One Last Night (13 page)

Giorgio was not sure what Maya felt for him but he was almost certain it wasn't love. In the beginning she had been captivated by his wealth and lifestyle and the love she had spoken of back then seemed more a star-struck variety than the real thing. After the first year, she had stopped telling him she loved him, which more or less proved her feelings had not been genuine.

He was ashamed to admit he hadn't been in love with her when he asked her to marry him. It had been a convenient marriage for him, a way to secure his future. His world had been rocked by his father's accident and he had done what had been expected of him by marrying a suitable wife to continue the proud heritage he had been born into.

It had only been recently that he had thought long and hard about his feelings for Maya. They had been changing like the seasons: warm and cool, hot and cold. The experiences they had gone through had clouded things for him. He had shied away from the overwhelming emotions Maya demonstrated at times. It was the pattern of a lifetime and it had taken her leaving him for him to see it. But he knew that without the pressure of producing an heir and fulfilling everyone else's expectations he and Maya were amazingly compatible. Not just in bed, although that was wonderful and he constantly delighted in her body and how it made him feel, but it was more than that, much more. She had been a wonderful support to him through the agonising process of his grandfather's illness. She had sat for long hours reading to Salvatore and then, when she was not with him, she was at home at the villa, making sure things were in order when Giorgio got home exhausted from trying to juggle all the things he had to do. She quietly and diligently backed him up, offering comfort when he needed it, but also maintaining her new-found independence, not allowing him to dominate her, as he had done in the past.

Maya's voice interrupted his reverie. 'Do you think we should find out the sex of the baby on the next ultrasound?'

'Do you want to know or be surprised?' Giorgio asked.

'Haven't we had enough surprises?' she asked with a wry look.

He smiled and, leaning forward, pressed a soft kiss to the middle of her forehead. 'You continually surprise me, Maya,' he said and moved his lips down the side of her face until he got to her lips.

She moistened them in preparation, her eyes flaring with reawakened need. He lowered his head slowly, inch by inch, taking his time, waiting for that betraying little murmur of pleasure she gave when his mouth finally settled on hers.

No one could kiss like Giorgio, Maya thought. Not that she'd had a truckload of experience, but enough to know that when he kissed her there was no way it could ever be described as chaste and platonic. He kissed with sultry, steamy purpose, his need erotically apparent with every thrust and glide of his tongue inside her mouth.

When he moved his mouth to rediscover her breasts her back lifted off the bed in delight. She felt her nipples tighten to twin points of pleasure as his hot moist mouth enveloped each of them in turn. His hands cupped her feminine mound, teasing her with the so-close-but-not-close-enough presence of his clever, artful fingers.

She whimpered but he kept her hungry for him, holding her in his power, as she had done just minutes before.

Just when she thought she could stand it no longer, he gently but deftly turned her over onto her stomach, coming between her spread legs from behind in the most erotic position of all. There was a primal, earthy quality to it, a raw urgency that made her blood race like rocket fuel in her veins.

He entered her in one slick possessive thrust, a dominant surge of his body that spoke of his alpha status and her feminine submission to it. It was exciting, it was enthralling, it was everything she had hoped it would be. He had her coming apart in seconds, her whole body quaking with the tremors of release, until she was sweaty and sated, her flesh singing and tingling all over.

He waited until she had finished before he emptied himself, the action of his body pumping from behind with the brush of his hips against her sensitive buttocks making her feel a ripple of reaction all over again. She heard him groan deep in the back of his throat, signalling the supreme monumental scale of his pleasure.

Did he have this level of pleasure with anyone else? she wondered. The thought was unwelcome and intrusive, like a rat suddenly appearing under the table just as important dinner guests were to arrive. She couldn't make it go away; it nibbled at the edges of her consciousness, making her ill with the thought of how Giorgio could so easily have his cake at home and any number of gateaux on the side.

But how could she know without asking, and how could she ask without revealing how much it mattered to her?

WHEN Maya woke the following morning she found Giorgio's side of the bed empty, which wasn't unusual since he was an early riser, but a sixth sense told her something was amiss.

She pushed back the covers and, slipping on a bathrobe, padded down the stairs. She heard him speaking on the phone from his study, which again was not unusual, even at this early hour, for he had business concerns all over the world in several different time zones. What was unusual was the way he was deliberately keeping his voice down, even though she could tell he was blisteringly angry.

He was speaking in English and it was undoubtedly to a woman.

As Maya listened her heart cramped with each word that was spoken, her fragile hopes of happiness dying an excruciatingly painful death.

'I told you never to call me on this number,' Giorgio was saying. 'Our association, as you call it, is over. I have other priorities now.'

The person on the other end of the line must have said something in return for he paused for a moment before continuing in the same harsh tone, 'I will deny each and every one of your claims. You have no evidence. Everyone will see it as nothing more than a money-making exercise on your part.'

Maya had heard enough. She slipped away and went into the kitchen, in desperate need of a glass of water to soothe her aching throat.

It was there that she saw the morning paper.

It was emblazoned with the features page headline: Hotel Billionaire Giorgio Sabbatini Caught Out in Tell-all Exclusive by Lingerie Model Mistress.

Maya's hand shook as she turned the pages to the section where there was a photograph of Giorgio and the lingerie model, called Talesha Barton, captured in a cosy-looking tryst in a nightclub. Talesha was everything Maya was not. She was buxom and tall, dark-haired and exotic-looking with wide almond-shaped eyes and a mouth that was impossibly full and sexy.

The tell-all story was full of saucy details of how the part-time model had met the estranged Giorgio Sabbatini and enjoyed a hot night of passion with him in a secret hideaway. 'He is an amazing lover,' the model was quoted as saying. 'He can go all night without a break. It was the best sex of my life.'

Maya swallowed against a tide of nausea and closed the paper, her whole body shaking with anger and despair and indescribable hurt.

Giorgio came into the room just as she turned from the bench. 'Maya?'

She threw the paper at him, the pages flying like sheets off a clothes line, landing all over the floor at his feet. 'You bastard,' she bit out through clenched teeth. 'You cheating, two-timing bastard.'

He frowned darkly. 'Now, wait just one damn minute,' he said, stepping over the debris of the paper on the floor. 'You surely don't think any of this rubbish is true, do you?'

Maya was close to hysteria. She could feel it bubbling up inside her; the pain and hurt and sense of betrayal was so acute it had nowhere to go but burst out of her. She felt so hurt, so crushed by his perfidy. And now it was all out in public, what he had been up to and who he had been up to it with. How would she ever hold her head up again? Would people always be looking at her and murmuring about what a naive fool she was to think he wouldn't return to his playboy form as soon as her back had been turned? How long was she to put up with this? Would there ever be a time when she would be free of this torture?

'How could you sleep with that…that…tart?' she asked.

His expression became stony. 'You are assuming I did actually sleep with her when you have nothing to base that on, other than what you have read in the paper. She was paid a lot of money for that fairy story and I swear to God that's all it is.'

'Oh, please.' She rolled her eyes in disdain. 'You were photographed with your arms around each other.'

'If I recall, so were you with your "date",' he returned.

Maya stiffened her shoulders. 'I told you nothing happened. Someone took a photo that looked far more intimate than it was.'

'Likewise,' he said. 'Although I admit I did go out with her a couple of times and I considered taking it further but I decided against it. I let the press make what they wanted of it at the time. I was angry at you for leaving me so I didn't really care if you read about it at that point. Now it is different.'

'Because you want it all, don't you, Giorgio?' she said bitterly. 'You want the obedient, compliant little wife at home nurturing your children while you have your bit on the side, just like your father did.'

His jaw went rock-hard and his lips white-tipped at the corners. 'Keep my father out of this,' he said. 'My mother forgave him a long time ago for his fall from grace. It is their business, not ours. And he is no longer alive to defend himself, in any case.'

'Your mother was a fool to take him back,' Maya said. 'But maybe, like you with me, he didn't give her a choice. Did he blackmail her back into his life? Or was it the fact that she had three young sons to bring up all on her own that prevented her from leaving?'

Giorgio raked his hand through his hair. 'You have no idea what it was like for them. They lost their little girl, their much adored only daughter. It broke them. My mother grieved and grieved until she was so heavily sedated by the family doctor she couldn't function. I had to step in so many times to help look after my younger brothers, to feed them and bathe them and put them to bed when the nanny left without notice over something my mother had said in a moment of despair.' He stopped briefly to draw breath.

'My father couldn't cope. He had a hotel business to run. My grandfather and grandmother did what they could but no one could do anything to take away the pain. I lived with the fear of losing my mother, if not my father as well. I was convinced they didn't want to live any more. I had to do everything in my power to keep them strong, to keep the family together.'

Maya listened without interrupting. It seemed that each time he spoke about his baby sister he told her a little bit more of that tragic time. His gradual opening up to her helped her to understand more about his emotional distancing, the way he found excessive displays of emotion so off-putting. He'd had to be strong for everyone; he'd had to keep his emotions in check while everyone around him was falling apart.

'And then finally the cloud started to lift,' he continued. 'In an ironic way, I think it was my father's affairs that snapped my mother out of her depression. She knew she had to carry on, to do what she could to rebuild their relationship, which had been so happy before Chiara died.'

'I'm sorry,' Maya said softly. 'I didn't understand how hard it was, for you particularly. You were so young to be looking after everyone like that and feeling so responsible for them all.'

He looked at her with a grim expression on his face. 'Marriage takes a lot of work, Maya,' he said. 'Even good ones can have bad things happen to them. It is worse for people who live in the spotlight as everything we go through is reported in the press, often incorrectly.'

She eyeballed him, challenging him to tell the truth and nothing but the truth. 'Did you sleep with that model?'

It was a moment before he spoke.

A long moment.

'I am ashamed to say I fully intended to,' he answered. 'But when it came to the point of doing so I decided it wasn't the best course of action. Clearly, that ticked off Talesha Barton so her little payback was to have my reputation besmirched and my marriage put on the line for the second time.'

Relief made Maya feel giddy. She believed him because he had been honest, almost too honest.

He had admitted how close he had been to having an affair, which, on reflection, she realised he'd had every right to have, considering they were officially separated at the time. 'Are you going to do anything about the story she gave to the press?' Maya asked. 'Will you ask for a retraction of it or take legal action against her or the paper?'

'I will get my legal team on to it,' he said. 'The sooner this is nipped in the bud the better. If the woman in question calls you, do not talk to her. Just hang up the phone. This is about money; it's not about anything else.'

A little bit like our marriage, Maya thought sadly.

He came over and tipped up her chin with his finger. 'I can't promise you the press won't target me again, or that some other woman I once dated before I met you won't see a chance to make money out of it and do so. All I can promise is that I will look after you and our baby, to build the family we have both always wanted.'

Maya decided to put herself out on an emotional limb. 'If I was to lose this baby, will you still want our marriage to continue?'

He frowned as if the question annoyed him. After all, it wasn't just the baby he wanted. He wanted to keep his fortune under his control and a costly divorce was hardly going to allow that.

'There are plenty of happy marriages around without children,' he said at last. 'Anyway, we have time on our side. We can have another round of IVF or even consider adoption.'

'Isn't love a prerequisite for a happy and fulfilling marriage?' she asked, stepping a little further out on that precarious emotional limb.

His eyes gave nothing away; they were dark and unfathomable. 'Like this baby, it will be a bonus if it happens,' he said. 'You claimed to love me once; perhaps you will find it possible to do so again, but maybe with a little more maturity this time.'

'You think I wasn't mature enough to know what love was back then?' Maya asked, frowning at him.

'You were blindsided, Maya,' he said. 'You said it yourself. What girl could resist the designer clothes, the holidays, the luxury villas and hotels?'

'Oh, for God's sake,' she said in frustration. 'I only said that to annoy you. I wasn't the least bit impressed by your wealth, well, maybe just a little bit in the beginning. I fell in love with you, not your money or your lifestyle. I just wanted to be with you, for who you were as a person.'

He looked at her for a heartbeat or two. 'Do you even know who that person is now?' he asked.

Maya looked into his eyes. 'I would if you would let me,' she said softly.

'I want to be the sort of person who can make you happy, Maya,' he said, touching her cheek again. 'But I am not good at showing emotion. I don't feel comfortable leaving myself open to possible hurt.'

'But don't you see you can't go through life not loving or needing anyone?' she asked. 'What sort of parent will you be if you can't show how you feel?'

'If you are suggesting that I will not love this child, then you don't know me at all,' he said. 'I would give my life for it, even now.'

'And what about me?' she dared to ask. 'Would you give your life for me?'

He took her by the upper arms and held her firmly, his eyes tethering hers with smouldering purpose. 'I have already given up my life for you, Maya,' he said. 'I have agreed to resume our failing marriage, haven't I? I could have walked away and started anew with someone else, but I didn't.'

'You know that's not what I am asking,' she said, holding his gaze as steadily as she could.

'Sometimes you ask too much, Maya,' he said, dropping his hold as if she had grown too hot to handle. 'I have things I need to see to-some business. I will be away for most of the week.'

Maya frowned. 'You're going away?'

He gave her an impatient look. 'I have a large corporation to control, Maya, you know that. My grandfather's death has intensified the workload. I have meetings in three different countries and long hours of paperwork and figures to trawl through.'

She dragged at her lip with her teeth, not sure whether she should reveal her vulnerability to him or not, but in the end she went for broke. 'But what about me?' she asked. 'I don't want to stay here by myself. Can't I come with you?'

His expression became shuttered. 'I think it is best that you stay here where you are close to the doctor you know and feel comfortable with. Dr Rossini is just minutes away if you feel worried about anything. Besides, the travelling might be too much for you. I am going to be locked away in meetings, in any case. I won't have time to spend with you.'

Maya felt hurt that he obviously didn't want her to be with him. 'Fine.' She folded her arms, not even caring that her bottom lip pushed out in a pout. 'No doubt I'll find something to do to entertain myself.'

'Maya, the press attention here is bad enough,' he said. 'But they are like jackals after a meal everywhere else. I don't want you to be harassed by them.'

'I can handle the press,' she said, glaring at the newspaper that was still lying all over the floor.

His brows moved together. 'I don't want you speaking to the press under any circumstances; do you understand?'

She raised her chin and gave him an arch look. 'Are you worried I might sell out to them and tell the truth about how our reconciliation really came about?'

Anger flared in his dark gaze. 'If you do that you will regret it, Maya,' he said. 'I will make sure of it. You will not just be hurting me but my family as well. Do you really want to risk everything for a cheap shot at me?'

Maya held his burning gaze for as long as she could, but in the end she had to lower her eyes from his to stare at the floor. 'Of course I'm not going to speak to the press,' she said on an expelled breath. 'Surely you know me better than that.'