The Italian’s Bride On Paper by Kim Lawrence

CHAPTER ONE

MAYAPUTDOWN the phone and eased her bottom on the edge of the table where she had perched for the duration of the call. She pushed a section of hair that had escaped her casual topknot back from her face with her forearm and yawned. If she hadn’t been waiting for the call she would have already been in bed, which, given it was a Friday night, she was twenty-six, single and living in London, probably made her what most people would call sad.

She knew she was going to have to do something about her social life, or rather the lack of it, although the irony was she’d actually had an invite tonight: a group from work had been going out for cocktails to celebrate someone’s engagement. She had had to refuse, explaining her mum was travelling overseas to stay with her sister and had promised to contact her the moment she arrived.

‘A long trip?’ someone had asked.

‘San Macizo.’

She didn’t have to elaborate further. The exotic island had been the location of a recent blockbuster movie and had been very much in the news, as well as the subject of numerous articles. Like the articles the conversation had swiftly moved on from the stunning scenery to Maya’s brother-in-law, with his film-star looks, bemoaning the fact that the hot heir to the throne of San Macizo, the delicious Dante, was no longer available; he’d married an English girl, who everyone wanted to be.

If Maya had contributed to this part of the conversation she could have explained that the English girl was her own sister Beatrice, who, after being reconciled with her husband, had now happily taken on the role of Princess and mother, making both roles her own.

Bea was pregnant again and suffering severe morning sickness, so Maya was glad their mum was there to offer support and also fuss over her delicious little granddaughter, Maya’s goddaughter.

But Maya had stayed quiet, not because she wasn’t proud of her royal connection, but because it was easy to predict the questions they might have asked, like, If your sister’s a princess, how come you’re working as a window dresser for a department store?

The answer, according to her sister, was that Maya was too damned proud, stubborn and stupid to take help when it was freely offered to her. Maya had really appreciated the offers of help, and she knew they were well meant and sincere, but, though it might take longer, when she finally got to where she wanted to be, it would mean so much more to know she had done it herself and not just used her connections and their bank balance.

She yawned, easing one fluffy mule back on her narrow foot, and caught herself thinking about making a mug of cocoa... Oh, God...cocoa...get a life, Maya! Would the wine she had opened last weekend still be drinkable?

Cocoa or last week’s wine? She had not completely decided when the doorbell rang.

This time of night the only person who rang her doorbell was the pizza delivery service and she had definitely not ordered one.

Puzzled but not alarmed, she went to the door.

She tightened the belt on her robe before she opened the door a crack—one of these days she really would get a safety chain.

It was not a pizza, it was a woman, and she was not alone. Before becoming a proud aunt, Maya wouldn’t have been able to guess the age of the dark-haired baby the woman carried, but if asked now she would have estimated him at somewhere between three and four months. But she wasn’t in any state to guess; behind the flickering of her silky, sooty dark lashes, the eyes they framed were blank with shock as she stared at her visitors.

She hardly noticed the door swinging wide as she took a tiny step back, but finally she breathed out a shakily incredulous, ‘V...Violetta...?’

Because although it really couldn’t be, the woman standing there—tall, slim, looking as though she had just stepped out of the pages of a fashion magazine, her river-straight waist-length hair with a mirror gloss, her make-up perfectly highlighting her china-blue eyes—was the same woman she had seen in the photo her birth mother had proudly shown her—her half-sister. Maya still had it—it was the only thing her birth mother had ever given her.

‘You’re Mia?’

‘Maya.’

‘Of course, Mummy described you perfectly...but I’d have known you anywhere!’

‘You would?’

‘Absolutely! There’s just this connection between us; I can feel it, my little sister. Can’t you?’ As she bent forward to kiss the air either side of Maya’s face, Maya instinctively leaned back, not to avoid contact, but to stop the baby being sandwiched between them. ‘Although you’re older than me, aren’t you? But I’m sure you look lovely with some make-up on.’

Maya blinked rapidly, unnerved by Violetta’s rather Siamese cat stare and too utterly confused to even register the implication that she clearly did not look lovely without it.

‘No...yes, that is, I’m...’ Maya shook her head. ‘You...here...’ She took a deep breath and focused on forming an entire sentence. ‘Just what is happening?’

‘I needed help—’ Maya watched with horror as her half-sister’s slender shoulders began to shake, and her lovely face crumpled as tears began to roll in slow motion down her cheeks.

Maya’s wary antagonism melted into genuine concern. ‘Is there anything I can do?’

‘I shouldn’t be here, really... I’m so sorry. I should have rung you, I know, but I was afraid you’d say no and I had nowhere else to go. You’re our only hope, so please don’t send us away,’ she begged plaintively, hugging the sleepy baby so tight that he gave a little cry of protest.

It jolted Maya free of her shock. ‘Oh, no...no, of course not—’ She broke off at the sound of heavy breathing a moment before a figure carrying luggage under both arms came into view.

‘There’s no lift, and you don’t travel light.’

Maya, who was feeling as though events were getting way ahead of her, took in the numerous bags now filling the doorway and the panting, sweaty-faced new arrival, who did not look happy, though his frown vanished when Violetta looked at him with tears shimmering in her beautiful eyes.

‘Oh, you poor thing! Mia was just about to help you, weren’t you?’ she assured him, an emotional hitch in her voice as she turned to Maya. ‘This man—George, isn’t it?—has been a total angel... Now, where is my purse...? Oh, Mia, would you get it for me? And don’t forget to give George a healthy tip.’

Mia?Ah, well, she’d been called worse, and she had other priorities, like locating her purse, paying the driver and dragging the luggage wedged in the doorway inside. By the time she had accomplished these tasks Violetta and the baby had transferred themselves to the sofa in her living room, and while the baby dribbled and chewed his fist his mother was giving her attention to the interior decor. It was patently obvious from the flare of her nostrils that shabby chic was not her thing.

Maya waited. There were just so many things to say she didn’t know where to start, though it seemed she didn’t need to.

Her visitor whispered a tremulous, ‘I’m sorry.’

‘For what?’

The literal response drew a tiny frown and the intense blue gaze narrowed calculatingly on Maya’s face. ‘Turning up without warning this way...but I was desperate, although I swear I’ve wanted to reach out to you for so long...’

‘You have? But I thought your mother... Olivia said that neither of you wanted anything to do with me...’ Maya bit her lip, hating that telltale quivering of her voice.

‘When Mummy met you, I was...vulnerable.It’s a time in my life that I still struggle to talk about. And Mummy always was...is very protective of me. Later on, I must admit I was afraid that you’d resent me, even though—’ Her lips quivered this time, and her voice cracked. ‘Even though Cristiano said that I should... I’m sorry—’

She looked around helplessly until Maya located a box of tissues on the desk behind her. The practical gesture seemed pretty inadequate given the situation, but it was better than nothing.

‘Cristiano?’

‘My husband.’ Violetta took a tissue and dabbed it gently to her miraculously smooth and unblotchy cheek. Maya couldn’t believe there wasn’t even a smudge to her make-up. ‘But he died without ever seeing our dearest Mattio.’

Maya’s wide, shocked eyes went to the little baby—her nephew!—and her heart ached for him and his mother. How on earth did someone recover from a tragedy like that?

‘I am so sorry to hear that.’

The baby chose that moment to grab a strand of his mother’s dramatically coloured hair in his chubby fist. Violetta let out a squeal, her expression of tragic suffering suddenly morphing into annoyance.

‘Let me.’ Maya leaned forward and unwound the tiny yet tenacious fingers from the glossy strand that started auburn at the root and went through an extraordinary range of shades ending in a deep strawberry blonde at the tip. It was hard, given the artistry, to guess what her natural hair colour was.

‘And now I...I have nothing!’

Struggling to respond with anything that didn’t sound lame and shallow, Maya offered another tissue, which was refused as her half-sister shook back her glossy hair.

‘You have this little one and he has you,’ Maya finally said hoarsely as she felt her throat thicken with tears. She swallowed hard; if she started crying it would not be as pretty as Violetta’s efforts. ‘All a child needs is to be wanted and loved,’ she added, even as she reminded herself that love did not pay the bills. ‘I know it must be hard financially being a single parent and—’

‘But Mattio is an Agosti!’

Maya shook her head, confused.

Her ignorance appeared to shock the younger woman, whose blue eyes flew wide. ‘He is heir to half the Agosti fortune.’

‘Oh, right...’ Maya nodded vaguely, getting the picture, though to her mind, as useful as silver spoons might be, surely a child would be better off with a living father?

‘Of course, the money should have come to me as his widow, but Cristiano changed his will, and I know exactly who to blame for that,’ she said darkly. ‘Not that I have a problem with the money going to Mattio,’ she added hastily, seeing the look on Maya’s face.

Maya nodded, feeling uncharitable that she had trouble believing this claim. How could she blame the woman? It must be hard if she had expected to inherit.

‘I have a problem with having to go to Samuele for every penny. He saw to it that Cristiano left financial control of our child’s fortune to him.’

‘Who is Samuele?’ Maya asked, seriously struggling to keep up.

‘He is Cristiano’s older brother. He’s always hated me—he was jealous because Cristiano stopped letting him make all the decisions. Oh, I don’t blame my darling Cristiano, he was vulnerable and Samuele dripped poison in his ear and turned my own husband against me... I can tell you don’t believe me, but then no one does!’ she cried, her voice rising to a shrill hopeless note. ‘They don’t understand—they think that Samuele is caring of his family, including me.’

Maya pressed her fingers to the throbbing in her temples. With each word a picture appeared that was horribly familiar to her, channelling her anger into a quiet resolve.

‘Oh, I understand. I understand perfectly,’ she said, ‘how someone can appear one thing on the surface and be something very different.’

Before he had married her and Beatrice’s mother, Maya had believed her stepfather was the person that the world thought he was: caring and considerate and, most importantly, making her grieving mother happy again. Then they had married and the abuse had begun, so subtle, so insidious that her mother hadn’t seen that she was being isolated from her friends, her support network, and in the end even her daughters, until it was almost too late. Maya had not known then but she did realise now that Edward had seen her own closeness to her mother as an obstacle to his all-consuming need for total control over his wife.

Golden girl, he had mocked as he’d deliberately set about revealing to the world and her mother that she was not golden at all; she was useless, she was deceitful.

‘They call it coercive control,’ Maya said grimly. ‘But you’re not alone.’ And neither had she been; Beatrice had been there for her. Now it was Maya’s turn to offer support to another woman and she was glad to be able to.

‘You understand!’ Gratitude shone in her half-sister’s eyes that was quickly replaced by despair. ‘But there’s nothing you can do to help me, because he has everything. Samuele has money and power, and now I think...’ She faltered, kissing the top of her baby’s head before revealing, ‘No, I know he’s trying to take my baby away from me, but no one will believe me. But maybe they are right?’ she cried wildly.

‘No, don’t believe that, ever! Believe in yourself,’ Maya replied fiercely, her voice shaking with emotional emphasis.

‘Coming here was a total act of impulse. It all became too much for me and...well, I just need some space to work out what to do next.’

‘You can stay here with me. Take all the time you need.’

‘Really?’

What are you letting yourself in for?

Immediately ashamed of the momentary flicker of uncertainty, Maya lifted her chin and she smiled. ‘Really.’

It had been the early hours of the morning before Maya had finally crawled into bed, but despite being exhausted she slept in fits and starts, repeatedly waking and remembering all over again that Beatrice’s room was not empty any more. It was occupied by a half-sister she did not really know, a half-sister whom, given what she was going through, Maya ought to feel a connection with, and she was confused by the fact she didn’t.

But then maybe it was unrealistic to expect emotions like that to just materialise out of thin air, and it obviously didn’t help that she found herself comparing Violetta to Beatrice and finding her blood relative coming out second.

Whatever she did not feel for Violetta was more than compensated for by what she did feel for Mattio. She had felt nervous when Violetta, pleading utter exhaustion, had handed over the baby to Maya to feed and change.

Maya had been surprised by the little ache in her heart when she had eventually handed him back, and it had made her wonder if her own birth mother had felt that way when Olivia had given her up? Had the sound of her crying triggered the same instinct that had Maya leaving her warm duvet cocoon as she heard Mattio wailing in the next room? Dragging both hands in a futile smoothing motion across her wildly tumbled dark curls, she swung her feet to the floor.

Maya closed down the useless speculation over her birth mother and caught sight of herself in the mirror as she grabbed a robe off the hook behind the door, the sleep-deprived face that stared back at her bringing a fleeting grimace to her face.

On the plus side, her disturbed night had not been troubled by the recurrent dream that she half dreaded, half longed for. She never remembered specific details. On waking all that remained was an erotic blur; the sense of deep yearning, the memory of a deep honeyed voice and a strong sense of shame that usually lingered until she’d had her second cup of coffee.

It hardly seemed possible that a chance encounter so many months ago with a tall, arrogant stranger should leave such a strong imprint on her unconscious. She lifted a hand to her suddenly tingling lips. Had he kissed her or had that been a fiction invented by her overactive imagination too?

An extra loud baby cry had her shrugging off the memory of temperature-raising dark eyes. Once outside her room, she thought she could hear the distressed baby cries even more loudly, but then her experience of crying babies was not what anyone would call extensive.

Her niece probably did cry, but whenever Maya saw her, which was too infrequently, little Sabina Ella, a deeply contented child, always seemed to be smiling or examining the world around her with big solemn enquiring eyes or giving the deep little belly chuckle that was impossible not to react to.

There was a wistful element to the small smile that played across the fullness of Maya’s soft mouth in response to the memories of her last visit to San Macizo. She was really glad her sister had found the happiness she deserved, and that she was finally reconciled with her husband, but she couldn’t help wishing that Beatrice had found all those elements a little closer to home.

Approaching the bedroom door, she paused and after a moment knocked, raising her voice to make herself heard above the distressed bawling inside.

‘Is there anything I can do or get for you, Violetta?’ she asked, directing her question to the closed door. She paused again and waited, head tipped to one side in a listening attitude, but the only thing she heard was Mattio.

Pitching her voice louder, she repeated her question and was not really surprised when there was still no response; she could barely hear herself above the crying. Tapping on the door again, she called out the other woman’s name several times to give her some warning as she pushed it slowly open.

‘Violetta?’ Maya scanned the room, empty but for the travel cot that held the baby, his wailing subsiding into a series of gulping, heartbreaking breathy sobs as he heard her voice.

Maya walked across to the cot and whispered a tentative, ‘Hello there.’ The baby’s face was red, his eyes puffy with prolonged crying, and when he saw Maya he didn’t quiet completely but he did stretch out his chubby little hands towards her.

Maya felt something tighten in her chest, the strangest sensation.

‘Oh...’ She swallowed, feeling the unexpected heat of tears pressing against her eyelids. That’s all we need, more tears, she told herself sternly as she blinked hard. ‘So where is your mummy?’ she asked, refusing to think about the significance of the undisturbed decorative pillows on the bed until she actually had to. ‘Violetta!’

The baby, clearly objecting to her raised voice, started crying in earnest again.

‘No...no, don’t do that! I’m sorry, don’t...oh, God!’ Taking a deep breath, she leaned into the cot and lifted out the warm, damp baby. ‘Righto!’ she said, channelling slightly desperate cheer as she settled him awkwardly against her hip. ‘So, let’s go find your mummy, shall we?’

The knot of panic in her chest had expanded to the size of a heart-compressing boulder as, jiggling the baby in her arms, she walked through every room in the flat. It didn’t take long—there was nowhere a cat could hide, let alone a person—but she retraced her steps anyway.

‘This is not happening,’ she muttered. But it was, and she had to deal with it. ‘Don’t worry, it’ll be fine,’ she said to the baby, and saw that his little head was propped on her shoulder. He had fallen asleep, exhausted by his crying.

There had to be a perfectly logical explanation for this, she thought, and then spotted the note propped behind a framed photo of Beatrice with Dante, who was looking at his wife with an expression of total adoration. There was a name scrawled across the front of the envelope.

Not her own name, but Mia.

Well,some people were just bad with names. Weren’t they?

She stared at the envelope with a sudden sick feeling of dread in the pit of her stomach. Probably, given the situation, it was totally justified.

Why prolong it, just do it! Better to know the worst.

Or was it, was it really? There were occasions when blissful ignorance had a definite appeal and Maya had always struggled with the ‘rip the plaster off and get the pain over with’ mindset.

One arm supporting the sleeping baby, she glanced down at his sweet, tear-stained face and wished she could copy him. She blew out a gusty breath and decided to put him back in his cot.

Baby settled, the next thing on her checklist—because this wasn’t about delaying, it was prioritising—was the formula sitting in the fridge to inspect. While the letter wasn’t going anywhere, when he woke Mattio would need feeding and, of course, changing. Locating the changing mat and nappies and clean clothes took another few minutes, but the letter was still sitting there and now she had run out of more important and less potentially explosive things to do.

With a hiss of exasperation, she snatched at it and ripped it open, but she had barely scanned the contents when the doorbell rang, making her jump.

Samuele lifted his hand off the doorbell and applied his clenched fist to the wooden panel, fighting the urge to batter his way through the last barrier between him and his nephew.

Instead, he took a deep breath and reminded himself that, while Violetta was a piece of work, selfish, cold and manipulative, she would not harm her own child. This small soothing piece of positivity didn’t lower his levels of frustration because, though it might be true, Samuele also knew that she would not hesitate to use Mattio to further her own agenda. This particular vengeful widow had never put anyone’s needs above her own self-interest and motherhood had not altered that aspect of her one iota.

Samuele’s hand lifted to the fading red line that ran down from his cheekbone to his jaw, glad that the one on the other side had already gone. He was the target of Violetta’s spite, not the baby, but that didn’t mean the innocent child could not be collateral damage. His gut tightened with guilt that he had not seen this, or something like it, coming.

He had promised Cristiano so easily that he would take care of his child. Pulling himself up to his full height, he fixed his steely gaze on the door. He would make good on that promise.

He heard the sound of a key in the lock and took a step back—waiting for...who?

The words of the note still echoing in her head, Maya’s unsteady hands were shaking so hard she struggled to get a good grasp on the key in the lock, not realising until a lot of fumbling later that it wasn’t locked, it couldn’t be locked, because Violetta had left it open when she left.

Just thinking of how desperate Violetta must have felt to leave her own baby with a virtual stranger sent a fresh surge of emotion through her body. She’d said in the brief note that she would come back for Mattio...and she would, Maya was sure of that. Perhaps she already had?

Relief that Violetta had realised she couldn’t desert her baby washed over Maya in a heart-steadying wave. She gave the stiff door an enthusiastic tug, stepping forward as it swung open to reveal, not her half-sister, but a shockingly familiar imposing figure. The welcoming smile of relief vanished from her eyes as reality collided with her dreams.

Her voice shook with the sheer impact of recognition that nailed her to the spot, leaving her feeling as though she had just run full pelt into a wall.

The seconds ticked away as two sets of eyes locked. It was Maya who finally broke the tableau, her chest heaving as she gasped for air before giving voice to her unedited reaction at being faced with the person who had unlocked something inside her so many months ago that she still refused to acknowledge.

‘Oh, no... You!’

No matter how many times you skydived, there was always that moment of shock in the split second when you actually launched yourself into space. This was the first time Samuele had experienced that same sensation with both his feet still on the ground.

His hooded gaze moved in a slow sweep upwards from her bare feet to the top of her glossy head, taking in everything in between. He clenched his teeth, the twist of lust in his belly that crossed the border into pain all too familiar.

His reaction to this woman was just as visceral as it had been the first time, when her liquid dark eyes had flashed fire at him for being rude to that artist. The same eyes now were glazed with shock. His glance lingered on the soft full outline of her mouth... He had thought about that mouth a lot since that day, wished he had followed through with his instinct and actually kissed her, so he’d know what she tasted like.

A muscle clenched in his jaw. ‘You are the sister?’ And presumably a part of Violetta’s plan to extort money from him.

Not ready to admit to anything just yet, Maya countered this accusation with her own question.

‘You’re the brother-in-law?’ The man in her dreams, the man she had met for only moments eighteen months ago, and yet who had imprinted himself indelibly inside her head, was Violetta’s persecutor!

One dark brow arched upwards as with a contemptuous curl of his lips he announced, ‘I am Samuele Agosti, and, as I’m sure you know, I am here to return my nephew home to Italy.’

He had lost none of the arrogance she remembered from Zurich, and, unfortunately for her, none of his rampant maleness. She folded her arms protectively across her chest.

‘Well, you’ve had a wasted journey.’

‘Where is she?’

The question was not directed at her but past her, unlike the fleeting scornful glance that she was definitely the intended recipient of.

Her chin went up. ‘I’d like you to leave now.’ The door only moved a couple of inches before it met the immovable obstacle of his size-twelve foot shod in handmade leather. ‘Home for a child is where his mother is—’ Maya stopped, unable to prevent the self-conscious dismay from spreading across her face as she realised that even if this were true, Mattio’s mother wasn’t here.

She was the only thing standing between this man and her baby nephew.

‘You don’t sound too sure about that,’ he remarked.

‘You know what I am sure of—that I’m going to call the police if you don’t leave in the next ten seconds.’

‘The thing about threats is that you have to be willing to follow through with them, or at least convince the person they’re directed at that you are.’

Maya found her eyes following the motion of his long fingers as they moved from the open-necked collar of his white linen shirt and the vee of olive skin at the base of his throat, up his neck and across the dusting of dark stubble on his firm, square jaw.

There was a challenge in his smile, and the male aura he radiated—his presence—could fill an entire arena. This was not an arena, it was a very small, unglamorous hallway, and it made her feel very small and insignificant.

The recognition of the feeling made her square her shoulders. She didn’t care who he was, this was her space! She drew herself up to her full diminutive height, managing to project a sense of confidence, which was a miracle in itself, considering she was not dressed for dignity—a fact that was just hitting home to her.

Without taking her eyes off his face, she casually reached for the tie on her robe and knotted it around her middle before smoothing down her hair, but it was a pointless exercise, she knew, so she gave it up. Dignity was more than skin-deep.

‘I don’t bluff.’ She tightened her belt another vicious notch and pushed out abruptly, ‘Just go away.’