The Marciano Love-Child. Melanie Milburne
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same ink-black hair and olive skin, the same-shaped mouth—although Matthew’s was still soft with the innocence of childhood.
‘I will give you a day or two to think it over.’ His deep voice invaded the private torture of her tangled thoughts.
She got to her feet in one abrupt movement. ‘I don’t need two—’
He held up one and then two long fingers against her mouth. ‘Two days, Scarlett,’ he said, holding her gaze. ‘Think about it.’
Scarlett swallowed as her body remembered how intimately those fingers had known every pleasure spot she possessed. How she had felt that first frisson of passionate response when he had stroked the silken folds of her femininity for the first time—how she had quivered inside and out when he had explored her so thoroughly and so devastatingly with his fingers, his mouth, his tongue, and the hot, pulsing hard length of him.
He lifted his fingers, and she ran her tongue over where he had been, her stomach doing a sudden free-fall when she saw his eyes flick to her mouth.
And stay there.
The air tightened around them, as if an invisible clinging vine had silently insinuated itself into the room and was now pulling them closer and closer together.
Scarlett couldn’t breathe; she wasn’t game enough to draw in a breath in case he heard the betraying flutter of her pulse beneath her skin.
She stood very still as he reached out again, this time with just the index finger of his right hand, brushing it against the softness of her bottom lip, his eyes still locked on her mouth. The temptation to sweep her tongue over and around his finger was suddenly overwhelming. She had to clamp her teeth together to stop herself taking him in her mouth and sucking on him, as she had done so many times before.
And not just his finger…
His eyes came back to hers, a tiny frown pulling at the dark slashes of his eyebrows, the line of his mouth losing its inherent cynicism for just a brief moment.
‘I had forgotten how very soft your mouth is,’ he said in an even deeper, more gravelly tone than he’d used before.
Scarlett rolled her lips together, more to stop them buzzing with sensation than to draw his attention back to her mouth—but his eyes dipped again, and this time she felt the heat of his gaze like a brand on her lips.
‘I-I think it might be time for you to leave,’ she scratched out through her too-tight throat. ‘I have nothing further to say to you. I don’t want the work. You’ll have to find someone else.’
He looked down at her for a long moment. ‘I am not quite ready to leave, Scarlett. There are still some things I would like to discuss with you.’
Panic prickled at her insides as she stood stock-still in front of him. She couldn’t step back because her desk was in the way, and stepping forward was out of the question, with the possibility of brushing against him to get past.
She was trapped.
‘Four years ago you told me you were pregnant,’ he said into the silence.
Scarlett felt her throat tighten even further, but somehow she managed to maintain eye contact with him. ‘Yes…yes I did.’
‘You also told me the child was mine.’
A glitter of anger lit her unblinking gaze. ‘Yes, I did.’
‘Did you go through with the pregnancy?’ he asked after an infinitesimal pause.
She kept her gaze locked on his. ‘At the risk of repeating myself—yes, I did.’
His expression remained as unreadable as a book with the pages glued together. ‘Does your child have contact with its father?’ he asked.
She frowned at him, angry at the way he was crossexamining her. ‘What’s with all these questions, Alessandro? You were the one who insisted the child couldn’t possibly be yours. Why the sudden interest now? Have you suddenly changed your mind and decided I wasn’t lying to you after all?’
He gave a little shrug of insouciance. ‘No, of course I have not changed my mind. There is no way I could be the father of your child.’
Scarlett sent him a caustic glare. ‘So you think.’
‘I do not think, Scarlett,’ he said with a granite-hard stare. ‘I know it for a fact.’
She stood before him, silently fuming at his arrogance, her simmering hatred for him threatening to spill over.
His mouth tilted into a sardonic smile as his eyes roved over her lazily. ‘Anyway, you do not look as if you have had a child. You are as slim and attractive as you were four years ago.’
She gave him a withering look. ‘Thanks for insulting every mother out there who’s put on a bit of weight after childbirth.’
‘I did not mean to insult other mothers.’
‘No, you’re here to insult me,’ she shot back. ‘You can keep your contract, Alessandro Marciano. I don’t want anything to do with a man who thinks I am a liar and a cheat and a whore.’
‘So even after all this time you are still determined to have me nominated as the sire of your offspring, are you?’ he asked with a curl of his lip. ‘Why is that, Scarlett—because the other possible candidates would not pay up?’
She ground her teeth as she glared at him. ‘There were no other candidates, and you damn well know it.’
The cynicism in the line of his mouth increased. ‘You do not like admitting you got it wrong by singling me out, do you, Scarlett? You thought you had landed yourself a meal ticket for the rest of your life when you met me. I wondered at the time why you had fallen into bed with me so quickly. It all made sense, of course, when you told me your news. You needed financial security, but you got it wrong in selecting me.’
She clenched her fists by her sides. ‘I loved you, Alessandro. I really loved you. I would have given anything to have spent the rest of my life with you, but not for the reasons you’re assuming.’
‘Love?’ He snorted. ‘I wonder if you would still have claimed to love me if I’d told you at the beginning of our affair that I was not interested in having children—ever.’
‘Why didn’t you?’
Something moved in his gaze, like a shifting shadow. It was there one second, gone the next.
‘We had only been seeing each other for three months,’ he said. ‘I was going to tell you within the next week or two, as I was concerned that you would have hopes for a future of marriage and babies with me. I realise it is a lot to ask of a woman, to relinquish her right to have a child with the man she loves.’
‘So you do acknowledge that I loved you?’
The cynical slant to his mouth returned. ‘I believe you loved the idea of marrying a multi-millionaire. Nothing awakens love so much as money, I have found.’
‘Why are you so against having children?’ she asked, still frowning. ‘I thought all Italians loved children—having a loving family is everything to them, not to mention having an heir.’
‘That has never been in my plans,’ he said. ‘I have other things I want to do with my life. Being tied down with a wife and children holds no appeal at all.’
Scarlett searched his face, wondering what had led him to such an intractable stance, but his expression was inscrutable.
‘I will see you in two days’ time, Scarlett, to discuss the terms of the contract.’ He handed her a card with his business details on it. ‘My private phone number is on the other side, if you should wish to contact me before then, otherwise I will see you at the Arlington Hotel on Thursday at ten a.m.’
Scarlett looked down at the gold-embossed card with its