Riccardo's Secret Child (20 page)

‘No doubts.' Julia smiled, filled with bliss and wonder that this big, dark, powerful man cradling her against his chest could actually love her. ‘You have no idea how much I've wanted you to tell me what you just did. I fell in love with you and it hit me like a bolt from the blue. When you kept talking about want I felt that I had to run away because I wanted so much more from you.'

‘And that's why you accepted a date with that wimp…'

‘Roger is not a wimp!' Julia smiled with unconcealed pleasure into his chest. ‘Although I did find my attention straying quite a bit when I was sitting at that table with him.'

‘Straying to me, I take it?'

Julia moved sinuously against him, curling into his body, and he groaned. ‘Carry on like that and my little talk for the night is finished,' he growled, bending to kiss her with a fierceness that was returned.

‘Oh, good.' She began unbuttoning his shirt, running her hands over his broad chest and teasing the flat brown nipple with her finger. ‘Just so long as you take it up again later.'

‘Later,' he promised solemnly, ‘and tomorrow and the day after, right into forever…'

‘A
PPARENTLY
you're the woman for me,' Riccardo said, his arm around Julia's shoulders as they both sat on a swinging chair on the wooden deck, staring out into the velvet moonlit darkness. She could hear the sound of the surf, gently lapping against the beach ahead of them, although the sea was just a black lake, fringed with sand and the swaying trees.

‘It would seem that I need a woman who can keep me on my toes.' He tilted his bottle of beer, swallowed a mouthful and leant to nuzzle the neck of the woman he adored.

‘And I thought your daughter was the one who could do that,' Julia murmured with a smile on her face. Nicola was absorbed with her father, but she would never forget her mother. Neither she, Julia, nor Riccardo would allow that to happen.

‘Oh, that child of mine can keep anyone on their toes. I needn't tell you that my family think the world of her. The first granddaughter among four grandsons. She will be spoilt rotten.'

They had been in Italy for two weeks now and Julia had met most of his family and it was as vibrant and closely knit as he had promised. She had been afraid that her mother might have been put off by the sheer volume and effervescence of them all, but she had taken to them like a duck to water.

‘And what about the next child?' She patted her stomach which was only now beginning to show the signs of the
baby she was carrying, the baby that had been conceived when love had still been an unmentionable word and passion had driven caution to the winds.

‘A son,' Riccardo said firmly and he laughed that sexy, low laugh of his that never failed to make the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. ‘I shall need all the help I can get to support me with my women…'

He placed his hand over hers on her stomach and then began stroking her belly in slow, circular movements until her body went limp and she moaned softly under her breath.

‘I absolutely refuse to make love out here,' she said, hooking her finger around his thumb. ‘Nicola might be sound asleep, but mothers have a tendency to hear the smallest of sounds. My mum would have a heart attack if she came out here and found us…'

‘In flagrante delecto…?'
He chuckled. ‘Your mum would discreetly disappear with a smile on her face. You know I can do nothing wrong in her eyes.'

‘Poor, deluded woman…' Julia turned to kiss him, holding his beautiful face between her hands. ‘However, there is the beach, and it is rather warm tonight…'

‘You're a wicked woman.'

‘My darling, you taught me everything I know…'