Michelle Reid – The Italians: Franco, Dominic and Valentino: The Man Who Risked It All / The Moretti Arrangement / Valentino's Pregnancy Bombshell (страница 11)

‘Did she send a dessert?’

He’d done it again—blocked her from mentioning his father. ‘A couple of truly delicious Maritozzi buns. Franco, about your father—’

He withdrew his hands from hers. ‘Since when have you been Salvatore’s biggest fan?’ he demanded impatiently. ‘He treated you like a lowlife when we were together.’

‘I’m not his adored son.’

Flattening out his lips, he shut his eyes again.

In bubbling frustration Lexi sat back in her seat, then instantly sat forward again: no matter what the doctor had advised, or what Franco himself preferred, she found she still could not let the subject rest.

She reached out to retrieve his hand. ‘Francesco, please just listen—’

‘Franco,’ he interrupted. ‘I know you are mad with me when you call me Francesco.’

Lowering her gaze to his hand, Lexi watched her own fingers drawing patterns on his palm the way she’d used to do when they talked. Quite suddenly she wanted to break down and weep. They’d been together for six months. For two of those months they had been inseparable. For the other four they’d hated each other’s guts.

‘And when you extend that to Francesco Tolle,’ he continued, giving a good mimic of her cut-crystal English accent, ‘I know I am in really deep trouble.’

‘You stopped calling me Lexi altogether,’ Lexi recalled dully. ‘I became Alexia—and if you think my accent was cold, yours was made of ice picks.’

‘I was angry.’

‘I know you were.’

‘I was wildly in love with you but we—’

She stood up so fast Franco had no chance to react. By the time he’d dragged his heavy eyelids open it was like looking at a stranger—an achingly beautiful but distant stranger.

‘I’d better be going. I need to find somewhere to stay.’

‘Pietro will have reserved a suite for you at a hotel close to the hospital.’ Aware that he was slurring his words now, as the drugs they’d fed into him began to drag him back down, Franco decided to let her escape. ‘He will be waiting to drive you there.’

‘I’ll see you tomorrow,’ she mumbled, and was gone before he could say anything else.

Releasing a sigh, Franco let his eyelids droop again and saw the other Lexi. The younger one, sitting cross-legged on the bulkhead of his sailing yacht, Miranda, relaying some convoluted story to him about an incident that had happened on the film set of the movie she’d come to Cannes to promote. She hadn’t had a clue that she was blocking his view of the open sea in front of them. She hadn’t cared that a stiff warm breeze was tangling her hair into spiralling knots, or that the tiny red bikini she’d been wearing was revealing more than it should.

And her innocence had shone out of her like a tantalising aura. She’d had no clue that what shone in him was deep, hot and very physical.

She’d liked him.

Franco threw an arm up to cover his eyes and for once wished they’d stung him with more sedatives, because he did not want to look any harder at the sexual predator he’d been then. The cabin beneath her, where he’d lived during that long summer, had already been set up ready for her seduction, and he’d been burning with anticipation while she talked.

A seduction that had taken them from Cannes to Nice, Cap Ferrat, Monte Carlo, then San Remo—

San Remo …

Franco shifted onto his side and didn’t care that it hurt him like hell. Reaching for the bell, he waited for the nurse to come to him. ‘I want this cage removed and these tubes taken out. I want a couple of pillows and I want my mobile phone,’ he reeled off with grim intent.

‘But, signor—’

‘Or I will get up and get them for myself.’

He did not get his first two requests, but he was reluctantly handed his mobile phone. ‘Grazie,’ he murmured, allowing the nurse to fuss around him, placing the pillows beneath his shoulders, mainly because he felt too damn weak to do the job for himself.

Lexi slept like a log. She had not expected to sleep at all, but the moment her head had come to rest on the pillow exhaustion had taken her out like a light, and she’d awoken this morning feeling so invigorated, but baffled as to why she should feel like that.

Or maybe she did not want to look too deeply into why, she mused with a frown, picking up the phone and ordering some breakfast, before quickly showering while she waited for it to arrive. She was starving. Despite telling Franco that she’d eaten his dinner, she’d been too stressed to do more than pick at Zeta’s delicious dishes. Now her stomach was growling as she walked across the elegant sitting room of the vast suite Pietro had reserved for her and went to take a quick look out of the window to check the weather before deciding what she was going to wear.

Not that her choices were many. Her weekend bag revealed a frustrating lack of common sense when she’d packed it so hastily back in London. Nothing in it was appropriate for hot and sunny Livorno in September; and she discovered she had not even packed any shoes.

A knock sounded on the suite door as she walked out of the bedroom wearing a long-sleeved stripy tunic top and a pair of black leggings tucked into black ankle boots. Assuming Room Service was delivering her breakfast, she opened the door—only to fall back two steps in shock.

There was no mistaking that Franco had been forged in his father’s image. Dressed impeccably as always in a dark business suit, and in his mid-fifties, Salvatore Tolle was still a very attractive if dauntingly austere man.

‘Buongiorno, Alexia,’ he greeted her soberly.

‘B-buongiorno, signor,’ she returned in a voice made breathless by surprise.

‘May I come in?’

Without saying another word Lexi stepped to one side in silent invitation for him to enter the suite. Nerves made her stay by the door once she’d closed it again. As she watched him take up a stance in the middle of the room she tried to anticipate what his visit could be about.

He took a few moments to glance around her accommodation. ‘You are comfortable here?’

She pleated her hands together at her front. ‘Yes, of course … thank you.’

He nodded his silver-threaded dark head. ‘I have spoken to Francesco,’ he announced abruptly. ‘He called me last night from his bed.’

‘Oh!’ Lexi instantly cheered up. ‘I’m so glad he did that. I was upset when I heard he had—’

‘Your concern on my behalf is touching, but I would prefer it if you resisted the urge to express it,’ Salvatore interrupted in a cool voice.

It felt like having a door slammed shut in her face.

She should be used to it, Lexi told herself. The few conversations she’d ever had with Salvatore had always felt like that.

‘Though I do thank you, Alexia,’ he then surprised her by adding, ‘for urging my son to—soften his attitude towards me.’

‘N-no problem.’ Having been stopped from saying what she would have liked to say to him, Lexi left her response at that.

Another knock sounded on the door, and this time it was her breakfast. Glad of the diversion, because Salvatore had always scared the life out of her, Lexi allowed the waiter entry and watched mutely as he crossed the room to place the tray down on a small table set by the window.

‘Can—can I offer you a cup of tea?’ she enquired politely, once the waiter had left them again.

‘Grazie, no,’ Salvatore responded. ‘However, please—sit down and enjoy your breakfast, ‘he insisted.

Lexi sat down at the small table, but the thought of eating or drinking anything in front of him just closed up her throat.

‘Please tell me why you’re here,’ she urged, hearing the strain in her own voice. ‘It’s not Franco, is it? He hasn’t—?’

‘Francesco is fine,’ came the quick assurance. ‘If fine accurately describes the injuries he endured,’ he added bleakly. ‘I have come here directly from visiting with him.’

‘Oh, that’s …’ Good, Lexi had been about to say, but held it back by biting down on her tense lower lip.

‘Francesco does not know I am here, you understand?’ he informed her then. ‘He has forbidden me from approaching you, so my relationship with my son is in your hands once again, Alexia.’ The rueful smile he offered her almost melted her wariness. ‘However, there is a matter I need to discuss with you.’

‘Will you at least sit down first?’ Feeling pretty uncomfortable sitting there, while he stood tall and straight several metres away, Lexi indicated the vacant chair placed at the table.

He really looked as if he was actually going to take her up on her offer, too; but then he glanced at his wristwatch, frowned, and shook his head. ‘I have to leave in a few minutes to catch my flight to New York. We are very close to procuring a large contract there, which will keep our New York shipyard busy for the next four years. Francesco was dealing with the details. Of course now that he cannot I must go in his place …’

Lexi pressed her lips together and nodded her head in understanding. She found she needed something to do with her restless fingers and picked up a glass of juice.

‘I must, therefore, ask you to do me another favour,’ Salvatore went on. ‘Leaving my son without my support at this time is unacceptable. I will be back in time to attend Marco’s funeral next week of course,’ he assured her quickly, having no idea that she did not already know when Marco’s funeral would be. ‘However, I will have to return to New York almost immediately afterwards. The thing is, Alexia, all being well, Francesco will be released from hospital in the next few days. Since he has decided to place his complete trust in you, I must ask if you would continue to support him in my place through the coming few weeks.’