Deserving of His Diamonds? Read online

  He picked her up and carried her to the bed, dropping her in a sexy tangle of limbs, his weight coming down over her, his body spearing hers with a hard thrust that knocked the air right out of her lungs. She heard him give a primitive male grunt of pleasure as her body wrapped around him, a sound that made her shudder all over in delight. He set a furious pace but she was with him all the way. She clawed at the skin on his back, she grabbed his taut buttocks and drove him on with a feral urgency she had no idea she possessed.

  It was wicked.

  It was racy.

  It was thrilling to have him so close to losing control.

  She felt the tension in her body rise with every rough surge of his body within hers. She felt her orgasm approach like a speeding train. She couldn’t have done anything to stop it if she had tried. It smashed into her, tossing her high in the air, rolling and rolling her in a whirlpool of heady, blissful sensation that surpassed anything she had felt before in his arms.

  He came with a stabbing thrust and a shout of pleasure that made her skin shiver. She felt the pulsing of his body as he discharged his essence, anointing her, branding her as his.

  He rolled off her and lay with his chest heaving, his body totally spent and the scent of their coupling fragrant in the air.

  Gisele wasn’t sure what to say, so said nothing. She was still struggling to get her breathing under control. Her body was still tingling from the sensual assault of unrivalled ecstasy. She wanted to hate him, but how could she when he made her feel this way? He had dismantled every one of her defences with his hot, drugging kisses and his fiery possession. She squeezed her legs together and felt the stickiness of him. It was such a stomach-hollowing reminder of the passion that still flared between them. Would it ever go away? Would she be able to walk away once the month was up?

  Emilio turned back to her, propping himself on one elbow as he toyed with the wayward strands of her hair. ‘I want you to move into my room,’ he said.

  Gisele quickly hid a nervous swallow. She had wanted some space but he clearly wasn’t going to be satisfied unless she was in his arms every night. The intimacy of it terrified her, not because she didn’t want to sleep with him. She did. It was just that she knew she would fall in love with him all over again if he got too close.

  ‘What, now?’ she asked.

  ‘Not right this minute,’ he said, rolling her so she was lying on top of him. ‘I have other plans for you just now.’

  ‘Oh?’ she said with a coolness she was nowhere near feeling. Her body had already betrayed her. It had welcomed him with slick moistness, gripping him so tightly she could feel the hot, hard length of him filling her completely. She couldn’t just lie there without moving. She just had to feel the delicious sensation of being in control. She rode him all the way to heaven and back, finally collapsing over him when she had shattered into a million pieces. She felt him plunge himself deeper and deeper before he let go with a raw groan of ecstasy.

  And then, without the need for anything other than the sheltering circle of his arms, she fell soundly asleep …

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  EMILIO lay awake for long hours, watching Gisele sleep. She was purring softly like a kitten beside him. She had curled up against him, one of her arms thrown across his chest in the way she had used to do. He stroked the silky flesh of her arm, thinking how much he had missed moments like this. She was the first woman he had wanted to spend the entire night with. He had never felt comfortable doing that with any other lover. The physical closeness of sex became something deeper with her. Her natural sensuality was something that had attracted him from the first moment he had met her.

  He had loved that she had been a virgin. It was perhaps a little old-fashioned of him to have been so ridiculously pleased, but he admired her for not putting herself out there for just anyone. All the women he had slept with had been experienced. It had stopped him in his tracks to think Gisele had waited until she felt she had met the right man to give herself to.

  He had been that right man.

  She had waited until she was absolutely sure she was ready for that level of intimacy. He had enjoyed tutoring her. He had always thought there was something highly sacred about her giving herself to him. It wasn’t just her body she had given him, but her trust.

  It had been such a precious gift, one he had savoured and treasured … until the sex tape scandal had erupted and he had mistakenly believed her virginal status had all been a hoax, a deliberate ploy to gain his confidence in her—an act to put a ring on her finger and a steady income in her bank account. His extensive experience of gold-diggers and social climbers had made his judgement skewed. He had not for a moment considered Gisele had been innocent. That was the thing that still plagued him the most. He had not looked long and hard enough for another explanation. He had gone with the pack on calling her out as little more than a high-priced whore.

  It pained him to think of the way he had let her down. Would she ever forgive him? Did the fact that she had let her guard down enough to be intimate with him again mean she was softening towards him? Or had she only done it to ease her conscience about taking the money he had promised her? Was the only thing tying her to him two million dollars? It was a disquieting thought and one he couldn’t readily dismiss from his mind.

  She moved against him, stretching one leg and then the other before her eyes slowly opened. ‘Have I been sleeping?’ she asked, struggling to an upright position, her blonde hair all tousled like a bird’s nest around her shoulders.

  Emilio smiled and brushed a strand of hair out of her eyes. ‘Like a baby,’ he said.

  Something flickered in her eyes before she lowered them, her fingers plucking at the edge of the sheet covering her chest. Her face had taken on a stricken look. He even saw the colour leach out of her face.

  Emilio propped himself up on one elbow. ‘Are you OK?’ he asked.

  ‘Why wouldn’t I be OK?’ she said, affecting an indifferent tone.

  He trailed a gentle finger down the slope of her linen-creased cheek. ‘Did I hurt you?’ he asked. ‘Things got pretty intense there last night.’

  She still didn’t look at him but her cheeks filled with colour again. ‘No, of course not.’

  He tipped up her face with a finger beneath her chin. ‘Still just sex?’ he asked.

  ‘Of course,’ she said with a haughty look. ‘What else could it be?’

  His eyes continued to study her as he outlined the contours of her mouth with the tip of his index finger. ‘Liar,’ he said. ‘It’s never been just sex, has it, cara?’

  She pushed against his chest and rolled away from him, reaching for a bathrobe and tying the ends around her waist, her lips pressed tightly together as if she didn’t trust herself to answer. She gave him a final chilly look and stalked across the room.

  ‘Where are you going?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m going to take a shower,’ she said with a little flash of her gaze. ‘Is that OK or should I have asked permission first?’

  Emilio frowned at her. He was getting a little tired of her game-playing. One minute she was sobbing with pleasure in his arms and the next she acted as if she couldn’t wait for the month to be over. He wanted their relationship to settle down, not be a constant battlefield. He wanted the past put behind him. It wasn’t his way to dwell on things. He had to move forwards. There was no other choice. ‘Do what you like,’ he said, throwing off the bedcovers as he rose from the bed. ‘I’ll see you downstairs.’

  When Gisele came downstairs Marietta had set out the breakfast things and the morning papers out on the terrace. She sat down and poured herself a cup of tea, but just as she was lifting it to her mouth she saw there an English paper sticking out from beneath the Italian one. She pulled it out and looked at the headline below the main news item. The cup in her hand fell with a loud smashing clatter to the flagstones of the terrace. Her heart jerked, stopped and then started to stutter. Her breathing stalled for so long her head sw
am.

  She heard the firm tread of Emilio’s footsteps come out on the terrace. ‘Gisele?’ he said. ‘Are you all right? Have you burnt yourself?’

  She pressed the paper to her thumping chest, unable to get a single word out past the sudden constriction of her throat. Her heart was thudding sickeningly, a kick-blow beat that was as painful as it was erratic.

  There were two photos. One was of Emilio and her at lunch yesterday. The shot showed her looking crossly at him. It wasn’t very flattering to her at all, but that wasn’t the worst of it.

  The other photo … oh, dear God … How had it happened? How had the press sourced a photo of her at her baby’s grave? Had someone followed her there the last time she had placed flowers on Lily’s grave?

  She tried to think through the haze of pain inside her head. The cemetery had been a little busier than usual that day. Had someone recognised her and cashed in on the opportunity to sell the shot to the press? She knew there were websites where members of the public could sell phone pictures of celebrities: candid shots, catching people off guard with no make-up on or having an intimate argument with a partner—private moments made public for cash. Not that Gisele thought of herself as a celebrity in any shape or form, but re-establishing her connection to Emilio made her an instant target. Was this how life was going to be for the next month? Her still raw, agonising grief splashed over every paper for others to gawk at?

  To have her private pain made so public was devastating. She couldn’t bear it if her tragic loss was going to be cheap fodder for the press. Lily’s short, precious life would be wrapped around someone’s fish and chips or vegetable scraps—discounted as yesterday’s news.

  How on earth would she bear it?

  Emilio’s dark gaze went to hers. ‘What on earth’s the matter?’ he asked.

  She opened and closed her mouth, her lips too dry to make them move. She felt sick. She was sure she was going to be sick. Her insides were churning with such anguish and despair she felt as if she was going to drop in a faint. She vainly tried to keep the paper against her chest but her hands were shaking so much she could do nothing but watch in sinking heart-stopping dread as Emilio took it from her.

  Time seemed to come to a standstill as he unfolded the newspaper. Even the sound of the paper crackling as he opened it was magnified a thousand million times. And then she saw as his eyes went to what was printed there. Every word was carved on Gisele’s brain like a cruel tattoo: Andreoni Reconciliation Haunted by Tragic Death of Love Child.

  Gisele saw the flinch of Emilio’s dark gaze, the camera shutter flick of shock, surprise and disbelief. Every muscle on his face seemed to freeze for an infinitesimal moment.

  There was no movement.

  No sound.

  She couldn’t even hear him breathing.

  But then the column of his throat moved up and down, once, twice.

  ‘What?’ His one word was a rasping gasp, a choked, strangled sound that contained so much agony it resonated in her trembling body like a loud echo.

  She could feel his tension. She could feel every tight band of muscle in his body. His face was ashen. He looked as if he had aged a decade right before her eyes.

  She hadn’t wanted him to find out like this. She’d wanted to work up to it, to make sure she had a more secure footing with him before she told him what she had gone through.

  She slowly released the breath she hadn’t even realised she had been holding. ‘I was pregnant when I left you two years ago,’ she said. ‘I didn’t find out until a couple of months after I got back to Sydney.’

  His throat moved, rose and fell again as if he was trying to swallow something that didn’t quite fit inside his oesophagus. ‘Pregnant?’ he said hollowly.

  ‘Yes …’

  The silence was so intense she heard him draw in a breath. She even heard the sound of his hand against his skin as he dragged it downwards over his face, catching on his stubbly regrowth.

  His eyes took on a haunted look. ‘You had a baby?’

  Her throat tightened over the word. ‘Yes …’

  He swallowed again. ‘My baby?’

  For a moment all she could do was just stare at him as the hurt of his question smashed against her heart like a knockout punch. Then she took a breath and sent him a look that would have stripped wallpaper off a wall. ‘How can you ask that?’ she said. ‘How can you?’

  His expression contorted with remorse as his hand came back up to rub over his face. ‘Sorry, I wasn’t thinking,’ he said. ‘Of course it was mine. Forgive me.’ He dropped his hand back by his side. He looked completely floored, dumbstruck, shattered. ‘Was it a girl or a boy?’

  ‘A girl,’ Gisele said, squeezing back tears.

  ‘What happened to her?’ he asked in that same raspy croak.

  She let out another painful breath. ‘I found out at sixteen weeks there was a problem,’ she said. ‘I was offered a termination. But I wanted to give her a chance. There was a slim chance she might’ve made it. I wanted her to make it. I wanted it more than anything but she didn’t live past a few hours. Six hours, twenty-five minutes and forty-three seconds, to be precise. Not much of a lifespan, is it?’

  Emilio felt as if he had been hit with an anvil that had come out of nowhere. He had not seen it coming. Nothing could have prepared him. He stood there in a shell-shocked silence as his thoughts ran riot, each one pointing a finger of blame at him.

  Gisele had been pregnant when he had cast her from his life. He had thrown her out on the streets while she had been carrying his child.

  A child he would never meet.

  A child he would never touch or hold in his arms.

  A child he would never know.

  What had stolen his child’s life from him? What had gone so terribly wrong that she had been advised to terminate the pregnancy?

  He thought of his tiny daughter suffering. Had she felt pain? Distress? His gut twisted with anguish. Why hadn’t he been told?

  ‘What was the problem?’ he asked. ‘What happened to her?’

  ‘She had a genetic abnormality,’ she said. ‘Some of her organs hadn’t developed properly. There was nothing they could do to fix it.’

  His little daughter had never stood a chance. Would it have been different if he had been there? Could he have saved her? He would have shifted heaven and earth to do so.

  Frustration and grief besieged him. He felt the weight of it like a straitjacket made of lead. His emotions—emotions he had never allowed space enough to breathe—were now gasping for air until his throat felt as if it had been scraped raw with rusty razor blades.

  ‘What caused it?’ he asked hoarsely.

  She looked down at her hands. ‘Who knows? The doctors said it was just one of those things but I’ve always wondered if it was something I did or didn’t do …’

  Emilio felt another smashing blow of guilt assail him. If it was anyone’s fault, wasn’t it his? The stress she had been under would have been enough to jeopardise the baby’s development.

  His baby.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me you were pregnant?’ he asked. ‘I could have helped you. It might have made all the difference. Did you ever consider that? Why did you keep my own child’s existence a secret from me? Surely I had the right to know?’

  She gave him a hardened look. ‘Have you forgotten your parting words to me?’ she asked. ‘You said you never wanted to see or hear from me again. I had no reason to suspect you didn’t mean it.’

  ‘Did you even try and contact me?’ he asked. ‘Did you even give me a chance to do the right thing by you and the baby?’

  She glared at him, her grey-blue eyes flashing with accusation. ‘And have you pressure me to get rid of her because there was something wrong with her?’ she said.

  Emilio opened and closed his mouth, trying to locate his voice. His chest felt as if someone had landed a heavy blow to it, knocking the air right out of his lungs. How could she think so lowly of him? Didn�
�t she know anything about him? ‘Did you really think I would’ve asked you to do that?’ he finally said.

  ‘I wasn’t prepared to risk it,’ she said. ‘You strive for perfection in everything you do. I wasn’t sure how you would handle the news of a baby that wasn’t perfect in every way, especially since our relationship had ended so bitterly. I thought you’d be better off not knowing. I thought you wouldn’t want to know.’

  Emilio kept looking at her in bewildered dismay. Did she know him so little that she thought he would not want to give his child every possible chance at life? He would have done anything—anything and everything within his power. ‘What sort of man do you think I am?’ he asked. ‘Do you really think I would’ve rejected my own flesh and blood?’ Like my mother did to me. The words were like a flashback of horror. He blinked to make it go away. ‘I would never have done that, Gisele. Never in a million years.’

  She bit down on her lip and swung away, her arms going around her body protectively. ‘I had enough trouble dealing with everyone else’s opinions on what I should do,’ she said. ‘I didn’t think I could cope with your input as well.’

  Emilio swallowed against a king tide of regret. ‘You should have told me,’ he said. ‘Damn it, Gisele, do you realise what this is like for me, finding out like this now, and via the press, for God’s sake?’

  She swung back to face him, her expression full of bitterness. ‘So this is all about you, is it, Emilio? What about me? What about what I suffered? You have no right to tell me how you feel. As far as I’m concerned, you brought it on yourself.’

  Emilio felt his spine tighten with anger. He had never felt so blindingly angry. He was angrier than when he had thought she had betrayed him two years ago. How could she be so cold and callous to deny him the knowledge of his own daughter? ‘You did it deliberately, didn’t you?’ he said. ‘You could have told me but you chose not to because you knew that would hurt me far more than anything else. It was your chance to punish me for not believing you. It was a perfect payback. And it worked, goddamn you. You couldn’t have thought of a better revenge.’