Baby By Accident: International Billionaires III: The Italians (16 page)

“How can you laugh?” Her mouth pursed with disgust. “We’re at work. There are people right outside the door. This was…”

“Was?” His brain was coming back to life, along with his anger at her.

“Was—”

“Fantastic?”

“No.” The word came harsh and loud, though the blush sweeping her cheeks gave his male pride a moment of mollification.

A moment.

“You are an animal.”

“And so,” he drawled, his hate escalating, brushing aside the memory of his intense pleasure just moments before, “are you,
Princesse
.”

She flinched, as if the nickname had driven a knife into her.

An internal howl screamed from his gut and yet, he couldn’t think of anything to say that she’d accept. So all he did was sneer.

Her fine hands fisted at her side as if ready to punch him and he wondered if she’d dare. What would he dare in response? But she kept her distance, on the other side of his desk. “You are beneath contempt.”

“As you say.” He’d had enough. Enough of her stubborn pride. Enough of her temptation and then rejection. Enough of her here at his company.

“There’s not a gentlemanly bone in your body.”

“I’ve heard this before.” He ran his hand through his hair, brushing it off his shoulders with studied indifference. “You should find some new slurs to throw at me.”

“I’m not going to spend any more time with you.” She stomped to the door.

“There is one more thing we haven’t finished.”

“We’re totally finished.” Swiveling around, she scowled at him.

“Not quite.” He slipped his hands into his pockets before he gave in to the urge to grab her and show her how wrong she was. About everything. “There is the original reason I called you into this office.”

“Why you—”

“My apologies for distracting you.” He grinned. It was painful to do, but he had to.

“You are the—”

“We have not come to an agreement about your work schedule, though.”

“There isn’t going to be any agreement.” She clutched the door handle, as if ready to fly out of this building and fly far away from him.

“I agree.”

His apparent concession shocked her. Her head swung around, her eyes wide.

“As you say, there will be no agreement.” His hands fisted in his pockets, letting his words be the weapons. “There doesn’t have to be.”

“Right,” she snarled. “I suppose you’re going to use the same old threat on me to get me to comply.”

“No.” He’d made a promise to himself not to use that particular weapon ever again. It was distasteful and not needed.

“Then there isn’t any way you can make me do what—”

“How convenient that I am the boss and you are the employee.”

She stared at him, her eyes as frosted as the North Sea.

“You are fired,
Princesse.
” He smiled once more, a charming, cutting smile. “Fired.”

H
ad
this bed always been this hard?

Lise stared at the darkened ceiling.

She’d always hated this stupid ceiling light. The thing was monstrous. Glass encased with some kind of cold metal. It looked like a gargoyle perched, ready to land on her. What had her father’s decorator been thinking? It was impossible to see all the details of the stupid light. Not because there was so little moonlight in her bedroom, but because the water in her eyes kept blurring her sight.

A trickle of tears slid down her face and neck, adding to the damp spot on her pillow.

She was fired.

Any woman would cry when that happened, right?

Brushing her hands across her cheeks, she pressed her palms on her eyelids, trying to push everything back. The memories, the emotions, the realizations.

The tears paid no attention and kept coming.

She should be in a righteous rage, not weeping like a brokenhearted girl.

After…after…well, after. She’d ripped out of his office like a wounded animal. She should have stayed and made a last stand. But the only thing she’d been able to think about was escape and retreat. All she could fathom in her blinded mind was getting away from his body and his words until she found something to latch on to.

A remnant of pride, perhaps.

The residue of intelligence.

Or maybe, hopefully, the remaining piece of her heart.

This ugly, cold house of hers had been a needed bolthole. A place away from him to gather something. Anything. A place she could hide in until—

Until he demanded she come home.

He hadn’t come to get her. Hadn’t wanted to retrieve her.

What a silly, silly woman she was. To think of
that.
To hope for
that
. To weep for
that
.

The pillow would be sopping wet for months at the rate she was going. A sodden gulp was the only response to her vague thought.

The hours had passed. She’d sat on the bumpy couch her father had assured her was the best money could buy as the afternoon sun had set. She’d stared at the ugly landscape the decorator had insisted fit with the room until the clock had told her it was time for bed. Long past time. She’d been idiotic enough to choose a silk nightgown instead of the comfort of flannel just in case. Just in case.

No demand to return. No contact. No need for her.

What had been monumental to her meant nothing to him. That was the reality of the situation.

The tears appeared to be falling a bit faster. Her palms were wet now.

A very foolish woman indeed.

She’d told him the truth. Even though the confession scared her. Because she no longer wanted to lie to him. She’d given him her body. Even though the surrender scared her. Because she needed him. She’d given him so much more. Even though she hadn’t realized it until it was too late.

She loved him
.

Lise surprised herself when an outright sob escaped her.

Vico Mattare had won everything. Every battle and every war between them. He’d won her company, her hand, her baby. Yet he’d done far worse. He’d won her unwanted heart, her unneeded soul. He’d breached the walls of her defenses without her awareness and with his careless indifference.

Not until she’d watched his face as he thrust into her, watched as his firm mouth twisted in ecstasy and his eyes glazed with need had she understood what was really happening to her.

She loved him.

Joy had bloomed in her spirit as he spilled himself inside her.

The joy had blossomed and built. Bewildering her.

When it was over, when she’d come back to earth, when she’d recovered enough of her brain to have a thought instead of merely sensation, the joy had turned sharply into fear. Love wasn’t something she knew much about. Not the deep, soul-drenching love wrapping and winding around her heart for Vico. This love wasn’t the safe, passive affection she’d held for Robert. This wasn’t the giddy, girly friendship she had with Tracy and Suz. And it certainly didn’t resemble the obligatory love she felt for her mother.

This love she felt for Vico was stark and sudden. Scary.

What have I done
?

Her eyelashes fluttered on the skin of her palms, smearing the tears.

The first words she’d said to him were not thoughts or beliefs or any kind of rational expression. They’d been the deep upwelling of her spirit, afraid for her survival, afraid of what he had the power to do to her.

He’d taken her words in an entirely different manner.

She’d sensed it in the stiffening of his body. Saw the rejection in his eyes as he withdrew from her. Within seconds, they were at each other’s throats exactly as they always were.

Was it any wonder then that she’d snapped at him? It wasn’t the right thing to do, she knew that. She should have attempted to explain herself, explain the unexplainable. But she was scared, so she’d done what any woman would have. Using her words, she’d tried to put some distance between them. Time was what she needed so she could figure this out in a calm sort of way. Get herself under control.

Her usual pattern.

When had her usual patterns ever worked with this Vico Mattare?

Why couldn’t he have seen her heart opening to let him in? What did he think it meant for her to give herself to him, all of herself?

“He doesn’t want what I feel,” she muttered into her pillow as she slid over on her side and wrapped her arms around her body. “He only wants sex.”

The ache in her heart spread down her torso to lodge in her womb.

There’d been another shock, as well as the love, to justify her behavior. The shock of realizing she’d do anything with this man, anywhere. It didn’t matter if it was the office, the car, the bed, the bath. If he wanted her, she wanted him. Being a lady fell right off her radar screen when she was around him. When Vico Mattare came into her picture, there was no hope for the lady.

Why couldn’t he have seen she was shocked by this monumental change inside herself?

Instead of giving her some space or trying to understand, her husband had ranted and raved and turned into his typical rude self after turning off his randy self so quickly it made her senses spin. While she was still attempting to get a grip on the pleasure coursing through her body, he was slapping her with marching orders.

“Brainless idiot.”

Her righteous murmur didn’t help.

“Spiteful ass.”

The tears didn’t stop. The pain didn’t diminish.

She hadn’t been able to think. Not until hours later. Slowly, though, she’d wrestled her emotions together and figured them out. The love for him, the passion, the hope. Despite the fact that they’d fought, she’d held on to a slender thread of optimism as she mulled over the newness of her raw feelings, the tenderness of a fresh perspective. For hours this afternoon and into the evening, she’d lived in a fantasy world of girlish dreams long after any other woman would have taken a clue. She’d supposed they’d come together again, he’d yell, she’d yell and somehow…somehow…

Somehow they’d recapture what had happened so gloriously in his office this afternoon.

A more silly, foolish woman would be impossible to find.

Because this was Vico Mattare.

A man who was a notorious womanizer. A man who’d tricked her. A man who’d had to marry her. The draw between them was only sex to him. Not earth-shattering as it was to her. There was no love in the man, no real passion for
her
.

The true facts had finally started penetrating the fog of her love as the sun set and hope left with it.

The reality drummed into her as she made her way to bed.

The truth was right in front of her as she stared into the night.

Lise placed her hand on her heaving chest and tried to quiet the turbulent heart smashing against her ribs. Her brain continued yelling out the logical facts, the undeniable reality, the cold, hard truth. The mix pressed behind her eyes and roared in her ears.

Her heart didn’t listen. It kept beating. Bursting.

Hugging the pillow, she wiped her cheek on the soft cotton. She forced herself to look at the other ravaging reflection she’d arrived at on this horrible night.

Her instinctive withdrawal from him from the moment they’d met had not been what she’d thought. Her reaction to him hadn’t been disgust or disdain. It had been far more serious than that. Her womanly heart had instantly known exactly the damage he could do to her if she let him.

She’d let him.

The damage to her was breathtaking.

It was quite, quite hard to breathe when one was sobbing.

Did crying this way make a person sweaty?

Pushing the covers back, she tried to take a breath, tried to suppress another sob. Perhaps if she got up for a drink of water, it would calm her down. She hated feeling like this. She hated any feeling of any kind and she was never, ever going to allow her heart to fall so far into feeling she lost herself. Not again.

She flicked on the light.

Blood.

Blood on her nightgown. Not sweat.

The sob turned into a scream, scraping her lungs and throat with an acid taste of raw fear.

Fumbling for her mobile, another scream rattled in her soul.

The baby.
The baby
.

The pulse of blood pushed out of her, sapping her strength and hope. Only one person had the power to stop this. Only one person could help her. The phone wobbled in her hand as she pressed his button.

“Vico!”

V
ico stared
across at his sleeping wife.

Her cheeks were whiter than the hospital sheets covering her. The soft gilt of her blonde eyelashes lay on those cheeks. Her body was still, only the slight lift of the covers when she breathed proved she lived.

A close call
, the doctor had stated.

Si
, too close.

For the rest of his life, he would remember the pleasure at seeing her number on his phone when she’d called. She’d reached out to him, he’d thought. She’d made the first move, he’d gloated. This had been what he wanted, needed, after the brutal ending to their lovemaking.

However, the moment of triumph had turned quickly, hadn’t it? His pride had been cut into nothing when he’d heard her scream. Why had he stubbornly stayed away from her rather than finding her and bringing her home? If he’d been there with her from the beginning, he could have calmed her, helped her, held her.

Instead, his pride meant his wife was alone at the time of crisis.

Gloating pleasure lay like a thick slime of disgrace coating his core for all eternity.

The baby was fine
, the doctor had continued.
For now
, he’d cautioned.

Si
, for now.

The doctor didn’t understand. He didn’t know the damage Vico Mattare could do to a child. Not even Lise knew. He’d managed to do some damage already, hadn’t he?

A gurgle of pain clotted his throat.

The memory of her when he’d finally reached her would lay like a silent indictment on his heart for the rest of his life. The ambulance he’d called had arrived mere minutes before he’d screeched to a stop in front of her imposing house.

The one she’d run to, to get away from him.

The one he’d left her in alone.

The one she could have easily lost their child in.

He’d leapt from the car, running down the walk as the open door filled with her being wheeled out by the efficient, bustling team of medics. The long black buckles tight around her belly. The IV drip attached to her arm. The breathing mask slipping over her mouth as they hustled her to the waiting ambulance.

Barely conscious. Her fragile hands covered with her blood. Her skin as pale as parchment.

Vico concentrated on sucking in a breath and letting it out.

The scrape of his inhalation seared his lungs.

Riding in the ambulance to the hospital, helpless as the medics attempted to stabilize her, would rank as the worst moment of his life. Surely, it would. He could not possibly be asked to live through a torture like that one more time. He would not survive it.

Things needed to change
, the doctor had added.

Si
, things did need to change.

Things such as a man losing his temper and yelling at his employee like a raving lunatic. Things such as a husband treating his wife with contempt and cruelty. Things such as a savage taking his woman with all the finesse and skill of a crazed animal.

Things like that.

He lurched out of the uncomfortable chair he’d spent the night and day in, and paced to the far wall. A fairly good copy of a Gainsborough landscape hung on it. The dappled sunlight lit the country road with gold. The line of oak trees graced the lane with shadow. The road wound through the valley, disappearing over the hill. In the distance, stood a sturdy manor. Quiet and peace and home.

He should let her go.

Go back to Taverwood Grange, her childhood home. Go back to peace and quiet. Go back to her mother who clearly loved her and clearly despised him. Esther Helton had made that abundantly clear when she’d arrived at the hospital.

If there was one gentlemanly bone in his body, he should let Lise go.

Stuffing his hands in his pockets, he turned and looked at her silent, motionless body.

He couldn’t do it.

Which proved she’d been right about him from the very beginning.

He was no gentleman.

No, what he was, most certainly, was craven. A coward of monumental degree. A cad who cared far more for his own heart, his own soul’s survival, than either his wife’s or his child’s.

He slumped on the wall. His hands were cold ice inside his pockets.

There was no use in yelling at himself. It would change nothing. Just as all the yelling and cursing he’d done over the years had been meaningless and worthless in changing the fundamental ugliness in the pit of him. If he had managed to live with that particular guilt for fifteen years, he’d somehow manage to live with this one on top of it.

Her hand moved on the coverlet, her lashes fluttered.