Peyton dropped her hand. ‘No. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. You can drop things and just leave. Like right now. Ican’t.’
Grasping her by the upper arms, he gazed into her eyes for long moments, his dark eyes flinty. ‘Marry me.’
If he’d shape-shifted into an animal right now, Peyton couldn’t have been more surprised. Of all the times he’d proposed to her, this one actually stung. She knew it was coming from a deep well of concern for his mother but that didn’t make it any less difficult to deal with.
Peyton shifted against the restraining bands of his hands. ‘Go to your mother,’ she said. ‘Go home.’
He stared at her for long moments, frustration and indecision toying for top billing in the stormy brew of his eyes as he released her arms. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.
Peyton linked her arms around his neck and gave him a fierce hug because even though she was angry and disappointed with him now, he was still flying halfway around the world to an uncertain family situation.
‘It’s okay,’ she whispered. They could talk about it when he got back. ‘Now go.’
He turned away and left then but it wasn’t until she heard the front door slam that a sob caught in her throat and Peyton realised the awful truth. She loved him. Loved a man who didn’t love her back.
A man who wanted to marry her for all the wrong reasons. And there was nothing she could do but keep it to herself and never let him know.
13
Two weeks later Valentino lay horizontal in his business-class seat, wide awake, somewhere over the Pacific Ocean. The lights in the cabin had been turned low and most sensible travellers were using it to grab some shut-eye. They’d be landing in Brisbane in just over four hours.
But he couldn’t sleep.
He was impatient for the plane to fly faster, to get there sooner. He needed to see Peyton. He’d screwed up with her so badly with that botched proposal and he needed to make it right.
What he should have said was –I love you, please marry me.
He just hadn’t realised at the time it was how he felt. He’d known the minute the plane took off though, carrying him thousands of kilometres away from her, his heart heavier and heavier the closer his plane got to Italy.
The further it got from Peyton.
His thoughts drifted to that day again. The day of the market and the brunch with her parents. It had started so well and had got even better as he’d massaged her feet with those red toenails which been an inexplicable turn on. They’d looked so damn… sexy and he’d known he was in big trouble.
Which was why he should never have offered the foot massage, but he’d thought he could handle it. And maybe hecouldhave prior to the incident in the scrub room when the baby had kicked and he’d placed his hands on Peyton under her scrub top.
He’d been doing just fine with keeping his distance until that point. Treating Peyton as the pregnant mother of his child. Affording her the right amount of reverence and respect. But that moment she’d looked at him, her eyes smoky with desire?
Yeah, his thoughts had been less than reverent from that point.
But it had been herfeetfor crying out loud. Nothing sexual about feet – for him anyway. He was wrong, though, so very wrong. Especially with such vocal approval of his technique. Every time his fingers had strayed to a new part of her foot she’d given an appreciative moan which had shot his concentration to pieces. He’d continued through sheer grit alone and steadfastly refusing to look at anythingbuther feet.
That little squirm of hers had been the limit, though. He’d been going okay till then, holding his libido in check, but she’d moved and things had shifted in his peripheral vision, and he couldn’t stop himself from turning his head and looking his fill. Finding her hand resting on her belly in a pose he’d seen more and more often since her tummy had popped had been the last straw.
Her habit of wearing baggy clothes and scrubs had allowed her to hide her pregnancy from others. Butheknew. He’dfeltit. And that day she’d been wearing a flowy skirt that had hidden her legs as she’d walked but lying horizontal on the couch had flattened to reveal the outline of thighs that had filled out over weeks of him feeding her the most tempting food he could findandthe small rise of her tummy.
And God help him, he’d wanted to see it. To lay his eyes on it. A swell of desperate need rising in him that he hadn’t been able to contain.
Despite the insistent buzz of his libido, Valentino hadn’t meant it to be sexual when he’d first kissed her belly. It had merely been impulsive but then somehow it felt natural to keep kissing, like men the world over did to their partner’s pregnant belly. Until her quiet whimper had kicked things into an entirely different tempo and he’d wanted to seeallof her body.
To catalogue all the changes pregnancy had wrought, yes, but also because his blood was throbbing and his pheromones were raging and the rough cant of her breathing was filling his head, and the tight rein he’d been keeping on his libido vanished like smoke as her nipples had brushed the pads of his thumbs and she’d arched her back and cried out his name then lifted her head for his mouth.
Dio!Her mouth.He hadn’t been able to get enough of her mouth.
The phone call had been like a bucket of cold water. The worst timing but also his worst nightmare come true. The one thing that always worried him about being too far away from home. But even so, with his sister hysterical and his mother in who-knew-what state, he’d have given anything to have rewound time and not answered that call.
Delayed it. Switched it off. Let it go to voice mail.
With Peyton looking rumpled and dazed, her mouth glistening, her nipples engorged, her small round belly out and proud and the aroma of her arousal a dizzying distraction, he could easily have ignored it until they’d satisfied their hunger.
