FROM THE MOMENT he realized he had a daughter, Leandro had tried to imagine what he would feel a thousand times. After all, he had raised Valentina for all intents and purposes. Something novel from the emotional spectrum he’d ever experienced, he admitted that much.
But the sight of the little girl that barely came to his knees, looking up at him with those gray eyes, both curious and reticent, punched through him. It was as if he was caught in a whirlpool of emotion, tossed about by a vicious eddy that threw him from grief to anger to sheer, gut-wrenching amazement that she was his.
And loss, excruciating loss.
It had been almost close to an hour since he and Alexis had arrived at the tiny brownstone house that belonged to her parents.
Tension swirled through the air from the moment she introduced him. The Sharpes were too polite to say anything to his face, better than what Alexis had received back in his home, but their doubt filled the air. Even more powerful was their obvious anger for Alexis. She had forgotten to mention that she had come to see him against their wishes.
After an excruciatingly uncomfortable half hour, they went to visit with friends and Leandro had been able to breathe again.
Keeping to his word, he had held himself back from approaching Isabella.
But waiting had never felt so painful as he heard Alexis’s firm but husky tone and Isabella’s soft voice in the kitchen. He had no one to blame. Neither would he let anything nor anyone stop him from setting it to right.
He stayed on the couch, anxious like never before when Alexis and Isabella walked back into the tiny living area.
Reaching him, Isabella leveled an unabashedly curious look at him. “Mamma says you’re my papà.”
Leandro cleared his throat, found himself unable to utter a word still. Chill and heat, everything enveloped him.
“She said you guys were friends before and then fell out. Is that why you didn’t come to see me before?” His gaze flew to Alexis’s and held. That she hadn’t filled his daughter’s head with anything but the truth made his own treatment of her even more awful. “It’s okay,” Isabella continued, laying her small hand upon his. “My friend Sam and I fight all the time, too. Mamma says friends gotta make up after fights. You and Mamma made up?”
“Si...yes,” he corrected himself when he saw her little frown. “We have.”
“Does that mean I can tell my friends that you’ll be—?”
“Izzie, sweetie,” Alexis interrupted, “remember how we talked about your papà living all the way in Italy and us—”
“You can tell all your friends, Isabella,” Leandro added, ignoring Alexis’s pursed mouth. “Maybe we can even meet your friend Sam tomorrow? Would you like that?”
“Can we throw the ball around with them? Sam’s dad has a really good arm.”
Even as his arms ached to pull her into his embrace, even as prickling heat knocked at his eyes, Leandro consoled himself with shaking his little girl’s hand. “Si, we can. Although it is your uncle, Luca, who’s the best with a ball in the family.”
A cute, heart-wrenching smile split her mouth. And Leandro’s breath caught.
It was in Isabella’s smile that Alexis peeked through. The effervescent joy, the confident tilt of the chin, the way it tore through him... Alexis was in his daughter where it mattered. “I have an uncle?”
“You have an uncle, an aunt and a great-nonno in Italy, who’re all dying to meet you.”
“What’s a nonno?” Before he could answer, she tugged his hand. “Can I show you my new puzzle? Are you going to stay here? We only have three bedrooms but you can have mine. Unless you want to sleep in Mamma’s room now that you’re friends again?”
He laughed as her questions continued, much like the machine that threw tennis balls at a player.
“No, sweet pie, he can’t stay here.”
“Why not?” Both he and Isabella asked at the same time.
Alexis’s smile didn’t falter. “Our house is too small for you. But Brooklyn has luxury hotels that should suit your exacting tastes.”
“I’m staying here, Alexis.”
His heart threatening to burst out of his chest, Leandro stood up and followed his little girl to her room.
Even as he was aware of a set of molten brown eyes digging into his back, censure and curiosity and a million other questions in them.
* * *
Maybe taking Izzie on a holiday to Italy for the summer isn’t such a bad idea, Alex. Izzie will get to meet the Contis and you can have a nice break.
Her dad’s words from this morning still rumbled through Alex, like the after-ripples of an earthquake that had upended her world this morning.
You went when we warned you against it. Now that he’s being so reasonable, what’s bothering you?
This was her mother. Clenching her teeth so hard that her jaw hurt, Alex dragged another cardboard box with canned organic beans.
The damning thing was the heartless, manipulative jerk hadn’t even broached the subject of visiting Italy with her. Yet, here was her dad, the very man who’d looked at Leandro with the utmost suspicion last week, persuading her to not hold grudges and do what was best for Izzie.
Even now, her throat burned at her parents’ continual, insidious hints about Leandro being a model father to Izzie. While they had never approved of a single decision of hers.
How had he done that? In just two weeks, how had he turned her own parents and even her best friend against her? And to what end?
Also, why was the man who’d wanted to be on his merry way to his waiting fiancée still here?
Marking off the cans on her inventory chart, Alex blew out a long breath. The broken A/C in the beginning of a New York summer meant the storeroom was like a sauna. Sweat poured in rivulets down the back of her neck. With her hospital bills from the myriad of treatments she had undergone still arriving every few weeks like buzzards circling a dead body, she couldn’t afford to get the air-conditioning fixed now. Nor could she hire extra help to sort and stock their inventory.
Cursing, she pulled her cotton T-shirt off her back. The damn thing went straight back to sticking to her skin. Making sure that she didn’t put undue strain on her left hand, she knelt in front of another box and ripped off the duct tape. She knew she was pushing herself, that this inventory could wait until next week after the long hours she had put in over the past few days.
God, she’d barely even spent any time with Izzie.
But going back home before she was exhausted meant seeing the blasted man. Seeing him meant remembering his words from the flight. Remembering meant...realizing that she’d, foolishly, hoped he would have some magnanimous reason for his behavior seven years ago. How naively unsophisticated she was in not accepting that she’d been a convenient lay and nothing else.
Until he’d said the words, until they had landed on her like poisonous darts, Alex didn’t know they’d hurt so much. Didn’t know that they would make her want to burrow into an emotional shell like Izzie’s pet turtle and never emerge.
He’d been devoted to his wife, Alexis couldn’t get over that. It said everything she’d assumed about him was wrong. Exactly opposite even.
Only when she saw him and Izzie together—Leandro, powerful and handsome and so thoroughly masculine and Izzie, tiny and smiling and his very image—did she remember the reason he was here.
Knowing that he was sleeping in the bedroom next to hers made even the little sleep she’d been getting disappear.
He should’ve looked incongruous in the small bed in Izzie’s room, yet he looked right at home. Just as he’d slipped so easily into the role of a father.
With his utter devotion to Izzie, with his unpretentious, get-your-hands-dirty gardening skills he’d helped her mom with, with his keen attention to several issues that had to be fixed in the house and immediately arranging workers to do so...
In her parents’ view, suddenly the man had gone from dishonorable stranger who’d impregnated and then ditched their reckless, good-for-nothing daughter and more importantly, their much-adored granddaughter to an accomplished, down-to-earth-even-though-he’s-stinking-rich gentleman who could do no wrong in their eyes.
If she didn’t hate him before this, Alex was sure she did now.
She attacked the second line of the stubborn tape with both hands, her temper finally fraying.
“Alexis!” came the thunderous growl from behind her.
Before she could react, she was hauled up from behind, viselike hands clamped tight under her arms. Awareness smoldered through her, like a current of lightning.
The moment she was upright, his grip gentled. Long fingers rested on the upper curves of her breasts. Air burned through her lungs.
Her back felt as though it would bow from the pressure of holding herself stiff.
The sheer violence of her need to feel those fingers drift down, the instant tightening of her nipples hungry for his touch, ripped through her. One step back would send her into the hard, male muscle that every inch of her wanted to feel.
God, the man was engaged to another woman. Didn’t her body understand that?
Longing made her throat burn, muscles quiver, skin thrum. She didn’t dare wiggle for fear of him touching her. “Let me go, Leandro,” she said in a husky voice. “I’m all sweaty.”
Instead of heeding her, he took a step further. The blanket of heat that surrounded her was instantaneous. The scent of him drifted down over her skin, covering every cell. Drenching her until all she breathed was him. “Not until you tell me what, per carita, you are doing.”
As always, he sounded perfectly balanced, unruffled.
“I’m working. We can’t all dance attendance on you,” she snapped, and then regretted her words.
When he tried to turn her, she resisted. She couldn’t face him, feeling so raw and vulnerable. She couldn’t face herself if she betrayed how much she still wanted him.
Closing her eyes, she willed her breath to calm.
“Should you be pulling and pushing boxes that weigh a ton when your hand is nowhere near healed?”
“I was careful to not use my left hand.”
“And what if you hurt your other hand dragging things that shouldn’t be handled without the appropriate tool?”
“I can take care of myself, Leandro.”
A hiss of impatient breath. “That is not up for debate. But that there are numerous things you need help with is fact, too. Especially around the store.”
“You forget that I’ve been taking care of my parents, Izzie and the store. We don’t need your help. This isn’t why I asked you to come.”
She heard his muttering in Italian, before she turned and looked up at him.
The clean, strong lines of his face struck her with that same fierce hunger.
For the first time since she’d laid eyes on him again, he looked truly confounded. If she wasn’t battling her hyper-awareness of him and her growing, irrational temper, she would’ve enjoyed the look on his face.
“Why are you always so defensive? I will say this again because it does not seem to enter your stubborn mind. I do not think that you came to see me for any reason other than Isabella’s welfare. And I am...glad that you did. Any man who turns away from his duty is not worth the air he breathes.
“Now, I have instructed your father to call back the manager who used to assist him at the store but full-time. My real estate agent has had some interest in the store, too.”
“For one thing, I can’t afford to hire staff now.” Alex gritted her jaw. “And I have no plans to sell the store.”
He didn’t even bat an eyelid. “I have transferred some money to your account. That should help until the store is completely operational again.”
God, the man had to be the most thickheaded, arrogant, high-handed specimen of the species. Didn’t he realize she wanted nothing to do with him on a personal level? That her pride, which was all she had at this point, was hanging by a sheer thread? “I’m not taking money from you.”
“Why not?”
“Why should I?”
He looked at her as if she were lacking brains completely. “Because I have it and you need it.”
“I don’t know what the hell kind of game you’re playing, or what you’re trying to prove. Or is that it? You get a kick out of changing how my parents see you? Your monumental ego can’t stand that they think less of the mighty Leandro Conti?”
“Cristo, I only intend to help you. You think I like knowing that you struggled so much all these years when I should have helped?”
The guilt in his eyes stayed her for a few seconds.
“Well, I don’t want your help. Is it not enough that you...you own half your country, do you also have to be good at gardening and fixing the house and a million other things?” Didn’t he see how hard he was making this all for her? “You might as well label me incompetent and be done with it.”
* * *
If he had ever assumed he could understand the complexities of Alexis’s mind, he was wrong. A simple conversation with her was like handling a hundred Lucas and Valentinas on their worst days.
From the moment they had spoken of that night seven years ago, it was as if there was an invisible wall between them and she had retreated behind it.
Except when they were both with Isabella. That was the only time she smiled, the only time she made eye contact with him.
Dio, the only time the stubborn woman even acknowledged his presence in her house.
He hadn’t been there a single night before he realized how much responsibility rested on her shoulders, how many day-to-day things Alexis handled with barely a complaint and with an efficiency that he couldn’t help but admire.
Still, it was too much for one person. She had handled so much for so long alone.
It had proved easy enough to win her parents over now that he truly intended to take care of Isabella and even Alexis by association, to change their perception that he was the big bad wolf that had gobbled up their lovely daughter.
Only Alexis began to act strange. The more her parents and even her friend Emma realized his true intentions and supported him, the more withdrawn she became. A betrayed look dawned in her gaze. Now, when he was finally doing the right thing.
And the worst thing was that her mistrust was taking a toll on him. The more she dismissed him, the more stringent became his need to make her acknowledge him, and his right to be in her life.
Not just his right over Isabella. But he wanted Alexis, too.
There it was...the knot that he hadn’t been able to unravel in the past week.
Look at how he had held her just now. At how violently and instantly his body had reacted to the mere graze of her slender curves against his. At how insanely powerful the urge was to touch her, to taste her, to bury his nose in the crook of her neck and breathe in the scent of her skin.
His desire for her was already out of control, threatening his plan.
When her friend Justin had visited and embraced her, all he’d wanted to do was pull her away from the young, blond, insufferably amiable giant and tuck her away behind him.
To declare like a Neanderthal that Alexis wasn’t available.
When they had laughed together over some childhood story, when he’d seen how familiar Justin was with Alexis and everything regarding her...he’d felt the most absurd sense of jealousy.
He hadn’t felt possessive even about a toy in his childhood.
Teeth clenched, eyes closed, he counted to ten.
The scent of her, skin and sweat and undeniably her, it filled his lungs, his blood, unlocking every rebellious, insidiously craven indulgence his body wanted with her.
Dio, how he wanted her. Even after everything. Even today.
She would be his wife, his to possess, his to protect.
She would be in his bed, his room, his life. He could have her whenever, wherever, however he wanted, until this madness in his blood was defeated. Until every irrationally possessive clawing was satisfied. Until he was inured to this feverish desire he felt for her.
Until he could look at her and feel nothing but satisfaction that he’d done the right thing.
Beneath this war she was waging with him, Alexis was like him. At such a young age, she’d been forced into being a mother and yet it was clear that she exceled at it. She cared for everyone around her, to the detriment of her own well-being.
Now, he would look after her. Just as he had done Rosa.
She would see how good of a father he could be and would want for nothing.
They could have a marriage without drama, without the messiness of emotions. By the time the attraction between them fizzled out, they would have more children. And then they would be bound as parents who cared about their children.
Hadn’t that been his only condition when Antonio had found Rosa for him? That his new bride be someone who would love their children and devote herself to being a calm, supportive wife?
Alexis needed his strength, just as Rosa had done, only in a different way. She needed to be protected from her stubborn self first.
Only with that promise did the clamoring hunger in his blood subside.
“Alexis,” he said in a composed tone, “explain to me how offering help is calling you incompetent. How trying to reassure your parents that I mean well for Isabella is,” he held himself back, just, from sounding possessive about her, knowing that it would only alienate her, “...wrong.”
“That’s exactly the problem.” Chin tilted up, her gaze flashed fire at him. Her thin T-shirt hugged the round globes of her breasts. His hands itched to touch her, trace those lush curves, to mold them. Blood hummed with a thrum as he imagined baring her to his gaze.
“You’ve been here barely two weeks and they worship you. They love everything you do.” A choked whimper escaped her, her mouth trembling. “It’s almost as if everything I’ve tried to do for more than a decade counts for nothing.” She threw the pad in her hand against the wall, her lithe form shaking. “It’s almost as if I... I count for nothing.”
The sheen of moisture in her eyes punched through him, tying his insides into a knot.
Tenderness like he’d never known assailed him, releasing the fist-like tension that had been driving him this past week. He’d always been protective of those around him. It was in his nature, in his blood. And yet, nothing unmanned him as much as Alexis’s tears did.
The very defiance of her meeting his gaze even as those brown eyes welled up...it was a breath-stealing sight. He wished he could capture it on paper, or in a song, like Luca would have. He wished he had words to describe how magnificently beautiful she was.
Instead, he did the one thing he’d always exceled at.
His large hands on her slender shoulders, he pulled her to him and wrapped his arms around her. Even stiff and unbending as she was, she still came. That she took the comfort he offered told him how upset she was.
“Alexis.” He had never tried so hard to sound understanding, never felt such raw impatience tearing at him to fix her grief. “Tell me what bothers you and I’ll fix it.”
Forehead resting against his chest, she let out a slow exhale. “For once, I can’t hate your arrogance, Leandro. I’d give anything if you could fix it.”
Smiling, he stroked her temples. “You don’t know what I can do until you try me, cara. You haven’t been sleeping again, have you?”
“I miss him.” Teary and choked, she sounded unlike the Alexis he knew. “I miss him so much.”
Such unparalleled love reverberated in her tone that everything within him stilled. “Who are you taking about?”
“You’ll think me the most horrible person ever.”
“When have you cared about my opinion, Alexis?” he shot back, hating the thread of disquiet that coursed through him.
Just as he expected, her spine straightened. That fighting spirit returned to her eyes. “I don’t. I just... It’s my brother, Adrian.”
Relief was a palpable thing within him. A lover would have caused problems for him. That was the only reason for it. “I didn’t know you had a brother.”
“He died when I was seventeen, just before he was about to start college. Oh you’d have liked him so much. He was charming, brilliant, handsome, kind...exceled at his studies, sports. God, there was nothing that Adrian wasn’t good at.
“I could have hated him for being their favorite, if he hadn’t loved me so much. You see, unlike Adrian, I didn’t excel at anything. I barely got through my classes. Mom and Dad and I never really connected... Adrian was always the buffer. When he passed away suddenly...” She wiped her eyes with the heels of her hands, much like Isabella did. “Not only were we shattered, but it felt like there was nothing connecting me to them. There were days when I wished I had died instead of him.”
“Dio, Alexis!” The very thought unnerved Leandro on so many levels. “I’m sure your parents didn’t wish that.”
“No, probably not.” She stepped away from him. “I have tried my level best to be a good daughter. But I... I’m not him. Seeing how happy and elated they are with everything you do, how easy you make it all, I’m sure it reminds them of him. Of how different and how better life would’ve been if he were alive.
“And I can’t be angry with them for thinking that because it’s true. I drove a very fiscally wise store toward ruin with my ideas, got pregnant at twenty and...now, I brought a myriad of problems on us with this accident.”
Cristo, didn’t anyone tell her that all those were not her fault? That she was braver and stronger than any woman in the same situation? Didn’t she realize it was her parents’ fault in measuring her against a son who was long gone?
Leandro wanted to shake her and somehow show her the image he had of her.
But finally, he understood her behavior of the past week.
Alexis was used to taking care of everyone around her, of putting everyone else’s needs first. In just a week, he’d seen her handle ten different things for her mother, Isabella and even her friend Emma.
It was time for someone to remove such weight from her shoulders. And he would do it. Even if he had to manipulate that very weakness of hers.
“A small business that you think you ruined in a hard, economic climate, accolades at university you think you lack, ambition you think you don’t possess.” He had heard all those insidious remarks from her mother, the regretful but equally hurting statements from her father, only the awareness that he would take her away from it all had stopped him from peeling their hide. “How do they measure up against the strong, happy little girl you’ve been raising all these years, Alexis? Against swallowing your anger for me and coming to me when you worried about Isabella’s future? I would have given anything to see my mother champion for us like you do her.”
Her stunned gaze, her mouth falling open soundlessly—her shock at his words was a tangible thing in the air. Something in his chest ached at how desperate she had been to hear a compliment. To be told that she wasn’t a failure.
Her disbelief slowly ebbed out of her eyes. “I...don’t know what to say.”
“Learn to accept my help.”
She swiped at her eyes with the back of her hand and glared at him. “So nothing I just told you got through to your head?”
“Whatever I’m doing, it’s so that you can breathe easy when you come to Italy with me. So that you don’t worry about the store or them. They deserve better than to worry about your health and Izzie’s security and about what you’ll do when they’re gone. They deserve that holiday they’ve been planning for ages.”
“How do you know about their trip to Australia?”
“Your mother showed me the brochure.”
That same inadequacy swirled through Alex. How had she missed how disappointed they must be? It was something they had saved up for for so long. And because of her bills, everything had been pushed back.
She leaned her forehead against the cupboard door.
This was how she had felt when Adrian had died.
Useless, incompetent, of no good to anyone.
And now, she had bigger responsibilities and yet was worse off.
Tears scratched at her throat. “I don’t know what to do. I’ve been trying so hard to keep everything together. I just...”
“So make it easier on yourself and them. Let me help. You’ve handled everything single-handedly all this while. But you don’t need to anymore.
“Isn’t that why you set this whole thing in motion?”
“So you want me to take your handouts and be happy about it?”
“No, I want you to get the rest you deserve so that Izzie doesn’t worry about you.”
“You should’ve talked to me first before you campaigned my parents to your side. How about if you ask instead of deciding we’re coming with you?”
Autocratic wasn’t enough to describe the man’s attitude.
“Is this a war of wills then, Alexis? I’m proposing this so that Isabella can spend time with my family and you can recover easier, too. It won’t be long before the stress you’re under translates to Isabella. I could not leave everything here as is, knowing the situation.”
“Stop speaking as if her very life is unstable,” she protested, a lump in her throat. That sense of failure was a lead weight in her chest.
“Not unstable, no. But it is clear that the accident has made everything harder.”
Which was exactly the conclusion she had come to. Yet hearing it from his mouth scraped her pride.
Of all the things, what was this compulsion to prove herself to him? Why did his opinion matter this much? Why did his concern, which she was slowly realizing was a huge part of what made Leandro, feel so personal?
“What about your wedding?”
His gaze instantly shuttered. “What about it?”
“Luca told me that your fiancée’s father is pushing for a summer wedding.”
If she didn’t have absolute belief in his prized self-control, Alex would have thought he was close to violence. Such fury blazed in his eyes at the mention of Luca. “You have been talking to Luca?”
“He called to say hello to Izzie and yes, we chatted, a couple of times. I don’t think us being there before your wedding is a good idea. The last thing I want is for your new bride or her family to treat Izzie like I was treated.”
“They won’t.”
“What about me?”
When had he swallowed up the distance she’d put between them? Her heart raced as he gently pushed a lock of hair behind her ear. “No one will hurt you, cara.”
“I can see the headlines now.” She kept her tone casual through sheer effort, loath to betray how the idea of his wedding haunted her. The thought of him with his new bride, those hands of his caressing some unknown figure, of laying those lips on another woman, of that inscrutable gray gaze widening with desire...her lack of sleep had gotten worse since she’d seen him again.
He’d laid every concern of hers to rest and yet made her restless to her very bones.
“Leandro Conti’s Love Child’s Trashy Single Mom a Distinguished Guest at His Wedding to an Heiress...”
A smile broke through the austerity of his face, transforming his face into breathtaking beauty. Even white teeth flashed at her, one edge of his mouth turning up crooked. Breath catching in her throat, Alex swallowed hard. “Reading Italian tabloids?”
Heat poured through her cheeks. She had given in and scoured for news on him. The lurid headlines and gossip that seemed to always swirl around his family explained Antonio’s vulgar words to her. But what had amazed her was Leandro’s lack of the same.
And she’d faced the hard truth—that he had trusted her without proof. Even before he’d seen Izzie’s pictures.
That he was honorable made it so much harder for her to hate him.
“I assure you I will protect you, Alexis.”
“Thanks but no thanks. I saw how you sprang to my defense when Antonio was—”
“I was in shock and you shut him up promptly. Like no one has ever done. No one will say a word to you, I promise you that.”
“How can you guarantee that? There’ll probably be a million guests at your wedding and they’ll surely wonder who I am and I can’t stand to be the object of such gossip. Not to mention being a fourth wheel between your new bride and you and your family and her family and—”
One tapered finger landed on her mouth, burning the soft flesh of her lower lip. “Will you send Izzie by herself with me then?”
She swatted his hand away. “No! I...she’s a baby, Leandro and a week doesn’t make you anything less than a stranger.”
Her answer seemed to please him. “Then what I suggest is the only solution we have. I would like to spend time with Isabella.”
“But I—”
“Dio, Alexis!” Impatience made his tone staccato, harsh. “No one will say anything because there will not be a wedding.”