Claiming His One-Night Baby

So many funerals.

So much grief.

Too much pain.

When the burial was over and the priest led the mourners into the castello for the wake, Matteo hung back to visit a grave on the next row.

The marble headstone had a simple etching.

Roberto Pellegrini

Beloved son

No mention of him being a beloved brother.

Generations of Pellegrinis and their descendants were buried here, going back six centuries. At twenty-eight, Roberto was the youngest to have been buried in fifty years.

Matteo crouched down and touched the headstone. ‘Hello, Roberto. Sorry I haven’t visited you in a while. I’ve been busy.’ He laughed harshly. In the five years since his brother’s death he’d visited the grave only a handful of times. Not a day passed when he didn’t think of him. Not an hour passed when he didn’t feel the loss.

‘Listen to me justifying myself. Again. You know I hate to see you here. I love you and I miss you. I just wanted you to know that.’

Blinking back moistness from his eyes, his heart aching, his head pounding, Matteo dragged himself to the castello to join the others.

A huge bar had been set up in the state room for the wake. Matteo had booked himself into a hotel in Pisa for the next couple of days but figured one small glass of bourbon wouldn’t put him over the limit. His hotel room had a fully stocked minibar for him to drink dry when he got there. He would stay as long as was decent then leave.

He’d taken only a sip of his drink when Francesca appeared at his side.

He embraced her tightly. ‘How are you holding up?’ He’d been thirteen when his uncle Fabio and his wife, Vanessa, had taken him into their home. Francesca had been a baby. He’d been there when she’d taken her first steps, been in the audience for her first school music recital—she’d murdered the trumpet—and had beamed with the pride of a big brother only a few months ago at her graduation.

She shrugged and rubbed his arm. ‘I need you to come with me. There’s something we need to discuss.’

Following her up a cold corridor—the ancient castello needed a fortune’s worth of modernisation—they entered Fabio Pellegrini’s old office, which, from the musty smell, hadn’t been used since the motor neurone disease that eventually killed him had really taken its hold on him.

A moment later Daniele appeared at the door with Natasha right behind him.

Startled blue eyes found his and quickly looked away as Francesca closed the door and indicated they should all sit round the oval table.

Matteo inhaled deeply and swore to himself.

This was the last thing he needed, to be stuck in close confines with her, the woman who had played him like a violin, letting him believe she had genuine feelings for him and could see a future for them, when all along she’d been playing his cousin too.

It seemed she had been with him every minute of that day, always in the periphery of his vision even when he’d blinked her away. Now she sat opposite him, close enough that if he were to reach over the table he would be able to stroke her deceitful face.

She shouldn’t be wearing black. She should be wearing scarlet.

He despised that she was still the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen and that the years had only added to it.

He studied the vivid blue eyes that looked everywhere but at him. He studied the classically oval face with its creamy complexion, usually golden but today ashen, searching for flaws. Her nose was slightly too long, her lips too wide, but instead of being imperfections they added character to the face he’d once dreamed of waking up to.

And now?

Now he despised the very air she breathed.

* * *

‘To summarise, I’ll take care of the legal side, Daniele takes care of the construction and Matteo takes care of the medical side. What about you, Natasha? Do you want to handle publicity for it?’

Francesca’s words penetrated Natasha’s ears but it took a couple of beats longer for her brain to decipher them.

She’d struggled to pay attention throughout the meeting Francesca had called, the outbursts of temper between Daniele and Francesca being the only thing that had kept her even vaguely alert.

‘I can do that,’ she whispered, swallowing back the hysteria clamouring in her stomach.

Ignore Matteo and keep it together, she told herself in desperation.

God, she didn’t know anything about publicity.

She knew Francesca thought she was doing the right thing, inviting her to this meeting of siblings—and the Pellegrinis considered their cousin Matteo to be a sibling—and that Francesca assumed she would want to be involved.

Any decent, loving widow would want to be involved in building a memorial to their beloved husband.

And she did want to be involved. For all his terrible failings as a husband, Pieta had been a true, dedicated humanitarian. He’d formed his own foundation a decade ago to build in areas hit by natural disasters; schools, homes, hospitals, whatever was needed. The Caribbean island of Caballeros had been hit by the worst hurricane on record the week before he’d died, wrecking the majority of the island’s medical facilities. Pieta had immediately known he would build a hospital there but before his own plans for it had fully formed his own tragedy had struck and he’d been killed in a helicopter crash.

He deserved to have this memorial. The suffering people of Caballeros deserved to benefit from the hospital Francesca would steamroller into building for them.

So Natasha had striven to pay attention, not wanting to let down the loving Pellegrini siblings who’d been a part of her life for as long as she could remember, since her father and Fabio had been old school friends. She’d never had siblings of her own and as soon as it had been announced she’d be marrying into the family the closeness had grown, even during the six long years of their engagement.

If only Matteo weren’t there she’d have been better able to concentrate.

There had not been one occasion in his presence in the past seven years where she hadn’t felt the weight of his animosity. Polite and amiable enough that no one could see the depths of his loathing, whenever their eyes met it was akin to being stared at by Lucifer, her soul scorched by the burn of the hatred firing from green eyes that had once looked at her with only tenderness.

She could feel it now, digging into her skin like needles.

How could Francesca and Daniele not feel it too? How did it not infuse the whole atmosphere?

A part of her understood why he despised her as he did and, God knew, she’d tried to apologise for it, but it had been seven years. So much had changed in that time. She’d changed. He’d changed too, turning his back on the reconstructive surgery he’d worked so hard to specialise in and instead going the vanity surgery route. With his twenty-eight clinics worldwide and the patent on a skincare range he’d personally developed that actually worked in reducing scars and the signs of aging, he’d gone from being a dedicated professional surgeon to an entrepreneur who fitted surgery in when he had the time. Matteo had amassed a fortune that rivalled the entire Pellegrini estate and Pieta’s personally accrued wealth put together.

He’d even changed his surname.

He’d become famous with it. Tall with dark good looks, olive skin, strong jaw and black curly hair that he’d recently had cropped short, it had been inevitable. ‘Dr Dishy’ the tabloids called him. It seemed she could barely pass a newsagent or log on to the internet without seeing his seductive face blazing out at her, normally with some identikit lingerie model or other draped on his arm.

Today his usual arrogance had deserted him. Even with the laser burn of his loathing infecting her, she could feel his anguish.

Pieta had been more than a cousin and surrogate sibling. He’d been Matteo’s closest friend.

Her heart wanted to weep for him.

Her heart wanted to weep for all of them.