The Italians: Franco, Dominic and Valentino: The Man Who Risked It All / The Moretti Arrangement / Valentino's Pregnancy Bombshell

‘Explain that,’ Bruce clipped out. ‘Are you saying you don’t feel anything for me?’

‘I care for you deeply, but—’

‘You’re still in love with that Italian swine,’ he said. ‘Has it occurred to you that he’s plucking on your heartstrings because he’s ill and probably looks endearingly pathetic?’

‘This conversation has nothing to do with Franco,’ she contended.

‘Of course it’s about Franco,’ Bruce sliced back. ‘He crooks his finger and you go running—’

‘No, this is about you opening my eyes to the kind of relationship that has been developing between us, and I think I’ve always known deep down that it’s not going to work.’ Lexi pressed home, even though she knew it was going to hurt. ‘You recognised that too, Bruce,’ she reminded him gently. ‘I saw it in your expression and heard it in your voice. You’ve been the most wonderful friend to me—the very best. But somewhere along the line our feelings for each other became confused.’

‘Thanks, Lexi, for telling me that you think I’m such a limp-brained fool.’

She gripped the phone more tightly. ‘I didn’t mean that—’

‘Good. Because I am not the one who’s confused about my feelings. I can accept that you might need more time to make up your mind about us, but what I can’t take is you doing it while hanging around him. He’s like poison to you, Lexi. He always was and always will be. I will give you until after Clemente’s funeral, then you had better be back here pronto or I’m coming to get you—because I am not giving up on us!’

He cut her off. Lexi leant back against the wall and closed her eyes. She should have dealt with this. She should have dealt with it months ago. Now she felt he had every right to be angry with her. The problem was she didn’t like hurting people. She knew what it felt like, having been so badly hurt herself. And the worst part was Bruce was not her enemy. Franco was her enemy. If only because of the way he could still make her feel.

Re-entering Franco’s room, she found he wasn’t there. A glance at the closed bathroom door and she pulled in a deep breath and went back to sorting out the things she’d piled on his bed, glad of the few minutes’ respite while she tried to put her conversation with Bruce to one side.

The door to the bathroom opened. Turning around, Lexi almost dropped down onto the bed when a fully dressed Franco stepped out—a Franco she never had grown used to seeing like this. It felt as if someone had stuck a live wire in between her ribs, and the electric sensation tingled all the way down to her toes.

He was wearing a dark pinstriped suit of such amazing quality it seemed to glide over his long, lean physique like a living, moving thing.

‘You can’t get dressed,’ she breathed out in trembling objection. ‘Why have you got dressed?’

Managing to drag her gaze away from its mesmerised stare at the neat red tie knotted against the pristine white shirt collar that showed off the deep golden skin beneath his chin, she felt it clash with a set of rock-hard handsome features that bore little resemblance to the man she’d been looking at ten minutes before—the man she remembered as the Franco she’d used to know.

Not this one, though. This one was the married version—the one she’d learnt was a horribly cold, distant stranger who could look at her through the impassive dark eyes of a ruthless decision maker, as he was doing right now. She wrapped her arms around herself, shivering in response to the look.

‘We are leaving,’ he said. No embroidery to that declaration. He simply stepped over to the table with barely a limp on show and closed down his laptop, then picked up his phone.

‘I—I don’t understand.’ Flicking a glance at the bell push dangling over the pillows on the bed, she wondered anxiously if this was another one of his agitated moments and if she needed to bring someone in here fast, before he did himself some damage.

‘It is pretty simple. I have been unplugged, I am off all medication, and now I want to get away from this place.’

‘You mean they’ve signed you off?’

Glittering eyes set between narrowed eyelashes sent her a grimly mocking look. ‘Who are they, precisely?’

‘The …’ She waved a hand. ‘The doctors and—whoever. You can’t just walk out because you feel like it, Franco. There might be something really wrong with—’

‘You did.’

Cut off midsentence, Lexi blinked at him. ‘Excuse me?’ she breathed.

‘You walked out of here without being “signed off,” as you descriptively put it.’ Putting the phone in his pocket, he gathered up the fluffy rabbit next and carried it over to where she stood by the bed. ‘Actually, you ran.’

Having glued her attention to his legs, looking for a pronounced limp or something to indicate whether it hurt him to walk, Lexi jerked up her head. As if her surprised little world had just gone topsy-turvy, she found herself having to look up—and up—to reach the hard contours of his face. A clattering mass reaction stopped her breathing. It was so long since they’d stood toe to toe like this. Seeing him lying in bed or even sitting in a chair had not jolted her memory banks into reminding her of just how tall Franco was.

And it wasn’t just the extra inches of height he had over her—it was the sheer breadth of him and the illicit vibration of dangerously exciting power idling beneath the suit. He towered over her and her mouth dried up. She blinked and was suddenly assailed with an image of him, all golden tan and ridged muscles, standing over her just like this, wearing only a pair of white boxer shorts. A shockingly terrible tingle attacked the tips of her breasts, then shot like a flaming arrow to the vulnerable place between her legs. Liquid heat poured into the same place, making her squeeze in a sharp, choky little breath, and her skin broke out in a hot-cold sweat.

‘And I’m not even touching you,’ Franco chided softly, reading the choky gasp because he remembered it so well. ‘Yet,’ he added with silken purpose, just to see what would happen to her next.

A tide of interesting colour washed up her slender white throat and the black of her pupils dilated until they’d almost completely obliterated the ocean-blue of her irises.

‘This potent effect we have on each other is one hell of an aphrodisiac, cara,’ he murmured delicately. ‘Do you want to know what you are doing to me?’

Lexi slowly lowered her eyes in an effort to break free from his scintillating spell. She felt dizzy, and tiny muscles all over her were contracting so tightly they pulsed.

‘Y-you have no reason to run.’ Valiantly, she locked the single brain cell she seemed to have left on what he’d said before.

‘But you did?’

Pinning her lips together, and realising that they felt plumped up and tingly, Lexi nodded her head, finding she had to part her lips again so that she could speak. ‘And I will do it again if you don’t turn off the sexual pressure.’

His mouth broke into a wolfishly amused grin. ‘Good to know I’ve still got it, amore.’

‘You and how many others?’ Lexi derided his insufferable self-belief, at the same time deriding all the other good-looking men with truckloads of sexual charisma she met on a day-to-day basis—not one of whom came anywhere near making her feel what Franco made her feel.

That he’d completely misunderstood her meaning hit her as she watched his eyes cool. Even his cheeks suddenly looked carved, as if someone had scooped any hint of softness out of them. Lexi felt the sudden need to redistribute her weight equally between her two booted feet, and she unfolded her arms to drop them down to her sides, her fingers curling into fists.

‘You mis—’

‘Spare me the numbers.’

Turning abruptly away from her, he pushed the stuffed rabbit into one of her bags. The moment she lost his attention Lexi reached out and snatched up the bell press; gave it a long and urgent push. He caught the movement and swung back. Lexi dropped the bell push as if it was hot. As his eyes narrowed on her like stinging lasers she pushed her chin up and fed him back a wide-eyed look of sparking defiance.

To her total astonishment Franco threw back his dark head and laughed. ‘So even you think I’ve gone crazy!’

There was no ‘even you’ about it. Lexi had considered him crazy ever since she’d arrived here. He might be reading her every thought and feeling, but she found she couldn’t keep up with his thought patterns or the fast changes in his mood.

‘You’re not leaving here without someone’s say-so.’ She struck a stubborn pose.

‘Pietro will be here in five minutes,’ was all he commented, as if that was enough to relay his intentions. ‘I sent him to your hotel to settle the bill and collect your things.’

The door swung open before Lexi could respond to that piece of smooth forward planning. Dr Cavelli walked in, then stopped when he saw his patient was dressed and standing.

As cool and casual as a long drink of water, Franco turned and strode across the room, a smile on his face and his hand outstretched. ‘Thank you,’ he murmured in smooth as balm Italian, ‘for the wonderful care and attention I have received from you and your staff. However, it is time for me leave.’

The doctor had been staring at the limp free way Franco had been moving, but he jerked his eyes up to the outstretched hand, then even further, staring dubiously at Franco’s beautifully polite mask of a face. ‘I am not sure …’

‘I am drug free and feeling much better,’ Franco pointed out in a dulcet tone, then waited as if he had the patience of a saint while the doctor glanced questioningly at Lexi and she sent a helplessly bewildered shrug in return.

‘There is no medical reason why you cannot be discharged, signor,’ Dr Cavelli murmured cautiously. ‘However, you will need to keep a watchful eye on your bruising for the next week or two. The risk of blood clots has not diminished, and you will need the dressings changed on your thigh wound.’

‘Alexia and I will promise to keep a watchful eye out for blood clots,’ Franco assured him, refusing to look at Lexi even though he was holding his breath in case she told him she was not prepared to do anything of the kind. ‘And I am capable of changing my own dressings.’