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

been there when she’d called her wedding off eight years ago—calm, quiet and yet somehow devastated. He’d never asked her why, only given his support when she’d asked for his help to curtail the media swarming in like locusts at the prospect of drama and tragedy beneath the elegant, sweet public persona of hers.

      He’d never let on that she was the one woman he wanted with a desire that seemed to span years, when usually his lovers had a shelf life of maybe six months.

      As she grew older, she’d become even more irresistible. More beautiful, more elegant, more composed, which taunted his base impulses because he wanted to see beneath that perfection. He wanted to see her undone. In his hands.

      “Thank you for agreeing to see me on such short notice. I know how busy you are,” she finally said, turning to him.

      “Why are you being so formal?” he countered. “Is everything all right?”

      “Everything’s fine,” she said, raising her brown gaze to his, not quite smiling, not quite serious. She studied his features with something almost bordering on desperation, searching, as if she meant to see through to his soul. It was unnerving, and yet not...unwelcome.

      “Sorry, I’m just... I don’t know where to begin.”

      “Take your time, then.”

      She put away the empty glass, dropped her white clutch down on the coffee table and then rubbed her palms up and down her hips. Inadvertently calling his gaze to the thoroughly feminine swell.

      His gaze traveled from where her hands rested, up, up, up her hips, to the thrust and fall of her breasts, the pulse beating away at her neck to the plump, glossed lips, to collide with her stunned brown gaze.

      A sudden shimmer of awareness—bright as a bolt of lightning in a dark sky, sizzled through the air around them. Condensing the expansive room, the world, to just the two of them. Her gaze dropped to his mouth, for an infinitesimal second, before she pulled it back up. The moment was weighted, tangible, as if she’d pressed her mouth to his. But it was enough.

      Enough for him to know that the attraction he’d denied for years wasn’t just one-sided. Enough for his muscles to jerk and tighten in anticipation, in need. Enough for the rational side of him to issue warnings.

      “I came to ask you something. Something very important.” The words rushed out of her. “It’s a big thing.”

      “Bene,” he said, reaching for her, but she jerked back.

      “No, it’s a huge thing. Don’t laugh at me, yeah? No, wait, I don’t care if you laugh at me. Just don’t dismiss it immediately, okay? Please, Leo.” Desperation filled her words. “I went through every means available to me and I come to you after a lot of thought. Please promise me you will consider it.”

      “Neha...”

      “I mean, you know me, yeah? For what? Sixteen... No, seventeen years! I’ve never done anything impulsive or rash or reckless. Head down, I worked just as hard as you. Harder even, because life’s not easy for women in the business world. I’ve never...” When her breath became shallow and her eyes filled with an alarming combination of panic and fear, he grabbed her hands and tugged her toward him.

      “Calm down, bella,” he said, keeping his own tone steady.

      She was the most levelheaded woman he knew. This panic, this anxiety...was bizarre. Alarm bells went off in his head. Was she in some kind of trouble? Not financial, because he would’ve heard of it. He had a huge stake in So Sweet Inc.

      Was it...a man? The thought jarred him on too many levels.

      “Make me that promise first,” she said in a demanding, petulant, possessive voice that was completely uncharacteristic of her.

      “I can’t make a promise without knowing what you’re asking me for.” His words were clipped, curt, tangled up in his own reaction. It had always surprised him that after her broken engagement, Neha had never been involved again with another man. Or at least he hadn’t heard about it. He shouldn’t be this shocked that she was involved with a man now.

      “All I’m asking is for you to consider my request first. I have gone over all of my other options. Coming to you is the right choice.” She sounded like she was convincing herself, too. “This is what I want.”

      “Fine, bella. I promise to consider your request. Now, out with it. All the suspense is giving me a headache.”

      “Whatever your answer, will you please keep this whole thing from Mario? This is personal, this is about my future.”

      Leo nodded, shoving away the flicker of distaste.

       It was about a man.

      Why else would she not want her mom or stepfather to know? Was he good enough for her? Had he already deceived her? Did she know what kind of fortune hunters her wealth could attract?

      She slumped down onto the sofa with a harsh exhale. The afternoon light caught glints of copper and gold in the thick, silky strands of her hair. Fingers, clasped tightly together, rested in her lap. “I thought it through, looked at it from all sides, and I’ve decided that this is the right thing for me. For my life. For the life I want.” She licked her lips, a fine line of sweat beading about her upper lip. Then she looked up with the defiant tilt of her chin. “I’m going to have a child.”

      It was the last thing he’d expected for her to say. For a few seconds, he stared at her, his brain trying to catch up.

       She was pregnant? Had the man ditched her?

      “What is it that you want from me, then?” he said, shock making his question curt.

      Her teeth dug into that plump lower lip, her tongue flicked over it, demanding, and getting an unbidden reaction from his tense body. She tucked a wayward lock from her braid behind her ear, each movement so feminine, so utterly taunting.

      “Out with it, Neha,” he said, corralling his own rioting reactions with a ruthless warning. He’d wasted enough time indulging an unlikely scenario between them that he would never turn into a reality.

      She stood up and met his gaze head-on. “I would like you to father my child.”

       CHAPTER TWO

      IF ALL HER hopes and dreams hadn’t been hanging on his response, Neha would have laughed at the astonishment on Leonardo’s face. Like a typical man, he looked baffled by the concept of pregnancy. Or was it the forthrightness of her strange request?

      Unlike any other man, however, he recovered fast and pinned her with his penetrating gaze.

      “You’re not pregnant already?”

      “What? No!” She looked away, refusing to let her imagination conjure a quality to his question that wasn’t there. “Of course I’m not pregnant. I haven’t been with a man since...” She flushed at the sudden gleam of male interest in his eyes.

      Clearing her throat, she slowly unlaced her fingers, forced herself to look up at him. “I’m not pregnant. But I want to be. That’s why I’m asking you to... Be the father. To my child. So that I can be a mum. I want to build the family that I’ve always wanted. So that I can be...happy,” she finished softly.

      She grabbed her clutch and pulled a tissue out of it. Just to have something to do. He kept looking down at her, unblinking. Not betraying his thoughts. A stranger for all that she’d known him for so long.

      Lord, she’d appeared on network shows, giving speeches at conferences with CEOs and entrepreneurs, and this, the most important thing of her life... She was making a total mess of this.

      Even the practice sessions she’d done in front of the mirror in her bedroom didn’t help. Because she couldn’t