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  Mia startled. ‘You know?’

  ‘I do.’ Dante smiled.

  ‘How do you feel about it?’ Mia asked,

  ‘We’ll talk in the morning. You’re too tired now, but if you need anything...’

  ‘Dante—’ Except she was speaking to a closed door.

  Mia kicked her heels on the bed in frustration and lay there scarcely able to believe not only that he knew about his father but that he was smiling, and that he would leave her hanging. But then she started to smile as she realised Dante was giving her a choice.

  He always had.

  From their first night together, not once had he pushed her, or tried to persuade her.

  It was sex, Mia reminded herself.

  Nothing more than that to Dante.

  Yet he could be hers tonight, if she so chose.

  And she so chose!

  Mia pulled back the covers and rather gingerly climbed out of bed, because she loathed the house at night, but when she opened the bedroom door she had to smile, because Dante had left the lights on for her.

  And there was a shoe at the bottom of the stairs.

  A sock too.

  Then a shirt.

  There was a treasure trail, which she guessed would lead her to his door. She was glad of it, for Mia had never so much as been up these stairs before. There were his trousers halfway down an elegantly lit hallway, and she made her way down it, a little nervous, a little scared, a little cold, but desire propelled her. It was Dante she could accuse of being slovenly now for his black silk boxers were on the floor, leaving no doubt he was naked on the other side.

  Pushing open the door, she was met by Dante’s smile in the softly lit room as he pulled back the sheet. She ran the last steps to his bed and climbed into his warm, waiting arms.

  ‘You know?’ she said, continuing their conversation.

  ‘I do, and I don’t care about all that now. Come here,’ Dante said, and pulled her not into his arms but up onto his stomach. ‘I only care to see the changes in you.’

  He slipped her robe off but she fought to retrieve it as she felt very naked and very aware of his stomach on her sex. ‘Dante...’

  ‘What?’ he asked. ‘Are you going to play shy?’

  ‘I am shy.’

  ‘Not with me you’re not.’

  It was true. With Dante she felt less shy.

  ‘Can I ask you something?’ Dante said, as he held her hips. ‘And you don’t have to answer, only tell me what you want me to know. When you said you’d never known such feelings...’ He felt her blush all over, even her thighs on his waist burnt with embarrassment. ‘Never?’

  She nodded.

  ‘How?’ Dante asked, as if life without sex was an impossible feat.

  ‘Just...’ she shrugged ‘...no interest.’

  ‘None?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So what about that look you gave me the day we met? That come-to-bed look, that get-down-on-your-knees look.’

  ‘I would never do that.’

  ‘Okay. What else won’t you do?’

  She told him and Dante listened with great interest. ‘You have a very long not-to-do list.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So you don’t ever want to taste me?’

  Mia couldn’t believe she was discussing things she had always considered filthy, and, what’s more, she couldn’t believe that the thought turned her on. ‘Maybe that one I do want to try. Look, I don’t expect you to get it. You’re mad for all of it.’

  ‘I used to be,’ Dante said, ‘until an uptight girl came along and there’s been no one else since then. Waste of a condom last night, wasn’t it?’

  ‘You’re wicked.’ Mia smiled, trying not to show her deep thrill that there had been no one else, but Dante was examining those changes to her body now.

  With one finger, he stroked her breast and his light touch had her clench in a heady mixture of frustration and pleasure. Then he upped the pressure and rolled her nipple between his finger and thumb and then with his warm palm he caressed her so softly that she leant into his hand for more.

  His hand moved to the back of her head and he pulled her forward. Mia closed her eyes as his tongue flicked her swollen nipple then tasted her slowly and deeply, sucking on her and edging her towards desperation.

  ‘It’s going to be okay,’ he said, and ran a light hand over her stomach. ‘I’ll sort this for both of you.’

  She gave a slight mirthless laugh because, whatever way Mia looked, there was going to be hell to pay.

  ‘I will. I’ll build a canopy over the residence and hide you both away,’ Dante said, while knowing that hiding was not the answer. ‘Come with me tomorrow.’

  Mia tensed. ‘I can’t face the board.’

  ‘No,’ Dante said, and just as she breathed again, he ran a hand over her gold curls and slipped his fingers inside. There was no clamp of her thighs now as she let him explore her.

  He stroked her so lightly that it made her quiver and then he amended his request.

  ‘You don’t have to face the board, just come with me to Rome.’ He knew the press would be outside his apartment. ‘I’ll book us into La Fiordelise.’

  ‘Adjoining suites?’

  ‘If that’s what you want.’ Dante said.

  ‘Dante.’ She just wanted to focus on the bliss his fingers gave, and she answered through gritted teeth. ‘We’d have to drive.’

  ‘Fine,’ Dante said, not caring if it meant a five a.m. start.

  His fingers were more probing and so insistent now that they brought her up on her knees. ‘Dante...’ she said, because she was coming undone and he had to stop with the questions, yet he didn’t.

  ‘You’ll come to Rome?’

  ‘Yes!’ She shouted it, scarcely able to believe he could carry on a conversation when his fingers were doing unimaginable things and she was rocking on his hand, just coming to his skilful command. ‘Oh, God,’ she shouted as he removed the pleasure of his hand and left her frantic and pulsing in the air, but then he took her hips and groaned as he slipped inside her orgasm and delicious tension encased his length.

  She rested her hands on his chest as Dante moved her at his whim. It was the most delicious feeling, to feel all giddy and sated while she moved to his tempo. Dante thrust up into her as she screwed her eyes closed.

  ‘Open them,’ he told her.

  She ignored him.

  ‘Open them,’ he demanded, and she looked down at the two of them, to see Dante sliding into her. To both see and feel the passion was dizzying, and it was then that Mia found her own rhythm and it wound her tighter, ever tighter. But it was the sudden tight grip of his hands and the digging in of his fingers that held her still as Dante started to come, and it toppled her so that she felt as if she was spinning undone as she gave in to the deepest orgasm she had known.

  Mia collapsed onto his body, which wanted her, and lay listening to the thud, thud, thud of his heart that didn’t. At moments like this, she told herself she didn’t care.

  Even when she rolled off and they lay both on their stomachs with their heads turned to face each other, all she felt was calm.

  So calm that even the hoot of an owl outside didn’t startle her as it usually would.

  Instead she looked right into his eyes as she spoke, ‘I’m really not sure about going to Rome.’

  He stared back at her. ‘If my father’s secret has taught me anything, it is not to hide.’

  ‘That’s all very well,’ Mia replied, still calm, ‘but I won’t be paraded by you for a few weeks, until you relegate me to an ex who happens to have had your baby.’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘So, what is the point of me going with you to Rome?’

  It was Dante who blinked. He’d been about to point out that he still di
dn’t know what to say to the board, though the truth was he was very used to winging it. The deeper truth was that tomorrow would be made easier by knowing she was close—not that he told her that. Instead he trotted out his usual line when a woman tried to get too close. ‘You’re growing more demanding, Mia.’

  And still Mia did not react. ‘Yes,’ she replied, for she would not be his plaything until he grew bored. There was something about Dante that imbued her with confidence and in this little post-coital haze she gave him a slow smile. ‘I am growing more demanding.’

  ‘You want me to marry you for the sake of the baby, don’t you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Good, because that is the most ridiculous reason on earth.’

  It was now that she turned away, but still he wrapped her in his arms.

  Dammit, how could he could be so nice, even while he was breaking her heart?

  Married to Dante for the sake of a baby, that was the last thing she wanted to be.

  Mia wanted the impossible.

  But it was something Dante considered a pointless burden and something he didn’t believe in.

  Love.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  MIA DID NOT want to go to Rome!

  There was too much music to be faced there and the more she thought about it, the more she felt offended that he didn’t so much as consider bringing her to his home!

  ‘Are you sure that I agreed to this?’ she grumbled as they headed to the car, with sunrise still almost an hour away.

  ‘Very sure.’

  Dante was in jeans and she was in capri pants but she had a dress freshly pressed, thanks to Sylvia, in a suit carrier, and would change at a breakfast stop outside Rome.

  And though Mia would dearly love to doze her way there, it would seem that the driver wanted conversation.

  ‘What do you want me to tell them about us, Mia?’ Dante asked as they passed the poppy fields.

  ‘Deny, deny, deny.’

  ‘Lie, lie, lie, you mean,’ Dante said. ‘I’m not going to do that.’

  ‘Then say nothing.’

  ‘That’s what you want?’ Dante checked. ‘Because that I can easily do. I’m more than happy to tell them it’s none of their business. I don’t need the board’s approval.’

  ‘They’re your family, though.’

  Dante sighed.

  Didn’t he just know it.

  ‘I should never have agreed to work with family. I knew it was a mistake to take it on. Hell, if Luigi hadn’t been my uncle when I found him gambling profits away I’d have fired him on the spot.’ He told her about his uncle’s penchant for casinos. ‘And bloody Ariana does nothing other than spend, spend, spend...’ He ticked them all off one by one, the work-shy cousins, the aunt who spent more time drinking the wine than selling it, the scandals and hidden affairs that further served to prove his point: marriage was completely pointless. ‘Yet, because I don’t hide my behaviour, they think it gives them licence to judge...’

  ‘Did your father?’

  ‘No.’ Dante gave a soft, regretful laugh, missing him. ‘He always had my back. I thought he knew I would always have his.’

  ‘He did know that.’

  ‘Then why couldn’t he tell me he was gay?’

  Finding Mia so upset last night had blown the question straight out of his head. Then the bliss of sex had again chased it away, but he had lain the rest of the night, asking and asking himself why his father hadn’t told him.

  ‘I think he wanted to, Dante. In fact, I’m quite sure if he hadn’t become ill, he’d been about to come out, despite—’ She stopped herself.

  Dante, though, finished what she’d been about to say. ‘Despite my mother’s wishes.’

  Mia said nothing, blood being thicker than water and all that.

  ‘Mia,’ Dante said, in a rare admission, ‘I need your take on this.’

  ‘Yes,’ Mia reluctantly said. ‘I think he would have come out, despite your mother’s wishes, though we’re not all like you, Dante. We don’t all just shrug and carry on when our sex life gets hauled before an extraordinary general meeting.’

  ‘I guess.’

  They spoke some more about his father and Roberto as they left Luctano far behind.

  ‘Was the orchid from him?’ Dante asked.

  ‘Yes, I collected it from Roberto on my ride that morning.’

  ‘Poor Roberto,’ Dante said.

  ‘Yes,’ Mia agreed, ‘but as I said to him, he got to spend fifteen years with the love of his life and there’s nothing poor about that.’

  They chatted some more about his father and Roberto but inevitably the conversation turned back to them and the situation that Mia could not face. She didn’t want the slurs in the papers to be read by their child, and how Dante dealt with today would greatly affect that.

  ‘Dante, what are we going to do? If they find out about the baby the papers are going to be merciless.’

  ‘I don’t care.’

  ‘Well, I do. I hate how they keep saying that I’m your step—’

  She could not even say it.

  ‘You know,’ Dante said, ‘I am quite sure you could get your marriage annulled.’ It was one of the many possibilities he was considering. An annulment would void the marriage and tell the world that it had all been a sham so that Mia would no longer be his stepmother.

  ‘I probably could,’ Mia agreed. ‘But I would never do that to your father and neither would you.’

  ‘No,’ Dante said. ‘It was just a thought.’

  ‘I think I should go back to London, and just lie low until it all dies down.’

  ‘You want to live in London?’

  ‘My family are in London.’

  ‘What about my family?’ Dante asked. ‘Because that is what my child will be. What? Do I have to fly to see him?’

  ‘It might be a her.’

  ‘Well, if it is, I am not living with an ocean keeping me from my daughter! And what about us?’

  ‘What about us?’ And her foolish heart leapt in hope that he was actually considering them but, of course, this was Dante.

  ‘Well, are we still going to sleep together?’

  ‘What the hell?’

  ‘I’m serious. Sex is important.’

  ‘An actual date might be nice.’

  ‘It might,’ Dante agreed, ‘except you don’t want us to be seen together. So, what, do we come together now and then in our decadent palace?’

  ‘Heaven forbid that you invite me to your home.’

  ‘Ah, so that is what the sulking is about,’ Dante said. ‘Mia, the press will be outside, and...’ he told the truth, though he at least tried to lighten it ‘...I don’t like to bring women back home. I prefer hotels. It’s better for Alfonzo...’

  ‘Alfonzo? It’s better for the dog if he doesn’t meet the women you sleep with?’ Her incredulity was topped only by how much she hated his lack of commitment, because it was his commitment she craved.

  ‘We’ll go to my home if you really want to, but don’t blame me if we’re photographed again.’

  ‘No, we’ll go to the hotel.’

  As the sun rose, of course his phone went off.

  ‘Pronto!’

  It was Sarah, and he told her he’d be there by nine and that she didn’t have to worry about feeding Alfonzo. When he rang off he turned to Mia. ‘I’ll feed him after I drop you at the hotel.’

  God, she was even jealous of his dog!

  And then, because it was Dante’s phone, the second he ended the call it lit up again.

  ‘Pronto!’

  It was his mother. Mia struggled to keep up with Angela’s very emotional, very rapid words, but it would seem she wanted to tell Stefano and Ariana before he faced the board.

  Mia frowned, and had to
sit on her hands when Dante suggested they all meet at Romano Holdings at eight.

  There wasn’t time.

  ‘There isn’t time,’ Mia said, because the traffic was already growing. ‘You’ve got to get me to La Fiordelise, and feed Alfonzo. We’re already pushing things.’

  ‘Can’t you just wait in my office? There’s a private entrance to the car park.’

  ‘No!’ Mia was adamant, but then checked herself, not wanting to make this harder on him. After all, it was a big thing that Angela was about to be honest with the twins. ‘Fine, but as long as I don’t have to see any of your family or colleagues, and then we go straight to La Fiordelise.’

  ‘Fine,’ Dante bit back.

  He loathed her shame.

  As they arrived at the headquarters of Romano Holdings in EUR District they were both simmering with rancour as they slipped into the private entrance. Mia had on dark glasses and carried the suit carrier, more to shield herself, as they took the back stairwell up to the first floor in order to avoid the lobby. But finally, just before eight, she sat in Dante’s office.

  She sat on a low sofa as Dante dropped his clothes without thought, opened up a panel and produced a shirt. ‘Choose a tie for me,’ he said, as he dashed into the shower.

  What, was she his wardrobe assistant now?

  She was rattled and unsettled at being back here. Though they had used the side entrance, she had seen the pack of press outside the main one, and she was nervous too that his family were here.

  She chose a gorgeous aqua tie, but as Dante dressed hurriedly, he rolled his eyes at her selection and produced a grey one instead. ‘I’m not going to a wedding.’

  ‘I know you’re not,’ Mia said, ‘because you haven’t shaved.’

  And despite their filthy moods they shared a smile.

  ‘I’d better go up.’ He was to meet his family in what had been Rafael’s private suite on the top floor. ‘You’ll be okay?’ he checked, and gave her a quick kiss. ‘There’s the kitchenette...’

  ‘I do know,’ Mia said. After all she had worked here, albeit briefly, but her sniping at being back here stopped when she saw his tense features. ‘Good luck with your family.’