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“You deserve someone who loves you,”Fleurette had said so fiercely.
“There’s no need to talk of love,” he said, sounding as if he was being strangled.
“Of course there’s a need,” she said, and it was hard to keep her voice soft. To keep her gaze on his, when he looked very nearly horrified and her heart ached the way it did. “Love is the entire point, Cristiano.”
“No,” Cristiano said in a low voice. And this time, when he broke her heart, it was a devastation. “Cara.Julienne. Don’t do this. Surely you, of all people, must know that love is a lie.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
FINALLYEVERYTHINGWASgoing according to plan.
Cristiano might not have originally planned to marry and have children, but now that one was done and the other imminent, he found he rather liked the surprising peace of domesticity. It was far better than being haunted. And the new plan made sense.
He gave up his sleek, modern penthouse and moved back into the house he’d once given to Julienne and her sister. It was a home, not a bachelor’s residence, and he liked the idea of his son playing in the garden, or tearing up and down the stairs. Especially once he bought the attached house next door and began making plans to create one, far better home for his family.
His family.
He liked that word, even if he only admitted that to himself privately.
But then, he liked having Julienne there, in his house. With him. He particularly liked her in his bed.
Even if she did have a terrible habit of speaking about love. Of all things.
He could not have picked words to describe the things he felt and if he did, he would have chosen other ones. That terrible, wrecking tenderness that swamped him when he touched her, or when he thought of the baby she carried. The weakness he felt in him at the sight of her.
“Of course your father loves you,”his mother had told him when he was still small, but old enough to know better.“He loves both of us. He struggles to show it, that’s all.”
What waslovebut a tiny word that served as a gateway to despair?
Their wedding night, she’d stared at him with those eyes of hers he liked to think of as the precise shade of Cassara’s finest toffee. Though that night, there had been a shine to them that had trickled into his gut, kicked around in there and made him...edgy.
“Imagine if your father had loved your mother,” she’d said. “And if your grandfather had loved your grandmother. Who would you be now, do you think?”
“I respect you,” he had growled in return, shifting closer to her so he could put his hands on her body. And once again, speak to her in terms they both understood completely. “I want you. I will raise our son the way my grandfather raised me.”
“To be happy?” she had asked in her quiet way. “No matter who it hurts?”
“To be good,” he had retorted, feeling unaccountably challenged.
But he had handled it the way he dealt with all things involving Julienne.
With his mouth, his hands. With the near inexpressible pleasure of burying himself deep inside of her.
And as far as he was concerned, the conversation was over.
He moved them back to Milan, installing her in his house. His bed. Right where he wanted her—with the added bonus of it beingher.Julienne Boucher, the most formidable of all his vice presidents. Cristiano rather liked that he could come home from work and actually discuss it with her, because her opinion was always learned, careful and most of the time, right.
The research that Massimo had provided him, on pregnancy, parenthood and everything else he knew he would have to contend with, and soon, suggested that a woman’s preferences might change once she became a mother. Then again, they might not. He was happy enough to let Julienne do as she pleased, but he couldn’t help hoping that what would please her most would be—after an appropriate amount of leave—to join him at the Cassara Corporation again.
“Because it is not nepotism if we’re already married?” she asked one night, as she sat in the bedroom that was now theirs. She was rubbing lotion into her enormous belly in an attempt to control her stretch marks, a job that Cristiano sometimes took upon himself, because there was no part of her he didn’t find beautiful. Marks and all.
Tonight, he only watched. His wife and the son he would meet soon enough. Sometimes the sight of her so close to giving birth made his heart careen about dangerously in his chest.
Appropriate anxiety, he assured himself. It was what anyone would feel.
“Nothing inappropriate happened between us while you were my subordinate,” he said, with a shrug. “And I would be a fool indeed not to take advantage of the fact that one of the greatest minds that has ever worked for the company has returned to me.”
“To you, Cristiano,” she said, in that mild way she always used these days. That cool, calm voice while something too dark for comfort gleamed in her gaze. “I came back to Italy to tell you that you are to be a father. Not to concern myself with bolstering your corporate profile.”
