Melanie Milburne - Shock - One-Night Heir

He smiled a sinful smile, his dark eyes glinting at her. ‘Let them talk. I can spend time with my soon-to-be ex-wife, can’t I? Besides, we have business to discuss.’

Maya pressed her lips together. ‘I haven’t changed my mind about the villa. I sent the papers back to your lawyer. I am not going to let you pay me off with a lump sum. I told you what I want.’

‘I know,’ he said, scooping a glass of champagne off the tray of the passing waiter. He took a generous sip before he added, ‘but here’s the thing: I want it too.’

She looked up at him warily. ‘We can’t both have it, though, can we?’

His eyes locked on hers, hot and hard as steel. ‘I have given it some thought. For the next twelve months I would like the villa to remain a private residence. No developments, no changes.’

She frowned. ‘And after that?’

He took another sip of his champagne, his throat moving up and down slowly as he swallowed it, deliberately delaying his response, making her wait, making her feel unimportant, insignificant. ‘After that, if you still want it you can buy it from my family,’ he said.

Maya rolled her eyes. ‘Oh, for pity’s sake.’

‘What’s the matter, Maya?’ he asked. ‘I’m paying you a fortune in settlement. You’ll have enough cash to buy ten villas.’

She stalked away from him. ‘I don’t want your stupid money.’

In an effort to move away from the interested glances aimed at her, Maya slipped out to a balcony accessed by French windows. She hadn’t expected Giorgio to follow her out there but, before she could shut the doors behind her, he had stepped through them.

‘Why are you being so difficult over this?’ he asked, leaning back against the closed doors.

‘ I am being difficult?’ she asked with an incredulous look. ‘You’re the one who keeps sending legal documents the thickness of two phone books to me to sign.’

His forehead creased in a brooding frown. ‘I have shareholders and investors to protect. Don’t take it personally. It’s just business.’

Maya put her glass of juice down on a pot stand before she dropped it. ‘Oh, yes, it’s always business with you. Our marriage was nothing more than a business arrangement. The only trouble was I didn’t deliver the goods as promised.’

‘What do you mean by that?’ His voice was hard and sharp, like a flung dagger.

She dropped her gaze and let out a scratchy sigh. ‘You know what I mean, Giorgio.’

A lengthy silence passed.

‘I wanted it to work, Maya,’ he said quietly. ‘I really did, but we were both making each other miserable in the end.’

She looked up at him with a pained expression. ‘You don’t get it, do you?’

‘What’s to get?’ he asked, his voice rising in frustration. ‘We were married for five years, Maya. I know it wasn’t easy for you. It wasn’t easy for me, watching you…’ He didn’t finish the sentence but, moving away from the doors, lifted his glass and drained the contents.

Maya looked at his stiff spine, feeling the emotional lockout she always felt when they argued. He refused to talk about the losses they had experienced. She’d always had the feeling he had dismissed each miscarriage as nature’s way of saying something was not right. She, on the other hand, had wanted to talk about each of the babies she had named as soon as they were conceived. She had wanted to talk about their stolen futures, the dreams and hopes she had had for each of them. To her, they were not a collection of damaged cells that nature had decided were best sloughed away. They had been her precious babies, each and every one of them.

Giorgio hated failure. He was a ruthlessly committed businessman who refused to tolerate defeat in any shape or form. Success drove him, as it had driven his grandfather and his late father to build the heritage that stood unrivalled in the world of luxury hotels. Giorgio had no time for life’s annoying little hiccups. He wanted results and went about achieving them mercilessly if he had to. That was how Maya had ended up his wife. His father had just been injured in a terrible head-on collision and was lying in a semi-coma in hospital, not expected to live past a few weeks.

Giorgio had decided Maya would be an ideal candidate for a wife: educated, poised, young and healthy and in the prime of her reproductive life. How wrong he had been to choose her of all people, she thought bitterly. He could have done so much better, a fact some members of his family had hinted at over the last year or so. They were subtle about it, of course: an occasional comment over dinner about someone’s newborn child or how one of Giorgio’s school friends was now a father of twins. Each comment had been a stake through Maya’s heart, worsening her sense of failure, shattering her self-confidence, destroying her hope of one day being a mother. She had failed as a Sabbatini wife. She had let the dynasty down and, until she got out of Giorgio’s life, his family would continue to look upon her with pity and disappointment.

Giorgio put his glass down on the wrought iron table before he faced her. ‘My grandfather is dying,’ he said in a low, serious tone. ‘He told me this morning. He has less than a month or two at most to live. No one else in the family knows.’

Maya felt her heart drop like a ship’s anchor inside her chest. ‘Oh, no…’

His throat rose and fell over a tight swallow. ‘That’s why he wanted all the family here tonight. He wanted tonight to be a happy celebration. He didn’t want anyone’s pity. He will make the announcement to family and friends in the next week or two.’

Maya could understand Salvatore’s motivation in keeping tonight focused on his birthday instead of his impending demise. Pride was something she had come to recognise as a particular Sabbatini trait. Giorgio had it in buckets and barrels and spades. ‘Thank you for telling me,’ she said softly, not quite understanding why he had. Why hadn’t he told Luca and Nic, his two brothers, for instance?

His eyes were still meshed with hers. ‘I want you to think about postponing your trip to London,’ he said. ‘Call the school and tell them you can’t make the interview. Tell them you need to take compassionate leave.’

She stared at him, open-mouthed. ‘I can’t take leave before I’ve even got the job. They will give it to someone else.’

He lifted a shoulder. ‘If they do, then you weren’t meant to have it. If they think you are the best one for the position they will wait until you are available.’

Maya frowned at him furiously. ‘Of course they won’t keep the job open for me. I’m the least experienced of the candidates. I haven’t stood in front of a classroom since I was at university on teaching practice. I won’t stand a chance if I don’t turn up for the interview.’

‘You don’t need the job right at this moment, Maya,’ he said. ‘I have agreed on an incredibly generous allowance. If you want to work, then I am sure other jobs will come along in time.’

Maya threw him a castigating look. ‘Why do you have to be so damned philosophical about everything?’

He returned her frown with a challenging arc of one brow. ‘Why do you have to be so irrational and emotional?’

Maya turned away and looked out over the wintry gardens, her hands gripping the balustrade so tightly her knuckles ached. ‘Is this really about your grandfather’s health or an attempt to make me change my mind about the divorce?’

He didn’t respond for so long she wondered if he had left her there, listening to the soft patter of the February raindrops.

‘You can have your divorce, but not right now,’ he said at last. ‘I want my grandfather to die in peace, believing we have patched things up.’