LITMIR.BIZ

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ago. Leonardo was the one man who teased and taunted her dreams for so long, who made her want to break down hard-won defenses she’d built, for one taste of that carved, sinful mouth.

      It didn’t matter...it didn’t seem to matter to her body how many times she told herself that Leonardo was out of reach.

      For one thing, even if she could come out and ask him outright if he was attracted to her—and he amazingly said yes, Neha couldn’t take him on because he was too...important to her.

      For another, she knew what Leonardo thought of women in general and how far down his priorities romantic relationships were. He didn’t believe in love and marriage any more than she believed that another man like her papa had been—loving, warm, unconditional in his love for her—existed.

      In short, Leonardo was the last man on earth for a woman to build her future around. Not that he wasn’t a good man. He was the alpha in any situation—a protector at heart—and he extended that protection and care to maybe two other people in the world.

      She desperately wanted to be counted among them.

      That first day when they’d met she’d still been grieving over her papa, and he’d been...ragingly angry about how his father had emotionally abused Massimo for so long. That regret and pain in his eyes that he hadn’t protected Massimo... Neha had never forgotten that.

      For a gorgeously striking young man with the world at his feet, there had been such dissolution in his eyes when he had to face the stark reality that his father was a brute who crushed weaker people. That he’d worshipped a man who was so far from being a hero that he’d have to question everything he knew of himself.

      Wondering how many lies the foundation of his life had been built on.

      It was the only time Neha had seen that vulnerability in him. The only time she’d seen beneath the ruthlessness, the arrogance, the aura of power that surrounded Leonardo Brunetti.

      Once their careers had taken off, they had met a few times each year. In the beginning it had been accidental—bumping into each other at some conference, traveling at the same time. She’d started using him as a sounding board for her own business ideas. As the years went by, he’d started asking her to dinner every time he was in London. She’d begun stopping in Milan whenever she had the chance.

      She had obsessively followed his relationships from that first day on social media, and in glossy magazines, feeding her addiction about his life, wondering if between all the women he seemed to sleep with and dump eventually, he remembered her existence. But whoever the current woman in his life, Leonardo Brunetti, CEO of BFI, would meet his close friend Neha Fernandez, CEO of So Sweet Inc., on his every trip to London.

      For a confirmed bachelor, who couldn’t be pinned down by even the most beautiful woman on earth, Neha had become a permanent fixture in his life.

      Their friendship had deepened while morphing into a legend with the media. Their relationship had been analyzed and criticized and praised and “shipped” by some of Neha’s fans.

      And she was putting all that on the line. But her resolve didn’t falter.

      “You want me to...make you pregnant, so that you can have a baby, which in turn will make you...happy?” Leo finally said, every word enunciated in a biting tone.

      She held her composure, barely.

      “That is the request you want me to consider before I reject it outright, sì?”

      “Yes,” she replied, squaring her shoulders.

      A violent energy imbued his movements as he raked a hand through his hair and stepped away from her. “An innocent life is not a thing you go looking for because you’re bored, or because you’re unhappy, or because it’s the latest celebrity bandwagon to jump on—”

      “You’ve got every right to question the sanity of my decision. Every right to be shocked,” Neha cut in, determined to make her point. His concern for a hypothetical child told her how right she was in her choice.

      When it came to protecting an innocent life, Leonardo would always be a protector at heart.

      “But don’t think I came to this decision lightly. Or that it’s some biological-clock-induced crisis I’m acting on without thought. And you know me better than to think it’s for a publicity stunt.” Her voice rose on the last and she took a deep breath to calm down. “I’ve always wanted a family. A man I’d respect and love, children, a house with a backyard and a huge kitchen while I do my best to be a good mum and run a bakery.” A lump sat in her throat.

      “Sometimes I wonder if I fell so fast and hard for John because he came with a ready-made family. His daughters, so young, needed a mum and I bought into the fantasy without knowing what kind of a man he was. The dream of fitting into that family blinded me to what I should’ve seen from that first day.” She took a deep breath. “My dream has become impossible to achieve. One—” a bitter laugh fell from her mouth “—I can’t afford for all the millions I’ve made.” She’d morphed from a young girl, full of dreams, to a cautious, burned-out shadow of herself.

      The anxiety attack had come out of nowhere but had been years in the making. Once she’d gotten over the shock and fear, she’d seen it for what it could be—a much needed wake-up call to fix her life.

      It had given her the kick she’d needed to do something about getting the life she wanted.

      “You never told me why you called off the wedding,” inserted Leo, pulling her away from the whirlpool of her troubled thoughts.

      Everything in her protested at having to share the shame of her naiveté, of her desperation.

      But telling him why she’d called off her wedding was important now. For the most important decision she’d ever taken in her life. She had to strip her armor and bare herself. To a man who’d never be vulnerable in front of her, or anyone else, for anything in the world.

      “John told me the night before the wedding that Mario had been pulling his strings all along.”

      Leonardo’s pithy curse did nothing to salvage the pain of that meeting. The wound it had left in her. “What did the bastard tell you?”

      His anger on her behalf sent heat prickling behind her eyes. Made her weak. And she’d promised herself that she would never be weak again. That she would never tangle herself up in fantasy so badly that she couldn’t see the truth in front of her.

      “Exactly five weeks to the day before I met John, Mario and I had a huge row.

      “The company’s IP hadn’t been public yet. That first chain of bakeries we opened...it had become such a success in such a small span of time that I couldn’t believe it. Mario’s investment had come at the exact time. After the third bakery I’d opened, I was stretched to the max financially. I couldn’t believe that he shared the same vision that I had had. It snowballed into a monster I couldn’t keep grasp of soon after.

      “Before I knew it, we were franchising my brand. New lines of goods were launched, only half of which I had designed. I signed with an agent, who in hindsight never shared my vision. I started to appear on network shows and then we released a line of baking tools. More and more things that I hadn’t approved of. There were days when I hardly had any time out of meetings. But business was booming, and Mum was deliriously happy for me and so I let Mario steer the ship.

      “I didn’t quite have the guts to face up to him when I couldn’t exactly pinpoint the source of my own frustration.

      “Then I got a call from the CEO of a small American bakery goods company. He’d seen me on one of my shows and asked me to come take over his company’s European branch. Offered me carte blanche—the vision, the line of the goods, a new bakery chain, everything would be up to me. It was exactly the break I needed from...” She looked away from him, refusing to share the complex relationship she had with her mum. “Anyway, it was the perfect time for me to start it.

      “I

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