Claiming The Virgin's Baby (Mills & Boon Modern), page 18
So they’d returned to Venice to open a tasting room for tourists. Just yesterday, they’d met with an architect to discuss plans for a tasting room and retail store at La Tesora. They might even sponsor next year’s Venice Film Festival, to build the Falconeri brand. It made him nervous, but as his wife had said, the paparazzi were following them anyway—why not take that publicity and turn it into something positive? They were making wines. Instead of keeping it a closely held secret, why not go big, and see if the rest of the world liked their wines too?
It was risky. It involved putting his heart, and his wine, on the line. But in spite of that—or maybe because of it—Alex had never been happier.
In the palazzo’s salon, above the marble fireplace, the painting of his haughty ancestor had been replaced by a beautiful new oil painting of his wife, holding their baby in her arms. After he’d begged, Rosalie had arranged it as a gift for his thirty-sixth birthday. Alex looked up at the painting, at her dark, spectacular beauty, at the glowing warmth of her deep brown eyes.
Then he heard her voice behind him. “There you are.”
Turning, Alex saw his wife, even more beautiful in person. Coming forward, he kissed her. “Is everything ready?”
“Yes. Just in time too.” She gave him a sideways glance. “Are you sure you’re ready for this? There are four now, you know. Four.”
He paused. He’d invited Cesare and Emma and their children to stay not just for dinner, but for an entire weekend. If it went well, Alex and Rosalie and Oliver would go stay for a whole week with them in Lake Como later this summer. “If this works, our children will grow up as best friends.”
“But there will be five children in our house at once,” she pointed out. “All under the age of nine. Are you ready for that?”
“Absolutely,” Alex said.
She hesitated, then watched his face. “And six?” she said slowly. “Could you handle six?”
Alex frowned. “What do you—” Then his expression changed. He breathed, “Are you saying...”
Rosalie nodded shyly. “Around Christmas.”
“A baby!” With a shout, he pulled her into his arms, then kissed her cheeks and eyelids and forehead until she pulled away with a laugh.
“You’re squashing me!” Her eyes grew wistful. “Are you truly happy, Alex?”
“So happy, cara,” he whispered, holding her tenderly. “So very, very happy.” He gave a low laugh. “And I’m happy that this time, we did it the old-fashioned way.”
“This time,” she said huskily, her dark eyes warm. “And all the times to come.”
And as Alex lowered his head to kiss her, he was thinking that six children wasn’t such a bad idea. Because there was only one thing in the world more important than making wine, more important than promises, more important even than land that had been in the family for a hundred years. Only one thing would last forever, until all the stars went dim in the sky.
Love.
Coming next month
BEAUTY AND HER ONE-NIGHT BABY
Dani Collins
Scarlett dropped her phone with a clatter.
She had been trying to call Kiara. Now she was taking in the livid claw marks across Javiero’s face, each pocked on either side with the pinpricks of recently removed stitches. His dark brown hair was longer than she’d ever seen it, perhaps gelled back from the widow’s peak at some point this morning, but it was mussed and held a jagged part. He wore a black eye patch like a pirate, its narrow band cutting a thin stripe across his temple and into his hair.
Maybe that’s why his features looked as though they had been set askew? His mouth was…not right. His upper lip was uneven and the claw marks drew lines through his unkempt stubble all the way down into his neck.
That was dangerously close to his jugular! Dear God, he had nearly been killed.
She grasped at the edge of the sink, trying to stay on her feet while she grew so light-headed at the thought of him dying that she feared she would faint.
The ravages of his attack weren’t what made him look so forbidding and grim, though, she computed through her haze of panic and anguish. No. The contemptuous glare in his one eye was for her. For this.
He flicked another outraged glance at her middle.
“I thought we were meeting in the boardroom.” His voice sounded gravelly. Damaged as well? Or was that simply his true feelings toward her now? Deadly and completely devoid of any of the sensual admiration she’d sometimes heard in his tone.
Not that he’d ever been particularly warm toward her. He’d been aloof, indifferent, irritated, impatient, explosively passionate. Generous in the giving of pleasure. Of compliments. Then cold as she left. Disapproving. Malevolent.
Damningly silent.
And now he was…what? Ignoring that she was as big as a barn?
Her arteries were on fire with straight adrenaline, her heart pounding and her brain spinning with the way she was having to switch gears so fast. Her eyes were hot and her throat tight. Everything in her wanted to scream Help me, but she’d been in enough tight spots to know this was all on her. Everything was always on her. She fought to keep her head and get through the next few minutes before she moved on to the next challenge.
Which was just a tiny trial called childbirth, but she would worry about that when she got to the hospital.
As the tingle of a fresh contraction began to pang in her lower back, she tightened her grip on the edge of the sink and gritted her teeth, trying to ignore the coming pain and hang on to what dregs of dignity she had left.
“I’m in labor,” she said tightly. “It’s yours.”
Continue reading
BEAUTY AND HER ONE-NIGHT BABY
Dani Collins
Available next month
Copyright ©2020 by Dani Collins
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Jennie Lucas, Claiming The Virgin's Baby (Mills & Boon Modern)
