabbed his glass and the half-finished bottle in one hand and held out his other. ‘Let the night air wash away unpalatable memories.’

  Maisie knew she ought to refuse, that the alcohol swirling through her bloodstream would inhibit any rational decisions she needed to make.

  And yet she found herself sliding her hand into his, rising to her feet and discarding her shoes when he instructed her to.

  The walk to the beach was lazy, the sultry night air and soft ukulele-threaded music emerging from hidden speakers seeming to slow everything down to a heavy, sensual, irresistible tempo.

  He let go of her hand when they reached the sand, filled their glasses with the last of the champagne, then walked a few feet away to dispose of the bottle.

  Toes curling in the warm sand, she strolled to the water’s edge, laughing softly when the cool water splashed over her feet.

  For a single moment, Maisie dared to wonder how it would be to be in this place with the man of her dreams under different circumstances; if she’d been on a real honeymoon, not a desperate attempt to thwart a wizened old thug’s threats.

  The path her parents had set her on as a child hadn’t left
much room for dreaming. She’d been too busy trying to earn their love, to make herself worthy of their acceptance, to entertain such flights of fancy.

  But she was a grown woman now, and surely there was nothing wrong with letting her imagination run wild for a few minutes, in letting her senses be overwhelmed by this beautiful place, this breathtaking man beside her?

  She drained her second glass and didn’t protest when Romeo took it away, then returned to stand behind her. Her breath shuddered out when he slid his hands over her shoulders and started a gentle massage of the tension-knotted muscles.

  ‘What are you doing, Romeo?’ she asked shakily after several minutes, when she started to melt beneath the warm kneading.

  ‘You’re tense. Why?’

  ‘Probably because you’re touching me.’

  ‘You were tense before I touched you. Did I do something to make you this way?’

  She released a single bark of laughter. ‘The whole world doesn’t revolve around you, Romeo.’

  ‘Perhaps not, but if there’s a problem going on with you it needs to be addressed, do you not agree?’ He turned her around, looked into her face and frowned. ‘Are you bored? Do you require more challenges?’

  ‘No, I’m finding the lessons with Chef Sylvain illuminating and Mahina is teaching me a few Tongan recipes that will come in handy when I return to Ranelagh.’

  His mouth compressed but he nodded. ‘But you’re not happy. Don’t deny it.’

  She tried to step out of his hypnotising sphere, but he held her by the elbows.

  ‘This afternoon you thought you knew what ailed me.’

  His gaze sharpened, then he gave a wry smile. ‘Maybe it was my own need talking.’

  ‘What...what need?’

  ‘The need that claws beneath my skin, threatens to eat me alive...’

  She made a barely audible sound when he pulled the clip from her hair and the heavy knot tumbled over her shoulders. Strong fingers slid through her hair in slow, sensual caresses. Maisie realised her dream was sliding dangerously into a yearning for reality that would be hard to push back in a bottle should she set it free.

  But still she stayed, moaning softly when his mouth brushed the sensitive and tender spot below her ear. Light kisses traced along her jaw, down her neck to the pulse hammering at her throat. Desire pounded her, making her limbs heavy and the need to maintain that distance she’d been struggling to achieve melt away.

  He spun her into his arms, and she gasped at the voracious hunger stamped on his face.

  ‘Romeo...’

  His kiss stopped whatever feeble attempt she’d been scrambling for to save herself from the unstoppable freight train of sexual fury that hurtled towards her. But as he took control of her mouth, control of her body, Maisie knew she would welcome being taken over, being flattened by the sheer force of his hunger, as long as it satisfied hers.

  And it would.

  From searing memory, she knew Romeo was an unselfish lover. If anything, he achieved a deeper level of arousal by piling on her pleasure, taking her to the very brink of sexual release and burning with her as they both fell.

  He would give her everything her body desperately craved. And more.

  But what happened next? What of tomorrow?

  The questions began like small, icy kernels at the back of her mind. Then loomed, snowballed, until she pushed at his chest, desperate to free herself of this illusion.

  ‘Stop!’

  He raised his head immediately but didn’t release her. ‘You want me. Don’t bother denying it,’ he lashed out at her, his body vibrating with the tension that would surely explode at any moment.

  His gaze dropped to her lips when she licked them, savouring the taste of him to pathetically add to her collection of memories.

  ‘Yes, I do. But I won’t let you use me to scratch an itch that only stems out of being thrown together more than anything else.’

  He cursed under his breath. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘It means we have a thing for each other, I won’t deny that. But it’s meaningless. Just a brand of chemistry that will probably go away if we ignore it. I’m not going to experiment on something cheap and tawdry just because we both happen to have time on our hands. I have more self-worth than that.’

  He dropped his hands and took a single step back, but his dark gold eyes stayed on her. Accusing. Condemning. ‘We took marriage vows. I think that elevates anything that happens between us well above cheap and tawdry.’

  ‘Please don’t do that. Don’t rewrite the script on what the end goal is here. We only got married because of Lucca. And we agreed there would be no physical manifestation of those vows. Don’t change the terms now.’

  He laughed mockingly. ‘You talk to me about changing the terms when you can’t be in the same room as me or have a simple conversation without your pulse jumping all over the place?’

  Heat suffused her face, along with anger. ‘So you thought you’d take pity on your sexually frustrated wife and do something about it?’ she threw at him. ‘How very stoic of you.’

  ‘If I recall, leaving the physical side out of the marriage was your decision. I merely agreed because you seemed strongly wedded to the idea, pun intended. There’s no shame in requesting a renegotiation.’

  ‘I’m not requesting anything! All this...’ she waved her hand at the sandy beach, the jaw-droppingly gorgeous moonlight and the discarded champagne bottle and glasses ‘...was your doing. Some sort of attempt at seduction, perhaps?’

  He fisted his hair and then released it with a Latin flourish that made her belly quiver against her will.

  ‘Only because I thought it wise to tackle the situation before one of us exploded,’ he growled, his cheekbones hollowing out as he glared at her.

  ‘Well, consider it tackled. I’ll endeavour to keep my desires under better control from now on.’

  The tension in his body was so palpable, she could almost reach out and touch it.

  ‘You do realise there are millions of married couples who actually have sex with each other? Why not us?’

  A shiver went through her, but she still managed to lift her chin and face that challenge head-on. ‘Because I’m not built to have emotionless sex,’ she flamed at him, at the end of her tether. ‘And I’m damn sure you know that, Romeo. So stop. Please...just stop!’

  Burnished gold eyes gleamed with such intensity, Maisie feared she might have poked the lion one too many times. For several seconds he just stared at her, hands on hips, his gaze probing to her very soul.

  A heavy sigh depressed his chest, then he nodded solemnly. ‘I will stop if you want me to. But I think we both know it won’t be that easy, gattina. Come and find me when you change your mind.’

  CHAPTER TEN

  SHE MADE IT through the next seven days. Even went as far as to pat herself on the back for her stellar performance. Even when her body threatened resistance and advocated surrender at every turn, Maisie ground her teeth and sallied forth.

  She looked into Romeo’s eyes when he addressed her; didn’t move away when he approached to discuss whatever was on his mind, or dance away as she normally would’ve when they took turns teaching Lucca to swim.

  Even when she began to suspect that Romeo was deliberately testing her resolve by standing too close when they watched a particularly stunning sunset, or when his fingers lingered a touch too long when he passed her a plate of fruit at the breakfast table.

  In those times she forced herself to remember how transient this situation was. And that the end might come sooner rather than later. He’d opened up when she’d heard him having a heated phone call two nights after their escapade on the beach.

  Lorenzo had finally come out and demanded a cash settlement to restore the famiglia’s dwind
ling power. Romeo had flatly refused.

  The old man had retreated.

  Whether that was merely a distraction tactic was something Romeo was investigating, but so far they had nothing concrete to indict him with. But if it proved not to be, then Lucca could be well out of danger before his fourth birthday next week. They hadn’t discussed what would happen afterwards and she’d presumed Romeo would want access to his son, but Maisie couldn’t see the man who’d been labelled the Weekend Lover, the same man who’d walked away from her so definitely five years ago, wanting to remain tied down through a marriage licence.

  Her heart lurched painfully and she turned from watching Romeo and Lucca splashing on the other side of the pool. She thought of her little flat in Ranelagh and immediately hated herself for thinking it would be dull and dreary compared to this brilliant paradise. Compared to living under the same roof as Romeo.

  Ranelagh was her home. One she was proud of.

  She’d survived putting Romeo behind her five years ago. As painful as it’d been, she’d survived walking away from parents who would never love her the way she knew parents should love their child.

  She would get through this when the time came.

  ‘Is this your new way of attempting to tune me out? Staring out to sea and hoping you’ll be turned into a mermaid?’ His low voice seared along her nerve endings, starting that infernal flame that would only build the longer he stayed close.

  She looked around and saw Emily walking off with a tired Lucca. Once they’d settled into a routine, Maisie had come round to the idea of letting Emily help with Lucca. They got on well, and Maisie could indulge in honing her culinary skills without guilt.

  Bracing herself, she met Romeo’s dark hazel eyes, the blazing sexual fire he no longer attempted to hide evident in his return stare.

  ‘How very arrogant of you to assume my every thought revolves around you,’ she replied coolly, although cool was the last thing she felt when he was this close, his arms braced on either side of the pool wall, caging her in.