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

A start for what? The question pulled Lexi’s breath up short. She just had to work out what she was doing here, because—well, because it was beginning to feel permanent, and that was dangerous …

‘What is she doing?’ Franco asked as Pietro helped him out of his jacket.

‘I believe I heard her threatening to kill you,’ the older man responded evenly, and was rewarded with a crooked half smile, which quickly disappeared into a frown.

‘We make her welcome here this time, Pietro,’ he instructed grimly. ‘It is important to me.’

‘I know, sir.’ Laying the jacket aside, Pietro turned to help Franco unbutton his shirt, but his hands were impatiently waved away.

Franco was aching all over, and all he wanted to do was fall onto his bed. Even heeling off his shoes was agony, and he wondered how the hell he’d managed to put the shoes on in the first place.

Bloody-minded willpower and a grim determination to be in control of what was happening around him and to him.

‘I will do the rest.’ He turned away from Pietro’s hovering need to help. ‘Find out if my wife—’

My wife … The possessive title sounded so alien on his tongue it stopped his thoughts stone dead. He had rarely called Lexi that even when they were together—he’d rarely thought about her in those terms.

Then he remembered the last time he’d used the possessive term—to Marco—and experienced a different type of pain.

‘Check if she has eaten lunch today,’ he said, frowning again. He knew he’d deliberately missed out the my wife part because he did not feel he had the right to use it—not yet, anyway.

‘Have you eaten?’ Pietro was still hovering like a man who needed to do something helpful, but all Franco could think of was lying down on that bed.

‘Si,’ he said, though it was not the truth—but it saved him having to deal with further questions over choices of food. Or—worse—Zeta turning her kitchen upside down and making him his all his favourite foods to tempt his appetite, like she’d used to do when he was a boy and sick with some childhood ailment. ‘If you would tell Lexi—’ No. He changed that, smiling crookedly again. ‘If you would ask Lexi to come and see me after she has settled in?’

A silent nod and Pietro reluctantly departed. The moment the door closed behind him Franco gave up trying to remove his shirt and just rolled down carefully onto the bed. He would lie there for a couple of minutes to get his breath back, then …

The lingering effects of the drugs still moving around his system and exhaustion from the journey claimed him like a heavy blanket, and Franco knew nothing else.

He certainly did not know that Lexi had taken time for a shower and to change out of her dark city clothes, which were sticking to her overheated skin, into one of her new dresses that were more in keeping with a late summer in Italy. Then Zeta had arrived with a tray of tea and light pastries, which she’d discovered she was hungry enough to sit down and enjoy.

Over an hour later she let herself out of the suite she had been allocated all those years ago—two whole wings of the house away from Franco’s suite. Once deeply intimate lovers turned into married strangers, she mused as she walked the long corridors. What had the separate bedrooms said about their chance of making anything of their fated marriage? About as much chance as they’d both allowed it—which was basically none.

A grimace worked its way across her lips as she arrived at Franco’s door. About to lay a soft knock on it, she stalled her knuckles half an inch from their target when she heard a muffled noise that sounded very like a broken sob. A jolt of alarm had her bypassing the polite knock, and she just grabbed the handle and pushed the door open—only to freeze in dismay at the scene that met her unsuspecting gaze.

Franco was sitting on the side of his bed and he was not alone. Claudia Clemente, Marco’s beautiful sister, was kneeling at his feet between his spread thighs, her red-tipped fingers clutching at his head while she sobbed into his chest.

Almost anyone else walking in on this moving scene would have felt their heart rend in aching sympathy for both Franco and Claudia, but to Lexi it felt as if someone had reached into her chest and yanked her heart out. She would not have been surprised if she’d turned to stone where she stood. For Claudia was the woman who’d sent proof of that bet to her mobile phone years ago. She was also the woman Franco had spent the night with while Lexi had lost their baby and grieved alone.

CHAPTER SIX (#ulink_f1ab9c9c-3931-527b-8eb4-05b7d98a670c)

THROBBING with the need to just turn around, walk out of there and never come back again, Lexi felt nailed to the spot by the rush of emotions that flooded inside her. She was hurting. She was hurting so badly she might as well have been standing there like this three and a half years ago, witnessing their betrayal. They even had a bed there as a gut jerking prop.

A barely controllable desire to go over there and yank the dainty, black clad figure away from Franco and then punch him on his red lipstick stained mouth almost got the better of her. At that precise moment she did not care that Claudia was Marco’s kid sister, or that the two of them had every excuse to be indulging in a moment of shared agony.

How had Claudia got in here anyway? Had Zeta let her in? Pietro? One of the maids? Did Claudia have such a free run of this house that she could stroll into Franco’s bedroom without needing permission from anyone?

As if she’d been dropped behind a haze of misty red, she watched as Franco glanced up and noticed her standing here.

‘Lexi,’ he murmured, and sounded so thick and strained that the swinging punch scenario replayed itself in her head. He was either really turned on or close to tears, and the latter she refused to accept—mainly because it just didn’t suit the unforgiving frame of mind she was in.

It clearly didn’t suit him either, because she saw two streaks of colour shoot high across his cheeks.

Guilty and with an eye witness, she noted.

She hated him.

Claudia lifted her face up off his chest and turned her beautiful dark head. She was two years older than Lexi. Once upon a time those two years had felt more like a decade to Lexi, in smooth sophistication and worldly experience. Now the age-gap felt like nothing at all, and Claudia’s amazing sloe-shaped bottomless black eyes were still the most exotically beautiful eyes she had ever seen. She looked nothing like her light-haired, blue-eyed brother. She certainly did not have Marco’s sunny temperament. Claudia was devious, calculating and jealously possessive of both her brother and of Franco.

‘Lexi,’ Marco’s beautiful sister whispered as she climbed slowly to her feet. ‘I did not expect to see you here.’

Lexi believed it. Claudia was so visibly shocked to see her standing there she could not contain the horror from sounding in her voice.

Lexi did not spare Franco another glance. Her insides had gone into meltdown and were churning up with the ugliest kind of bitterness. It took all of her control to keep breathing in and out. She kept her eyes focused on Claudia, who was wearing the silver wash of tears glistening on the tips of her long black eyelashes.

Crocodile tears? No, that was just too mean for her even to think it.

Claudia had just lost her beloved brother, after all. Of course she would want to come here and commiserate with Franco over their mutual loss. She had the right.

But it was still difficult for Lexi to part her bloodless lips and murmur, ‘Hello, Claudia,’ peeling her tense fingers off the door handle and still feeling the tension in them when she dropped them to her sides.

Deep breath, Lexi. Walk forward, she instructed her legs, which tingled because they did not want her to go anywhere near Claudia Clemente. ‘I’m so very sorry about Marco.’

At least that was a genuine response. She offered commiserating kisses to the other woman’s cheeks and felt Claudia’s floral perfume dry her throat. From the corner of her eye she caught the way Franco’s facial muscles clenched when she said Marco’s name.

Well, too late for that, she thought, with a cold feeling that sat like a lump where her understanding and sympathy should be. With Claudia here there was no way he could avoid talking about Marco. With Claudia here there was no way he could continue pretending the accident had not happened, or that Lexi was the only person he could bear to have close.

‘Oh, please don’t say his name,’ Claudia begged, and her fabulous eyes filled up with fresh tears. ‘I think I am going to die from my grief.’

As a sob broke free from her throat Lexi felt a pang of guilt for suspecting the quality of her grief. Whatever else Claudia was that she despised, she could not take away from her that she’d adored her older brother. Pushing her own stony feelings aside, Lexi plucked a box of tissues from the bedside table and quietly encouraged Claudia to dry her tears.

‘I had to come,’ Claudia explained once she’d regained control again. ‘I knew that Franco would be tormenting himself. I needed to tell him that we do not hold him to blame.’

Well, that was truly thoughtful and caring of her, but while Claudia was busy dabbing her eyes Franco had closed his eyes and was turning that sickly shade of grey.

‘And M-Mamma and Papa needed to know if he would be well enough to attend M-Marco’s funeral next Tuesday.’

‘We will be there.’ The man himself spoke at last. Then he fell into deep, dark, husky Italian, spoken too fast for Lexi to follow; but that sent Claudia to her knees again, her arms locking tightly around his neck.

Lexi removed herself over to the window and stayed there until Claudia made her final farewells and eventually left. The ensuing silence hung like a woodchopper’s axe, hesitating over the downward slice that would split them clean in two.

Three and a half years was a long time to hang onto such a poisonous grudge, she tried hard to tell herself. She’d grown up an awful lot in those years, so it was logical that Claudia had done the same thing.

Deep down, though, she didn’t believe that Marco’s sister had changed. She’d seen something in the possessive trail of the other woman’s fingers as they’d let go of Franco, and in the way she hadn’t been able to resist bruising his lips with a final kiss before she’d dragged herself away from him.

The atmosphere she’d left behind pulsated with Lexi’s continued silence.

What am I doing here?