Page 17 of His Housekeeper's Twin Baby Confession
Her pulse throbbed. In her head a small voice was warning:Danger! Danger!But it was too late, because Massimo was coming to get her any minute now.
She tried to claw back some sense of reality before he came, telling herself that this was just a Cinderella moment. He would see how inferior she was next to all those other women tonight and he wouldn’t ask her to accompany him again. Things would go back to normal and that was okay.
That was more than okay,she assured herself fiercely.
She took a deep breath. Tried to calm her pulse. This was a moment out of time. A moment to indulge in fantasy and then go back to the real world in approximately three hours. Massimo was ruthless about the time he spent at functions. In and out.
There was a knock on the door.
He was here.
Against Carrie’s better efforts, all her attempts to keep her feet on the ground dissolved in a rush of nerves and heat. For a moment she felt light-headed. Tipping dangerously close to the edge of losing herself again...of allowing herself to dream of another life.
She took a deep breath. Calmed herself. She was not that girl any more. Any dreams she’d harboured had been well and truly shattered. She was a grown woman, and she knew exactly what was going on here.
Nothing much at all.
She called out, ‘Come in,’ but at the last moment couldn’t turn around to face Massimo. Because she was too afraid to see the look on his face when he saw her and compared her to every other woman in his life.
When Massimo walked into the room Carrie had her back to him. The dress was strapless. The top of her back was bare, shoulders straight. Her skin was pale, almost pearlescent in the light. Her hair was swept up into a rough chignon and the line of her neck seemed to him to be incredibly delicate. Vulnerable.
For a heart-stopping moment Massimo didn’t want her to turn around. He had a superstitious notion that once she did everything would change. That he’d embarked on something that was already leaving his control.
But it was too late. She was turning around, and he couldn’t stop her, and she was...breathtaking. Literally. Like a gem revealed after layers of dust had been brushed away.
His first thought was,Why has she hidden herself away?His second thought was,I want her.It beat through him like a drum. Heavy and insistent.
The dress was black and form-fitting, a classic design. The bodice was cut low over her chest and clung lovingly to the fullness of her breasts, held up by some feat of engineering that Massimo could only guess at.
His gaze continued down to where the material defined her small waist and then gathered and draped over her hips and thighs before falling in long loose folds to her feet.
It was all at once classically elegant and indecently sexy.
Incredibly, he managed to drag his gaze back up and find his voice. ‘You look...beautiful.’
‘I feel a little exposed.’
He looked at her. High cheekbones. Delicate jaw, but strong. She was pink in the face. Her eyes looked very green, as if they too had been dulled until this moment. She wore minimal make-up because she evidently didn’t need it. A slick of flesh-coloured lipstick. Slightly smoky eyes.
‘Your dress is fine, believe me.’
‘If you say so... I’ve never been to anything like this before.’
And they hadn’t even left his apartment yet.
Massimo’s conscience pricked. He ignored it. There was no way he could turn back now. A floodgate had been opened and for the first time in his life he felt like throwing caution to the wind.
He walked towards her and held out the box he was holding in his hands. He’d almost forgotten.
She looked from it to him, suddenly wary. ‘What’s this?’
‘An embellishment.’
Not that she needed it.
She took a step towards him, and Massimo gritted his teeth as her scent tickled his nostrils. Light, but with those subtle undertones of something much more potent. Like her...with hidden depths.
He opened the box and she looked down. He could see the pink leach from her face. Not the reaction he would have expected when a woman laid eyes on an art deco diamond and emerald necklace from one of the world’s most iconic jewellers.
