A Deal To Carry The Italian's Heir / Christmas Contract For His Cinderella - Jane Porter Mills & Boon Modern

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a woman you respect and admire, a woman who’s the real thing. I think it’s fantastico.”

      Leo tried to swallow the shock that filled his throat.

      “Shades of Silvio’s ruthlessness and abusive mentality could be in both of us. That does not mean we’ll prey on innocents,” said Massimo, who preferred computers to people, perceptive when it came to this.

      “You had a mother to teach you right and wrong,” Leo whispered, the words coming from a dark place he’d shoved deep inside himself. From a hurt so deep he’d tried his damnedest to bury it. “A mother who taught you that it wasn’t weak to...feel.”

      What he’d had instead was a father who had filled his formative years with poison against the woman who had walked out on both of them. Greta wasn’t cruel but she hadn’t ever been comforting to her grandsons, either. At least, not until she had married her second husband, Carlo, the first person who’d tried his best to teach them what it meant to be a good man.

      But Leo had already grown up by then. Had been filled to the brim with bitterness against a woman whose face he didn’t even remember.

      “But I almost lost Nat with my own hang-ups, sì?” Massimo’s gaze gentled. “You reached out to me when you discovered what a brute Silvio was, even though he taught you nothing of what makes family. You made him back off, you encouraged me to follow my passion. You believed in me and brought millions in seed capital when I’d have sold those designs for peanuts. There’s a reason a smart, levelheaded woman like Neha picked you.”

      Leo had no words to express the gratitude and the indefinable emotion that pressed down on his chest. He hadn’t needed Massimo’s reassurance, but it felt immensely good to have it all the same.

      “The only thing I would worry about in this whole scenario is...how the both of you will make it work.” Massimo grinned. “Nat and I will watch from the sidelines, popcorn in hands. She’s going to love seeing Neha bring you down a notch.”

      Leo smiled. His sister-in-law was determined to see him defeated. In something, anything. “All Neha literally wants is to put me to stud, Massimo.”

      Massimo burst out laughing, then sobered up when he realized Leo was serious. “What?”

      “She wants the child because if I’m the father, Mario will think twice before he comes near the child. He’s got her all twisted inside out. She doesn’t want a coparent. Much less a relationship.”

      “You’re okay with that?”

      Leo didn’t answer, his gaze caught on the beautiful woman who had turned his life upside down with a simple request.

      He was going to be a father, yes, but he wasn’t going to do it all by her rules.

      Neither was he going to be tempted into a relationship with a woman he’d share a child with, with his history of relationships. Agreeing to Neha’s request meant he could never satisfy the deep hunger she evoked in him.

       CHAPTER THREE

      NEHA KNOCKED ON the thick wooden door. When there was no answer, she turned the gleaming metal handle and stepped into Leonardo’s bedroom. Uninvited.

      The suite was twice the size of hers. Hers was thoroughly feminine with soft pink walls and bedspreads; this was a thoroughly masculine domain.

      A dark oak desk sat in one corner of the room with a large monitor and papers neatly filed while comfy sofas and a recliner made up a cozy sitting area around a giant fireplace. Original, priceless artwork hung on the cream walls, a casual display of the Brunetti wealth—an overarching theme over the entire villa.

      Dusk hadn’t fallen completely yet and the high windows filled the room with an orange glow. One portrait hung on the wall—Silvio sitting in a vintage armchair while Leo, no more than six or seven, stood next to his father, dressed in a matching three-piece dark gray suit, his thick curly hair slicked back, his baby-blue gaze full of grief and an ache he hadn’t learned to hide yet.

      A jarring contrast to the powerful, impenetrable man he was today. Neha traced her finger over the little boy’s face, a host of emotions running through her.

      She called out Leo’s name a couple of times and heard nothing back. Drawing a deep breath, she ventured farther in. There wasn’t so much sunlight in the bedroom and there was a coolness to the room, the air filled with that masculine tone she associated with him. The walls were a light gray with light blocking shades on the windows while a massive king bed sat against a high-ceilinged wall.

      A huge upholstered headboard and pristine white sheets made the bed look like an ocean of welcoming comfort and warmth.

      She could picture Leonardo sprawled in the middle of that bed, taut muscles relaxing after a long day, languid mouth stretched into an inviting smile, waiting for her. Her breaths came shallow, her fingers reaching out as if she could...

      Leo walked in through a large door she hadn’t noticed, rows and rows of expensive, tailored clothes behind him.

      Any sense she did possess before, any air left in her lungs, rushed out.

      His magnificent chest was bare, tailored black trousers hung low on his hips. His jet-black hair, thick and wavy, was damp from the shower.

      Neha couldn’t even pretend to look away. Every inch of him was chiseled to perfection like one of the life-size statues littered throughout the estate. She knew he worked out with that same ruthless discipline he applied to everything else in life, but dear God, she could spend hours just looking at his body, imagining all the things she would love to do to it.

      Miles and miles of tautly stretched skin beckoned her touch. The broad sweep of his shoulders, the jut of his collarbones, the solid musculature of his chest, the slab of rock-hard abdomen...he was intensely male, an utter contrast to her soft curves.

      His chest was liberally sprinkled with hair, and she imagined the sensation of that rough hair abrading her silky skin, over her sensitive nipples... An ache filled her breasts, narrowing down into her lower belly.

      Every inch of him was defined and all she wanted to do was test the give of all that toned muscle with her teeth.

      A single drop of water plunked onto his chest from his wet hair and she followed its trail from one neatly defined pectoral to the dip, through the tight planes of his abdomen and into the line of hair below his navel and into the band of his trousers.

      “Should I wait a little longer before I put on the shirt?”

      His voice—ringing with a husky wickedness—jerked Neha out of her greedy feasting. Heat rushed up her neck and into her cheeks.

      Blue eyes danced with a roguish glint she’d never seen in him before. His sculpted mouth was turned up at the corners, his smile—a rare, genuine flash of teeth digging a groove in one cheek—a beautiful thing that could pull her out of the darkest of pits any day.

      She looked away and then back, utterly incapable of coming up with a reply that wasn’t a yes, please. He was flirting with her and how she wanted to retort in kind. But it could lead everywhere and nowhere...

      “Massimo said you’re leaving for Milan again. That you’re off to Paris from there. I didn’t want to miss seeing you,” she babbled, trying to gather a little sense. “We hadn’t talked again and I thought I should...”

      He waited silently. And that bubble of intimacy pulled her, deeper and deeper.

      “I’ll wait outside. Can we talk while you walk to the helicopter?”

      He leaned against the big bed, his shirt thrown casually onto it. His glorious chest still bare. “I wasn’t going to leave without talking to you.”

      “Oh, okay,” she said, suddenly feeling superconscious of her own attire.

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