The Surprise Conti Child Read Online Free PDF

tonight. It will take us some time to reach him. Have patience, si ?”
    â€œYes.”
    Her legs barely holding her up, Alex half leaned on Luca’s arm. Her thudding pulse was a violent cacophony in her ears as they walked into the marble floored foyer and searched for that tall, lean frame that had haunted her dreams for seven years.
    * * *
    Alexis...
    He’d thought he’d seen her an hour ago, her face paler than the simple, white silk blouse that clung to her curves.
    Leandro had never been quite so shocked in his entire life as he’d been the moment he spied that lithe figure on Luca’s arm.
    For a few minutes, he had stood there, stock-still, wondering if he was hallucinating. Wondering if the eve of his engagement to Sophia had unlocked the one face he had tried to bury in the deepest recesses of his mind.
    Wondering if his one sin was finally catching up to him.
    Until Sophia had put a hand on his shoulder slightly and called his name.
    He’d turned to her, offered a quick smile and then slowly, his very sanity up for question, searched that same spot again.
    There had been no Luca or her.
    The long evening dragged on and on until Salvatore Rossi had paraded him in front of all the guests, boasting quite shamelessly that his daughter had snared a dynastic connection like Conti.
    And Leandro Conti of all.
    Even Sophia had cringed at some point. Who, Leandro admitted, he liked.
    There was something self-sufficient and intelligent and very contained about her. At least, he would have a comfortable marriage, he realized halfway through the evening, free of all the marital drama he’d seen between his own parents.
    Valentina’s innocence or not, he couldn’t take a marriage like that.
    Within minutes of meeting her, Sophia had put his mind at ease.
    He’d danced with her as the band played a slow jazz, then with his sister, who had chatted on and on about some old friend.
    It was past ten and Leandro found himself in the private sitting lounge on the first floor, away from the still celebrating guests.
    Salvatore Rossi and Sophia, Valentina, his grandfather, two of his aunts and two of his dissolute cousins were present. Luca had acted strangely, even for him, ever since Antonio had announced this merger.
    Leandro was about to go looking for him when he appeared at the entrance and behind him, walked in the one woman Leandro never ever wanted to see again in his entire life.
    The woman who’d known his one moment of weakness, the loss of his control...
    Valentina’s cheerful greeting reverberated loud in the silence of the room, the clatter of her heels on the parquet floor as she went to the woman deafening.
    It was Alexis he had seen earlier.
    A neatly cut black jacket delineated slender shoulders. A silk blouse clung to a lush figure that he didn’t quite remember like that. She had been lithe, almost gaunt, breakable in his large hands...and yet so violently passionate...as if only Leandro could give her what she needed most.
    Maledizione!
    He was mad to be wondering about her body and yet his gaze continued its perusal of her with a mind of its own.
    Dark blue jeans hugged her long legs, legs she had wrapped around him as he...his blood drifted south slowly, a heady thrill filled his veins, a feeling he had never known except that night...
    Leandro gritted his teeth, willing his body under his command. One look at her and he was ready to react like an uncouth youth.
    He lifted his gaze to her face, and stared in shock.
    A jagged scar began somewhere beneath her hairline and went through her left brow, the skin puckered. Yet didn’t minimize her appeal. If anything, it added even more character to the strong lines of her face.
    She was no dazzling beauty, then or now.
    Hers was more insidious, seeping under one’s skin before you realized, the kind that enthralled the more you looked.
    It lay in that high forehead, the intelligence that shone in those