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He didn’t actually believe Rachel was Juliet’s matchmaker, and he certainly didn’t think she’d benefited in any way from Juliet’s schemes, but Juliet was as amoral as they came. To pursue a dying man? To deliberately get pregnant, not caring that you were creating a life where the child would never know his or her own father?
Gio was far from perfect. As Rachel had said, he was driven and ambitious, but there had to be a line one didn’t cross. Juliet had no such scruples, and she’d needlessly complicated Antonio’s final year, creating pain not just for Antonio, but the whole family.
But tonight his frustration wasn’t with Juliet. It was with himself.
Why was he so intent on provoking Rachel? Why did he want to test her, tease her, draw a response from her?
What did he want from her?
But that was actually easy. What didn’t he want from her?
She’d woken him, and the desire consumed him. It had been far too long since he’d felt emotion, or hunger, and he felt both now.
He wanted her. And he would have her.
CHAPTER EIGHT
HE’D GONE TO bed tense, and then woke in the middle of the night to the sound of a baby crying.
It wasn’t an ear-piercing cry, but more fretful and prolonged. Giovanni rolled onto his back, smashing his pillow behind his head, and listened, eyes closed, to the wail coming from down the hall, realizing that he’d heard the crying even in his sleep and had incorporated the sound in his dream.
It hadn’t been a pleasant dream, either. He’d been talking with Antonio and they’d argued, and he didn’t remember what they were arguing about but it was tense, and Antonio turned around to face him, and as he turned the baby was there in his arms. And then the baby was crying, and Antonio blamed him for upsetting Michael, and Giovanni answered that he’d done nothing and that’s when he woke up.
And heard the baby crying down the hall in his room.
Was no one going to the baby? Could Rachel not hear him? Or had something happened to Rachel?
Giovanni flipped the covers back and climbed from the bed, throwing his robe on over his pajama bottoms. The pale green room was dimly lit, illuminated only by a small night-light. In the soft yellow glow he could see Rachel holding Michael and patting his back, crooning in his ear but the baby cried on, miserable.
She was facing the oil landscape on the wall, gently jiggling the baby as she studied the scene, unaware that she was being watched. She really was good with Michael, he thought, very much the mother the baby needed.
They would both stay here with him, he decided. It was logical. It made sense. Michael needed Rachel, and Giovanni wanted both Michael and Rachel...
“Is this normal?” he asked, approaching them.
She startled, turning quickly to face him. “He’s teething. It makes him fretful. But he’s not settling down and he feels warm to me. He might be coming down with something, which would explain why he’s been not quite himself the past few days.”
“He’s running a fever?”
“I think so.”
“You haven’t checked?”
She gave him a look he couldn’t decipher. “I didn’t bring a thermometer with me, but I’ll go buy one in the morning. You must have a pharmacy nearby, and if he’s feverish, I’ll take him to the doctor and have him checked out, just in case.” She pressed her lips to the top of the baby’s head. “Sorry to have disturbed you but we’re fine.”
She turned her back on him as she walked away, pacing back across the room, crooning in the fretful baby’s ear. In her pink robe, with her hair loose over her shoulders, she was small and delicate and very, very appealing.
His body hardened. He wanted her—in his bed, and out of bed. But she was wary of him, almost skittish. “Do you want me to take a turn with him?” he offered. “Could you use a break?”
“I’m fine.”
“You always say that.”
“Because I am fine.”
“Even when you’re desperate, you’re fine?”
She laughed softly. “I try very hard not to be hysterical. I don’t enjoy the state of desperation.”
