Her Sicilian Baby Revelation / The Greek's One-Night Heir. Natalie Anderson

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СКАЧАТЬ finding it difficult?’ he sneered. ‘How the hell do you think I feel?’

      ‘I can guess.’

      ‘I don’t need your fake empathy.’ He took a large swallow of wine with a grimace. ‘I have discovered that I’m a father and that the mother of my child kept him a secret from me for three years and now I have to deal with threats from my oldest friend’s new wife who is also my son’s aunt. I didn’t even know you had a sister.’ And neither had he known she was Salvatore Moncada’s secret daughter. Until that day, he’d had no idea Dante’s recently discovered sister was the lover who’d run away from him.

      While outwardly open about who she was, Orla had actually kept her cards very close to her chest. He’d known she’d studied for a degree in zoology—he’d never met anyone who’d studied that subject before so it had stuck in his mind—and that she’d travelled to Sicily in the downtime between ending her graduate job as a veterinary technician and starting her dream job on an Irish conservation project, but it wasn’t until she’d disappeared that he’d realised he knew nothing of importance about her.

      ‘Well, I didn’t know you had a fiancée so that makes us even,’ she fired back.

      ‘I didn’t have a fiancée. I ended it with Sophia the day I met you.’

      ‘You would say that.’ Orla squeezed her eyes shut and rubbed her temples. Her head was now pounding. ‘Even if I accepted that you’re telling me the truth on this…’

      A memory flashed in her mind of sitting on her bed at home, palm flat against her still-flat belly, masochistically searching Tonino’s name for the hundredth time and seeing the press report that his engagement to Sophia was over.

      How long after she’d returned to Ireland had she read that report? A couple of weeks? The report had made clear that Tonino had ended the engagement.

      She could scream. Even if he were speaking the truth about when he ended it, he’d still lied about everything else.

      Rubbing her temples even harder, trying not to wince at the pain shooting through her head every time she spoke, she said, ‘Whose apartment did you take me to?’ She remembered more than waking in his bed now. She remembered the apartment itself.

      ‘Mine.’

      ‘Codswallop. Don’t forget my brother is a billionaire like yourself—that was not a billionaire’s apartment.’

      ‘It was the first apartment I bought with my own money when I was twenty. I use it when I want privacy…’

      His words rang loud in her head, adding to the growing agony, but pushing at her mind were flashes of what he’d wanted privacy with her for. Those particular memories were still nothing but shimmers yet powerful enough to send a bolt of heat down low in her abdomen.

      Once she had craved this man’s touch. She’d craved everything about him.

      She’d made love to him and created a life with him.

      ‘And as for your brother,’ he continued, ‘you never told me you were Dante’s sister and Salvatore Moncada’s daughter. You accuse me of hiding things…’ He downed his wine and blew out a long puff of air. ‘We are losing focus. We are here, now, for one reason only and that is for my son. He is the only thing that matters.’

      If he referred to Finn as ‘his son’ again she would swing for him. Well, she would if she had the energy, but she could feel it draining from her body. Since the accident Orla had suffered from frequent, often debilitating headaches and this one was turning into a whopper. No doubt stress and exhaustion had conspired together and she wanted Tonino gone before he witnessed it go into full bloom.

      When she answered, it took all her remaining strength not to let the pain in her head infect her voice. ‘At least we can agree on that. Look, Tonino, can we call it a night? Finn’s an early riser and I really need to get some sleep before he wakes up. Hopefully a good night’s sleep will put us both in a better frame of mind and we can talk again in the morning about where we go from here.’

      For a long time he didn’t speak, just stared at her, his jaw clenched, firm lips tightly pursed, a pulse throbbing in his temple. ‘Where we go is simple. We tell Finn I am his father and that from now on I am a permanent part of his life.’

      ‘Fine.’ At that point she would have agreed to anything to be rid of him. It felt as if she had a big bass drum bashing in her head.

      The smile he gave chilled her to the bone. ‘And, dolcezza, to be clear, if you attempt to leave my hotel with my son before the morning, I will have no hesitation in launching a full custody battle—and it’s a battle I will win.’

      He let himself out of the suite without a backwards glance.

      Tonino took a long breath, arranged his features into what he hoped was a non-threatening expression and then knocked on Orla’s door.

      He’d done much thinking since leaving her suite, and as the hours had passed the rage inside him had subsided. His behaviour, he recognised, had not been much better than the behaviour he’d accused Orla of, albeit a different kind of abhorrence. For his son’s sake, he needed to build bridges.

      The door opened just as he raised his knuckles to knock on it a second time.

      Orla looked at him as if he were something a stray cat had dragged in. ‘What time do you call this?’

      He took a beat to soak in the thick dark hair, all tousled and spilling over the thin pink robe wrapped around her slender form, and felt a thickening in his loins as he was taken back four years to their first morning together. They’d taken a shower and afterwards he’d expected her to lock herself in the bathroom to paint her face on as all his previous lovers had done. That she hadn’t, that she’d been so comfortable in her skin and so comfortable with him not to feel the need to cover it, had evoked the strangest of feelings in him. Even today he couldn’t explain what that feeling was, but he felt it again now as he stared at the pink, plump lips that had fascinated him as much as everything else about her had.

      He’d wanted Orla with a needy desperation he’d never felt before or since. He could hardly believe those feelings were still alive in his veins.

      Breathing through his mouth to protect his lungs from filling with her scent, Tonino stepped past her into the suite. ‘You said Finn’s an early riser. He must take after me.’ Not that Tonino had had any sleep that night. How could he when he was still trying to comprehend what he’d discovered yesterday?

      Forget that every component of his body was heightened for Orla, he was here for one reason only. His son.

      ‘Tonino, it’s six thirty.’

      ‘I know.’ He looked around the living area of the suite. ‘Where is he?’

      ‘His nurse has taken him for a walk around the gardens.’

      ‘This early?’

      ‘He’s been awake for over an hour.’

      If he’d known СКАЧАТЬ