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‘I am not going away without Mattio.’
There was no hint of concession in his voice or on his chiselled features. Thinking hard, she considered his beautiful fallen-angel face, her eyes drifting over the angular contours of his lower jaw and hollowed cheeks, which were dusted with dark stubble that emphasised the razor edge of his carved cheekbones and the sensual curve of his upper lip.
‘So, I think this is where you invite me in.’
‘Or what, you’ll barge your way in? I’m warning you, I really will call the police.’
He lifted his eyes from where they had drifted to the gaping neckline of her silky nightshirt, and she couldn’t help the shiver of excitement that sizzled down her spine.
‘Feel free if Violetta actually isn’t here.’ He subjected her face to a speculative laser-like scan. ‘I’m quite sure this situation will be of interest to them.’
It suddenly occurred to her that this might well be the case. She weighed her options and discovered she didn’t have many.
With a tight-lipped sigh she stepped to one side and without another word he shouldered his way past her.
‘Come in, why don’t you?’ she drawled, sarcasm masking her apprehension as she glared at the man who now dominated her small living room.
Samuele scanned the modest space that had probably been dominated by the stacks of books and a dressmaking dummy draped with fabric, only now they took second place to a baby buggy, a stack of disposable nappies and general baby detritus. But the item his eyes zeroed in on was a stuffed rabbit. He felt his throat thicken, remembering when it had been new, his brother’s way of telling him that he was going to be an uncle.
‘Don’t you mean you’re going to be a father?’ Samuele had responded.
‘Maybe.’ His brother had handed him the toy. ‘The cancer’s back, Sam. I start chemo next week. So, you see, this kid is going to need you to be around.’
‘You’ll be around for them! You beat it once, you’ll beat it again.’
‘Sure, I will.’
They had kept up the pretence, dancing around the truth, right up until the last minute. Sometimes he thought that his little brother had been protecting him, rather than the other way around.
Maya watched a muscle jump in his cheek as he bent forward, pausing before he straightened up with a soft toy in his hand. For a split second she saw something in his face that made him seem almost vulnerable. She experienced a troubling moment of what felt scarily like empathy, but then he looked at her, and his eyes were not those of a man who needed her empathy, they were hard and cold and ruthless.
‘So where is Violetta hiding?’
‘She’s not hiding anywhere...’ Unable to sustain eye contact with the darkness in his, she transferred her gaze to the toy trailing from his fingers. ‘She’s...gone out.’
‘Where and when will she be back?’ he asked as he arranged himself in the nearest chair.
Maya struggled to contain her panic as she watched him stretch his long legs out in front of him. ‘I don’t exactly know,’ she said, pretty sure she was sounding as lame as she was feeling.
His eyes narrowed. ‘Don’t know exactly what—where or when?’
‘All of those.’
‘You know very little,’ he observed unpleasantly.
‘I know you are sitting in my chair and I didn’t invite you in... I’m sure that’s against the law.’
He grinned. ‘Only if I’m a vampire.’
Her lips tightened at the flippancy but she couldn’t help thinking that it wouldn’t actually be such a stretch to see him in the role of a sexy vampire!
‘Look, this is ridiculous.’So was imagining offering him your neck.
Ridiculous would be him allowing himself to be fobbed off. ‘I’ll wait for her.’
‘No!’ She gulped and added, ‘I’m expecting some—’ She broke off as the sound of a low murmur amplified by the baby monitor on the coffee table filled the room. ‘Oh, God, he’s woken up again.’
Her eyes widened as her uninvited visitor vaulted to his feet in one smooth stomach-clenching action. Maya was only a heartbeat away from throwing herself physically in his path as he approached the door leading to Beatrice’s bedroom. It was crazy; she still thought of it that way, even though her sister had only spent a few nights there before her life had taken a very different direction.
