Men of Power
Kenzie gasped. Dominick’s breakfast meeting this morning had been with Adrian Carlton, Jerome’s younger brother…?
Jerome’s handsome face darkened angrily. ‘I don’t believe you,’ he finally replied. ‘Adrian doesn’t have the sort of money to buy that amount of shares.’
Kenzie could see, from Dominick’s self-assured smile, that he was in fact telling the truth.
‘Oh, he didn’t buy them from me,’ Dominick said sardonically. ‘I’m signing them over to him later this afternoon. In exchange for his agreeing to release Kenzie from what’s left of her contract.’
‘You—’
‘That was extremely arrogant of you, Dominick!’ Kenzie gasped disbelievingly.
‘You didn’t let me finish, Kenzie,’ he told her softly. ‘Adrian will agree to release you from the contract only if you choose to be released,’ he added firmly.
‘And why would I want to do that?’ She frowned.
‘Because you’re pregnant,’ Dominick pointed out softly. ‘How do you think you’re going to carry on working when you’re seven, eight months pregnant?’
‘Surely that was for me to decide, not you?’ She shook her head.
‘You’re pregnant?’ Jerome interrupted coldly. ‘That’s the reason you fainted last night?’ He stared at her exasperatedly.
‘That’s the reason she fainted last night,’ Dominick clarified, knowing that he hadn’t explained himself to Kenzie properly, and that she saw his behaviour as high-handed. But really he was only trying to give her a let-out if she wanted one, the let-out he knew she had been seeking the last five weeks…
‘I don’t believe this!’ Jerome shook his head as he began pacing the room impatiently. ‘This is just—unbelievable,’ he muttered inadequately. ‘Did you get her pregnant on purpose?’ he accused Dominick. ‘Were you so determined to get her back that you made her pregnant to do it?’ he scorned.
Kenzie’s cheeks were flushed now. ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Jerome—’
‘You did, didn’t you?’ Jerome took no notice of her as he scowled at Dominick.
‘Jerome, don’t be so—’
‘No, let him speak, Kenzie,’ Dominick cut in evenly, keeping very still as he looked at the other man through narrowed lids. ‘What makes you so sure the baby is mine?’
Jerome snorted. ‘Who else’s would it be?’ he snorted. ‘Kenzie is so damned prudish she should take the veil! At least, she could have done,’ he added insultingly. ‘I’m not sure they accept pregnant nuns—What the hell—?’ he choked as Dominick grasped him by his shirt front and all but lifted him off his feet. ‘Take your hands off me, Masters!’ he blustered as Dominick thrust his face into his.
Letting this man go was the last thing Dominick wanted to do as the truth hit him squarely in the chest. A truth Kenzie had always insisted upon, and which he had refused to believe!
He had taken this man’s word over Kenzie’s, and had instantly believed Carlton when he had told him that he and Kenzie were involved.
It had all been a lie!
A lie Carlton seemed to have forgotten completely in his anger.
‘You lied to me, Carlton!’ he denounced as he pushed the other man away from him. Touching Jerome Carlton now made him feel ill. ‘Why did you tell me that you and Kenzie were having an affair?’
‘You told him what?’ Kenzie choked incredulously as she stared at Jerome in disbelief.
‘I told him that the two of us were involved in a mad, passionate affair that was beyond both our controls,’ Jerome sneered. ‘And that the only reason you were hesitating about coming to New York with me was because you didn’t want to hurt him!’
‘But—but why would you do such a thing?’ Kenzie questioned in a daze, completly shaken by this revelation.
At least it explained why Dominick had refused to believe her denials of the affair—how could he help but doubt her when Jerome was telling him completely the opposite? How must it have made Dominick feel to be told she was only staying with him out of a sense of pity?
To a man like Dominick, who didn’t believe in love, that would have been the final humiliation…
Jerome shrugged, seeming unconcerned by his actions. ‘Because selling off shares in Carlton Cosmetics wasn’t enough to get the company out of trouble,’ he told her unrepentantly. ‘I needed something else, something bigger. What I came up with was the beautiful international model Kenzie Miller as the new face of Carlton Cosmetics. But I had to get your overbearing brute of a husband out of the picture first!’
Kenzie didn’t think or hesitate as her hand arced upwards and made hard contact with Jerome’s cheek, her eyes blazing with tears of anger as she glared her dislike at him.
His face twisted with derision as he put a hand up to his rapidly reddening face. ‘Both of you seem to have lost the plot somewhere,’ he muttered. ‘The question both of you should really be asking yourselves isn’t why I lied about my affair with Kenzie. The question you should be asking yourselves is why Masters found it so easy to believe me…’
The fact that he was right only made Dominick more angry.
‘Get out, Carlton,’ he grated harshly, his face pale, and eyes dark and haunted. ‘Get out now. Before I give in to what I would really like to do to you!’ he added bleakly before turning away, having eyes for no one but Kenzie.
Now he knew exactly what he had done and he knew also that Kenzie could never forgive him for the way he had doubted her.
Why should she? He had listened to, and believed, the word of a man who meant nothing to him, over the word of the woman who meant everything to him…
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
‘DOMINICK…?’ Kenzie spoke uncertainly once the two of them were alone, the apartment door having slammed shut behind Jerome several seconds ago as he had wisely taken Dominick’s advice and left.
The verbal exchange between the two men had been vicious, but for Kenzie so very enlightening…
She moistened her dry lips. ‘Dominick, exactly when did Jerome tell you he and I were having an affair?’
‘Don’t!’ he groaned huskily, turning away to inhale a deeply controlling breath. ‘I—you—I was so wrong, Kenzie!’ he muttered in despair. ‘So very wrong and so arrogant. And I’m still doing it, aren’t I?’ he added self-disgustedly. ‘If you want to carry on working for Carlton Cosmetics I’ll tell Adrian this afternoon—’
‘I don’t,’ she cut in impatiently, knowing that after the things that had been said this morning, she could never continue working for Carlton Cosmetics, even if Adrian was now in charge of the company. ‘What I want is for you to answer my question.’
‘You’re angry.’ Dominick sighed. ‘You have every right to be,’ he accepted heavily, running a hand through the dark thickness of his hair. ‘What an idiot I’ve been,’ he murmured. ‘A stupid, stupid idiot! Can you ever forgive me, Kenzie?’ He looked at her with pained eyes.
‘I’m not sure there’s really anything to forgive,’ she said quietly.
‘It sounds to me as if we were both manipulated by a totally unprincipled man who saw the rift in our marriage and took advantage of it.’
Dominick gave the ghost of a smile. ‘That’s very generous of you, Kenzie. I’m not sure, in the circumstances, that I could be as generous—’
‘Dominick, please tell me when Jerome told you those awful lies about the two of us,’ she prompted tensely.
‘It was after one of our—uglier arguments.’ He grimaced at the memory. ‘It’s difficult to remember which one. We were arguing such a lot in that month before we separated. Ironically over having the baby you are now expecting,’ he acknowledged ruefully.
Yes, ironically, Kenzie also realized.
A baby that she already loved, but had no idea how Dominick, now that he must realize the baby was his too, felt about it…
Dominick shook his head in disgust. ‘I was always so determined never to fall in love, never to lay myself open to the sort of pain my parents had inflicted on each other and on me!’ He sighed deeply. ‘Even when I asked you to marry me I reasoned it all out so logically! I was thirty-seven. A wife, especially one as beautiful and accomplished as you, could be a good business asset. I wanted you, you wanted me, so why not get married? God, what an arrogant fool I was! Okay,’ he drawled self-derisively as he saw Kenzie smile slightly, ‘what an arrogant fool I still am!’
‘Do you think?’ Kenzie prompted softly.
‘No, I don’t,’ he said heavily. ‘Those first four months without you were indescribable! I told myself it was because I was angry. Furious. And with good reason. Not only had you walked out on me, but you had left me to go to New York with another man.’
‘Because Jerome lied to you about the two of us having an affair…’ Kenzie frowned, half of her knowing that what Jerome had said—taunted—was true: if she and Dominick had had the sort of marriage where they loved and trusted each other, then none of that misunderstanding would have happened…
‘We barely spoke any more,’ Dominic went on, ‘let alone made love. We were like two polite strangers sharing the same apartment. And then when you seemed so determined you were going to accept the contract Carlton Cosmetics were offering you I decided to go and speak to Carlton myself. What the hell I thought I was doing, I have no idea.’ He grimaced at the thought. ‘The man I was then seems like someone else to me.’ He winced. ‘A cold, arrogant man who seemed to think the whole world, but especially you, should comply with what I wanted. Even when it came to having children…’ he added heavily.
‘We can talk about the baby in a minute,’ Kenzie assured him, a tiny bubble of happiness starting to grow inside her, getting bigger with every passing second. ‘What’s important is that you believe Jerome lied,’ she said firmly. ‘That you believe I have never had an affair. With him or anyone else.’
‘How can I not believe you?’ he groaned. ‘But, don’t you see? I should have known it then! If I had trusted you then, if I had believed in the love you said you felt for me, then—’
‘You hadn’t had too much of an example of love up to that point in your life, Dominick—’
‘Don’t make excuses for me, Kenzie,’ he muttered, interrupting her. ‘I behaved abominably when you said you were going ahead and accepting the contract despite what I said. I behaved even more dreadfully six weeks ago by taking advantage of the situation when you came and asked for my help over Kathy’s wedding,’ he acknowledged hollowly.
Yes, he had. But if, despite Kenzie’s denials, Jerome had told him that the two of them were having an affair, she could see how hard it would have been for Dominick, when their own relationship was so strained by that time, to have believed anything else.
If the two of them had loved each other, if they had been secure in that love, then no one, and nothing, would have been able to come between them to destroy that love…
‘I don’t blame you for hating me now, Kenzie,’ Dominick said flatly at her continued silence. ‘It’s the least I deserve after the way I’ve behaved.’ He closed his eyes briefly, dull pain in their depths when he opened them again to look at her. ‘If I could take it all back, if I could undo what I’ve done—Damn it, no matter what I thought the provocation, I had no right to treat you the way that I did. Not six months ago. And certainly not five weeks ago when I forced you to come away with me to Bedforth Manor.’ His face was very pale. ‘I bought that house for you, Kenzie. Just before you left me.’
Dominick had bought that wonderful, warm, family home for her…?
‘It doesn’t make a lot of sense, does it?’ he acknowledged as he saw her obvious surprise. ‘I’d had this vision of taking you there, of telling you I had bought it for the two of us to live in, of seeing your face light up in the way that it used to when you were happy…’ He shook his head. ‘And instead, four months later I forced you to go there with me and—’
‘Dominick,’ Kenzie cut in softly. ‘You have to stop this now. It isn’t helping anything, least of all us, to rip yourself apart like this.’
‘I told you, it’s what I deserve!’ he bit out forcefully.
‘Why don’t you let me be the one to decide what you deserve?’ she whispered huskily.
He gave a humourless smile. ‘Okay, Kenzie, tell me what you think I deserve?’ His shoulders tensed as if for a blow.
‘I will,’ she promised gently. ‘Dominick, when we first met I fell completely, irrevocably, unreservedly, in love with you.’
‘I know that!’ He gave a pained groan. ‘It was a love I believed I was totally incapable of returning!’
Had believed he was incapable of returning…?
That past tense gave her the encouragement she needed. ‘What you don’t seem to be aware of is that I’m still completely, irrevocably, unreservedly in love with you!’ She smiled shakily.
Dominick became very still, his heart beating so loudly it threatened to deafen him.
‘I could never have made love with you at Bedforth Manor in the way that I did if I wasn’t still in love with you,’ Kenzie continued softly. ‘The baby I’m carrying—our baby—was, as far as I’m concerned, conceived in love.’
He swallowed hard, his emotions—admiration for Kenzie, a building joy, but mostly love—overwhelming him.
‘Dominick, before Jerome arrived, you said I had another alternative,’ she reminded huskily. ‘You offered to continue our marriage even believing that I was expecting another man’s baby. Dominick, did you offer that because you—you love me? Please answer me, Dominick!’ she pleaded emotionally.
‘Yes, I love you!’ He took a hesitant step towards her. ‘I know now that I’ve always loved you. Since the moment I first looked at you. Since the moment you first smiled at me. I just didn’t realize it until I made love with you at Bedforth Manor. Our lovemaking that day was so overwhelming, so deeply moving, it was completely unlike anything else we had ever shared!’
‘For me too,’ she admitted quietly.
He swallowed hard. ‘Please believe me when I say I’ve changed, Kenzie! That I really do love you. That I’ll love you until the day I die,’ he said with certainty, the last five and a half months without her showing him exactly how much he loved and needed her.
She reached up to caress one hard cheek. ‘I do believe you, Dominick,’ she choked. ‘I really do.’
He breathed raggedly. ‘I want you to know our baby—a baby I assure you I want very, very much!—was conceived in love on my part too!’ he whispered. ‘We made love that day, my darling—and it scared the hell out of me!’
Kenzie didn’t seem to notice the tears falling down her cheeks as she laughed huskily. ‘Then what you deserve, Dominick, what we both deserve, is a second chance at being together. And this time we’ll get it right!’ she promised determinedly.
‘Do you really mean that, Kenzie?’ He stared at her. ‘You’ll take me back? Give me a second chance? Let me be a father to our child?’
‘All of those things, Dominick,’ she said, gulping back her tears. ‘And this time we won’t let anything, or anyone, come between us!’
Dominick no longer cared whether or not he deserved this second chance, he just intended grabbing it with both hands and never letting go!
‘I love you!’ he groaned as he took her in his arms and held her tightly against him. ‘I love you. I love you. I love you!’ He rained kisses all over her face, first her eyes, then her nose, and finally her mouth, kissing her with all the love he had inside him for this beautiful, forgiving woman.
He still had a lot to learn about love, but he didn’t doubt that Kenzie would show him how, together, in honesty and trust, the two of them could do anything…
‘Can we live at Bedforth Manor?’ Kenzie asked him a long time later. ‘I absolutely love the house. And the pool-house. It’s where our baby was conceived, after all,’ she added teasingly, the two of them now snuggled up together on the sofa, Dominick’s arms about her as he held her tightly against him.
‘I don’t care where I live as long as I’m with you,’ Dominick stated fiercely, knowing a happiness that he had never believed possible, the past gone now as he realized at long last that to be truly happy he had to give love as well as receive it.
And he loved Kenzie more than life itself.
Their baby was the result of that love. And their child would grow up knowing its parents loved it as much as they loved each other.
‘Why don’t we arrange to renew our wedding vows? In the same church where your sisters were all married?’ he encouraged softly, loving the silky feel of her hair as he caressed the smooth darkness.
Kenzie turned to look up at him. ‘Would you really like that…?’
‘Yes, I would,’ he assured her without hesitation. ‘I would like to do this properly this time, Kenzie. Most of all I would like to share promising to love you for the rest of our lives with all of your family.’
‘Then that’s what we’ll do,’ she agreed, overwhelmed with the happiness they had now found together.
Dominick smiled down at her. ‘I’ve also been thinking that I might like to buy an estate agency in Worcestershire…In the name of a company, so that your father doesn’t realize it’s me, of course. What do you think?’
She kissed him lightly on the lips. ‘I think you had better not reform too much, Dominick, or I won’t recognize you any more!’ she teased lovingly.
‘Hmm,’ he murmured, his own face softened with the same emotion. ‘Perhaps we should go into the bedroom and refresh our memories…?’
‘Perhaps we should.’ Kenzie stood up, holding out her hand to him. ‘There’s more than one way of renewing our vows to each other,’ she whispered huskily as the two of them walked hand in hand to the bedroom.
Their daughter, Sophie Louise, was born eight months later, tears of happiness falling down Dominick’s cheeks as the tiny miracle was placed into his arms.
She was so beautiful, this daughter of his.
So perfect.
So exactly like her mother in every way he decided as he looked lovingly at Kenzie.
The love of his life…
The Italian Tycoon and the Nanny
Rebecca Winters
About the Author
REBECCA WINTERS, whose family of four children has now swelled to include three beautiful grandchildren, lives in Salt Lake City, Utah, in the land of the Rocky Mountains. With canyons and high alpine meadows full of wildflowers, she never runs out of places to explore. They, plus her favorite vacation spots in Europe, often end up as backgrounds for her romance novels. Writing is her passion, along with her family and church. Rebecca loves to hear from her readers. If you wish to e-mail her, please visit her website at www.cleanromances.com.
CHAPTER ONE
THE phone in Massimo’s pocket rang, but this time he didn’t answer it. What part of no didn’t Gillian Pittman understand? She was the only female professor in the group and could have her pick of a dozen men. But she’d set her sights on Massimo, and he didn’t return the compliment.
When he wanted feminine companionship, he spent the odd weekend in Mexico City or Positano with his favorite person, Cesar, who happened to be reigning champion of the Grand Prix. His second cousin’s addiction to racing ensured plenty of women for both of them.
After a grueling workday, he craved a tall glass of ice water followed by a long hot and cold running shower that operated at maximum pressure. Too bad no such luxuries awaited him in the tent he’d called home for the past two years.
It was no bigger than a large, airless closet. Set in the heart of the Petén forest of Guatemala, it offered little more than a place to eat, sleep and record his findings.
The professional teams working at the Cancuen dig site lived in a compound on the other side of the Mayan palace they were excavating. It offered a few more amenities. But he’d come here on his own in an unofficial capacity. To join them after hours meant sacrificing his privacy, something he wasn’t prepared to do.
As he undid the lid on a bottle of water, his phone beeped. Irritated by the intrusion, he drained the contents before checking to see what was so important Dr. Pittman had resorted to sending him a text message. But a quick glance revealed it was Sansone who’d been trying to reach him.
An ominous presentiment stole through his body.
In the twenty-four months he’d been gone, he’d never received a phone call from his oldest cousin, let alone a text message. Sansone disliked him too intensely for that.
Steeling himself to deal with it, he pushed the button and read, Tragic news, Massimo. Call me immediately.
The word tragic had a specific connotation he couldn’t in all conscience ignore. Had his uncle been injured? Or worse?
In that moment before he called his cousin back, the sweat poured off him faster than when he was subjected to the sun’s full intensity.
“What’s happened?” he asked, the second he heard Sansone’s voice.
“Papa had news that caused him to collapse. The doctor’s with him, so he asked me to phone you.”
He wouldn’t put it past his uncle Aldo to pretend he was ill to gain Massimo’s sympathy. This could be a manipulative ploy on his uncle’s part to get him to come home.
Massimo wasn’t ready to do that. Something earthshaking would have to happen first.
“What news might that be?”
After an uncharacteristic hesitation he said, “It’s about Pietra.”
With the mention of Massimo’s sister, the air froze in his lungs. “What about her?”
“Her father-in-law called to tell Papa that she and his son were killed in a car accident earlier today.”
Killed—
Pietra?
He reeled. Breathtaking pain shot through him.
“And the baby?” he demanded savagely.
“I don’t know. Papa didn—”
Massimo hung up, unwilling for Sansone to hear any part of his grief.
“I’m afraid I have to be in Portland tomorrow for the beginning of that three-day conference, Julie. Let me know the day and time of the funeral. I’ll try to arrange a flight from there.”
When Brent sounded preoccupied, it meant he was sitting in front of his computer doing work. Somehow Julie had expected more from the man who professed to love her.
She gripped the phone tighter, too overwrought with grief to think clearly. Shawn’s death hadn’t fully sunk in yet.
While her heart ached for her helpless, orphaned nephew, she was still mourning the brother she’d loved. She couldn’t believe Pietra, her charming sister-in-law, was gone. The loss was agonizing enough without trying to process the horror of the crash that had snatched two precious lives from existence.
“I wish I could tell you something definitive, but we’re waiting for Pietra’s uncle to phone back. Until he does, nothing can be settled,” she whispered in an unsteady voice. “When I think of Nicky …”
“The little guy won’t remember any of this. Luckily he’s got your mom.”
She bit her bottom lip so hard she tasted blood. “As I told you yesterday after hearing the news, Nicky has me, Brent. My mother has already been a mother.”
He made a strange sound in his throat. “Except that you work in San Francisco. How are you going to do that and take care of a baby, too?”
The answer seemed obvious to Julie. Yet by his posing that question, her hope that he wanted a future with her under any and all circumstances died on the spot.
“I … I’m planning to move here to Sonoma.” Since learning of the fatal accident from her father, the idea had been growing in her mind. She intended to phone her boss and resign before the day was out.
“And give up the great job I helped you get in order to tend a child that’s not even yours?”
Oh, Brent.
She shook her head. Why did it have to take a tragedy like this for her to see just how self-absorbed he was? They would never have made it. He wasn’t ready for marriage, let alone interested in helping her raise Shawn’s boy.