AllFreeNovel
Share Us
‘But you will be having it with me and if I agree to getting tested, you can too,’ Maya cut in.
Raffaele spoke through gritted teeth. ‘Anything else you feel as though you must air?’
‘Yes, what do we do if a pregnancy doesn’t happen? It can take up to a year even for a healthy couple to conceive. Were you aware of that?’
No, actually he hadn’t been, but he would have preferred flogging to admitting that salient fact to her! Raffaele knew absolutely nothing about conception or pregnancy, only how best toavoidthat development, which was why he had never taken the tiniest risk in that field.
‘We can only deal with that situation if it occurs,’ Raffaele fielded impatiently.
‘I want full custody of any child we may have,’ Maya informed him next.
‘I won’t agree to anything other than joint custody. For all I know you’ll be a terrible mother,’ Raffaele responded. ‘I will maintain access rights to any child we have for that reason. It’s my duty to protect my child too.’
Maya blinked in surprise, disconcerted by his attitude because she had fully expected him to be willing to sign over any rights to that prospective child whom he only wanted in the first place to fulfil a business purpose. That he should actually care about the child’s welfare was a plus in his favour, the only plus he had shown her so far, she acknowledged grudgingly.
‘Where is all this conception stuff to take place?’ she enquired, pleased by her calmness.
‘Italy, where we’ll get married. I’m already putting the arrangements in order,’ Raffaele volunteered.
Maya stiffened. ‘Youdolike to put the cart before the horse, don’t you?’
‘But then I knew you’d come down offyourhigh horse and agree,’ Raffaele replied, setting her teeth on edge again.
‘We’ll be living in Italy?’ she questioned. ‘What am I supposed to tell my family?’
Raffaele shrugged a broad shoulder with magnificent disdain. ‘Tell them we’re getting married? You don’t need to tell the whole truth. You could spin a love-at-first-sight story.’
‘I don’t like telling lies,’ Maya said icily. ‘I’ll tell them you’ve offered me a job in Italy and that because of that famously compassionate streak of yours—’ her lip curled at that provocative phrase and his teeth clenched again ‘—you’ve decided to erase their debts because of the connection that once existed between our families.’
‘Thehateconnection, you mean?’ A rough-edged laugh parted Raffaele’s perfect masculine lips. ‘Tell them whatever you like. It’s not my business.’
‘But youmadeit your business. You ownalltheir debts, don’t you? It’s too big a coincidence that all their debts came home to roost on the same day,’ Maya opined in disgust.
Raffaele jerked his chin in unashamed acknowledgement.
‘So, you set up me up for this...literally,’ Maya accused.
‘No, you can thank my great-grandfather, Aldo, rather than me for that move. I didn’t know you existed until he made me aware of it before informing me that he owned your family lock, stock and barrel,’ Raffaele recounted drily. ‘If I hadn’t been willing to play ball and go for the deal he offered me, he would have happily bankrupted your parents and made them homeless because he has no reason to like your family.’
An angry smile tilted Maya’s lush pink mouth. ‘Are you implying that I should be grateful for you and the marriage proposal?’
‘Sì...’Raffaele confirmed, golden flames dancing in his arrogant challenging gaze. ‘Without me, where would you and your family be?’
Incensed afresh, Maya jumped up. ‘You just couldn’t be kind for even ten minutes, could you be?’ she snapped back at him, her furious voice shaking. ‘You want me on my knees in gratitude...don’t you?’
A sudden disturbing grin flashed across his lean, devastatingly handsome features as he vaulted upright, towering over her with his superior height. ‘Now you’re talking my language...what I wouldn’t give at this moment to have you there!’
The explicit image she assumed he intended struck her like a mortifying, humiliating blow as she belatedly realised what she had said, and it was too much on top of everything else she had already endured from him. Her hand flashed up and he caught her wrist between long brown fingers before the slap could connect, his reflexes far faster than her own. ‘No, don’t youdare!’ he breathed in a raw, wrathful undertone. ‘Nobody hits me now.’
Nobody hits me now?What on earth did he mean? For an instant, Maya froze in shock and bewilderment at what he had said and what she had almost done. She was on the very brink of apologising as she moved away in a blindly direct line with the corner of the coffee table when he simply stretched down his long arms and scooped her up from the other side of the table separating them and lifted her bodily into the air. ‘I’m sorry...put me down!’ she gasped.
‘I’m not going to hurt you. I don’thurtwomen. You were about to trip over the table,’ Raffaele bit out, almost breathless as he stared down into her bright green eyes and his scorching gaze trailed down her heart-shaped face to the pillowy invitation of her pink lips. A raging beast of sexual hunger was clawing at him, disorientating him.Nobodyhitsme now?Why the hell had he let that slip out? He never, ever referred to the abuse he had suffered as a child.
‘That’s good, and thanks...now put me down,’ Maya repeated urgently, her heart hammering so hard inside her chest she thought it might jump right out.
After an instant of hesitation during which she believed he was not about to listen to her at all, Raffaele slowly lowered her back to the floor a safe distance from the table and she snatched in a gasping breath. ‘I didn’t intend to frighten you,’ he said flatly.
‘I wasn’t frightened, not exactly,’ Maya framed, all out of breath and inspiration because, for the count of the ten seconds he had held her, she had experienced panic and then the strangest inner pulse of excitement that had left her quivering and embarrassed and all over the place. ‘I’m sorry I went for you like that. You made me very angry. That’s not an excuse...well, it is, isn’t it? But I have never tried to hit another person before in my life and it won’t happen again, I assure you.’
