A Deal To Carry The Italian's Heir / Christmas Contract For His Cinderella. Jane Porter

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      Eyes wide, breath hitching loud enough for him to hear, she came at him. And hugged him. Hard. The press of her body against his was a pleasure of mere seconds, gone before he could revel in it. The scent and warmth of her fleeting heaven. Her hands on his shoulders, she kissed his cheek, and a shiver of anticipation built inside him. Anticipation that would never deepen into more. “I don’t know how to thank you,” she said, pulling back. “I promise you, Leo. You’ll never regret it.”

      Leo pulled her arms from around his neck and took a step back. Putting distance between her and him. Giving his discipline a fighting chance.

      Every muscle in his body flooded with the awareness that here was a woman who was his match in every way. A woman who’d never ask him for more than he could give, a woman who would be the absolute best mother to any child they had, a woman that would always make him laugh and want.

      Awkwardness flashed in her eyes before she fiddled with her clutch again.

      As he watched her walk out of his bedroom, Leo stayed leaning against the bed. He turned his neck around, tension clinging to his frame.

      Cristo, now even his bedroom smelled of her.

      The rest of the day, he wondered if he would come to regret his decision. Because he had tied himself irrevocably to the woman he desperately wanted and could not have.

       CHAPTER FOUR

      NEHA WALKED ONTO the picture-perfect balcony attached to her suite and took in the astonishingly beautiful view of the grounds surrounding the villa and the glittering lights of Lake Como. After a relaxing day at a luxurious spa and lunch at a café overlooking the beautiful canal district of Navigli with Natalie’s irreverent companionship, Neha was equipped to face the evening.

      Greta’s eightieth birthday celebrations—the perfect event for Neha and Leonardo’s first public appearance as an official couple. Today, they’d confirm the rumors that had already been whipped into a frenzy by Leo’s carefully orchestrated trips to her offices, even at the opening of a new, trendy café in London.

      They’d seen more of each other in the last two weeks than they had in the last fifteen years. He was doing it for the press coverage, but she struggled mightily to not fall into the fantasy right out of her head.

      Like sending her favorite exotic orchids the day after she’d returned from Milan.

      Like showing up at work last night and packing her off to Lake Como so that she could attend Greta’s party and get a weekend away in the process. Neha had protested at first—it was a whole extra day she didn’t need to bunk.

      “You expect me to accept the fact that you want to retire seriously, and yet you won’t cut yourself a break after an eighty-hour week,” he’d said, his powerful frame shrinking the size of her vast office. The broad sweep of his shoulders had electrified her senses after a long day, the reality of seeing him in her space making everything she’d set into motion achingly real.

      The attraction she felt for him all the more painful to deny for he was just as out of reach now as ever. But he’d been right about her needing a break.

      The two weeks since she’d returned had been packed with back-to-back meetings, a visit to a newly launched bakery in east London where she hadn’t been allowed inside the huge, state-of-the-art industrial kitchen but posed for pictures with delicious treats she hadn’t created, and reading hundreds and hundreds of pages of contracts with the legal personnel for a book deal she was going to sign soon.

      A cookbook with her brand name but the actual recipes had been created by a team of world-class chefs.

      She’d been thrust right into her soul-sucking life and desperate for escape, but Neha had given in. Even as the cautious part of her whispered that running away with Leo and to Leo was a dangerous habit.

      Every free moment of the last two weeks had been spent replaying that scene between her and Leo in his bedroom. She’d fantasized in the most wicked detail what it would have been like if she’d taken his mouth for a kiss she’d wanted for so long. If she’d asked him to conceive their child by making love to her...

      Her cheeks heated. Would he have taken her up on that offer, too? Did he feel this awareness that seemed to hum through her when he was near?

      But she was also painfully aware that it was time to bury what had been her heart’s desire for so long that it was a part of her.

      They could never be lovers now, not with their lives entangled around an innocent life. Not an easy decision but done.

      As the horizon shone brilliantly in the evening sky, for the first time in years she was hopeful for the future. With Leo by her side, she could finally build the life she wanted. And her baby would have everything she had known once—a doting mother, a caring father, a loving family.

      “She’s refusing to join us?” Massimo asked as Leo walked into the lounge, having spent more than an hour with Greta, who was acting like a petulant teenager instead of the Brunetti matriarch celebrating her eightieth birthday with Milan’s upper crest due to appear in less than an hour to honor her.

      Leo took the tumbler of whiskey Massimo offered with a grateful nod and downed it. He sighed. “She’s not just acting out this time. She’s really upset that Alex is not here.”

      “It’s not like Alex to disappear like this without a word to any of us, for months at a time.”

      Leo agreed. While their grandmother’s stepdaughter, Alex—Alessandra Giovanni, one of the top supermodels in the world—had family in the US and regularly disappeared from Milan for months at a time for her shoots, on a given day, they’d always known where she would be. More importantly, Alex never went more than a few weeks without dropping by to visit with Greta.

      But this time, even Alex’s mother had no idea of her daughter’s whereabouts.

      Greta, having lived through the path of destruction her son had blazed through her life, had never been soft or loving with Leo or Massimo. But she had stood guard over her grandsons, helped them overthrow her own son when it had been clear Silvio would destroy BFI.

      Only with her second husband, Carlo, whom she’d lost after a precious few years, and his daughter, Alessandra, had a different side emerged of Greta.

      He knew Alex felt that same love toward Greta, knew she felt like she belonged here with Massimo and him, more than she did with her mother’s family. So why disappear like this? Where was she?

      He was about to suggest they reach out to Alex’s agent when Neha walked into the lounge.

      Looking absolutely ravishing in a fetching pink creation that left her shoulders bare, kissed every curve like he wanted to, molded to the swell of her hips. And yet, somehow, she managed to look elegant and stunning, too. Her hair in an updo showcased the beauty of her high cheeks and strong brows. Mouth glistening a light pink, she reminded Leo of a ripe, tart strawberry. A strawberry that he wanted to bite.

      She took one look at them and stilled. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to intrude on you two. I can come back.”

      There was a hint of shimmer on her neck and the valley of her cleavage when she stood under the crystal chandelier, beckoning a man’s touch. Leo could no more stop watching her than he could stop breathing. Dio, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d been this mesmerized by a woman. Maybe never. “Of course you’re not intruding,” he said.

      Maybe a little too sharply, because her gaze jerked up to his.

      He cleared his throat and went to pour another drink. He needed the extra fortification if he had to spend the rest of the evening with her—looking but not touching, enveloped by the