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Maya looked at him and truly hated him.Grieve?We?She was an emotional wreck and he was calm and assured, which was only to be expected from a man who had no more feelings than a lump of concrete! As she tried to suppress the tumultuous surge of her resentment she studied him, her heart hammering somewhere in the region of her throat, it seemed, teaching her all over again, and when she least required the reminder, how weak she could be around him.
It was the middle of the night and, for once, Raffaele looked tired and under strain, the sculpted lines and angles of his lean dark features clenched taut and shadowing his dark deep-set eyes. But he also looked drop-dead gorgeous and vibrant as if no adversity could do him down for long. His bronzed skin still had the gleam of burnished gold like his eyes, his untidy blue-black hair remained glossy as silk, his arrogant head was high, the athletic flow of his lean, muscular body fluid. She wanted to reach out a hand to him and hold on tightly and she hated herself for that betrayal, for that need for comfort that made her so achingly vulnerable.
‘This baby was never real to you the way it was to me!’ she condemned bitterly instead. ‘You didn’t think of our baby as a little girl or a little boy, a child who would be a mix of us both, you only saw our baby as a device to be used to acquire a multimillion-pound company! You didn’t see anything wrong with using your own flesh and blood that way! Even though you suffered because your parents broke up when you were a baby, it didn’t bother you that you were cursing our child to grow up in a divided family as well!’
‘You’re right. I saw what I wanted and went for it. I’ve never had to think about moral boundaries or consequences such as this before and now that I have, I see that I went wrong. But I didn’t realise that until I met you,’ Raffaele bit out in a rasping undertone. ‘Unhappily, I can’t change anything I did now. It’s too late.’
Maya wasn’t even listening properly to him. ‘Yes, too late,’ she agreed sadly, lying back down and turning her face away. Aware of him hovering at the foot of the bed, she frowned. ‘Go back to the yacht, Raffaele.’
‘I’ll get right on that,’ Raffaele breathed through gritted teeth of restraint.
Was she kidding him? His wife suffered a miscarriage and she still expected him to just walk away? Getting it wrong wasn’t an excuse to keepongetting it wrong. It meant he had to stop and think about what he was doing, but he didn’t actually need to think about what to do next. Every fibre of his being told him that he needed to stay with his wife to support her after such a loss, even if shedidn’twant him with her.
It had beenhisloss too, he reflected, striding from the room and finding a corridor window that overlooked the car park to stare out. And he wasn’t quite as callous as Maya appeared to believe because he too had been thinking about the child she carried as an individual. He had pictured a little boy with her fair hair and his eyes and then a little girl with his hair and her eyes, before accepting that genes weren’t that easy to forecast and that their child might look more like one of their parents or not very like them at all. But the child would still have beentheirchild, their flesh and blood. Not, however, a cross between a possession and a plaything, as his late mother had viewed him, not a sacrifice for financially foolish parents, as Maya had become. No, their child would have been safe from such unreasonable demands and expectations, their child would have been left free to become whoever and whatever he or she wanted within safe boundaries. Divided family or not, he would have made it work for their child, no matter what the cost.
But, regrettably, Maya was correct in that he had not started out thinking along balanced, reasonable lines that took a child’s needs into consideration. He had simply seen an opportunity to expand his business empire and had leapt on that fresh challenge to alleviate his boredom. He hadn’t cared about the position he was putting Maya in, nor had he thought in any depth about the child he was planning to bring into the world with her help. He had been selfish, callous, possibly even cruel, he conceded grimly, and he had few excuses to make for himself. He didn’t need that technology company or Aldo’s business holdings and properties because he was already richer than sin. He should have thought more than twice about dragging an innocent woman and a child into his bleak, self-indulgent existence.
All of a sudden he was no longer surprised that the situation he had created had blown up in his face. It was what he deserved, after all, for being irresponsible and lacking in compassion. But it wasn’t whatMayadeserved, he thought heavily, and Maya was devastated by the loss of their child. Maya had been ready to love that baby from the instant it was conceived. Her heart, unlike his own, was open and giving.
The dawn light was brightening the room when Maya wakened from her restless doze. Almost immediately the events of the night flooded back to her and her eyes stung afresh, the heaviness in her heart weighing down on her again. A slight sound behind her made her flip over and stare in consternation at the sight of Raffaele slumped in a graceful sprawl of long limbs in the chair beside the bed. Unshaven with dark stubble framing his strong jaw line and accentuating his mobile mouth, he looked unnervingly familiar and precious to her. ‘Why are you still here?’ she exclaimed.
‘Where else would I be?’ he parried levelly. ‘I’m part of this too. I couldn’t leave you alone.’
‘Even though I gave you permission to do exactly that?’ Maya glanced away from him again, disturbed by how welcome she found his presence and the sense of security it gave her. The gut reactions Raffaele stirred were misleading and annoying. She always wanted to trust him even when she knew she shouldn’t.
‘You don’t always know what’s best for you,’ Raffaele fielded.
‘And youdo?’ An embarrassed flush lit her heart-shaped face as she heard the edge of scorn lacing her voice.
‘I think we both know that if I had ever once considered what wasbestfor you, I would never have met you in the first place and offered you the choice that I did,’ Raffaele countered drily, sharply disconcerting her.
Maya stared at him in astonishment. Even if he had chosen not to approach her, her family’s debts would still have been called in. Aldo would have seen to that. Her parents would have been made bankrupt and homeless and that was not a development she could have faced any more easily. Raffaele had given her a choice. It might not have been a choice she relished but at the time ithadseemed the lesser of two evils.
‘I suppose you never thought of something like this happening,’ she muttered.
‘No, I didn’t,’ he agreed quietly. ‘It didn’t occur to me that I was taking a gamble on real life and that that is likely to be messier and less predictable than a business transaction.’
‘But then you’re too accustomed to controlling developments and people and it’s made you reckless,’ Maya murmured, her heart jumping in her tight chest as he looked up at her through his lashes, his eyes a butterscotch gold that were like a shard of sunlight against his bronzed features.
‘When it’s a question of how I’ve treated you, reckless is an acceptable criticism,’ Raffaele bit out grudgingly, his lean dark face stormy at having to make that concession. ‘I didn’t allow for the human factor.’
Involuntarily, Maya smiled. It was only a small smile, just a slight turning-up at the corners of her mouth. ‘Who are you and what have you done with Raffaele Manzini?’ she quipped.
Raffaele stared steadily back at her, his attention lingering on that unexpected hint of a smile, his golden eyes suddenly ablaze. With disconcerting suddenness, he vaulted upright. ‘Would you like something to eat or drink?’
Heat had engulfed Maya, shocking her, her face burning up as she shook her head and reached for the glass of water beside the bed to raise it to her taut mouth, so unsettled was she by the effect he could have on her at the most inappropriate moments. ‘I’m not hungry yet...probably all the medication. You should return to the yacht.’
‘I’m booked into a hotel near here,’ Raffaele slotted in. ‘It’s more convenient.’
‘Go and get some sleep,’ Maya urged.
Raffaele tensed. ‘We haven’t talked about what happened yet,’ he breathed tautly.
Maya paled. ‘I really don’t want to talk about it. I just want to leave it behind,’ she confided.
Raffaele frowned. ‘I don’t think it’s that simple,bellezzamia.’
‘It can be,’ Maya muttered. ‘Talking about stuff doesn’t always make it better. I’d confide in Izzy but I can’t, right now. She’s pregnant. If I told her what had happened to me, it would make her sick with worry and it would spoil the pregnancy experience for her. It wouldn’t be fair to do that to her.’
