Claiming His One-Night Baby

* * *

Matteo pulled his car up by the kerb and turned off the engine. The grand town house he’d parked opposite from stood in darkness.

Slumping forward over the wheel, he closed his eyes.

What was he even doing here?

He should be in his hotel room, drinking the minibar dry. He’d made that arrangement assuming Natasha would be staying in the castello with the rest of the family. He hadn’t slept under the same roof as her since she’d accepted Pieta’s proposal.

But she hadn’t stayed. A couple of hours after their meeting to discuss the memorial for Pieta she had made the rounds to embrace everyone goodbye. Everyone except him. By unspoken agreement—unspoken because he hadn’t exchanged more than a handful of words with her in seven years—he’d kept a great enough physical distance between them that no one would notice they failed to say goodbye to each other.

He put his head back and breathed deeply, willing his heart to stop this irregular rhythm.

What the hell was wrong with him? Why was it today of all days that he couldn’t shake her from his mind? Why today, when he was mourning his best friend and cousin, had the old memories returned to haunt him?

He could see it so vividly, leaving his room in the castello to head outside to join the rest of his family in the marquee for his aunt and uncle’s thirtieth wedding anniversary party. Natasha had left the room she’d been sharing with Francesca just a short way up the corridor from his at the same time. His heart had skipped to see her and he’d been ecstatic to see the necklace he’d sent for her eighteenth birthday there around her slender neck. He’d been disappointed not to make it to England for her party but he’d been a resident doctor at a hospital in Florida close to where he’d been to medical school. An emergency had cropped up at the end of his shift, a major car crash with multiple casualties that had resulted in all hands on deck. By the time they’d patched up the last casualty he’d missed his flight.

He’d been taking things slowly with her, waiting for her to turn eighteen before making a physical move. And then, in that cold castello corridor, Natasha in an electric-blue dress, the epitome of a chic, elegant woman, he’d realised he didn’t have to back off any more.

All the letters and late-night calls they’d been exchanging for months, the dreams and hopes for the future they’d shared, had all been leading to this, this moment, this time. It was time for their future to begin right then and he’d fingered that necklace before taking her face in his hands and kissing her for the very first time.

It had been the sweetest, headiest kiss he’d ever experienced in his then twenty-eight years, interrupted only by Francesca steamrolling from her room and clattering up the corridor to join them. If she’d been three seconds earlier she would have found them together.

Three seconds.

What would she have done, he wondered, if she had caught them in that clinch?

Because only two hours later Pieta had got to his feet and, in front of the three hundred guests, had asked Natasha to marry him. And she’d said yes.

Matteo rubbed his eyes as if the motion could rub the memories away.

He shouldn’t be thinking of all this now.

Why had he even come here, to the house she had shared with Pieta?

A light came on upstairs.

Had she just woken? Or had she been in the darkness all this time?

And was Francesca right to be worried about her?

Francesca had cornered him as he’d been making his own escape from the wake and asked him to keep an eye on Natasha while she, Francesca, was in Caballeros. She was worried about her, said she’d become a lost, mute ghost.

Although Natasha and Pieta had only been married for a year, they’d been together for seven years. She might be a gold-digging, heartless bitch but surely in that time she must have developed some feelings for him.

He’d wanted her feelings for Pieta to be genuine, for his cousin’s sake. But how could they have been when she’d been seeing them both behind each other’s backs?

Other than the few social family occasions he’d been unable to get out of, he’d cut her out of his life completely. He’d blocked her number, deleted every email and text message they’d exchanged and burned all her old-fashioned handwritten letters. The times he’d felt obliged to be in her presence he’d perfected the art of subtly blanking her in a way that didn’t draw attention to anyone but her.

He should have just said no to Francesca. Lied and said he was returning home to Miami earlier than planned.

Instead he’d nodded curtly and promised to drop round if he had five minutes over the next couple of days.

So why had he driven here when he’d left the castello fully intending to drive straight to the hotel?

* * *

Natasha pushed Pieta’s study door open and swallowed hard before stepping into it. After a moment she switched the light on. After going from room to room in complete darkness, in the house that had been her home for a year, her eyes took a few moments to adjust to the brightness.

She didn’t know what she was looking for or what she was doing. She didn’t know anything. She was lost. Alone.

She’d stayed at the wake as long as had been decently possible but all the consolation from the other mourners had become too much. Seeing Matteo everywhere she’d looked had been just as hard. Harder. Her mother pulling her to one side to ask if there was a chance she could be pregnant had been the final straw.

She’d had to get out before she’d screamed the castello down and her tongue ran away with itself before she could pull it back.

The rest of the Pellegrinis were staying at the castello and with sympathetic but concerned eyes had accepted her explanation that she wanted to be on her own.

At her insistence, the household staff had all stayed at the wake.

This was the first time she’d been alone in the house since she’d received the terrible news.

Feeling like an intruder in the room that had been her husband’s domain, she cast her gaze over the walls thick with the books he’d read. A stack of files he’d brought home to work on, either from his law firm or the foundation he’d been so proud of, lay on his desk. Next to it sat the thick leather-bound tome on Stanley and Livingstone she’d bought him for his recent birthday. A bookmark poked out a third of the way through it.

Her throat closing tightly, she picked the book up and hugged it to her chest then with a wail that seemed to come from nowhere sank to the floor and sobbed for the man who had lied to her and everyone else for years, but who had done so much good in the world.

Pieta would never finish this book. He would never see the hospital his siblings would build in his memory. He would never take delivery of the new car he’d ordered only the day before he’d died.

He would never have the chance to tell his family the truth about who he’d really been.

‘Oh, Pieta,’ she whispered between the tears. ‘Wherever you are, I hope you’re finally at peace with yourself.’

The sound of the doorbell rang out.

She rolled into a ball and covered her ears.

The caller was insistent, pressing the doorbell intermittently until she could ignore it no longer. Wiping the tears away, she dragged herself up from the study floor and went down the stairs, clinging to the bannister for support, mentally preparing what she would say to get rid of her unexpected visitor.

Please don’t be my parents. Don’t be my parents. Don’t be my parents.

Bracing herself, she unlocked the door and opened it a crack to peer through.

Certain she must be hallucinating, she pulled the door wider.

Her heart seemed to stop then kick back to life with a roar.

Matteo stood there, shining like an apparition under the brilliance of the moon.

He’d removed his black tie, his white shirt open at the throat, bleakness in his eyes, his jaw clenched, breathing heavily.