Buch lesen: «The Surprise Conti Child»

TARA PAMMI can’t remember a moment when she wasn’t lost in a book—especially a romance, which was much more exciting than a mathematics textbook. Years later, Tara’s wild imagination and love for the written word revealed what she really wanted to do. Now she pairs Alpha males who think they know everything with strong women who knock that theory and them off their feet!

MILLS & BOON

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Contents

Cover

Introduction

The Legendary Conti Brothers

Title Page

About the Author

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

EPILOGUE

Endpage

Extract

Copyright

PROLOGUE

LEANDRO CONTI.

The name floated, almost reverently, on the lips of the sweaty, gyrating crowd, bringing Alexis Sharpe to a sudden halt in the middle of the dance floor in an exclusive Milanese nightclub she’d only been allowed into because of her new friend, Valentina Conti.

Their friendship had been instantaneous when Alex, backpacking through Italy, had somehow found herself facing the attentions of an enamored but harmless Italian waiter. Tina had interfered and instantly decided that she liked Alex.

Valentina, vivacious, sophisticated and rich, was as different from Alex as Milan was from Brooklyn, but Alex hadn’t been able to resist Tina’s generous heart. The differences hadn’t bothered her either until she had met Tina’s older brother.

Leandro Conti... CEO of Conti Luxury Goods.

Gorgeous, sophisticated Italian magnate.

Brooding. Forbidding. Almost godlike in the way he surveyed the rest of them. As if he existed on a different sphere.

For a twenty-year-old from Brooklyn, and for one who blended into average and dull on a daily basis, that felt very true.

That he was at the nightclub in Milan was as rare as a UFO sighting. Suddenly, even the most raucous party girls pushed their hair back, adjusting dresses poured over hourglass figures.

They were hoping to catch his attention, Alexis realized, with a dawning sense of defeat.

Still, she chanced a glance.

The central glass dance floor suspended above water and the interplay of light created an illusion of a vast space. Yet the edgy elegance faded against the darkly stunning man.

That same hungry, fluttery feeling uncoiled in the pit of Alex’s stomach.

Clad in a black dress shirt and dark blue jeans, the chiseled angles of his face tightly stark, he came to a standstill at the edge of the dance floor. That slate-gray gaze searched, and dismissed each face in turn.

How she longed to make sure he noticed that she, Alexis Sharpe, was a woman. That she couldn’t be dismissed so easily...a compulsion she’d never felt before.

She faced every day that she lacked any special talent, that she’d been overlooked, even by her parents. This vacation to Milan had been a desperate escape she’d grabbed after being rejected at another high-flying Manhattan firm for a job. When she’d realized she wasn’t equipped for a big career like some of her friends, that a menial job at her dad’s health food store comprised her future.

A summer in Italy because you’ve been turned down at another job, her mom had said in that resigned tone of hers. Rewarding failure, are we now?

As if she hadn’t expected anything different of Alex. The words had rankled but Alex needed this. A small rebellion in a life that had made her less than mediocre and thoroughly without merit.

And yet, when it came to Leandro Conti, she felt a reckless freedom, a vicious urge to stand out to him.

Like that time two weeks ago when he had arrived at the dinner with Valentina, their brother, Luca, and their friends on the veranda overlooking the lake.

A soft breeze had rolled in from the lake and Valentina had whipped up a batch of margaritas. Alex had had just one sip and instantly put it down.

Leandro had dragged a chair out next to her, inquired over Valentina’s twisted ankle, and then he’d turned that dark gray gaze on her.

“Other than chiding Tina that she is a big baby,” he mimicked her tone, and Alex cursed herself for losing patience with Valentina that evening a few weeks ago, “how are you enjoying your trip, Ms. Sharpe?”

That accent of his had sent a shiver curling through her spine even as it stiffened at his condescending tone.

Shock that he’d sat down next to her had stolen speech from her. While his gaze had traversed over her messy, high ponytail, her forehead, her nose and, then briefly, her mouth.

A bare five seconds, maybe but Alex had felt the perusal like a caress.

Heat had clamped her cheeks and she gritted her teeth. “Alex, my name is Alex. Why do you refuse to say it?”

His greeting to her had always been unflinchingly polite, as if he was determined to deny her even that small satisfaction.

Valentina, both shrewd and kind, had warned Alex that her older brother wasn’t someone to set her sights on.

Perversely, that warning had only intensified Alex’s attraction to the man.

“Why do you shorten it to a man’s name like that?” And then he had flitted that intractable gaze over the rest of her, her small breasts in her worn-out community college T-shirt, her midriff and her long legs in worn-out capris and her favorite sneakers. Moved up again. Four weeks amid Valentina and her friends dressed at the height of sophistication and it was the first time Alex wished she’d dressed up.

His thinly sculpted upper lip curled and Alex clenched tight inside. “Do you assume you are successful at hiding everything you are?” A taunt that no one else at the table could hear.

Shock buffeted her in waves as she looked inward.

Had she done that? Had she dressed to minimize herself, to willingly lay down in defeat before she could actually be rejected anyway by the world?

She met his gaze with a boldness she didn’t know she had, this man who saw her so clearly. “I have no idea what you mean.”

He sat at a perfectly respectable distance, yet fire uncoiled in every nerve. His warm breath feathered over the rim of her ear. “Little advice from your friend’s brother, Ms. Sharpe. Stop looking at men like that.” Then he looked at her again and those gray irises widened. “Unless you’re fully aware of the weapon you wield.”

He’d left then, without a backward glance.

Leaving Alex seething with humiliation and embarrassment and anger. Only then had she realized that he knew.

He knew that she was attracted to him.

And he had rejected her. Very thoroughly.

But she hadn’t even retorted because it was as if her brain was incapable of higher functions when he was close.

Like now.

The din of the nightclub, the slow jazzy tune that had men and women around her gyrating sensuously, the sweaty crush of the crowd and the heated scent of pheromones...everything faded as she studied him.

He stood about two feet from her, and yet, she was aware of every inch of that hard, lean body, could feel herself gravitate toward him.

As if he was a black hole and she was being sucked toward him.

Hasn’t he made a fool of you enough already, some tiny self-preservation instinct asked.

Alex clutched it like a lifeline, forced her legs to turn away from him.

She didn’t need an arrogant Italian to ruin her hard-won holiday this summer. To make her feel as if somehow she came up short.

She already lived with that feeling every day.

This trip to Italy, this whole summer was supposed to be about escaping, about being someone other than the Alexis who failed at everything, the Alexis who was nothing but a mere shadow of everything her genius brother Adrian had been. About living before she returned to being a disappointment to her parents.

Anxious to get away, she tripped in her four-inch stilettos. A leanly muscled forearm wrapped around her waist, steadying her.

Held tightly against a hard, male chest, her breath knocked out.

“Grazie mille,” she managed one of the two phrases she knew, breathless against the press of the corded muscles just below her breasts.

“You can barely stand in those stilettos. Just because Valentina offers a free pair of Contis doesn’t mean you should wear them.”

Her head jerked up, the gravelly voice tugging at her nerves.

Leandro Conti stared down that aquiline bridge of his nose. Neon blue lighting from the strobes cast blue shadows on his narrow, angular face, teasing her with flashes of his thin-lipped mouth.

The scowl on his brow straightened her spine. “Are you implying that I’m not good enough to wear your exalted designer shoes?”

“I do not imply.”

“You’re a jerk, Mr. Conti.”

His gaze flitted down over her neck, and her body tightly encased in a sheath dress she’d borrowed from Valentina. Even the stretchy fabric couldn’t make much of her nonexistent curves.

But under his stare, Alex felt scorched, marked.

“And you...are playing hard at being a grown-up. Unsuccessfully, I might say.”

“Damned if I do, and if I don’t, with you. At least three men wanted to take me home tonight,” she taunted recklessly, even as hurt pierced her, “so I say take your unwanted, stuffy opinion—”

His fingers tightened over her waist, but never hurting. Though his expression remained coolly remote. Alex wondered if his grip told more truth about him than his words. “Ah... I didn’t realize your goal was so low.

“Did my fashion-genius brother not advise you that those sturdy jeans and neon pink sneakers suit that innocent, American girl-next-door image of yours to perfection? It is the perfect lure.”

His infuriating attitude scraped. But the thing that her juvenile mind focused on was that he remembered her neon pink sneakers.

“Of all the faults I attributed to you, being a snob wasn’t one.”

“What did you attribute to me then?”

“Arrogance. Cynicism. As much feeling as a rock.”

He let her go then, almost shoving her away from him. As if she’d hurt him.

Alex tottered again on the heels. Her ankle throbbed.

His arm shot out again, accompanied by pithy Italian she was glad she couldn’t understand. Her body felt ragged, as if someone else controlled her limbs.

“Should you be drinking when you’re among strangers in a foreign country?”

The sharp, almost caustic tone of his words, fortunately, canceled out the sensuous web she fell into.

Oh, he made her so mad. And bold. And hot. As if every inch of her skin was on fire, hungry, desperate to be quenched with his touch.

“I had one...one glass of wine.” But since she’d barely eaten anything all day, it had gone straight to her head. “Not that I need to explain myself to you. Back off.”

One eyebrow rose in that imperious face. Arrogance dripped from the man even when he didn’t understand her. “Back off?”

His palm was a heated brand on her lower back while he was a fortress of wiry strength in front. Men she’d met at college were boys compared to Leandro Conti. Ergo, her utter lack of sophistication in handling him. “Leave me alone. You’re not my keeper, something in that vein.”

“So do you have a keeper, back home? I don’t think they’re doing a good job of looking after you.”

“What is this? The sixteenth century?” she quipped.

He wasn’t particularly amused but there was a gleam in those gray depths. An infinitesimal softening of that mouth. “You’re not quite the lost little waif I thought, are you?”

She forced a laugh to cover up the tingling she felt all over. He smelled so good, like the most decadent dark chocolate with a bitter edge to it. The one that clung to the senses long after it was consumed. The one you glutted on knowing it was going to settle into your thighs and hips. “Is it impossible for you to speak without being insulting?”

“You will not get sweet words from me, Ms. Sharpe. Barely eighteen and roaming a foreign country, staying with strangers. You might as well hang a Take Me sign around your neck. I’d never let Valentina—”

The barb landing sharp, Alex spoke through gritted teeth. “I’m twenty and I’m not Valentina.”

She’d die before she admitted that, since that first night that Valentina had brought her to the Conti Villa, all she had thought of was him. That it was his dismissive look that’d had her borrowing Valentina’s dress.

That it was his attention, his gaze that she had sought from day one. That the thought of leaving, of going back to her dull existence without knowing his kiss, his touch, haunted her.

“And Valentina and Luca are my friends, even if—”

“If you consider my brother a friend, if you mistake his intent toward you,” he said, as his nostrils flared, and she wondered if he was disgusted or angry or both, “you’re more foolish than I assumed. I should have never let Valentina bring you to the villa.”

“You find my presence so objectionable that you’re avoiding the villa, aren’t you?”

She hadn’t meant to betray that she’d noticed his absence. But he didn’t deny her claim either.

Hurt was a thorn nestled deep into her skin.

“Luca and I...we understand each other perfectly,” she added defiantly.

Although he was right.

A day after she had arrived at their villa, Luca had cornered her twice, teased her, kissed her. Made it clear within an hour that he’d love to make it more. Alex had a feeling Luca would take any woman to bury whatever lingered under that easy charm. And just as easily discard her the next morning.

But she hadn’t been tempted, at all. Alex felt nothing even as she admitted that Luca was sex on legs.

The man in front of her however...he made her feel naked and languid and achy all over, with just one look from those gray depths. For all his grating politeness, he made her feel as if he saw her, the Alexis that wanted to pack a lifetime of adventure into one short summer.

Why, she’d no idea.

“Have you already slept with him then?”

If she’d been a violent person, if the amused glint in his eyes hadn’t lulled her, Alex would’ve slapped him then. Instead, she slowly but firmly pushed his hand away and threw him a disgusted look. “Is this your job then? Follow around the women Luca tangles with and silence them with a dirty payoff—”

“I didn’t intend to offend you,” he offered roughly, and Alexis almost believed that he hadn’t meant to. That it was curiosity rather than judgment in his tone.

She had it bad, if she was justifying his cheap remarks...

“Could there be a different intention?”

“You don’t know Luca like I do. And you are...”

“I’m what, Mr. Conti? The stereotypical American slut? Easy? Weak enough for you to insult without knowing the first thing about me?”

Something almost like regret pinched his mouth. When his gaze flipped open again, a storm danced within it. As if some small part of him was uncoiling and awake. “Luca is a...sucker, as you call it, for your type.”

She raised an eyebrow then. Maybe not so imperious like him but she was proud of herself. “And what type is that?”

He sighed. Satisfaction pounded in Alex’s blood, the little sound of his capitulation a roaring defeat.

“You want your pound of flesh?”

“From the moment I arrived, you’ve looked at me like I was dirt beneath your handmade Italian shoes. I want every drop of blood that you owe me.”

A hint of a smile caressed his lips, tilting one corner of his mouth up. The impact of it was like molten honey through her veins, turning her languorous and sluggish. “You’re young and vivacious, a striking contrast of strength when compared to someone like Valentina. But your eyes, they betray your innocence and your vulnerability. You possess a distinct lack of artifice that is dangerously attractive. For a man like Luca with such jaded taste, you’re like a fresh drink of water that might just sate his unquenchable thirst. It’s enough to rouse a man’s instincts, enough to make him assume, foolishly, that you need to be protected.”

Heartbeat skittering all over the place, Alex stared, stunned. She had thought herself beneath his notice, inadequate to even catch his attention. “Why foolish?” she croaked.

“Because, as I’m realizing slowly, you might look innocent and vulnerable, but you’re not weak.”

“If that’s an apology,” she countered weakly, battling the fluttering feeling in her chest, “then it’s the most convoluted one I’ve ever heard.”

A couple of women, one dressed in black leather and the other a white cocktail dress, both so tight as if they were painted over their voluptuous bodies, passed them huddling Alexis toward him.

Their hushed whispers and awed mutterings were obvious enough for Alex.

Leandro Conti didn’t usually hang around nightclubs. Or parade in public, she realized, in complete contrast to Luca who seemed to go out of his way to engage the media’s attention.

Nor had he found her by accident. Valentina had already left.

Which meant he had come here looking... “Why are you here tonight?” When he frowned, she elaborated. “You barely seem to tolerate the normal pursuits and company like the rest of us.”

“Have you studied me so thoroughly then?”

Alex blushed. How neatly he had trapped her into admitting that she’d been obsessed with him. But she’d never met anyone like him, didn’t know how to hide her fascination.

His hand stayed on her elbow, separating her from the crowd. “My grandfather is convinced you’re a gold digger out to get her claws into Luca. I’ve been ordered to make sure you don’t succeed.”

Her jaw fell open. Disbelief slowly cycled to righteous fury. And here she’d thought he’d come for her. “Go to hell,” she whispered and took off.

Hot tears prickled behind her eyes and she resolutely locked them away. The arrogant jerk wasn’t worth a single tear.

Somehow, she managed to only delve deeper into the mazelike nightclub, the sexy, almost hip-hop-like music chasing her. One minute, she was pushing through the throng, and next, she was looking at a lushly carpeted, quiet corridor with three unmarked doors.

Cursing, Alex turned around and banged into the one man she never wanted to see again.

Why was he following her?

“I told you to go—”

His fingers on her wrist viselike, he slid a card at the door and tugged her inside. “You’re making a scene.”

The door closed behind them with a finality that made Alex jump. But the stinging response that rose to her mouth died.

It was a VIP suite. Eyes wide, Alex studied it, a furious flush rising up through her neck.

Floor-to-ceiling glass paneling made up the far wall of the plush suite, giving a perfect view into the dance floor and bar on the two levels.

Two lush couches stood against the far wall, adjacent to a small refrigerator. And on the other wall was a giant plasma screen that was currently turned off.

Gut swooping, she turned. “I don’t think we should be here. This area...”

“I own this club, Ms. Sharpe.”

Laughter, more sarcastic than warm, gurgled out of her. A villa in Lake Como, a nightclub in Milan, and a growing luxury goods collection that celebrities were crazy about—the Contis might as well be from a different planet. “Of course you do. Have you had men watching me all this time?”

The thick swath of his eyelashes shadowed his expression. “Valentina always has protection.”

“And you told them to keep an eye on the American gold digger/slut, too.”

“It was for your protection.”

“And who protects me from you?”

The dim, somehow still classy purple lighting in the room didn’t quite hide his flinch. But she was far too furious to wonder why.

“What do you intend? To lock me up here? To have me neatly packed away in one of your jets and have me dumped on the other side of Atlantic? To send me off silently into the night?” No, he wasn’t allowed to dismiss her like this. Not when she felt so weak-kneed and aware of him. “You know your brother is a fast worker. What if I already have him in my clutches? Maybe Luca and I’ve already, thoroughly, f—”

“Basta!” he muttered, before his hand descended on her mouth while the other one locked her against the wall.

The rough, almost possessive grip he had on her hip branded her. But it was his gaze that held her rooted.

A flash of temper? A spark of emotion? Whatever it was, it lit his usually droll gaze.

He wasn’t impervious to her.

Hot, reckless energy pounded through her, making her thrum with excitement. “You can think it, but I can’t say it, Leandro?” She drawled her words, adding a lazy taunt. “At least, with Luca, I know I’ll have a good time without insults.”

Gray irises widened, bleeding into the dark black around.

The quiet room shrank around the two of them, an explosive current springing into life. The masculine scent of him was a whiplash against her senses, his fingertips pressing into her flesh.

Yet all Alex felt was charged up.

“Do you know what you so dangerously provoke? Are you prepared for it?”

A wealth of meaning reverberated in his statement and it lay between them, a grenade ticking away.

Drunk on the challenge in his molten gaze, Alex couldn’t back down. “I don’t care how wealthy you—”

His tapered fingers squeezed her palm gently. “I don’t agree with my grandfather, bella.”

“No?”

“No.”

“Then why did you come tonight?”

Tension filled the infinitesimal silence before he answered, “Luca told me he picked up a drunk Tina and couldn’t locate you. I don’t like the idea of you being out at night in Milan alone.”

“You could’ve asked anyone else to do that. Your security team...you didn’t have to come yourself. You could—”

“What you’re hoping for, it will never happen, Alexis.”

“You called me Alexis,” she said simply, letting the warmth of his body float her away.

His head cocked to the side, and he rubbed her jaw.

Shock...he was shocked that he had said her name. The fingers that had been brushing her cheek pulled away. “Come, it is time for you to leave.”

It was as if he’d slammed a door in her face.

He wasn’t talking just about the nightclub or Milan, but Italy. He was telling her it was time for her to leave. Panic flared through her, but beneath it was a realization that sent her heart slamming against her rib cage. All these days...

“You want me,” she accused. “You made me feel like I was the only one who felt it, as if I was gauche enough to read it all wrong—”

In a near-violent movement that sent her breath bursting through her, Leandro captured her wrists. Stilling her body from leaning into him. “This is a mistake.”

Yanking her hands away from his grip, Alexis pressed her body against his.

A jagged sound wrenched out from his lips, throaty and low. Moving her hands up his chest, Alex tilted her head back. Every inch of his face was frozen in some kind of torturous agony. And she didn’t intend to let him win.

She buried her mouth in the opening of his dress shirt. Velvet-smooth and hot, his skin burned against her lips. “Kiss me, just once. Show me what you feel, just once.”

One hand snuck into her hair. Her scalp prickled as he tugged her up. Dark need pinched his features and Alex shivered, suddenly, finally, understanding the depth of the need he hid under that infuriatingly indifferent mask.

Anticipation roped with tension set her nerves on fire.

“You do not know who you’re playing with.”

She jerked back. “Am I so beneath you then?”

He shook his head. But the shadows didn’t leave his eyes. “You’re too young.”

“I’m old enough to know what I want.”

Flicking her tongue out, she tasted him. His hands vined tight around her, flattening her nonexistent breasts against his chest, knocking the breath out of her. “You think I’ll stop at one meager kiss?” Pure need punctured every word. “You think to play with my desire and walk away after a chaste embrace, to taunt me like you do these boys with your innocence?”

His warning only incensed her desire even more. “I’m not the one afraid, Leandro.”

A volley of Italian fell from his mouth as she pressed her lower body to his. The ridge of his erection against her belly made her quiver.

His fingers descended on her hips, hurting her with their grip to keep her unmoving. “I will not touch my brother’s seconds.”

“We shared one kiss before I walked away. I’m not interested in Luca.”

“You are the first woman in the world to claim that.” Something flashed in his gaze even as his long fingers drew maddening circles over her wrists. “Which is why he likes you so much.”

If her heart beat any faster, it would rip out of her chest. But still, she risked. And in this spine-tingling risk she took with Leandro, Alex felt more secure, more wanted than she’d ever felt in her life. “And you?”

It was as if all the walls he kept up fell down in dust and a primitive hunger filled his gaze. “I feel need, Alexis. When I look at you...all I feel is desire.”

Even then, it was she that lifted her head, reached up and pressed her mouth to his. She, who had no experience with men, that wrapped her hands around his nape and refused to let go.

She that touched her mouth to his.

Soft and hot and hard at the same time, his mouth was a gateway to heaven and hell. Every nerve ending quivering, every instinct driving her forth, she ran the tip of her tongue tentatively, slowly, over that cruelly sculpted lower lip.

With a growl that made her belly tighten, finally he relented. Finally, he touched that hard, harsh mouth to hers.

Lights exploded behind Alex’s eyes as if the world was a kaleidoscope of sensations and textures.

Masculine and demanding, he parted her lips and pushed in.

With his tongue and teeth, and with an expertise that made her sex shockingly wet, Leandro devoured her.

There was no playfulness, no seduction to his kiss, just as his words. It was a full-on sensual assault that left no doubt about where it was leading.

His hands skimmed everywhere—her breasts and the boldly taut nipples, her hips, the curves of her buttocks—before they crept under her dress and pulled it up.

Long fingers hitched her thigh around his hips until the heat of her was intimately pressed against the rigid length of him.

Every inch of her vibrated with excitement, desire, need, every inch of her thrummed at the sensation of power.

When he pushed her against the wall and covered her breasts with his hands, Alex whimpered.

When his fingers reached her wet core—alien and intrusive, her gaze flew to his, shocked and aroused and oh-so-willing. Her mouth dried at the stark need in those gray eyes.

Groaning, she came off the wall like a bow when he curled a finger inside her just so, driving a fork of heat through her pelvis.

When he flicked the rim of her ear with his tongue, and told her what he was going to do to her, Alex buried her mouth in his neck and gave herself over.

To the man, to the moment, to the incredible sensation of being wanted.