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But Julienne did none of these things.
She appeared at dinner that first night looking fresh and easy, seeming to shine even brighter than before. The smile she aimed his way was sunny, which had the direct result of making him glower.
“The staff tell me that you have insisted on a solitary dinner service every night,” he said, sitting in his usual spot at the head of the grand table, the centerpiece of the formal dining room. “Right here at this table.”
She beamed at him, sitting directly to his right. “There have to be some perks to finding oneself marooned in Tuscany. I decided I might as well make use of your fine staff and your truly excellent cook.”
And when Cristiano could seem to do nothing at all but stare darkly at her, she smiled again, even more sunnily. Then she turned her attention to her antipasti.
He resolved to use this experience—sharing the villa with her, against his will—as an opportunity for some immersion therapy. He did not wish to be haunted, thank you. He wanted her out of his head, his unfortunate dreams, his life. Cristiano felt certain that familiarity must breed its usual contempt, and that in short order thisthingthat ate away at him would disappear completely.
Once it did, he could approach the rest of this rationally. Carefully.
But everywhere he went, she seemed to be there. Even if she was not physically in the room, there was some reminder of her. Her scent on the breeze, or the sound of her laughter from across the atrium.
More than that, the woman he associated so strongly with a particular corporate sleekness and style of dress preferred to go about...naked.
Well. Not preciselynaked.
But as the weather got warmer, Julienne could often be found out at the swimming pool, set slightly down the hill from the house, sunning herself.
Wearing absolutely nothing but a bikini.
And he had not lied to her that day in the library. He found her new, impossibly lush body astonishingly beautiful. Almost too beautiful to bear.
He might not want to think of his impending fatherhood. He actively avoided it, in fact. But it was impossible not to look at Julienne and think of fertility. Of spring and sunshine, colorful new flowers and the fresh green of new growth.
She was bright and round and ripe, and every moment he did not have his hands on her was a torment.
Cristiano found himself in his own hell. Here at the villa, where he had always come for sanity. For an escape from the tumultuous life his parents led. One week led into the next, a riot of longing and fury, Julienne’s knowing smiles, and those dinners that required more self-control than they should have.
Familiarity with Julienne bred nothing like contempt. On the contrary, it ignited nothing short of an obsession.
But he knew addicts too well. And he knew that succumbing to the itch was always worse, in the long run. Always. Far better to white knuckle his way through this without sampling her again.
Sooner or later, this vice grip she had on him would fade. He was sure of it.
One night at dinner, she looked up from the gazpacho that had been served as their first course and announced that the doctor would be coming the following morning.
“It was so thoughtful of you to set up an obstetrician’s office of sorts in one of the studies,” she said, in that tone of hers he spent far too much time analyzing. Was she mocking him? Was that a hint of a sardonic slap? Or had he gone utterly mad and was nowparsingher tone? “If you come to the appointment tomorrow, you’ll be able to see—”
“‘Come’?” Cristiano stared at her from across the table, the icy distance he preferred to keep between them crumbling into so much ash. “Why would I attend your doctor’s appointment?”
And for the first time since he’d come here, that sunny, breezy demeanor of hers cracked.
First, that smile tumbled from her face. Her gaze darkened. She put her fork down and took a breath, as if he was trying her patience. And more—messing with her head the way she was doing with his.
Funny how that seemed a hollow victory.
“What game are you playing, Cristiano?” she demanded, an undercurrent in her voice that made his chest tight. “Why would you be here, however reluctantly, if you didn’t want some part in your son’s life?”
Cristiano stared back at her as if he was made entirely from stone. It would be easier if he was, he knew. “I’m here to encourage you not to continue to seed the voracious Italian press with scandalous stories about my grandfather,” he told her, crisply, as if he couldn’t see the dark thing between them. Not even now it was all over her lovely face. “And if I cannot encourage you to stop, to prevent you from doing it all the same.”
Julienne sat back in her seat, her belly taking up most of the room between them. Or so it seemed to him, because that gloriously round belly was all he could see.
She studied him for far too long. With a considering sort of look in her clever eyes that made him feel far too exposed. “Let me guess. This is your fear talking. Again.”
He didn’t like that. “I am who I am. Who I have always been in all the years you have known me. It is hardly my fault if you cannot accept this now that you are with child.” He shrugged. “Perhaps this is an example of the pregnancy hormones I have heard so much about.”
