The Unwanted Conti Bride (The Legendary Conti Brothers) (15 page)

Tears rolled down Tina’s cheeks as she cut off Leandro. “I’m not angry, Leandro. At least not anymore, now that I have had time to recover from the shock. All you and Luca have ever done is love me,
si
? You could have hated me for
Mama
’s abandoning of you. You could have left me to my own fate when she died. I am your sister and nothing could change that. But I look at Sophia, I look at the state of my marriage, and I realize what a naive fool I am. I am leaving Kairos. And Milan.”
She was leaving them both.

Luca reached her the same time Leandro did. He held her tight while she sobbed. Luca had never been more proud of his little sister.

Fear danced in Leandro’s eyes, and Luca shook his head in warning. His brother’s job for years had been to protect Luca and Tina. But it was Tina’s life now.

Luca kissed her cheek while Leandro compulsively said, “Where are you going? Will you stay with friends? You will tell us if you need help,
si
?”

Tina laughed at Leandro and hugged him tight. “I am an adult, Leandro. I can take care of myself. You’re to stay out of this thing between Kairos and me. But
si
, I will keep in touch, although only if you tell me what state Sophia leaves Luca in when she’s through with him.”

A weight lifted from Luca’s chest and he hoped Tina would find happiness in her new journey. He found himself frantically praying to a God he had only ever hated before.

“You’re a genius,
si
?” she said to him, exaggerated doubt in her teasing tone.

Luca nodded.

“Then,
per piacere
, do not lose the most wonderful thing to ever happen to you.”

* * *

Casa Rossi, the first major designer store of Rossi’s after its reinvention and the lounge bar on Piazza San Fedele, glittered on its opening night. Creamy white carpet and sofas, with different designer pieces from every noted brand on the shelves, made the space an intimate, exclusive event.

Pink champagne flowed freely, designer-clad men and women walked around and talked and got noticed by people they wanted to be seen by. More than a few people had approached her. Sophia had no doubt it was more to feed their own curiosity than anything else.

Because she’d dragged the venerable Contis into an out-and-out war. She refused to let Luca hide. She had been terrified when Leandro had come to see her but refused to back down.

Already the list of people who wanted to be invited to the next event was growing exponentially according to her assistant. Sophia had quickly looked through and struck off some of the men who’d called her quite a range of names over the past few years.

She adjusted a buttery-soft white leather clutch, still amazed at the success of her idea. Where Conti Luxury Goods entered, the entire range of companies who had once turned away from Rossi’s joined in. The gray wolves were all walking behind her now, like domesticated dogs, following the line of meat to Rossi’s.

Luca would so totally get that, she realized with a laugh. She’d have to tell him and then they would make fun of... And just like that, the painful knot in her stomach returned.

Two months since that night. She’d been pitied, smirked at, laughed at, that she had thought herself good enough to take on the Conti Devil. She’d turned her very life into a circus, herself into a cheap act for him. To make their marriage, its failure and Luca the focus of every rabid gossip in Milan.

Already, so many things had come out about him. Luca had to face himself. Accept himself. Only then was there a chance for them...

Having given up even a pretense of pride, which was all she had these days after making such a thoroughly public and humiliating spectacle of herself, of manipulating everything to lure him out, she’d begged Tina to tell her if she’d heard anything from him.

Hysterical that their fates had reversed. Now Tina was the stronger one, the one who told Sophia her brother wasn’t worth it while Sophia became a shadow of herself.

She lay awake at night, aching in mind and body, worked like a demon during the day...and it was taking its toll on her. This...faith in him, in her, in their love, the laughter they’d shared, it was burning out now.

What was she going to do if he never returned?

And then she heard it, the soft strains of music coming from the lounge bar beyond the foyer. It had a piano but she had actively looked away from it, for it had the power to send her to her knees now.

This was what he’d made of her. She, who had never been afraid of anything, was now scared of pianos, and music, bikes, the streets leading to the Piazza del Duomo, and couldn’t look at chocolate truffles without breaking down into sobs.

Suddenly, a strange silence replaced the soft chatter. And in that silence came that music again, the point in that vicious circle where it was trapped. Sophia felt like she was living the song.

Heart in her throat, she walked to the lounge.

There he was. He sat at the piano, his head bowed, his fingers flying over it. White shirt and dark trousers, hair wet and gleaming, shoulders fluid. Soft pink light filled the room, casting flashes of light on him. Teasing and taunting her. Driving her utterly mad.

Sophia blinked.

It had to be one of her feverish dreams in which she heard that tune again and again, in which she saw him look at her with that hunger and desire, in which she felt his hands on her, holding her, touching her, driving her out of her own skin. In which she saw him poised over her wet sex, his expression one of utter reverence and wicked desire.

She could feel him between her legs now and she clutched her legs closed tighter.

Her heart thumped. Her breath stuttered. She felt feverish. Tears threatened to spill over. She leaned against the far wall and closed her eyes. She was so cold, exhausted. Like she was breaking apart again and again.

And then the tune rose to its pinnacle, hope and life twisting together.

“Stop, please,” she yelled. It did.

A frisson went through her and then she felt him in front of her.

His warmth. The scent of his skin. The air charging around him.

Her eyes flicked open.

Dark shadows under jet-black eyes. Wide, wicked, sensually carved mouth. Blades of cheekbones. Perfectly symmetric planes of his face.

The most beautiful man she had ever seen.

The man she loved beyond bearing.

She extended her arm, fluttered her fingers over his cheek. Ran her thumb over the sweep of one cheekbone and then over the defined curve of his upper lip. Her fingers kept sliding away from his face, so violently was she shaking. She felt his fingers clamp her wrist and hold her hand there against him, leaning into his touch.

She felt the pulse in his neck against her hand, frantic and hurried.

She felt his breath on the back of her palm, frenzied and rough, as if he had run a great distance to find her, instead of prowling from one corner of the room to the other.

She felt him, all of him and she shuddered violently. Her heart slammed against her rib cage.

He
was
standing before her. He was finally here. He had returned.

Sophia drew her hand back and slapped him across the cheek. So hard that his sculpted jaw went back and shock jarred up her arm. The sound of it reverberated in the silence, propelling her out of her nightmarish state. “Leave me alone,” she whispered, her voice on the verge of breaking.

He didn’t move. Didn’t utter a word.

Only gazed at her with glittering eyes. Even in the pink light, Sophia could see the mark she’d left on his cheek. Desperate, panicky, words came and fell away from her lips.

Please stay. Please want me. Please love me.

Please don’t ever leave me like that again.

No, she wouldn’t beg.

She made to push away from him but he moved faster. Trapped her against the wall, his arms bracketing her on either side. He said nothing, though, only stared at her, held her like that as if he was completely complacent in that position. As if he was content to hold her in place and gaze at her for eternity.

She kept her gaze at some far point in the distance. If she stared into those eyes, she would break permanently.

“Will you not look at me, Sophia?”

“I hate you. I...despise you. You...are exactly what I always thought you were,” she spat at him, her dignity, her self-respect, everything in tatters. Her strength nothing but a shadow in the face of her love for him. “A heartless bastard who can see nothing past his own bloody genius, nothing past his own demons. You were partying with your...damn groupies while I...I...” And then she fell against him, hate and love inseparably twining into a rope, binding him to her. “If you kissed a single one of them, Luca, if you have even touched one with a long pole... I’ll kill you with my bare hands.” Only then did she raise her eyes. He had never lied to her, but this... She needed to see the answer for herself. “If you so much as... This is over. We are over.”

“
Non, cara mia
. I couldn’t even look at another woman. I...was a bastard. For those first couple of weeks, I wanted to make sure you hated me. Your words that night, they haunted me. They hurt me. They mocked me. I thought I would give you all the reasons in the world to hate me. I thought I would shake that resolve in your eyes, show you what I truly was.

“But,
Dio
, I couldn’t go through with any of it. For the first time in my life, I realized what I had lost and that it had nothing to do with being my father’s son. That it was
I
that was ruining my life with my own actions. I promise,
cara
, I could not look at another woman but you.”

Something small and tenuous built inside Sophia again. Hope had never terrified her like that. “I did hate you. But I couldn’t shake off that faith in us. Is that what love is? This blind, illogical, irrational faith in the man who tears you apart so recklessly when all you’ve done is love him? I have no more, Luca. I’m done loving you.”

He shuddered around her, like a flash of lightning in the sky. His lean body jerked and settled around her again. “You did all this to make me face myself. You would give up on me now?”

She felt his hands move through her hair, his nose buried in it, her name a mantra on his lips. He held her gently as she sobbed her heart out. Two months of tears, two months of fears...two months of staying strong for him. “Sometimes, I feel like you have taken everything from me. Like a bus carried me away from everything that I loved. Like I will never breathe properly again. Like I will never be free again.

“I hate being in love. So much. I... It hurts so much.”

“Shh...
tesoro mio
. Shhh...please, Sophia. No more. I can’t stand the sound of you crying.” She heard the tension rise in him, too, heard the catch in his voice as if he, too, was breaking down.

He pushed away her hair from her forehead, wiped the remaining tears from her cheeks. Gently, oh, so tenderly. “I...ran so far, so fast, that night. But you...you were already a part of me. You... Everything was so colorless, Sophia. Even music could not soothe me. And then I saw myself. As you saw me. And I realized this life that has brought me to you, I could never hate it.
Ti amo, tesoro.
With every breath in me. Will you let me love you, Sophia? Will you give me the chance to be the man you deserve? I swear,
cara mia
, I will never hurt you again.”

Sophia threw her arms around his neck and held him tight. Breathed in the scent of him. He was solid and male around her. “Yes, please, Luca. Love me. Spend eternity with me.” He breathed a sigh, relief maybe, and held her tightly back. She gave herself over to Luca’s love. Her heart was his already.

EPILOGUE

Three years later

“I’
VE
BROUGHT
SOMEONE
to see you, Mrs. Conti.”

Sophia whirled around at that voice so fast that her head spun, her heart climbed up into her throat. She had seen them only this morning before she left for work, but her heart still ran away from her at the sight of them.

It was only three weeks since she’d returned to work after a six month maternity leave. But she missed spending those lazy mornings in bed when Luca would bring their bawling bundle into their bedroom and all three of them would cuddle, play and sometimes just fall into exhausted sleep after a cranky night.

Luca stood at the door, with the baby basket in hand, wicked mouth curved wide in a smile.

Her assistant, Margie, was faster than Sophia in reaching the new arrivals. She took the precious bundle instantly away from his father and cooed over him, before Sophia had even managed to breathe normally. “You’re lucky, Mrs. Conti,” Margie said in between the baby gibberish she spouted to their seven-month-old son. “You’ve got the two most gorgeous men in Italy chained to you.”

Sophia looked at her beaming son, gave him a cuddle and a quick kiss before Margie stole him away from her again. “I do, don’t I?” Laughing, Sophia met Luca’s gaze.

White shirt and blue jeans hugged her husband’s lean figure. Blue, ever-present shadows under his eyes. Stubble on his jaw, because he wouldn’t have found time this morning to shave. He looked thoroughly disreputable, for once, the very image of the crazy genius he was, and heartbreakingly gorgeous.

“You left without saying goodbye this morning.”

Her heart still racing, Sophia sighed. “You looked dead to the world.” She knew how little sleep he managed.

“Yes, but I don’t like you leaving for the day without kissing me goodbye.”

Reaching Luca, she threw her hands around him while he took her mouth in a fast, scorching kiss full of frantic hunger. The same desire flooded her limbs and all she wanted was to steal away with her man for an afternoon of pulse-pounding sex, like they hadn’t indulged in a while. Her sensitive nipples peaked when he stroked inside her mouth with erotic expertise that to this day stole her breath. That made her want to be just this wanton creature who made the sexiest man rock hard, and forget all her other roles—daughter, aunt, CEO of a multinational company and even a mother.

Pulling back slowly, he sank his fingers into her hair. Eyes glittered full of wicked invitation. “Take the afternoon off,” he said, mirroring her very thought.

Sophia kissed him and drew back quickly before he could ensnare her again. “Even if I did, what about your son? He gets crankiest before his afternoon nap, remember? Takes after his father, the devil.”

“He’s an angel. Just look at him.”

Dark-eyed, dark-haired, with a charming toothless grin, Leo was a mirror image of his father. The look in Luca’s eyes when he had held their son for the first time had almost crushed Sophia’s heart.

There had been fear, and wonder and hope and so much love. He had lifted the squalling infant in his arms so tenderly, tears running down his cheeks. And then he’d met her gaze. “He looks like me,” he’d said then, a sort of helplessness in his voice. As if it broke his heart a little, all over again. “
Dio
, Sophia, what if he...he is like me, too?”

Luca’s scars had healed, but not vanished.

Sophia had been crying, too. But she had stayed strong for him. She’d clutched Luca’s free hand with hers and squeezed tight. “Does it matter who he looks like when we love him so much? He’s a piece of our hearts, isn’t he?”

It had taken them only twenty-four hours, however, to realize their son, notwithstanding his cherubic looks, had the temper of the very devil. Within two days he’d reduced Sophia to hysteric tears and a dark fear that she couldn’t even calm her own son.

Packing them into his Maserati, Luca had driven them around all night, lulling them both into frantic sleep. The next night it had begun all over again. Until Luca had started playing the piano.

Only those two things calmed Leo enough to sleep every night now.

The smallest disruption to his schedule, and Leo was known to scream at decibel levels that could rupture unsuspecting eardrums. A thing that seemed to endlessly amuse his two cousins, the perfect little girls they were. “Why couldn’t I have a beautiful little doll like Izzie or Chiara?”

His arms around her, Luca nuzzled her neck. “You know what we could do if you want a girl,
cara mia
.”

Sophia snorted. “No way. I haven’t even lost half the weight I’ve gained. I wish men gained weight when their wives got pregnant. It’s not fair that you...you continue looking like you do while I look like a baby elephant.”

“Watch that mouth. That’s my lovely wife you’re talking about.” He pressed a kiss to her temple, reverent and tender. “I love you just as you are, Sophia. I wouldn’t change a single thing about you. I would change everything about my past, everything about myself, to prove it, if I could.”

The regret and pain in his tone was like a lash against her skin.

He accepted her for everything she was, flaws and all those little eccentricities, and she loved him, too. That she’d hinted, even unknowingly, at denying him that same acceptance was anathema to her.

“Si,”
Sophia whispered urgently. A shiver went through her and he held her tighter. “I do. And I trust you, Luca.”

Even to this day, she woke up sometimes in the middle of the night, saw him next to her on the bed, usually hogging all the sheets and pushing her to the edge of the bed in his need to hold her tight, and wondered at how much this gorgeous, beautiful man loved her.

And how deeply and how completely. The wonder in his eyes when he looked at Leo and her every day, it humbled her.

“Did you really want a girl, Sophia?”

Sophia locked her hands on top of his, settling into his arms. “Not really. Although I do worry sometimes.”

“About what?”

“I think of the future, and I’m sure I’ll dread mornings where I have to leave you two at home and walk away. I imagine coming home to a disaster zone.”

“Are you saying I’m going to spoil our son?”

“I know you’re going to spoil him rotten. And I’ll have to be the strict one.”

He nipped at her shoulder, his lowered voice a caress. “But you do strict so well,
bella mia
.”

Melting on the floor of her office was not an option so Sophia snorted instead. “I see that you’re not even saying no.”

His hands tightened around her waist, pressing her into his front. The length of his erection was a brand against her back. Her mouth dried, a rush of wetness pooling at her sex.

Sophia caught the moan in her throat, thanking Margie for discreetly walking away with their son to her private sitting area.

In the short time she’d been back at work, Luca and Leo’s visits to her workplace were already the highlight of the day for all the women in the office. Everyone wanted to hold her son, and everyone wanted to see Luca—the infamous playboy turned devoted husband and doting, stay-at-home dad—tease, taunt and make their strict boss blush. Or so Margie had told her when Sophia had asked why there was always a rush on their floor during lunchtime.

“I have asked Alex if she’d watch Leo tonight,” he said now, swiping that clever tongue over the very spot he had dug his teeth into at the crook of her neck. “She said yes. She also said she was surprised that it had taken us this long to ask her. She
also, also
said she would be keeping tabs, that the minute she hears that Leo’s sleeping better, she expects us to take Izzie and Chiara. Even if we have to rip away the little one from my brother’s hands.”

Sophia laughed. Leandro was so protective of the girls that it took all of Alex’s energy to ensure they had the freedom that little girls needed to run around and express themselves.

On the opposite end of the spectrum was her husband, who praised their little boy for his perfect aim when he threw his bowl of mashed peas across the room like it was a soccer ball. Luca had converted a whole room in his studio into a kid-safe playroom for Leo, who even as a seven-month-old challenged himself into how destructive he could get each day.

“The whole night? Is he ready for it, do you think?”

His fingers laced with hers, he held her tightly. “He is. Are you?”

It was both alarming and a little guilt-inducing to see how easily Luca had taken to fatherhood. He loved doing everything from morning to night without a single complaint. His energy, it seemed, was boundless.

He had watched Leo the whole night for weeks, only bringing him to Sophia for feeding. While Sophia had struggled, Luca had decided it was the perfect cure for his insomnia.

“I know that right now, you know more about his habits than I do, but I thought maybe—”

“Shhh,
bella
. Didn’t we talk about this? You’ve got nothing to feel guilty about. I love looking after him. I love bringing him to visit you here. I love seeing the glow you get when you work your ass off and you make a win in this world. This is our family, Sophia. Our life. This is what works for us. You’ve worked so hard to get here and it’s not like I’m ever going to work a nine-to-five job.”

“Yes, but I’m worried that you’re not getting any time to yourself. And that you’ll probably resent me sometime in the future, or think I’m not—”

“I love you. All of you. The woman who bawled like a baby when she held our son the first time, the woman who told her stepfather, in an uncompromising tone, that she and only she, could run Rossi’s the best, the woman who resurrected Rossi’s from its broken state, the woman who fought for me like a lioness, the woman who cries every time I play the piano.

“And that woman, that is who I fell in love with. That is who made me see a future full of love. Don’t you dare change on me now,
cara mia.

“I’m aware every minute of every day that I have this happiness, this love, this family with you and Leo because you’re who you are. I adore you,
cara mia
, more every day.”

Tears pricked at Sophia’s eyes, a lump in her throat blocking any words from coming out. Even if she was capable of them with her heart swelling in her chest. She turned and buried her face in his chest.

God, she loved him more and more each day, too. And sometimes, the depth of that love, the power it gave him over her, the possibility of her entire life falling apart at his hands...it choked her, too. That fear was becoming less frequent, though.

When Luca loved, as she’d learned in the last three years, it was with such unerring devotion, it was with such absolute giving, that it filled her with awe.

She squeezed him for all she was worth. “Okay, you and your son have to get out of here if I’m going to take the afternoon off.”

Desire glinted in his eyes.
“Si?”

“Yes, but not for what you’re thinking.”

“What, then?”

“Shopping,” she whispered against his mouth. She stroked her tongue into his mouth and pressed herself against him. His erection was a long, hard length against her belly. Darts of desire shot straight down to her pelvis. “I need new lingerie. Lots of red and black lace, I’m thinking, and those stilettos that I hear are new in the market.”

He groaned and leaned his forehead against hers. He was breathing hard as if he’d run a mile. “I guess I should shave, then.”

She ran a hand over his jaw, loving the bristly texture against her palm. “No, no shave,” she whispered at his ear. Laughing, he hugged her one more time and Sophia thought life couldn’t get any better.

* * * * *

In case you missed it, book one in the
LEGENDARY CONTI BROTHERS
duet,
THE SURPRISE CONTI CHILD
is available now!

Uncover the wealthy Di Sione family’s sensational secrets in brand-new eight book series
THE BILLIONAIRE’S LEGACY
beginning with
DI SIONE’S INNOCENT CONQUEST
by Carol Marinelli

Also available this month

Keep reading for an exclusive extract of
SLEEPLESS IN MANHATTAN
the first book in
USA TODAY
bestselling author Sarah Morgan’s enthralling new trilogy,
FROM MANHATTAN WITH LOVE
!

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