The Venetian One-Night Baby Read online

  ‘I knew that. Your mother told me.’

  She turned over so she was facing his bed. There was enough soft light coming in through the gap in the curtains for her to see him. He was lying on his back with his eyes closed, the sheets pulled to the level of his waist, the gloriously naked musculature of his chest making her mouth water. He looked like a sexy advertisement for luxury bed linen. His tanned skin a stark contrast to the white sheets. ‘When did she tell you?’

  ‘Years ago.’

  Sabrina propped herself up on one elbow. ‘How many years ago?’

  He turned his head in her direction and opened one eye. ‘I don’t remember. What does it matter?’

  She plucked at the sheet covering her breasts. What else had her mother told him about her? ‘I don’t like the thought of her discussing my private details with you.’

  He closed his eye and turned his head back to lie flat on the pillow. ‘Bit late for that, sweetheart.’ His tone was so dry it could have soaked up an oil spill. ‘Your parents have been citing your considerable assets to me ever since you hit puberty.’

  Sabrina could feel her cheeks heating. She knew exactly how pushy her parents had been. But so too had his parents. Both families had engineered situations where she and Max would be forced together, especially since his fiancée Lydia had broken up with him just before their wedding six years ago. She even wondered if the family pressure had actually scared poor Lydia off. What woman wanted to marry a man whose parents staunchly believed she wasn’t the right one for him? His parents had hardly been subtle about their hopes. It had been mildly embarrassing at first, but over the years it had become annoying. So annoying that Sabrina had stubbornly refused to acknowledge any of Max’s good qualities.

  And he had many now that she thought about it. He was steady in a crisis. He thought before he spoke. He was hard working and responsible and organised. He was a supremely talented architect and had won numerous awards for his designs. But she had never heard him boast about his achievements. She had only heard about them via his parents.

  Sabrina lay back down with a sigh. ‘Yeah, well, hate to tell you but your parents have been doing the same about you.’ She kicked out the rumples in her bed linen with her feet and added, ‘Anyone would think you were a saint.’

  ‘I’m hardly that.’

  There was another silence.

  ‘Thanks for letting me share your room,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t offered. I heard from other people at the cocktail party that just about everywhere else is full.’

  ‘It’s fine. Glad to help.’

  She propped herself back on her elbow to look at him. ‘Max?’

  He made a sound that sounded like a God, give me strength groan. ‘Mmm?’

  ‘Why did you and Lydia break up?’ Sabrina wasn’t sure why she’d asked the question other than she had always wondered what had caused his fiancée to cancel their wedding at short notice. She’d heard the gossip over the children issue but she wanted to hear the truth from him.

  The movement of his body against the bed linen sounded angry. And the air seemed to tighten in the room as if the walls and ceiling and the furniture had collectively taken a breath.

  ‘Go to sleep, Sabrina.’ His tone had an intractable don’t push it edge.

  Sabrina wanted to push it. She wanted to push him into revealing more about himself. There was so much she didn’t know about him. There were things he never spoke about—like the death of his baby brother. But then neither did his parents speak about Daniel. The tragic loss of an infant was always devastating and even though Max had been only seven years old at the time, he too would have felt the loss, especially with his parents so distraught with grief. Sometimes she saw glimpses of his parents’ grief even now. A certain look would be exchanged between Gillian and Bryce Firbank and their gazes would shadow as if they were remembering their baby boy. ‘Someone told me it was because she wanted kids and you didn’t. Is that true?’

  He didn’t answer for such a long moment she thought he must have fallen asleep. But then she heard the sound of the sheets rustling and his voice broke through the silence. ‘That and other reasons.’

  ‘Such as?’

  He released a frustrated-sounding sigh. ‘She fell in love with someone else.’

  ‘Did you love her?’

  ‘I was going to marry her, wasn’t I?’ His tone had an edge of impatience that made her wonder if he had been truly in love with his ex-fiancée. He had never seemed to her to be the falling-in-love type. He was too self-contained. Too private with his emotions. Sabrina remembered meeting Lydia a couple of times and feeling a little surprised she and Max were a couple about to be married. The chemistry between them had been on the mild instead of the wild side.

  ‘Lydia’s divorced now, isn’t she?’ Sabrina continued after a long moment. ‘I wonder if she ever thinks she made the wrong decision.’

  He didn’t answer but she could tell from his breathing he wasn’t asleep.

  Sabrina closed her eyes, willing herself to relax, but sleep was frustratingly elusive. Her body was too strung out, too aware of Max lying so close by. She listened to the sound of him breathing and the slight rustle of the sheets when he changed position. After a while his breathing slowed and the rustling stopped and she realised he was finally asleep.

  She settled back down against the pillows with a sigh...

  * * *

  Max could hear a baby crying...the sound making his skin prickle with cold dread. Where was the baby? What was wrong with it? Why was it crying? Why wasn’t anyone going to it? Should he try and settle it? Then he saw the cot, his baby brother’s cot...it was empty... Then he saw the tiny white coffin with the teddy bear perched on top. No. No. No.

  ‘Max. Max.’ Sabrina’s voice broke through the nightmare. ‘You’re having a bad dream. Wake up, Max. Wake up.’

  Max opened his eyes and realised with a shock he was holding her upper arms in a deathly grip. She was practically straddling him, her hair tousled from being in bed or from him manhandling her. He released her and let out a juddering breath, shame and guilt coursing through him like a rush of ice water. ‘I’m sorry. Did I hurt you?’ He winced when he saw the full set of his fingerprints on her arms.

  She rubbed her hands up and down her arms, her cheeks flushed. ‘I’m okay. But you scared the hell out of me.’

  Max pushed back the sheets and swung his legs over the edge of the bed, his back facing her. He rested his hands on his thighs, trying to get his heart rate back to normal. Trying not to look at those marks on her arms. Trying not to reach for her.

  Desperately trying not to reach for her.

  ‘Max?’ Her voice was as soft as the hand she laid on his shoulder.

  ‘Go back to sleep.’

  She was so close to him he could feel her breath on the back of his neck. He could feel her hair tickling his shoulder and he knew if he so much as turned his head to look at her he would be lost. It had been years since he’d had a nightmare. They weren’t as frequent as in the early days but they still occasionally occurred. Catching him off guard, reminding him he would never be free from the pain of knowing he had failed his baby brother.

  ‘Do you want to talk about your nightmare?’ Sabrina said. ‘It might help you to—’

  ‘No.’

  Sabrina’s soft hand was moving up and down between his shoulder blades in soothing strokes. His skin lifted in a shiver, his blood surging to his groin. Her hand came up and began to massage the tight muscles of his neck and he suppressed a groan of pleasure. Why couldn’t he be immune to her touch? Why couldn’t he ignore the way she was leaning against him, one of her satin-covered breasts brushing against his left shoulder blade? He could smell her flowery fragrance; it teased and tantalised his senses. He felt drugged. Stoned by her closeness.

  H
e drew in a breath and placed his hands on either side of his thighs, his fingers digging into the mattress. He would not touch her.

  He. Would. Not.

  * * *

  Sabrina could feel the tension in his body. The muscles in his back and shoulders were set like concrete, even the muscles in his arms were bunched and the tendons of his hands white and prominent where he was gripping the mattress. His thrashing about his bed had woken her from a fitful sleep. She had been shocked at the sound of his anguish, his cries hadn’t been all that loud but they had been raw and desperate and somehow that made them seem all the more tragic. What had he been dreaming about? And why wouldn’t he talk about it? Or it had it just been one of those horrible dreams everyone had from time to time?

  Sabrina moved her hand from massaging his neck to trail it through the thickness of his hair. ‘You should try and get some sleep.’

  ‘You’re not helping.’ His voice was hard bitten like he was spitting out each word.

  She kept playing with his hair, somehow realising he was like a wounded dog, snipping and snarling at anyone who got too close. She was close. So close one of her breasts was pressing against the rock-hard plane of his shoulder blade. The contact, even through the satin of her nightie, made her breast tingle and her nipple tighten. ‘Do you have nightmares often?’

  ‘Sabrina, please...’ He turned and looked at her, his eyes haunted.

  She touched his jaw with the palm of her hand, gliding it down the rough stubble until she got to the cleft in his chin. She traced it with her finger and then did the same to the tight line of his mouth, exploring it in intimate detail, recalling how it felt clamped to hers. ‘Do you ever think about that night? The night we kissed?’ Her voice was barely more than a whisper.

  He opened and closed his mouth, the lips pressing together as if he didn’t trust himself to use them against hers. ‘Kissing you was a mistake. I won’t be repeating it.’

  Sabrina frowned. ‘It didn’t feel like a mistake to me... It felt...amazing. The best kiss I’ve ever had, in fact.’

  Something passed through his gaze—a flicker of heat, of longing, of self-control wavering. Then he raised a hand and gently cupped her cheek, his eyes dipping to her mouth, a shudder going through him like an aftershock. ‘We shouldn’t be doing this.’ His voice was so gruff it sounded like he’d been gargling gravel.

  ‘Why shouldn’t we?’ Sabrina leaned closer, drawn to him as if pulled by an invisible force.

  He swallowed and slid his hand to the sensitive skin of her nape, his fingers tangling into her hair, sending her scalp into a tingling torrent of pleasure. ‘Because it can’t go anywhere.’

  ‘Who said I wanted it to go anywhere?’ Sabrina asked. ‘I’m just asking you to kiss me, not marry me. You kiss other women, don’t you?’

  His breath came out and sent a tickling waft of air across the surface of her lips. ‘The thing is... I’m not sure I can just kiss you.’

  She stared at him in pleasant surprise. So pleasant her ego got out of the foetal position and did a victory dance. ‘What are you saying?’ She couldn’t seem to speak louder than a whispery husk.

  His eyes had a dark pulsing intensity that made her inner core contract. ‘I want you. But I—’

  ‘Can we skip the but?’ Sabrina said. ‘Let’s go back to the I want you bit. Thing is, I want you too. So, what are we going to do about it?’

  His gaze drifted to her mouth and then back to her eyes, his eyes hardening as if he had called on some inner strength to keep his self-control in check. ‘We’re going to ignore it, that’s what.’ His tone had the same determined edge as his gaze.

  Sabrina moistened her lips, watching as his gaze followed the movement of her tongue. ‘What if I don’t want to ignore it? What if I want you to kiss me? What if I want you to make love to me just this once? No one needs to know about it. It’s just between us. It will get it out of our system once and for all and then we can go back to normal.’

  She could hardly believe she had been so upfront. She had never been so brazen, so bold about her needs. But she could no longer ignore the pulsing ache of her body. The need that clawed and clenched. The need that only he triggered. Was that why she hadn’t made love with anyone for all these years? No one made her feel this level of desire. No one even came close to stirring her flesh into a heated rush of longing.

  ‘Sabrina...please...’ His voice had a scraped-raw quality as if his throat had been scoured with a bristled brush.

  ‘Please what? Don’t tell it like it is?’ Sabrina placed her hand on his chest where his heart was thud, thud, thudding so similar to her own. ‘You want me. You said so. I felt it when you kissed me three weeks ago. And I know you want me now.’

  Max took her by the hands, his fingers almost overlapping around her wrists. At first, she thought he was going to put her from him, but then his fingers tightened and he drew her closer. ‘This is madness...’ His smoky grey-blue gaze became hooded as it focussed on her mouth as if drawn to it by a magnetic force too powerful for his willpower.

  ‘What is mad about two consenting adults having a one-night stand?’ There she went again—such brazen words spilling out of her mouth, as if she’d swallowed the bad girl’s guide to hook-up sex. Who was this person she had suddenly become since entering his hotel room? It wasn’t anyone Sabrina recognised. But she wasn’t going to stop now. She couldn’t. If she didn’t have sex with Max, someone she knew and trusted to take care of her, who else would she get to do the deed? No one, that’s who.

  Ten years had already passed and her confidence around men had gone backwards, not forwards. It was do or die—of sexual frustration. She wanted Max to cure her of her of her hang-ups...not that she was going to tell him about her lack of a love life. No flipping way. He’d get all knight-in-shining-armour about it and refuse to make love to her.

  Max brushed the pad of his thumb over her bottom lip, pressing and then releasing until her senses were singing like the Philharmonic choir. ‘A one-night stand? Is that really what you want?’

  Sabrina fisted her hands into the thickness of his dark brown hair, the colour so similar to her own. She fixed her gaze on his troubled one. ‘Make love to me, Max. Please?’ Gah. Was she begging now? Was that how desperate she had become?

  Yep. That desperate.

  Max tipped up her chin, his eyes locking on hers. ‘One night? No repeats? No happy ever after, right?’

  Sabrina licked her lips—a mixture of nerves and feverish excitement. ‘I want no one and I mean no one to find out about this. It will be our little secret. Agreed?’

  One of his dark brows lifted above his sceptical gaze. But then his gaze flicked back to her mouth and he gave a shuddery sigh, as if the final restraint on his self-control had popped its bolts. ‘Madness,’ he said, so low she almost couldn’t hear it. ‘This is madness.’ And then his mouth came down and set fire to hers.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Six weeks later...

  ‘SO, ARE YOU still keeping mum about what happened between you and Max in Venice?’ Holly asked when she came into Sabrina’s studio for a wedding-dress fitting.

  Sabrina made a zipping-the-lips motion. ‘Yep. I promised.’

  Holly’s eyes were twinkling so much they rivalled the sparkly bridal tiaras in the display cabinet. ‘You can’t fool me. I know you slept with him. What I don’t understand is why you haven’t continued sleeping with him. Was he that bad a lover?’

  Sabrina pressed her lips together to stop herself from spilling all. So many times over the last six weeks she’d longed to tell Holly about that amazing night. About Max’s amazing lovemaking. How he had made her feel. Her body hadn’t felt the same since. She couldn’t even think of him without having a fluttery sensation in her stomach. She had relived every touch of his hands and lips and tongue. She had repeatedly, obsessively dreamed about his possession, th
e way his body had moved within hers with such intense passion and purpose.

  She picked up the bolt of French lace her friend had chosen and unrolled it over the cutting table. ‘I’m not going to kiss and tell. It’s...demeaning.’

  ‘You kiss and told when he kissed you after he drove you home that night a few weeks back. Why not now?’

  ‘Because I made a promise.’

  ‘What?’ Holly’s smiling expression was exchanged for a frown. ‘You don’t trust me to keep it a secret? I’m your best friend. I wouldn’t tell a soul.’

  Sabrina glanced across the table at her friend. ‘What about Zack? You guys share everything, right?’

  Holly gnawed at her lip. ‘Yeah, well, that’s what people in love do.’

  She tried to ignore the little dart of jealousy she felt at Holly’s happiness. Her friend was preparing for her wedding to Zack Knight in a matter of weeks and what did Sabrina have on her love radar? Nothing. Nada. Zilch.

  A mild wave of nausea assailed her. Was it possible to be lovesick without actually being in love? Okay. She was in love. In love with Max’s lovemaking. Deeply in love. She couldn’t stop thinking about him and the things he had done to her. The things they had done together. The things she had done to him. She placed a hand on her squeamish tummy and swallowed. She had to get a grip. She couldn’t be bitter and sick to her stomach about her best friend’s joy at marrying the man she loved. So what if Holly was having the most amazing sex with Zack while all Sabrina had was memories of one night with Max?

  Holly leaned across the worktable. ‘Hey, are you okay? You’ve gone as white as that French lace.’

  Sabrina grimaced as her stomach contents swished and swirled and soured. ‘I’m just feeling a little...off.’

  Holly did a double blink. ‘Off? As in nauseous?’

  She opened her mouth to answer but had to clamp her hand over it because a surge of sickness rose up from her stomach. ‘Excuse me...’ Her hand muffled her choked apology and she bolted to the bathroom, not even stopping to close the door.