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Maya rolled her eyes.

Raffaele laughed, relaxation winging through him. It was true: he hated the house but it had taken Maya to make him admit the fact. ‘I’ll visit the spot above the beach where the dogs were buried and then we’ll get back on the yacht and tour with lots of sex included,’ he compromised.

‘Either you should sell this little island or demolish the house and rebuild,’ Maya told him, ignoring the ‘lots of sex’ quip even though it irritated her. ‘It shouldn’t have been sitting here for so many years empty and unused.’

Raffaele released his breath on a slow hiss. ‘I married an alpha woman, keen to remake me. Why didn’t I spot the warning signs?’

Beneath his intent gaze, Maya scrunched up her small nose. ‘Because you were too full of yourself to believe that an alpha woman could talk common sense?’

Raffaele winced and then suddenly grinned. ‘It’s possible...but here you are.’

‘Here I am,’ Maya murmured, both arms wrapped round him as she surveyed him and the lustrous dark golden eyes locked to her like magnets.

And, he reflected, this kind of holding is fine and meaningless. He might not have enjoyed a relationship in which such affection existed before, but he trusted himself enough to believe that emotion didn’t come into it for him. How could it possibly when he didn’t feel what he was supposed to feel? He should never have brought her to the island, never have told her what had happened in the house, should never have dropped his guard to that extent. He had made three mistakes in succession, he conceded grimly. No good ever came from letting people get too close, he reminded himself stubbornly. Maya was hotter than hot in bed and, in addition to her intelligence, it was a winning combination for their marriage. In fact, he could not have done better, he mused, because she picked up on his moods as well as a weathervane forecasting a storm. But then, she was a clever woman, a very clever woman, and no doubt as detached as he was from anything deeper developing between them.

Maya drifted awake thinking about her sister, Izzy, and missing her. She was alone in bed and that was typical, because Raffaele always rose at the crack of dawn to spend a few hours working in his on-board office. Taking over his great-grandfather’s business empire had kept him incredibly busy.

Just over a month had passed since the wedding and the secrecy Maya had embraced on that score had driven a wedge between her and the sister she loved, she conceded unhappily. Although they had talked with apparent openness on the phone during those weeks, Maya was stuck with the lie that she had taken a job in Italy. Yet how could she possibly tell Izzy the truth without upsetting her? Izzy, already dealing with an unplanned pregnancy and a new relationship in a foreign country, would be distraught if she knew what Maya had agreed to do to protect their parents and Matt.

Yet right now, there was a chance that Maya could be pregnant too and it was with a fierce desire to know, one way or another, that Maya slid out of bed. Her head swam dizzily as she straightened and moved into the bathroom to dig out one of the tests she had bought the day before and buried deep in the back of a cupboard. Her hands were a little unsteady as she sat down and unwrapped the box to pull out the instructions. The test was very simple, unlike her marriage, she conceded ruefully.

If she was pregnant, the marriage as such would be virtually over because that was what had been decided at the outset when she had insisted on exclusivity. Raffaele had agreed to stay faithful only until she conceived. He wanted his freedom back, the freedom to go out and sleep with other women. Why did the idea of that bother her? Why, when she had suspected for more than a week that she could have conceived, had she taken so long to buy the tests?

She had told Raffaele off for imagining he should be more than human that day on the island of Aoussa and now here she was being guilty of expecting more than she should from herself. After all, how could she live in such an intimate relationship with a man who attracted her and feel absolutely nothing for him? That wasn’t realistic. At least not for her and her generous heart, it wasn’t. Raffaele, though? Now that was a very different ball game.

Unlike her, Raffaele had spent a lifetime carefully ensuring that he felt very little for anyone. That was how he had got over his dysfunctional beginning in life; that was how he had learned to cope. Was he even capable of changing? And why would he evenwantto change when he was perfectly content as he was?

Yet that indifference in him to the more tender emotions scared and intimidated Maya, she acknowledged reluctantly. On his terms, she was just a business project and the child he wanted to conceive merely a useful tool that would give him the right to buy her grandfather’s technology company. On her terms, however, Raffaele was the guy she had hated when she married him and then somehow, incomprehensibly to her, he had turned into a man she was learning to love...

How could she be falling for Raffaele Manzini? How could the impossible have happened? A sea change had taken place inside her that day on the island as soon as she understood what he had suffered because he hadshownher his vulnerability. With that single act he had broken through her barriers and demolished her defences. She had stood above the beach with him where the dogs were buried and tears had misted her eyes when she’d seen the mound of pebbles he had gathered to mark the spot and the rough cross, cobbled together from driftwood by the gardener, Raffaele had explained. And, unfortunately for her, the way he had treated her since then had only encouraged the warmth of her developing feelings.

To date, being married to Raffaele was nothing at all as she had expected. He was wonderfully caring towards her and always coming up with new ways to please or entertain her. They had cruised the Mediterranean in the yacht, stopping off in random places to shop or explore ruins or sheltered coves and dine out, the very casualness of their itinerary relaxing.

And when it came to anything she might want, nothing was too much trouble for Raffaele. A reference to her interest in archaeology had led to a surprise flight to Egypt and the fulfilment of a lifelong dream to see the tombs in the Valley of the Kings. Raffaele wasn’t into any of that and yet he had still patiently, considerately ensured that she also toured the treasures in the Cairo Museum, saw the pyramids and caught another flight to visit the temples at Luxor. He had devoted an entire energetic ten days to her enjoyment of antiquities. Her fingers toyed abstractedly with the gold sphinx necklace he had given her as a memento of their stay.

He had given her a feast of memories that she would remember all her life. He had even had a cabin on the yacht set up for her to work in, complete with whiteboards and cutting-edge technology. Even if she worked all day and late into the night, he didn’t complain. No, he certainly wasn’t clingy, but he was capable of interrupting her to remind her to eat or to initiate sex, she conceded with a rueful grin.

For over a month she had lived in a fantasy world with a gorgeous guy who behaved as if she was so incredibly beautiful and alluring that he couldn’t resist her. Sexually, Raffaele was insatiable and yet the same man had admitted to her that prior to their wedding he hadn’t sought the release of sex for weeks because he had become bored with it. Only he could scarcely afford to be bored with sex when his main goal was to conceive a child, she reminded herself sourly. And only an idiot like herself could have forgotten that reality for long enough to become infatuated with him.I don’t get attached to people, he had warned her at the outset. With an angry snort at her own act of self-destruction, Maya finally stood up to check the test wand and see the result.

And there it was, exactly what she had expected: a positive.

Warm acceptance diametrically opposed to the furious self-loathing she had just been dealing with flooded Maya. No matter how she felt about Raffaele or her reactions to him, Maya wanted her baby and was excited at the prospect of becoming a mother. Yes, it was happening to her when she was younger than she had planned but Maya had always wanted children and could not be anything other than happy with such a result. Pausing only to brush her teeth and run a brush through her tumbled blonde hair, Maya walked back into the bedroom.

‘Well?’ Raffaele shot at her expectantly.

The sight of him when she was unprepared still left her short of breath and on the edge of the most ridiculous sense of excitement. But there Raffaele stood, sheathed in black jeans and a black shirt, tall, powerful and strong, and the very air in the cabin hummed with the vibrant energy that he radiated. He had been waiting for her to emerge.

‘Don’t keep me in suspense,’ he told her.

Maya blinked in astonishment as she realised that he had somehow guessed exactly what she had been engaged in doing. ‘How did you guess?’

‘You stopped drinking wine two weeks ago. You’ve been feeling dizzy. You went to a lot of trouble to make elaborate excuses about why you wanted to visit a pharmacist yesterday.AndI watch you like a hawk,’ Raffaele countered with a wry smile. ‘It’s ayes, isn’t it?’

‘At least you didn’t put a spy camera in the bathroom,’ Maya breathed, her clear gaze pinned to his lean, darkly handsome face and the smile already pulling at the corners of his beautiful stubborn mouth. ‘Yes, I’m pregnant...’

‘I didn’t expect it to happen so fast,’ Raffaele confessed then, crossing the cabin in one long stride to reach for her, linking his arms loosely round her shoulders as he gazed down at her. ‘How do you feel?’

‘Excited, weird, pleased, all sorts of crazy things.’

Source: www.allfreenovel.com
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