The Italian’s Bride On Paper by Kim Lawrence

CHAPTER THREE

ITWASLIKE watching the life story of a flower in time-lapse photography on a natural history programme; blooming, fading and shrivelling in mere seconds.

It was irrational, but he felt as guilty as hell for killing her hope.

‘Sorry, I didn’t know that.’

Shewas apologising to him? ‘There’s no need to be sorry, she was nothing to me.’ From what Samuele had seen Olivia was a vain, selfish woman who had passed on all those delightful qualities to her daughter.

‘Oh...no...me neither, I suppose... I mean, I didn’t really know her either. How—?’ she began and then stopped.

‘She didn’t suffer, did she?’

Samuele only knew the bare clinical facts, namely that Olivia had died after complications from a botched cosmetic surgery. He opened his mouth to share these when he met her anxious eyes and paused.

‘No, she didn’t,’ he heard himself say.

Samuele caught a look of relief on her face before she tipped her head in acknowledgement, and her expression was concealed by her wild mass of dark hair as she lowered her head.

So this was what lying to make someone feel better felt like—a novel experience but not one that he was likely to repeat any time soon.

‘So this was something your sister clearly didn’t share with you before she dumped her kid on you.’

Maya sighed. ‘She was upset, and she probably assumed I already knew.’ Even as she gave voice to the excuse Maya was thinking of the occasions that that there had been for her half-sister to tell her that their mother had died. ‘She was desperate.’ She felt ashamed of the doubt that she struggled to conceal but could hear in her own voice.

Not desperate, no—Samuele’s eyes moved around the room—but the woman he knew would have to be very determined indeed to consider spending a night here.

‘She is a widow with a baby, who is being undermined at every move.’

‘You don’t appear totally naive.’ In his view, being idealistic was probably worse. ‘So please listen to me when I tell you that this was totally planned, cara. She played you, as they say, for a sucker.’

‘That’s ridiculous!’ Was it? Little details of the previous evening surfaced in her head that she would not even have thought about if it hadn’t been for him planting seeds of doubt. ‘I saw her, she was... Why would anyone...?’ Her eyes suddenly widened. ‘What did you call me?’ Not Mia at least, said the catty voice in her head.

He shook his head in a pretty unconvincing attitude of bewildered innocence—she was pretty sure that Samuele Agosti was neither; it was hard to imagine he ever had been.

When she replayed it in her head the casual endearment on his lips sounded like honey, liquid and warm. Just thinking about it ignited another burst of heat low in her belly.

‘She isn’t coming back, you do know that?’

His expression came as near to sympathy as she’d seen, so she looked over his shoulder, refusing to allow the suspicions he had planted growing room in her head, worried because her hormones could be skewing her judgement. On the other hand, if what he said was true... Despite her determination the thought dropped into her consciousness and the ripples spread.

‘I’m not leaving without Mattio,’ Samuele stated.

I’m not leaving without Maya.

Maya swallowed past an emotional occlusion in her throat. She could suddenly see her dad so clearly, standing there smiling sunnily in response to being told that there was no parent accommodation available at the hospital—and besides, his little girl would be discharged from the overspill ward attached to the accident department after the cast that encased her broken arm had been checked by a doctor in the morning. She remembered willing him not to go and leave her in this big scary place and being glad he’d stayed even when she had cried that she wanted her mum, not him.

Mum had wanted to be there, he’d told her, but the rail strike meant she and Beatrice couldn’t get back from the town where her sister had been competing in an athletics competition until the next day.

Her eyes lifted. There was no resemblance at all between the gangly dad of her memory, with his beard and untidy gingerish hair, and this tall, impossibly handsome man. But nevertheless, they had something in common.

‘I need to see him,’ he reiterated.

She offered up a suspicious look but couldn’t bury the memories rising up in her...seeing the expression in her dad’s eyes—the one that had made someone produce a chair for him to sit on.

After a moment she found herself nodding, not, she told herself, because of an expression in anyone’s eyes, but because there was nothing she actually could do to prevent him.

She stood back and opened the door.

The curtains were drawn in the room; she had never reached the point of opening them. Light seeped between them and there was a lamp on the bedside table that cast more shadow than light.

Hovering uncertainly in the doorway, she watched him move across to the travel cot. He was not a man she would associate with hesitancy, but if he’d been anyone else that was how she would have termed his approach. As he reached it and looked down at the sleeping baby he was half turned to her so she could see his face in profile.

The subdued lighting exaggerated the dramatic bone structure of his face, and maybe it did the same to his expression, but what she saw or thought she saw was an almost haunted look of loss that made her feel almost as if she were intruding. Shaking her head at her irrational response as if to loosen the grip of the uncomfortable feelings, she quietly left the room without a word, wishing she could unsee that look. Empathy for him was the last thing she needed to be experiencing; she already felt bad enough for even imagining a fleeting similarity to her dad, who had been her hero. It felt like a betrayal.

She refused to concede that maybe Violetta’s monster wasn’t a total monster, so she focused on the indisputable fact that he quite definitely wasn’t a hero, not her definition of one anyhow. She would save her empathy for the baby caught in the middle of a conflict.

Conscience pricking, she walked into her bedroom, musing over her struggle to feel anything sisterly towards baby Mattio’s mother, despite her hot defence of the woman. She closed the door behind her, knowing that, as the walls were paper-thin between the two rooms, she’d hear a pin drop let alone someone making off with a baby.

Not that he would do that... On her way across the room she paused as she realised this confidence in him was actually based on nothing more than a very non-evidence-based gut feeling. Her self-reflective line of thought was abruptly terminated when she caught sight of herself in the mirror on the wardrobe door. Just when she thought things could not get worse!

She thought longingly of a shower as she left a trail of clothes in her wake, struggling to open a drawer in the tall heavy chest of drawers of stripped pine to reveal the neatly folded and brightly coloured selection of sweaters inside.

Walking out of the adjoining bedroom, Samuele was struggling to suppress immense waves of sadness, anger and guilt after looking at the child his brother had never met. Life is unfair; live it, he’d been told, except his brother hadn’t lived and life wasn’t just unfair—it was bloody unfair.

He hadn’t been able to protect Cristiano, but he was sure as hell going to protect his child no matter what it took. Still lost in his thoughts, he turned his head in response to a sound at the exact moment he was in line with a crack in the slightly open door, delivering an image of a slim, graceful and totally naked figure sitting back on her heels as she pulled open a cavernous drawer.

Smooth, sleek, supple, with perfect curves, she looked like an iconic art deco figure made warm flesh.

He turned his head sharply away, a stab of self-disgust piercing his conscience as his body reacted independently of his brain to the indelible image printed on it.

Flinging the pair of jeans she had grabbed backwards onto the bed, Maya sifted through the sweaters and hastily selected one.

Still resisting the pull of the shower, she turned the basin taps on full and washed her face. She fought her way into her clothes and cast another despairing glance at her image in the mirror as, brush in hand, she decided to just give up on her hair, choosing instead to secure the wild mass of dark curls at the nape of her neck.

She was halfway through brushing her teeth when she heard a noise from the living-room monitor, followed by a gentle whimper from the adjoining bedroom.

‘I think Mattio has woken up again!’ Samuele called.

‘I’ll be right there!’ she replied, hastily rinsing her mouth and remembering wryly not taking seriously Beatrice’s claim during the early sleep-deprived days of motherhood that she’d struggled to get dressed before midday.

She erupted into the living room like someone reaching the finishing line of a sprint. ‘What...why are you looking at me like that?’

He shook his head and crossed the room in a couple of fluid strides. Holding her gaze, he reached out and, before she could react, gently touched the corner of her mouth.

For a breathless moment their eyes clung as she tried desperately to hide the shuddering skin-tingling awareness that his touch had awoken.

If that was only a touch, imagine what a kiss would do to you, said the wicked voice in her head.

She already knew...the memory of the whisper of an almost-kiss surfaced from the place she had consigned it to and an uncontrollable shiver traced its way down her spine.

‘Toothpaste,’ he explained, sliding a tissue back into his pocket.

Her hand went to her mouth. Wearing clothes was meant to make her feel more confident and in control but they offered no protection whatsoever from his penetrating stare. ‘Oh...right, thank you.’ She shook herself and said briskly, ‘I need to go and sort out Mattio.’

Samuele watched as she left the room. He could hear the gentle murmurs of her talking to the baby through the monitor and a moment later she returned carrying his nephew.

‘Could you put that on the floor?’ She nodded to the brightly coloured plastic mat beside the nappy stack. ‘Yep, just unfold it for me, thanks.’

He continued to observe as she dropped to her knees and laid the baby on the padded plastic surface and jiggled with one of his feet before she unfastened the all-in-one affair he was wearing. The entire time she chatted unselfconsciously to Mattio, discussing what she was doing with the baby boy, who seemed to be listening to everything she was saying.

The change of nappy and clothes completed, she settled back on her heels and gave a little grunt of satisfaction.

‘You are really good at that,’ he remarked thoughtfully. He knew he was not, and it was not exactly a short trip back to Italy.

‘Beginners’ luck,’ she admitted. ‘I do have a niece, although she is a few months older than Mattio. Beatrice, my sister, is already expecting another.’

‘So were you both adopted?’

She shook her head as she got to her feet. ‘No, Beatrice came along when I was one, a kind of miracle baby. Mum and Dad had been told they couldn’t have children.’

‘That must have put your nose out of joint.’

She smiled, clearly unoffended by the suggestion, which, he realised, had probably been made to her numerous times. ‘No, our parents made absolutely sure we both knew we were special. Beatrice is my best friend.’

A muscle in his jaw clenched. ‘Tell her that often,’ he heard himself say.

Maya’s liquid eyes held the beginning of understanding.

Although one of his rules in life was that he didn’t explain himself, he inexplicably felt impelled to add abruptly, ‘Because now I can’t ever tell my brother that he was my best friend.’

‘I should think he knew that, don’t you? Sometimes you don’t have to say anything.’

The gentle way she was looking at him, as though he was no longer the enemy, unsettled him—or was it the fact that he liked the feeling that they might be coming to a better understanding of each other? No, that was far too dangerous. He didn’t appreciate the way his thoughts were going. ‘Could be. After all, he knew his wife cheated on him, but we never discussed that.’ The closest they’d come was when they’d overheard a group of women in an adjoining restaurant booth discussing the latest rumour concerning Violetta, but Cristiano had cut him off before he could say a word. Subject closed—for ever.

I know you don’t understand, but it’s my life and I love her.

Her expression immediately froze over at his dig about Violetta. ‘You just never give up, do you?’

‘I have that reputation,’ he responded coolly, accompanying his words with a lethal smile.

Lips tight, she glanced down at the baby, who was happily kicking his legs and blowing bubbles. ‘Can you watch him while I go and get his feed?’

She didn’t hang around long enough to see his nod of assent.

Samuele got to his feet. He could watch him but he could do very little else. Whenever he had tried to see Mattio, Violetta had always had a reason why it wasn’t convenient. Perhaps he hadn’t tried hard enough, which was why he was now little more than a stranger to his own nephew.

When Maya returned with the warmed bottle, Samuele was kneeling beside the baby, one large finger in the tight baby grip of a pink chubby hand, but it was the long thin red mark down the side of his face that suddenly caught Maya’s attention.

‘He has sharp nails,’ he mused, standing up and looking slightly self-conscious.

‘He isn’t the only one,’ she said, looking at the scratch on his face and wondering if there were others on his back... The idea of him lost to passion like that left a sour taste in her mouth.

‘It’s definitely not what you’re thinking,’ he said drily as she settled with the baby in a chair.

She flashed him a startled look before bending her head over the baby to hide the mortified heat that was stinging her cheeks. ‘You have no idea what I’m thinking,’ she mumbled, focusing on the baby as he eagerly attached his rosebud mouth to the teat and began to enthusiastically suck.

Samuele knew exactly what she was thinking but he didn’t say anything until the bottle was empty and she had carefully placed the baby over her shoulder and was patting his back.

‘This happened at the will reading.’ He touched the mark. ‘The others have faded. It was Violetta’s reaction to hearing that she would not have control of Cristiano’s money, the money that, according to her, she had earned as Cristiano’s wife,and that apparently I am stealing. Running away with Mattio is all part of her vow to make me regret it.’

‘That’s a terrible, wicked thing to accuse someone of!’ she exclaimed, horrified. ‘You really would say anything to get what you want, wouldn’t you? That’s slander!’

‘Only if it’s not true, and there were witnesses there, including the lawyer.’

She shook her head, but Samuele could see, once again, the doubts about Violetta creeping into the edges of her previous certainty. Cuddling the baby in her arms, she got to her feet. ‘There are two sides to every story.’

He sighed out his frustration as she settled Mattio in his little rocking chair. Maya eased her own chair protectively closer.

‘I agree. There are always two sides, but it seems to me that you are only willing to hear one. Why are you so determined to believe that I am the one in the wrong? How do you think I knew you existed, knew your name, found this place?’

The groove between her feathery brows deepened as she shook her head.

‘I had inside information from Charlie. Believe me or not, but the truth is that Violetta has a new, extremely wealthy boyfriend who very much wants to marry her.’ Deluded fool.

‘So you don’t want another man bringing up your brother’s baby?’

‘The point is the other man doesn’t want to bring up another man’s baby or, for that matter, any baby at all.’ He spelt out the situation with brutal brevity. ‘Charlie wants Violetta but not Mattio. He has no interest in any child restricting his lifestyle.’

‘So it was him who told you that Mattio was here?’

He nodded, seeing more cracks appear in her conviction and pushing home his advantage. ‘He told me exactly where to find Mattio because it would suit him very well if I claimed the baby.’ He held up a hand, the action drawing attention to the thin red line on his face and the tension round his sensual mouth. ‘Yes, I know this might be another one of my very wicked lies, so how about you call her and hear the proof from the merry widow’s own lips?’

‘I can’t call her because she left her phone here.’

‘That was a nice touch. Let’s face it, Maya, you are in no position to negotiate and there is a time limit on being awkward. Not that I’m suggesting you don’t do it very well.’

Maya slung him an unamused smile, realising that if he did take the baby, it was going to be harder for his mother to reclaim him. Violetta needed to come back right now, and Maya was sure if she could just talk to her, her half-sister would understand.

‘If you know who she’s with and have his contact details, then let’s call him, but let me speak to her. I’m sure by now she’ll be feeling...’ She petered out. She really wasn’t qualified to guess how a woman who had walked away from her child felt. ‘Guilty probably, so saying the wrong thing could tip her over the edge.’

‘You think I can’t be sensitive and tactful?’ Maya pulled a face, which drew a reluctant laugh from him.

To hide the effect the unexpected sound had on her Maya channelled chilly disproval. It was a pity it only went skin-deep; to her shame, just under the surface she was all quivering, melting warmth. ‘This isn’t a joke.’

The smile in his eyes vanished, snuffing out like a candle. ‘No, it isn’t,’ he said, producing a phone from his pocket. ‘How about I put it on speaker? Then if I get too insensitive you can rescue the situation.’

He was being sarcastic, she could see that, but what she didn’t understand was what he imagined he could achieve. Did he think he could bully Violetta into telling Maya to hand over her son? Even imagining such a situation brought her protective instincts to high-alert level and she’d only known the child existed for hours. Imagine if you’d carried and given birth...being apart from your baby would be like losing a part of yourself. Wouldn’t it?

‘You must see that the baby needs his mother.’ She searched his face for any hint of understanding but, after a moment, sighed.

There was more give in a granite rock face.

‘It depends on the mother. I don’t know how well you knew Olivia, but you were far better off without her, I assure you. Just look how Violetta turned out.’

‘We’re not talking about me.’ And they never would be because she would never invite this man into her head. ‘I have no abandonment issues.’

She bit her lip. She was getting familiar with his expressive shrugs; he was able to convey a range of emotions with the slightest movement of his broad shoulders.

‘What?’ she snapped querulously, because he was staring at her in that unnerving way again.

‘You have...’ Samuele half lifted a hand and then shoved it safely back into a pocket. The last time he had touched her mouth—No, he wasn’t going there again. ‘Blood on your lip.’

A man who made a mistake could be forgiven, but if he knowingly repeated that mistake, he was a fool who didn’t deserve forgiveness.

Samuele had never had any time for fools. Did it count as foolish, with the very recent memory of the heat that had stung through his body when he’d touched her mouth still fresh in his head, for his eyes to follow the tip of her tongue as it licked the pinprick drop of blood from the plump, pink outline of her bottom lip?

Probably not, but he hadn’t followed through with the impulse to replace his finger with his mouth and continue the exploration. He knew his reasoning bore all the classic hallmarks of rationalisation, but there was such a thing as overthinking something.

He accepted that looking at her mouth, or any other part of Maya Monk, wasn’t ever going to lead him down a path to inner peace. Luckily, he wasn’t looking to take away inner peace from this encounter—just his nephew.

There was a tension in the room that Maya chose to ignore as she nodded pointedly towards the phone he held.

After a moment he punched in a number and laid the phone on the coffee table between them. It was picked up almost immediately and a man replied, sounding distracted, possibly by the owner of the husky female laugh Maya could hear in the background.

‘This is Samuele Agosti. Put Violetta on, will you, Charlie?’

There was a silence before the man on the other end began to babble. ‘Samuele, it’s great to hear your voice, but actually I can’t help you—she’s not with me...’

‘Oh, for God’s sake, give me that thing and get out.’ There was the sound of rustling and banging and then what sounded like a door closing.

‘He’s gone. How did you know where I was?’

There was no betraying quiver in the voice; it was hard and cold and annoyed, but Maya knew without doubt that she was listening to her half-sister.

‘Well, you’re not with your child so where else would you be?’

‘You found him! Damn, that was quick,’ she snapped petulantly. ‘Clever old you. I really wanted you to sweat.’

The most shocking thing for Maya was that Samuele didn’t look even slightly surprised by this vicious, vindictive statement. Instead, he looked...she searched the angles and hollows of his face and the word dangerous floated into her head. The ruthless, relentless quality she had been aware of in him was in sharp focus as he allowed the moment to stretch before responding.

‘You succeeded.’ His glance shifted across to where Maya stood like a frozen statue, her hand pressed to her mouth, horror shining in her eyes.

Breaking eye contact, he shifted his weight from one foot to the other to move her into the periphery of his vision, ignoring the weight of uneasy guilt in his chest.

He had no time to be gentle; she needed to hear this. The truth was brutal—everyone learnt that lesson sooner or later. Yes, sometimes having your eyes opened hurt, but walking around with them tightly shut was dangerous, and a woman who’d reached her age should have stopped believing that every person was good and honest.

‘I was hoping you’d have to suffer for much longer than this.’ The petulance was now laced with viciousness. Maya felt almost numb now as she heard her half-sister hiss, ‘Because you deserve it after you turned my own husband against me and stole what’s mine. I deserve that money!’

‘Would that I could have turned him against you, but he was loyal to you to the end.’

The bone-deep weariness and despair in Samuele’s voice finally penetrated Maya’s own personal misery. It had all been an act and she had fallen for it.

‘You wanted to see me suffer, I get that, but isn’t this all a little bizarrely complicated, even for you?’

‘If I’d tried to vanish in Italy your contacts would have found me in thirty seconds and I needed to be in London to get my hair done—my colourist here is simply the best.’ Her laugh that made Maya think of glass breaking rang out before Violetta added, ‘And anyhow London definitely solved the babysitting problem. It was a toss-up, I thought, between that and having someone burn down your bloody castle, but this was more of a “two birds with one stone” thing. I told you that you’d regret cutting me out of the money. Next time I’ll get even more inventive, so don’t relax just yet, will you, darling?’

‘Cristiano left you very well provided for.’ Samuele struggled to keep his voice free of the disgust churning in his belly. ‘You don’t need Mattio’s half of the Agosti estate as well.’

‘Your brother always did what you told him, but at least your investment advice paid off. I do have a very nice sum, you’re right, but half the estate is worth a fortune.’

‘It’s Mattio’s.’

‘And Mattio is mine, but maybe now that you’ve found him I might let you keep him.’

‘How much do you want?’

‘Oh, darling, you can be so crude. You may hold the purse strings but I hold the baby, so play nice or I might change my mind.’

‘I’m listening.’

‘So you’ve met Mother’s little mistake, have you? Mummy said she wouldn’t be a problem or try and encroach in our lives, but it never occurred to me that she’d actually be useful.’

Samuele was glad that Maya had moved out of his line of vision; he didn’t want to see her reaction to that disgusting remark. ‘Get to the point,’ he bit out.

‘I see my future with Charlie.’

‘And his millions,’ he added contemptuously.

‘Well, I wouldn’t marry a poor man, would I?’ she cooed.

He didn’t bother replying.

‘It suits me for you to have Mattio right now. Charlie is not really into babies, but there’s always the possibility that I might just change his mind about that.’ And with that, she hung up.

After any conversation with Violetta, Samuele usually felt as though he needed a shower and this was no exception. He didn’t know at what point Maya had left the room or how much she had heard.

She was standing in the kitchen, her head bent. She had dragged her hair across one shoulder and was anchoring it there with her forearm, revealing the sculpted hollows of her collarbones, the delicately defined angle of her jaw and the elegant length of her neck.

She didn’t immediately turn when he entered but the added level of quivering tension in her body made it clear she knew he was there.

‘I don’t know how much of that you heard...?’

Maya’s arm fell away and her hair tumbled free as she spun around to face him.

‘Enough to know you were right, I was wrong, she was using me and now you’ve got what you want.’ She struggled to keep her voice flat, and struggled harder to push away the overwhelming self-pity, ashamed she was making this personal because the only person who should be considered in this scenario was the baby in the next room. ‘I suppose you want me to pack up his things?’ Without any warning her dignity was drowned in a rush of blinding anger.

‘Is it all about the challenge for you? The winning? I suppose you’ll lose interest in him now you’ve won,’ she threw out, not even sure she believed it but wanting to hurt him because—well, she was not about to give him the benefit of the doubt.

Or maybe she just didn’t want to be the only one hurting here.

Samuele tensed, every muscle in his face clenching as his face blanked, and anger bit deep at the insult. She had unerringly targeted his pride, questioning his integrity and implying he had no conscience.

He knew many men who were successful because they possessed little or no conscience. When it came to making money a conscience was something of a hindrance so he hid his, which made it doubly ironic that he was insulted now because he’d succeeded.

But when their gazes connected there was no spite in hers, just a mixture of sadness and pain, a pain so deep it took a real effort for him to detach himself from the emotions he saw there. His own anger deflated, leaving a vague sense of utterly irrational guilt in its place.

‘This child doesn’t have a father, which is not my definition of winning.’ He arched a brow. ‘What’s yours?’

Maya’s brow puckered, the muscles on her face quivering as her eyes softened and went liquid. ‘I’m so sorry, your brother must have been very young when he died.’

He watched her fighting back tears and struggled to imagine just how uncomfortable that degree of empathy must be to live with as he found himself revealing, ‘He tried to hang on to see his son, but he didn’t make it. He was the bravest man I have ever known.’

Samuele had never discussed his brother or the battle he had fought with anyone, so why was he suddenly opening up to Maya, of all people? He dodged the answer and swore under his breath. ‘You don’t have anything to be sorry for.’

‘When I lost my dad I bottled up my feelings, but when I actually talked about them—’

In a voice that could have wilted green shoots on a plant, he cut across her. It was for her own sake really; if she started wandering around in his head, she would definitely find more than a few things that she didn’t like. ‘I appreciate the sharing,’ he drawled sardonically, ‘but—’

This time it was Maya who shut him down. ‘I get the message.’

She did. If he was one of those people who thought admitting to emotions was a sign of weakness, that was his business; it was the baby her heart ached for. Being taught by example that to suck it up was what real men did... God, it was so depressing.

As she thought of the baby her eyes softened. She might have been abandoned but there was never a moment in her life after she was adopted that she had doubted she was loved. It was those early years that had made her tough enough to survive Edward’s concerted campaign of destruction.

‘What will you ever tell him about his mother?’ Oh, God, I said that out loud!

Bracing herself for another one of his icy put-downs, she maintained a defiant stance as she slowly turned to face him.

‘I would write her out of his life if that was possible.’

No ice, just a cool statement of fact, and while she sympathised with his attitude, she still didn’t think it was the right one. But then it wasn’t her business, was it? she reminded herself.

‘Isn’t it possible? Isn’t she giving you custody of Mattio?’ Giving him away as if he were simply a piece of excess baggage. That was when she’d had to leave the room; if she’d stayed there another moment her feelings would have got the better of her and she’d have started yelling down the phone at her half-sister.

‘Nothing is ever that simple with Violetta. It suits her now to have me take Mattio back to Italy, but she won’t relinquish her maternal control willingly,’ he predicted. ‘And once she’s got Charlie to the altar... Let’s just say she can be very persuasive indeed,’ he finished grimly, no doubt thinking of the custody battle that lay ahead.

‘Oh...I’m sorry.’

He arched a sardonic brow.

‘Well, you’d be better for Mattio than she would be. Actually, anyone would,’ Maya said honestly.

‘Wow, faint praise indeed,’ he drawled, the smile in his voice warming his eyes and making her want to smile back.

She fought the urge and dived for the door. ‘I’ll start packing his things up.’