A Hunger for the Forbidden(26)
You’ve had some of the fantasies.
Oh, yes, she had. But one night of passion wasn’t the sum total of her life’s desires.
“All of this,” he said. “And still you want this child?”
“Yes, Matteo. I do. Because babies are a lot of work. But the love you feel for them … it’s stronger than anything, than any fear. It doesn’t mean I’m not afraid, only that I know in the end the love will win.”
“Well, we can be terrified together,” he said.
“You’re terrified?”
“Babies are tiny. They look very easily broken.”
“I’ll teach you how to hold one.”
Their eyes met, heat arching between them, and this time her pregnancy hormones were making her feel something other than anger.
She looked back down at her breakfast. “How’s your head?”
“I feel like someone put a woodpecker in my skull.”
“It’s no less than you deserve.”
“I will treat you better than I did last night. That I promise you. I’m not sure what other promises I can make, but that one … that one I will keep.”
She thought of him last night. Broken. Passionate. Needy. She wondered how much of that was the real Matteo. How much he kept hidden beneath a facade.
How much he kept from escaping. And she knew just how he felt in some ways. Knew what it was like to hide everything behind a mask. It was just that her mask was smiling, and his hardly made an expression at all.
“Will you be faithful to me?” she asked, the words catching in her throat.
Matteo looked down into his coffee for a moment, then stood, his cup in his hand. “I have some work to see to this morning, and my head is killing me. We can talk more later.”
Alessia’s heart squeezed tight, nausea rolling through her. “Later?”
“My head, Alessia.”
My heart, you jackass. “Great. Well, perhaps we can have a meeting tonight, or something.”
“We’re busy tonight.”
“Oh. Doing what?”
“Celebrating our marriage, quite publicly, at a charity event.”
“What?” She felt far too raw to be in public.
“After what happened with Alessandro, we have to present a united front. Your not-quite wedding to him was very public, as was your announcement of your pregnancy. The entire world is very likely scratching their heads over the spectacle we’ve created, and now it’s time to show a little bit of normal.”
“But we don’t have a normal marriage—I mean, so I’ve been told.”
“As far as the media is concerned we do.”
“Why? Afraid of a little scandal? You’re a Corretti.”
“What do you want our child to grow up and read? Because thanks to the internet, this stuff doesn’t die. It’s going to linger, scandal following him wherever he goes. You and I both know what that’s like. To have all the other kids whisper about your parents. For our part, we aren’t criminals, but we’ve hardly given our child a clean start.”
“So we go out and look pretty and sparkly and together, and what? The press just forgets about what happened?”
“No, but perhaps they will continue on in the vein that they’ve started in.”
“What’s that?” She’d, frankly, spent a lot of energy avoiding the stories that the media had written about the wedding.
“That we were forbidden lovers, who risked it all to be together.”
It wasn’t far from the truth, although Matteo hadn’t truly known the risk they’d been taking their night together. But she had. And she’d risked it all for the chance to be with him.
Looking at him now, dealing with all the bruises he’d inflicted on her heart, she knew she would make the same choice now. Because at least it had been her choice. Her mistake. Her very first big one. It was like a rite of passage in a way.
“Well, then, I suppose we had better get ready to put on a show. I’m not sure I have the appropriate costume, though.”
“I’m sure I can come up with something.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
“SOMETHING” TURNED OUT to be an evening gown from the Corretti fashion line. It was gorgeous, and it was very slinky, with silky gold fabric that molded to her curves and showed the emerging baby bump that she almost hadn’t noticed until she’d put on the formfitting garment.