The Italian's Doorstep Surprise
Guilt flashed through her. As if she needed to be reminded that she already felt like a burden to him. “So?”
“You deserve more.” He lifted an arrogant dark eyebrow. “I will take care of you and the baby.”
His tone got her hackles up. “No, thanks.”
“Why? Are you in love with someone else? Rossini?”
“Benny?” Frowning, she shook her head. “We’re friends.”
He relaxed. “Well, then. Shall we say next week for the ceremony?”
Ceremony? “But I don’t love you!”
He shrugged. “Love. A momentary feeling that makes people do things they regret once the madness passes. A make-believe notion. An illusion. I’m grateful that I’m immune.”
Honora stared at him. Was there no getting through?
“I’m not going to marry you.” She enunciated the words, trying to drive them into his arrogant brain. “I’d be a horrible wife for you. And you...you would be a disaster.”
Nico looked at her, his handsome face impassive.
“Why did you sleep with me, then?” he asked quietly. “Was it so horrible? Was it such a disaster?”
Everything she’d been about to say got caught in her throat. Yes, she wanted to tell him, it was a mistake. But then that would mean her baby was a mistake, and she wasn’t. She was precious.
As for that night... Honora remembered the sparkling Christmas lights glowing every color in the frosty night. The scent of pine from the enormous, decorated tree in the penthouse with two-story windows overlooking all of glittering Manhattan.
And Nico, taking her in his powerful arms. The taste of his kiss, sweetness and Scotch, savage and tender all at once. The feel of his body against hers as he’d made her feel pleasure she’d never imagined.
Honora couldn’t lie. She took a deep breath. Looking up at him with tears in her eyes, she whispered, “It was the most beautiful night of my life.”
CHAPTER THREE
NICO STARED AT HER in the enormous living room, as the warm fire flickered over her lovely face. Outside, he could still dimly hear the wind and rain and the crashing surf. But in his heart, something tight...loosened, and he could breathe again.
“I wish I could remember.” His voice was quiet. “As you can.”
Honora gave a smile that seemed sad. “And I wish I could forget. Like you.”
He looked at her sitting at the other end of the sleek new sofa, wrapped in the white robe. Her dark hair was still damp, tumbling over her shoulders in a way that was much too sexy for comfort. And if she leaned forward, the robe fell open a little, revealing the neckline of the silk nightgown. Modest as it was, her full, pregnancy breasts strained against the silk. Swallowing hard, he forced himself to look only at her eyes. “If it was the best night of your life, why do you want to forget?”
She looked away. “Because...because it hurts to remember what a fool I was. Imagining I
was in love with you. Imagining I even knew you.”
Nico had sudden disjointed flashes of memory, the feeling of holding her in his arms in the penthouse, kissing her passionately against the window with all of Manhattan’s skyscrapers sparkling behind her. Taking off her clothes piece by piece, pulling her down on the soft rug beneath the Christmas tree... Later, he’d thought it was a hallucination, a dream of a sexy dark-haired woman whose exact features he could not recall.
I love you, Nico. I wasn’t brave enough to say it before. I love you.
Abruptly, he stood up and went to the wet bar. Pulling a crystal lowball glass from the shelf, he dumped in two cubes of ice. He opened a new bottle of Scotch and poured a generous amount over the ice. He swallowed the first sweet sip, trying to control the pounding of his heart.
Lifting her gaze, Honora said quietly, “You were drunk the night we slept together, weren’t you? That’s why you don’t remember. You were drunk.”
A thousand excuses poured into his mind. Evade, deny, don’t say anything that could be used against him, either in a court of law or in the much rougher court of public opinion.
But as Nico looked into her face, he thought how easy it would have been for her to lie and say that their night together had been awful, a tragedy, that she regretted it and hated him. She’d certainly proven that she had no problems insulting him to his face. But she hadn’t.
She’d been brave enough to tell the truth. He could at least tell her something that wasn’t a lie. “It’s more complicated than that.”