The Unclaimed Baby Read online

  ‘I have dreamed of doing this,’ Luca said throatily. ‘Touching you, feeling you respond to me. No one else has ever turned me on quite like you do.’

  It was just the reminder Bronte needed that she was not the only one he had been with and she was certainly not going to be the last. He had worked his way through a glamorous array of women since he was a teenager. She had known of his playboy reputation when she first met him but somehow hadn’t been able to resist his seductive charm. She was older and wiser now. And she had responsibilities. Ella was her most important one. There was nothing she would not do to protect her baby girl. Denying herself this was a sacrifice she had to make. For now, at least, until she could find a way out of the honey trap Luca had lured her into.

  She let her hands drop from around his neck, her eyes meeting his. ‘I can’t do this, Luca,’ she said. ‘Not here. Not like this. It’s…it’s too soon.’

  His eyes seared hers for an endless moment, a muscle working in his jaw as he fought to control his rampant desire. ‘Remember our deal,’ he said.

  Bronte slipped out from his arms where they were propped against the wall either side of her head and put a little distance between their bodies. She struggled to get her breathing to steady, difficult when her pulse was fluttering like a hummingbird inside her veins.

  ‘Deal?’ she asked with a scornful look. ‘Don’t you mean the bribe you put on the table, Luca? Money for sex.’

  ‘That is rather a crude way of putting it,’ he said.

  ‘It’s the truth, though, isn’t it?’ she asked. ‘You want to turn me into a whore. You open your wallet; I open my legs. That’s the so-called deal, isn’t it?’

  A nerve ticked like a pulse at the side of his mouth. ‘Don’t cheapen yourself like that, Bronte.’

  Bronte gave a choked laugh that was just shy of hysteria. ‘You tell me not to cheapen myself when you have insulted me more than any other person I know.’

  He drew in a breath and moved across the room, standing at the windows that overlooked the shimmering lights of the city below. Bronte saw the stiff set to his broad shoulders, the straight spine and the long legs standing slightly apart.

  She longed to go to him and wrap her arms around him, to take whatever he was offering, but she knew in the end it would only lead to further heartbreak. How could she ever trust he wouldn’t walk out on her again? She would not survive it a second time. It had nearly done her in the first time. It had only been the responsibility of Ella that had made her come to her senses and grow up—and grow up fast. But, even so, it was tempting. Oh, dear God, it was tempting. To feel his arms around her one more time, to have him hold her as if she was the most precious thing in the entire world. How she had dreamed and longed for one more time with him over the last two years.

  ‘Fine,’ he said after a long moment, his voice sounding hollow and empty. ‘You are free to go.’

  Bronte felt her heart give a little start. ‘But I thought—’

  He turned, his dark eyes hitting hers. ‘Go, Bronte. Before I change my mind.’

  She swallowed and took a hesitant step towards the door, but then she remembered her clutch purse was sitting on the sofa. She glanced at it but, before she could move, he stepped forward and picked it up.

  He came over to where she was standing and handed it to her. ‘This is all wrong, isn’t it?’ he said.

  She rolled her lips against each other, not sure if he wanted an answer or not. Of course it was wrong. It was wrong for her to still want him, no matter what terms he laid down. It was shameless of her, needy and pathetic and desperate, but that was what he reduced her to. No man had ever made her feel so desperately in need. No man had made her heart ache with an indescribable longing. No man had made her want to throw herself at him in spite of everything.

  She had to leave.

  She had to leave now, before he saw how close she was to offering herself for further hurt. She had to leave before these minutes alone turned into an hour or two of stolen pleasure that, just like in the past, would trick her too-trusting, too-romantic mind into thinking they had any sort of future.

  ‘I have handled this all wrong,’ he said again with a rueful tilt to his mouth. ‘I should have called you first, given you some warning, perhaps. Maybe then you would not be so wary of me. You would have been better prepared, sì?’

  ‘Why didn’t you?’ she asked in a scratchy voice.

  One of his broad shoulders rose and fell. ‘I wanted to see your instinctive response to me, not a rehearsed one.’

  Bronte gave him a disdainful look. ‘You make it sound like some sort of social experiment.’

  His eyes stayed on hers: dark, tempting, fathomless. ‘I would like to see you again, cara,’ he said. ‘Tomorrow night. No strings this time. No threats or bribes or blackmail, just two people having dinner together. If you like, we can pretend we have met for the first time.’

  Bronte chewed at her lip, torn between temptation and uncertainty. Was this some sort of set-up? What if he still wanted to pull the financial rug from under her feet? ‘The rent thing…’ she said. ‘I don’t have that sort of money. I think you know that.’

  ‘Forget about the rent,’ he said. ‘I don’t want you in my bed because you have no choice in the matter. I know you will come to me, Bronte. It is inevitable. I knew that as soon as I walked into the studio.’

  Had she been that transparent? Bronte wondered. ‘You are deluding yourself, Luca,’ she said with a proud hitch of her chin. ‘You mistook surprise for something else.’

  His knowing half-smile travelled all the way to his eyes. ‘So beautiful,’ he said, trailing a slow-moving finger down the curve of her cheek. ‘So very beautiful.’

  Bronte flinched in case she betrayed herself completely. His touch was like a feather and yet it set every nerve screaming for more. ‘What’s going on, Luca?’ she asked, rubbing at her cheek as if he had tainted her.

  His expression was like a blank stone wall. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘This…’ She waved her arm to encompass the suite. ‘You. Me. Us. I’m not sure what’s really going on. I get the feeling there is far more to this than you’re telling me.’

  He gave her a small twisted smile. ‘Is it so hard for you to understand I wanted to see you again? Would it not have seemed strange for me to travel all this way, knowing you lived in the same city where I would be based and not at least try and make contact with you?’

  Bronte’s mouth tightened with cynicism. ‘Do you make contact with all your ex-lovers wherever you travel in the world? If so, I am sure by now your little black book would be classified as overweight luggage.’

  His smile lingered for a moment as if he found the thought amusing. ‘There have not been as many lovers as you might think,’ he said. ‘I have been busy with…other things.’

  Bronte wondered what other things had taken up his time. She knew he worked hard in the family business but he had found plenty of time in the past to play hard too. If he wasn’t squiring yet another wannabe model or Hollywood starlet like his equally single younger brother Nicoló, what had he been doing?

  ‘Did you drive here or catch a cab?’ Luca asked.

  ‘I caught a cab,’ she said. ‘I didn’t want to have to worry about parking.’

  He reached for a set of car keys on a nearby sideboard. ‘I’ll drive you home.’

  Bronte felt a frisson of fear run through her like a trickle of ice-cold water. ‘You don’t have to do that,’ she said quickly. ‘I mean…it’s no trouble getting a cab. I would prefer it, actually…’

  His eyes narrowed just a fraction. ‘What is the problem, Bronte? You surely trust me to get you home safely? I do know which side of the road to drive on here.’

  ‘It’s not that,’ she said. ‘I would prefer to make my own arrangements.’

  ‘Is there someone waiting for you at home?’ he asked.

  ‘My private life has nothing to do with you, Luca,’ she said. ‘Not any
more.’

  He continued to watch her, his eyes dark and inscrutable. He didn’t speak, which made the silence open up like a chasm between them.

  ‘Look,’ Bronte finally said, moving from foot to foot with impatience, ‘I have to work tomorrow. And I don’t want my mother to worry.’

  ‘Your mother?’ A deep frown appeared between his brows. ‘You live with your mother?’

  She straightened her spine. ‘What’s wrong with that?’ she asked. ‘Property is horrendously expensive in Melbourne. I can’t afford the studio rent and a mortgage. I’m just starting out.’

  ‘How long have you been teaching at the studio?’ he asked, still frowning.

  ‘About a year,’ Bronte said. ‘Rachel and I trained at the same academy together. She broke her ankle in a car accident a couple of years ago and had to give up dancing. We decided to set up our own ballet school.’

  Another silence passed but to Bronte it felt like hours. Each second seemed weighted; even the air seemed heavy and too thick for her to breathe.

  ‘The audition you said you missed,’ he said, watching her steadily. ‘Did that by any chance have anything to do with me?’

  Bronte felt her heart trip and carefully avoided his gaze. ‘W…why do you ask that?’

  ‘We broke up, what, about four weeks before you were due to audition, right?’

  She gave a could-mean-anything shrug and fiddled with the catch on her clutch purse. ‘I didn’t see the point in trying for the company when my heart wasn’t in staying in London,’ she said. She brought her gaze back up to his. ‘It was time for me to go home, Luca. There was nothing in London for me. The competition was tough, in any case. I didn’t have a hope of making the shortlist. The audition would have been yet another rejection I just wasn’t up to facing.’

  ‘So you preferred to not show up at all rather than to fail.’ It was not a question but a rather good summation of what she had been feeling at the time.

  Bronte hadn’t realised he had known her quite so well. She hadn’t spoken to him of her doubts about making the grade. Their relationship hadn’t been the sort for heart-to-heart confessions. She had always felt as if he was holding himself at a distance, not just physically but emotionally, so she had done the same. ‘Yes,’ she said, deliberately holding his gaze. ‘I did, however, speak to the head of auditions in person and explain I was withdrawing my application. I had at least the common decency to do that.’

  There was another long drawn-out silence.

  ‘I know you took it hard, Bronte,’ he said in a husky tone. ‘I didn’t want to hurt you but I am afraid it was unavoidable. I had to end it. I had no other choice.’

  Bronte blinked back the smarting of tears. She was not going to cry in front of him. She had cried all the tears she was ever going to cry over him two years ago. ‘Was there someone else the whole time?’ she asked in a cool crisp tone. ‘You can be honest with me, Luca. I am a big girl now. I can take it. I wasn’t enough to satisfy you, was I? I wasn’t worldly enough for your sophisticated tastes.’

  He gave her a brooding frown. ‘Is that what you thought?’

  She flattened her mouth. ‘It’s what I know,’ she said. ‘I was a novelty for you at first but it must have become annoying after a while. I was good enough to have sex with but not good enough for you to take on any of your trips abroad. But no doubt you had plenty of women to step into my place.’

  He continued to frown at her. ‘That is not the way it was, Bronte.’ He raked one of his hands through his hair, making it look as if he had just tumbled out of bed. ‘I’ve always preferred to travel alone. It’s less complicated.’

  Bronte bit the inside of her mouth to control her spiralling emotions. Why hadn’t she left five minutes ago before it had got to this? ‘We went out for close to six months,’ she said. ‘Not once did you spend a whole night with me. Not once, Luca. You never even took me for a weekend away. Not even into the country. I was your city mistress. The easy girl you could bed any time you liked. You only had to pick up the phone and I was available.’

  Luca came over and captured Bronte’s flailing hands, holding them firmly in his grasp. ‘Stop it, Bronte,’ he said. ‘You were no such thing. Not to me.’

  She looked at him with tears shining in her eyes. ‘You used me, Luca. You can’t deny it. You used me and when you got tired of me you let me go.’

  Luca looked down at her hands, struggling to get away from his. His hands were so olive-skinned and dark and big compared to her slim, small creamy ones. Her hands reminded him of small doves fluttering to get away. Her body was so slight. Everything about her was so dainty and elegant. Her dancer’s body, the way she carried herself, the way her eyes looked so big and dark in the perfect oval of her face.

  He looked into those big dark eyes and wondered how he could repair the damage he had done. He could see the pain his rejection had caused. It glimmered there amongst the sheen of tears she was so determined not to shed in front of him.

  She was so unlike any other woman he had been with in the past. He had loved the fact he was her first lover. She had seemed embarrassed about it but he had secretly delighted in it. He wondered if that was why he could not forget her. She had touched him in a way no one else had ever done. There was a place deep inside of him no one had ever been able to reach and yet he had felt as if she had come so very close. He had not wanted to fall in love with anyone, not with his health the way it had been back then. But with Bronte he had come close. Too close. That was why he’d had to back off before he was in so deep he wouldn’t be able to think rationally. The more time he’d spent with her, the more he’d realised how unfair it would be on her to tie her to him when there was no guarantee he could give her anything in return.

  Luca released one of her hands so he could put his other hand in the small of her back, bringing her up against him again. He loved the feel of her body flush against his. She fitted against him as if she had been made for him. He felt his body stirring and wished he could show her what he found so hard to say out loud. But it would only scare her away. It was too soon. He had to take things slowly and carefully this time. She was like a shy fawn with an innate sense of danger. She needed time and careful handling. He had the patience for the careful handling, but time was something he didn’t have at his disposal. A month was all he had to get her to come back to him, to see if the magic was still there so they could build some sort of future together. Would it be enough?

  ‘Don’t fight me, Bronte,’ he said softly. ‘You are angry at me and I know I deserve it, but we still have something between us. You know we do.’

  Her eyes flared like a cornered animal facing a dangerous predator. ‘W…we share nothing,’ she stammered. ‘I don’t want to see you. I don’t want to be your sex slave. I don’t want to be your…your anything.’

  He brought her other hand to his mouth, kissing each of her stiff fingertips until he felt them tremble against his lips. He kept his eyes trained on hers, watching as the point of her tongue darted out nervously to anoint her lips. ‘I am not asking you to be anything but my partner for dinner tomorrow evening,’ he said.

  She swallowed tightly. ‘And…and after that?’

  He kissed the backs of her bent knuckles, still holding her gaze. ‘If you don’t want to see me again I will have to accept it,’ he said.

  Her eyes narrowed in suspicion. ‘You’ll let me go? Just like that?’

  Luca stroked away the frown that had appeared between her brows. ‘If you frown all the time you will get wrinkles.’

  She arched her head away from his touch. ‘You didn’t answer my question, Luca.’

  Luca let out a sigh as he dropped his hand back by his side. ‘I didn’t have to blackmail you into my bed in the past,’ he said. ‘I don’t see why I should need to do so now.’

  Her chin came up and her eyes flashed blue fire at him. ‘So you think I’ll just dive in head first then, do you?’

  He examined her taut exp
ression for a moment or two. ‘I think what will happen will happen, cara,’ he said. ‘We should leave things to fate, sì?’

  She continued to regard him warily. ‘Fate, huh? Like it’s fate that you’re suddenly my landlord.’

  ‘You’re not in any danger of being kicked out on the street,’ Luca said.

  ‘Can I have that in writing?’ she asked.

  He stood looking down at her for a long moment, breathing in her scent, that hint of honeysuckle and sunwarmed sweet peas that unfurled inside his nostrils, making them flare to take more of her in. ‘You really don’t trust me, do you?’

  She folded her arms across her chest. ‘No, strange as it may seem, I don’t trust you. I don’t like you and I can’t wait to see the last of you.’

  Luca felt his spine tighten with irritation. Did she have to keep reminding him of how much she hated him? Did she think it would make him want her less? If anything, it made him want her more. Or was that her intention? Was she playing hard to get to teach him a lesson, or to get more out of the relationship this time around? Maybe the last couple of years had toughened her up. Maybe she had enrolled in the academy of gold-diggers and now knew how to use men to serve her own ends. Either way, it didn’t matter. He wanted her any way he could get her. If she had changed, well, so had he. He was not the same person he had been two years ago. How could he be? Too much had happened.

  He went over to where he had put their champagne glasses down before. He picked up her glass and brought it back to where she was standing. ‘It would be a shame to let such good champagne go to waste,’ he said, offering it to her. ‘Why not stay a few minutes more and help me finish it?’

  She looked at the glass as if he was handing her a poisoned chalice.

  ‘It’s just champagne, Bronte,’ he said. ‘Let’s finish our drink and catch up on the last two years.’ He took a sip from his glass, hoping she would follow suit. Anything to prolong the time he had with her in case she didn’t show up tomorrow. ‘Tell me about your teaching. Do you enjoy it?’

  She took a tiny sip of her champagne and then held the glass with both of her hands around the stem. ‘I do, yes,’ she said. ‘The children are lovely.’