your child?’
‘He’s only little! Not that you’d know, of course.’ She paused and lifted her chin. ‘You’ve hardly gone near him.’
Matteo acknowledged the unmistakable challenge in her voice and he felt a sudden chill ice his skin, despite the warmth of the October day. How audacious of her to interrogate him about his behaviour when her own had hardly been exemplary. By her keeping Santino’s existence secret he had been presented with a baby, instead of having time to get used to the idea that he was to become a father.
Yet her pointed remark about his lack of interaction struck home, because what she said was true. He had kept his distance from Santino, telling himself that these things could not be rushed and needed time. And she had no right to demand anything of him, he thought bitterly. He would do things according to his agenda, not hers.
‘Rome isn’t far,’ he said coolly. ‘It is exactly two hundred kilometres. And I have a car constantly on standby.’
‘Funnily enough that’s something I do remember—being at your beck and call!’
‘Then you will know there’s no problem,’ he said drily. ‘Particularly as my driver is solid and reliable and not given to taking off to remote areas of the countryside in adverse weather conditions.’
‘Very funny,’ she said.
‘We can be back here in an hour and a half should the need arise. We’ll leave here at ten tomorrow morning—and be back early the next day. Less than twenty-four hours in the eternal city.’ He gave a faintly cynical laugh. ‘Don’t women usually go weak at the knees at the prospect of an unlimited budget to spend on clothes?’
‘Some women, maybe,’ she said. ‘Not me.’
But Keira’s stubbornness was more than her determination not to become a rich man’s doll. She didn’t know about fashion—and the thought of what she might be expected to wear scared her. Perhaps if she’d been less of a tomboy, she might have flicked through glossy magazines like other women her age. She might have had some idea of what did and didn’t suit her and would now be feeling a degree of excitement instead of dread. Fear suddenly became defiance and she glared at him.
‘You are the bossiest man I’ve ever met!’ she declared, pushing a handful of hair over her shoulder.
‘And you are the most difficult woman I’ve ever encountered,’ he countered. ‘A little gratitude might go down well now and again.’
What, gratitude for his high-handedness and for making her feel stuff she’d rather not feel? Keira shook her head in frustration as she tugged her T-shirt down over her straining jeans.
‘I’ll be ready at ten,’ she said, and went off to find Santino.
She put the baby in his smart new buggy to take him for a walk around the estate, slowly becoming aware that the weather had changed. The air had grown heavy and sultry and heavy clouds were beginning to accumulate on the horizon, like gathering troops. When eventually they returned to the farmhouse, Santino took longer than usual to settle for his sleep and Keira was feeling out of sorts when Paola came to ask whether she would be joining Signor Valenti for dinner that evening.
It was the first time she’d received such an invitation and Keira hesitated for a moment before declining. Up until now, she’d eaten her supper alone or with Claudia and she saw no reason to change that routine. She was going to be stuck with Matteo in Rome when clearly they were going to have to address some of the issues confronting them. Why waste conversation during a stilted dinner she had no desire to eat, especially when the atmosphere felt so close and heavy?
Fanning her face with her hand, she showered before bed but her skin still felt clammy, even after she’d towelled herself dry. Peering up into the sky, she thought she saw a distant flash of lightning through the thick curtain of clouds. She closed the shutters and brushed her hair before climbing into bed, but sleep stubbornly eluded her. She wished the occasional growl of thunder would produce the threatened rain and break some of the tension in the atmosphere and was just drifting off into an uneasy sleep when her wish came true. A loud clap of thunder echoed through the room and made her sit bolt upright in bed. There was a loud whoosh and heavy rain began to hurl down outside her window and quickly she got up and crept into Santino’s room but, to her surprise, the baby was sound asleep.
How did he manage to do that? she thought enviously—feeling even more wide awake than before. She sighed as she went back to bed and the minutes ticked by, and all she could think about was how grim she was going to look, with dark shadowed eyes and a pasty face. Another clap of thunder made her decide that a warm drink might help relax her. And wasn’t there a whole stack of herb teas in the kitchen?
To the loud tattoo of drumming rain, she crept downstairs to the kitchen with its big, old-fashioned range and lines of shiny copper pots hanging in a row. She switched on some low lighting and not for the first time found herself wistfully thinking how homely it looked—and how it was unlike any place she had imagined the urbane Matteo Valenti would own.
She had just made herself a cup of camomile tea when she heard a sound behind her and she jumped, her heart hammering as loudly as the rain as she turned to see Matteo standing framed in the doorway. He was wearing nothing but a pair of faded denims, which were clinging almost indecently to his long and muscular thighs. His mouth was unsmiling but there was a gleam in his coal-dark eyes, which made awareness drift uncomfortably over her skin and suddenly Keira began to shiver uncontrollably, her nipples tightening beneath her nightshirt.
THE WALLS SEEMED to close in on her and Keira was suddenly achingly conscious of being alone in the kitchen with a half-naked Matteo, while outside she could hear the rain howl down against the shuttered windows.
With a shaking hand she put her mug down, her eyes still irresistibly drawn to the faded jeans which hugged his long and muscular thighs. He must have pulled them on in a hurry because the top button was undone, displaying a line of dark hair which arrowed tantalisingly downwards. Soft light bathed his bare and gleaming torso, emphasising washboard abs and broad shoulders.
She realised with a start that she’d never seen his naked torso before—or at least hadn’t really noticed it. She’d been so blown away when they’d been having sex that her eyes hadn’t seemed able to focus on anything at all. But now she could see him in all his beauty—a dark and forbidding beauty, but beauty all the same. And despite all the stuff between them, despite the fact that they’d been snapping at each other like crocodiles this afternoon, she could feel herself responding to him, and there didn’t seem to be a thing she could do about it.
Beneath her nightshirt her nipples were growing even tighter and her breasts were heavy. She could feel a warm melting tug at her groin and the sensation was so intense that she found herself shifting her weight uncomfortably from one bare foot to the other. She opened her mouth to say something, but no words came.
He stared at her, a strange and mocking half-smile at his lips, as if he knew exactly what was happening to her. ‘What’s the matter, Keira?’ he queried silkily. ‘Can’t sleep?’
She struggled to find the correct response. To behave as anyone else would in the circumstances.
Like a woman drinking herb tea and not wishing that he would put his hand between her legs to stop this terrible aching.
‘No.
