LEANDRO MOVED THROUGH the perfectly manicured gardens and among his family and friends like a pale imitation of himself. No, an agitated, less-than-together version of himself.
The same scent of hydrangeas and jasmine that had calmed him so many times, the stone and marble villa that he had somehow wrested into a home for him, Luca and Valentina now mocked him and his very image of himself.
The disgusting and disconcerting fact was that he had rushed to her bedroom two seconds after Antonio’s self-satisfied whisper about her plans. Anger and disbelief and a rope of unease had held him in its grip as he raised his hand and clutched the gleaming chrome door handle.
In a flicker of a moment, from one breath to the next, he had realized what he had been about to do.
Izzie’s laughter from within the suite mocked him, scraped him.
He’d been exactly like Enzo had been so many times in one of his violent tempers.
He wouldn’t have hit Alex like Enzo had done with his mamma that one time or spewed vitriol or called her horrible names. He knew that much. Yet that he had become so angry, so unknowing of where he was going or what he was about to do...so afraid of losing something he hadn’t realized he needed.
But Leandro had never needed anything or anyone. His success with the company and being a responsible guardian to his brother and sister, they had all been driven by the needs of others.
The reminder of his father had been like a naked dip in the freezing lake that Luca had challenged him to in one of those rare moments of childhood they had enjoyed.
How had Alexis gotten under his skin? What was it about her that made him react with such violence of emotion? Why this hunger to claim her as his?
Until now, he had avoided the crowd, needing to cool his temper before he saw her. Or his brother who’d worn a smirking grin all evening as they met several of their cousins and aunts.
It was only years of meticulous habit that he now noticed the uniformed waiters and flowing champagne and Conti family members that came crawling out to see Isabella. And Alexis, of course, just like she had expected.
Because they all wanted to see the woman that had made him fall from his pedestal. They expected a stunning woman armed to the teeth with wiles and cunning. They would form a line to see his weakness, his...
But something inside him balked at calling her a weakness anymore.
With her simplicity and straightforwardness, Alexis would be a shock to all of them. She’d probably dress in a garish tank top and shorts just to insult him and his family.
He had no doubt that she would shred that dress into pieces, throw that diamond choker he’d selected himself in the rubbish bin.
“Papà...you’re back.” He heard Isabella’s squeal behind him.
His mouth instantly curving, he turned and saw her on the marble steps. Reaching her, he picked her up while she vined those chubby arms around his neck and held him tight. Kissed him soundly on his cheek. He stayed there, suddenly realizing how much he had missed Isabella’s incessant chatter in the past week. The sweet scent of her made his throat close up as it always did.
Dio, he had come so close to not knowing her...
“Did you miss me, piccola?”
She considered the question and he laughed again. “I had so much fun with Uncle Luca and Zia so not a lot, Papà.” As if to mollify him, she bent closer and whispered, “You wanna know a secret?”
“Si. Your uncle and aunt always hide the best ones from me.”
“I peeked at Mamma’s special folder yesterday when she was showering.”
“Mamma’s special folder?” he repeated, some sleek black diary with lots of phone numbers of men she knew instantly coming to mind.
When had he become so inventively distrustful? When had every small facet of Alexis’s life become this important to him?
All their lives, Antonio had in turn hated and loved Luca because he was the image of their father.
Right down to his creative pursuits and genius thinking and his looks.
Because he, like Enzo had done at a horrible price to all of them, lived so recklessly and without a direction. That he partied and drank and chased women indiscriminately.
But Luca, as far as Leandro knew, never lost it like he had this afternoon.
Luca, for all he slept with every willing woman, would never touch one in anger or distress.
Suddenly, it felt as if Leandro was the one who had inherited all of his father’s disgusting traits—distrust, this sudden temper, this unease as if he was losing control of himself.
The very thought made him cold to his bones. Made him want to ship Alexis back to New York on the next flight before she revealed sides of him he didn’t want to face.
“She has a big shelf full of those binders but she brang only—”
“Brought,” he corrected as he had seen Alexis do.
“Brought only a few here. She used to draw and write a lot in them before the accident. Now she just opens them and looks at them.” Sadness tinged those gray eyes of hers that were so much like his own. “Last week she thought I was sleeping. But I wasn’t and I think...she cried when she opened them.”
Alexis had been crying?
The image twisted his gut.
Izzie hugged him tighter and he knew the thought of Alexis’s tears scared her. “Papà will take care of Mamma, Izzie. She’ll never cry again, si?”
“Si,” she replied, her smile wide, her eyes full of pride.
“These folders, what do they have in them, piccola?” he asked, refusing to feel even a little guilt for using his daughter as his cohort.
If there was something he could do to take away that sadness from Alexis, he had to know.
“Lots of pictures and stories, Papà. Sometimes, she reads them to me. But not much since her car crashed.”
“Why not?”
With the attention of a gnat, Izzie tuned out his question. “Did you see these?” she added, raising her legs upward.
“New frock, bambina?” he inquired with the utmost affected interest while his gaze moved upward toward Alexis’s bedroom.
Anxiety and something else thrummed through his veins.
Isabella sighed that world-weary sigh of hers that made his heart squeeze every time. That made his chest feel too small for the laughter that roared through him. He did so now while she watched him with a bemused glance.
For his precious six-year-old, it seemed he was not only ancient but also completely out of touch with the modern world she lived in. Like how he was supposed to be buying gadgets and not stick-thin dolls for her. She was forever telling him off for not being savvy enough like Luca. Or for not installing some candy jewel game on his mobile phone.
Apparently, Leandro wasn’t hip enough for his daughter. Did Alexis think so, too?
Did she wish he could flirt and charm and do all these fun things like Luca did? Did she truly prefer someone fun-loving and adventurous like Luca to him?
Her husky laughter from this afternoon with Luca played along his nerves like some jarring symphony.
Dio mio, what was she reducing him to?
“Of course I had to wear a new frock to meet all my new family,” Isabella said with exaggerated patience. “It’s my new pumps.” She wiggled her toes again. “Zio Luca...designed Conti pumps, just for me.” Pride rang through her voice, as if she understood the centuries-old legacy.
She barely let him glance at the shiny black leather before she started off again. “Although Mamma says I shouldn’t expect new toys and games all the time just because you’re stinking rich. Does Italian money stink, Papà?” she then asked innocently.
Laughter barreled out of his chest. His entire body shook with the impact of it and he sank to the steps with Izzie in his arms while his extended family and his closest friends stared at him as if he had grown horns.
Luca and Valentina strolled close and stood stunned, their hearts in their eyes, as if they’d never seen him laughing like that.
Had he ever? Had they been deprived of so much despite his best efforts?
While his little girl went on in that incessant way of hers. “She says it’ll make me...” She scrunched her face again and by this time, Leandro was choking with laughter and tears. “... Arrogant and domi...dominairing like some people she knows.”
Even Luca and Tina had joined his laughter now.
“I asked what that meant and she said I should ask you. She said you’d know best.”
Leandro didn’t have a memory of ever laughing like this. Of ever feeling this carefree, of this rightness in his world.
Magpie-like, Izzie went on while a sudden hush fell around the crowd that had moved toward the steps.
Leandro pushed to his feet. He put Izzie down when she wiggled.
Alexis stood at the top of the steps, a vision in the dark pink silk.
Whispers buzzed around him while his family took stock of her but she had eyes for only him.
Leandro felt like a charge of electricity had hit him straight from the sky and held him rooted to the ground.
As if he had waited all his life for this moment where he could feast on Alexis.
There was shock and disbelief and, above all, that sense of wonder, as if he’d been given a gift.
What did it mean that she had worn the dress and jewelry he had sent her? Would she ever act as he expected?
But suddenly he realized there was such profound pleasure in the unexpected with Alexis.
Her strawberry blond hair fell in lustrous waves around her shoulders, framing her distinctive features. And the scar she wore so bravely only made her even more beautiful for him.
The diamond choker he had specially commissioned for her glittered around her swan-like neck.
Slinky straps exposed tanned shoulders while the ruched neckline hinted barely at her cleavage. The silky fabric fell to her ankles molding her long legs.
Shoulders squared, hair gleaming bright, she came down the steps. Only then did he see the thigh-length slit. One toned thigh and a shapely calf winked at him.
Like an engulfing wave, want came at him, drenching him from head to toe. Blood pounded. Instinct roared. Muscles thrummed.
Challenge oozed out of every pore on that sensual body of hers. His mouth dried. And he was hard like stone.
If she meant to prance around all evening in the dress and diamonds that he had bought for her, if this was her idea of Look But Don’t Touch, her idea of Privileges Revoked, then Leandro had to hand it to her.
She had devised the perfect form of revenge for his sins against her. She had also somehow taken the sails out of his anger, shaken loose the dread in his gut that she would flee one night with Izzie in hand, just because he had manipulated the truth for his purposes.
That he would wake up one day and not find her there, like he hadn’t seen his mother one summer morning. That he would lose this thing, too, one of the most joyous things that had come into his life, like everything had gone before.
Because to be a father to Izzie without Alexis as his wife was just not enough anymore. And not just for Izzie’s sake.
For all she bought those tickets, Alexis wouldn’t flee in the night. She wouldn’t leave without a fight, at least. She was not weak or cowardly.
He was no more Enzo than Alexis was his mother.
History would not repeat in his marriage, in this villa again, he told himself.
It was her way of wresting control of the situation, her way of coping when he had all but taken everything familiar away from her.
He understood her. And Dio, he really hoped she would understand, soon, why he had done what he had done. Or else, relief for his ever-present erection was never going to come.
Finally, she halted on the last step right in front of him. It brought her face-to-face with him. The subtle scent of her body teased him, the warmth from her body taunted.
Words came and floated away from his lips, inadequate and much too revealing of emotions he didn’t understand himself. “Arrogant and domineering, bella? If we’re going to coach her to take sides, then the war is truly on, Alexis.”
She raised a brow while her eyes glittered like precious stones. “Just teaching our daughter some important facts of life, Leandro. You wouldn’t want either of us to get used to this lifestyle and expect diamonds and tiaras for every little occasion now, would you? Even you couldn’t buy your way out of everything. Not with the number of things I’m going to have to forgive you for.”
Our daughter, she had said.
Was she going to accept what he planned for them? Or was she still going to challenge him at every turn?
He touched her then, as inevitable as his next breath. He lifted her hand and pressed his mouth to her wrist. Felt her tremble beneath his lips. Imagined trailing them over every inch of her.
Slowly, with excruciating reluctance, he returned her hand to her side.
“I would say we were even after that display at the pool this afternoon, no?”
He settled his arm around her waist and nudged her forward. She noted his possessive gesture with a raised brow but didn’t say anything. “Not even close. And are you so sure it was a display?”
“Yes.” He clasped her arm and pulled her to him. “A cheap ploy, too.”
A hint of tease turned her voice molten. “This from the master manipulator? The control freak? The man who let me believe his daughter was a burden, a hurdle in the way of his new happiness?”
While each and every one of his guests watched with a kind of twisted fascination, she cradled his jaw and looked up at him.
As if she owned him. As if she had every right to his body and even his thoughts. As if she had shed all those insecurities and fears and become this bold, stunning creature who owned her every desire.
Heart pounding, Leandro stared at her, his hands fisting at his side. His first instinct was to shove her hand and walk away. He’d never been one for public displays of any kind. Dio, he hadn’t even danced with Rosa in the public, or touched her this way.
He had never wanted to.
“I’m an old-fashioned man, cara,” he warned her but it didn’t carry any real threat. He sounded husky, rough. “I’ll always do what I think is right.” That was as far an explanation as he was willing to offer.
She traced his jawline, and then smoothed out the frown on his forehead.
Leandro held himself still, somehow. The sensation of surrendering to her touch and her words was alien yet exhilarating. “Then I’ll do whatever I have to do to ensure you do not ruin any chance we have of this working. For once, I’m going to be the one in charge, Leandro, the one who’ll protect this relationship. Can you handle that?”
Something danced in her eyes and he realized she understood him far better than anyone had ever done. He had done everything he could do to bring her here, to stake his claim and now she was doing the same.
Slowly the thought of denying her faded away, and stinging need rose in its place. Every other part of him waited in anticipation for her bold touch, for her daring strokes.
Cristo, would this woman ever stop surprising him? Was there any version of her that wouldn’t torment and tease him?
Could there be so much fun in relinquishing control?
It both thrilled and haunted him—how much he wanted to give up the reins of their relationship to her.
“I’ve decided to let you make it up to me for everything you didn’t tell me. But no more dresses and extravagant gifts, Leandro. You don’t want to confirm your grandfather’s belief that I’m for sale, do you?”
He didn’t know why he couldn’t suddenly tell her the truth or why with her, he acted first and then tried to rationalize his behavior to himself. Seven years ago and now. “You were right in that my family and friends here tonight will dissect every tiny detail about you and Isabella. One of them will speak to the press and there will be a furor about the Conti legacy as there is every ten years.
“I knew you wouldn’t want to give them anything more to talk about.”
“Meaning my usual clothes would give them something to talk about?”
“Si.”
Fire flashed in her eyes. And beneath that a deep vulnerability that he would have given anything to heal. This constant battle to protect the core of what made her her versus the desire to use it to bind her to him, it was slowly eroding him from within. “So you’re ashamed of me then?”
“No. I’m protective of you, Alexis.”
She moved her hands over the diamonds, the dress, her left hand slower than the right. “So this was all to make sure there was no cheap talk about me or Izzie?”
“Si.”
“And the note? Was that to shore up my armor against all these people, too? To build up my confidence so that I didn’t falter here tonight and humiliate you? Should I make sure I don’t talk much so that I don’t disappoint their image of the great Leandro Conti?”
“Si.”
Her head jerked as if he had slapped her, looked away and then met his gaze again with a wounded defiance. Suddenly, he felt like the lowest of low. “Dear God, is there anything real about you? Is there a single word or thought that comes from your heart? Do you possess one, Leandro? Or has it turned into a black lump and rotted?”
“No, Alexis.” He clasped her arm before she could turn away. “Hear me. I wrote it because I thought you needed to hear it, si, that you needed the courage to face this crowd. But, cara, I also wrote it because it’s the truth.
“Because it’s something you should be told again and again.”
Something glittered in her gaze then.
She bent toward him so suddenly that his thoughts scattered. His nostrils flared with the subtle scent of her skin and soap. “If you want this thing to work between us, if you want me to give this a chance, I need more, Leandro.
“I need more than duty and Izzie’s welfare and family values. I need more than glittering jewels and designer labels and manipulative words.
“Even struggling at everything I tried, I’ve been a good daughter and a mom. And I always will be. With you or without you. Just Izzie’s happiness is not enough for this to work.
“In this thing between us, I need to be just me, just Alexis who’s attracted to you. Who’s just a little bit crazy about you. Who wants you more than she wants the next breath of air.
“So damn it, Leandro, give me something. Give me something that’s free of your manipulation, of your duty, of what you think I need. Give me something of yourself. Or we end before we begin and it’s Izzie who’ll suffer.”
Awash in such pure desire, eddied around by such sharp heat, Leandro was captivated by her. Drank in the unflinching honesty in her eyes, of the way she held his gaze even as her mouth trembled.
And something inside him unraveled at the stark, unabashed courage in her words.
“Pink.” The word came out of him as if it was wrenched from the depths of his being, as if it was chipped off a concrete wall around his heart leaving a thundering crack behind.
“Pink?” she said then, frowning, the confidence in her eyes flickering.
He couldn’t take it anymore. He couldn’t stand that feeling of being ripped open with his emotions bare. He needed her taste, her scent to wash away that feeling of being stripped of his control.
So he took her mouth with a voracious greed, with little finesse. His teeth scraped against her lips as he forced her to open to him. Just as he had forced her to accept him into her life.
If there was a different way, Leandro admitted, with a sinking feeling, he didn’t know how.
But Alexis opened her mouth, Dio mio, it was pure heaven.
Nothing existed but the sweetness of her mouth, the current of need building up inside him. The press and fit of their bodies as if they were designed for each other.
Even the thought of his friends and family seeing him like this, undisciplined and hungry for a woman, didn’t stall his raking hunger.
She fisted his shirt in her hands, her soft groan music to his famished senses. “Leandro, no, tell me—”
He tugged her lower lip with his teeth and growled. “I bought this cursed dress because it was pink. Because I remember your fixation with everything pink. Because I knew you would like it. Because I wanted the sheer pleasure of seeing you in it, because I wanted to see your pleasure in it.
“I saw it almost a month ago in a catalog on my desk, before you even came back into my life and thought of you. And this past week, I couldn’t stop thinking about it, so like a schoolboy who wants to impress the girl he likes, I hunted it down to the designer store. I explained to them what it looked like, I described your size and I waited for two hours while they flew it down here from a different store in Rome.
“I have never, in my life, gone to such lengths to buy a small thing like that.
“Is that bit of madness enough for you, Alexis?”
And because he couldn’t bear to see his own reflection in her eyes, because he couldn’t pretend like he hadn’t heard the desperation in his voice, he turned away.
Still, she stopped him. Kissed his cheek boldly. Demanded that he hold her gaze. “Grazie, Leandro,” she said, warmth in her tone.
Why couldn’t she fight him and call him a hateful man for manipulating her, for taking advantage of her situation? What courage did she possess to give of herself this way, to wrench parts of him he didn’t want to give?
Such joy glittered in that brown gaze that for the first time in his life, Leandro felt truly out of his element. Her taste on his lips, her scent on his skin, that curve of her mouth, the warmth in her gaze, suddenly they were the most terrifying things he had ever beheld. Because they were both a tremendous gift and an almost unbearable burden.
For he knew now that he wasn’t enough to hold those intact, knew how easily he could shatter it and her and then...and then he had a feeling his entire world would collapse along with it.
And he wanted neither this power nor this vulnerability that Alexis brought into his life.