Miracle Christmas: Dr Romano's Christmas Baby

‘He’s right,’ Beth pushed.

Rilla looked from one to the other. She knew he was right. Except he said ‘cara’ and she wanted to melt. Rilla wavered.

‘You can sleep in the spare room,’ Luca said.

Well, she sure as hell wasn’t going tobe sleeping with him.

‘Damn right I will,’ she said, gathering her stuff and heading for the door, Luca’s sexy chuckle following her.

CHAPTER THREE

RILLA was exhausted. Utterly, deep-down-in-her-bones, one hundred per cent exhausted. But despite the weariness of her body, the charged silence in Luca’s car was keeping her super-alert. She must have been crazy to agree to this. There was too much to say, too much to talk about. And she just wasn’t up for it. Not tonight.

Luca pulled into the driveway, braked and turned the engine off. She looked at the flat that had been their home for the brief time they’d been together, too shattered to move, memories swamping her. The things they’d gotten up to between those four walls …

She’d moved in with Luca within weeks of meeting him, so in love, so sure of their love. The flat hadn’t been much, but they hadn’t needed much. Back then, all they’d needed had been each other.

After they’d returned from their Italian honeymoon they’d planned on buying a house and had been actively looking when her bombshell pregnancy had been revealed. Then all their carefully laid plans had gone out the window.

After their marriage had disintegrated she’d moved out and eventually bought herself an apartment at South Bank. Luca had kept the flat, placing it in the hands of a rental agency just prior to leaving the country, and it had been occupied on and off for the past seven years.

Rilla had often found herself in the street, outside the tiny two-bedroom place where they’d first made love. It had become a habit over the years, a bad one, and she’d noticed only last month that the flat was vacant again.

Was she ready to be alone with him? In their little flat full of memories? The attraction was still there, she couldn’t deny it. Even after days without sleep, every cell in her body crying out for slumber, it pulsed between them.

Seven years apart hadn’t doused the instantaneous flare that heated her body every time she looked at him. If anything, maturity had given him an even sexier edge, stoking the flame higher. And the way he’d stayed by her side had been heroic and appealing on an emotional level that called to her even more than the physical attraction.

‘Come on, Rilla,’ Luca murmured, breaking the silence in the confines of the car. She was looking at the place as if it were the portal to hell.

She looked at Luca. He looked bigger, darker, sexier in the dimness of the car. Her name rolled off his tongue, accented perfectly, and she shivered.

Oh, God, I’m tired.

‘Let’s go in,’ Luca prompted, leaning forward to unclip her seat belt as she still hadn’t made a move. She looked completely done in. Maybe he’d have to carry her? Please, no. He wasn’t up to such close contact tonight. Her slumberous eyes were already causing his groin to tighten.

‘S-sure,’ Rilla nodded, sitting very still until he pulled away. Damn it, she wasn’t a young woman at the mercy of her hormones any more. She was thirty.

And over him.

Luca opened the door and gestured for her to precede him. He tried and failed not to notice how her button-up red shirt pulled across her generous chest as her arm brushed his. How she was wearing the same perfume she’d worn the night they’d skipped out of the restaurant after entrées and made love for the first time.

Maybe it was the heightened emotional situation with Bridie or his fatigue weakening his resistance, but seven years of denial had come back and smacked him hard in the face. Damn it! He was as hot for her now as he’d ever been. And they were alone. In their flat.

Luca followed her down the short hallway, throwing his keys on the hallstand and ushering her into the lounge room, not even bothering not to look at her hips as they swayed in the A-line skirt she was wearing.

Dio! Give me strength.

He clicked on the lamp and it threw a subtle glow around the room.

‘Sit,’ he ordered, and escaped to the kitchen, fixing her a cup of tea. He felt the grittiness of his eyes as he waited for the kettle to boil and rubbed the back of his neck, massaging the aching muscles caused from nodding off in horrible, plastic, government-issue chairs.

‘I need a shower. Drink this,’ he said, holding the mug out to her. ‘I won’t be long.’

Rilla took it and drank, desperately trying to ignore the fact that Luca, her husband, was wet and naked only metres away.

Estranged husband. Nearly ex-husband.

Still, when Luca strode back into the lounge there was nothing ex about the leap her pulse performed at the sight of his near-nakedness.

‘Oh,’ Rilla said, her eyes drawn irresistibly to the sheer beauty of his chest.

A thick pelt of dark hair adorned his well-developed pecs and she followed its path as it became sparser, sprinkling lightly across six-pack abs, arrowing down further into a tantalising trail that disappeared behind the undone button of his jeans.

She found herself wondering if he had underwear on or if he’d hastily pulled the jeans on without? The zipper taunted her and she dragged her gaze back to his face with difficulty.

‘Finished?’ he asked, swallowing hard as he recognised the heat warming the tawny flecks in her eyes.

Luca was used to women looking at him with lust in their eyes but was surprised to discover Rilla was still one of them. There was an annoying twitch in his jeans and he silently cursed himself for his susceptibility.

It had always been like this. Right from the start. Heady and lust-infused. They’d slept together on their third date. And she’d moved in the next week.

‘W-what?’ Rilla asked, embarrassed to be caught ogling.

‘The tea?’ Luca pointed at the mug.

Rilla shivered at the way his voice washed over her. His slight accent had always turned her on. In the past he’d whispered to her in Italian as they’d made love and it had always, always taken her over the edge. Even now, after seven years of neglect, his accent stroked across her skin. Heated her belly. Hardened her nipples.

In this house, where every nook and cranny could tell a tale of lust, having Luca standing before her half-naked was a supreme test of her ‘over him’ theory. She was too emotionally wrung out over Bridie’s roller-coaster ride and too tired to resist the innate pull his body had over hers.

She handed the mug back to him as the silence grew between them, and she found herself wishing he would laugh. Throw his head back in that lazy Luca way he had and let forth a deep chuckle that rumbled from his belly and split his handsome face into a sexy grin. Anything to break the tension.

He’d once laughed a lot. They’d both laughed a lot.

She missed him, she realised. Rather dangerously realised. The Luca who laughed. And the one who had so often moaned her name. Quivered beneath her touch. Seven years she’d been telling herself she didn’t miss him and here, now, in their old flat, she had to face the fact that she’d been lying to herself.

Her tired brain searched for something to say, to regain control. She couldn’t afford to let thoughts of yesteryear sweep her away into an alternate reality. They were over. There was no going back.

‘I can’t believe you came back and didn’t even bother to inform me.’ She didn’t want to get into this with him tonight but her confusion over his motives at least kept him at a distance.

Luca heard the soft accusation in her voice and was pierced by the uncertainty simmering in her amber gaze. Her chest rose and fell in an agitated rhythm, straining the buttons of her shirt. Her dark hair tumbled to her shoulders and two spots of colour stained her cheeks.

How could he still want her after all these years?

Luca sighed and sat beside her on the sofa, throwing his head back into the soft cushion of fabric. Her perfume invaded his personal space and he shut his eyes. ‘I knew your father would tell you,’ he murmured.

Rilla swivelled her head to look at him. With his eyes closed he looked as weary as she felt. She shut her eyes too, allowing the quiet of the house to drift her away for a moment.

‘I’m sorry. I should have told you.’