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

Чтение книги онлайн.

       CHAPTER SEVEN

      ‘ARE YOU OKAY?’

      Ever since they’d left the government offices where they’d officially added Tonino’s name as father on Finn’s birth certificate, Orla had lapsed into silence. Her head was turned from him, her body pressed against the door as if she were preparing to make an escape the moment the car came to a stop.

      ‘I’m fine.’ Her tone suggested she was far from fine.

      ‘You do know this is for the best?’

      She twisted her head to meet his stare and sighed. ‘Yes. I do know that. Whether you believe me or not, I always intended to tell you about Finn. Always.’

      Tonino looked at his son—now his legal son—fast asleep in his car seat.

      He wanted to believe her. For their son’s sake. But he couldn’t escape the one verifiable fact that she’d made the deliberate choice to keep him in the dark about the pregnancy before the accident. Blaming Sophia’s deliberate sabotage was too easy—and he did believe that Sophia had confronted her; it was exactly the kind of thing the poisonous bitch would do—Orla should have told him about the pregnancy whether she believed he was engaged or not. Instead she had chosen to swallow Sophia’s lies and deprive him of the wonder of experiencing the pregnancy with her, which in turn had led to depriving him of over the first three years of his son’s life. Tonino, as his parents would testify, had never been one for forgiving or forgetting.

      ‘Can I ask you something?’ she said after a long period of time had passed when he’d left her assertion unacknowledged.

      He loosened his tense shoulders and inclined his head. ‘Anything.’

      ‘Last night you said our fathers were old friends. Did you know Salvatore well?’

      ‘Well enough. Why do you ask?’

      ‘I know so little about him. I don’t like to ask Dante because I can see it makes him uncomfortable. I think he feels guilty that they had such a great relationship while I was this dirty little secret.’

      He could understand why she felt like that. No one had known of Salvatore Moncada’s secret love child, not even Tonino’s own father, who had been Salvatore’s closest friend.

      He wondered how his father would react when he learned Salvatore’s illegitimate daughter was the mother of his grandchild. Probably with open arms. His mother too. There hadn’t been a single conversation between Tonino and his parents in recent years where the subject of him settling down and having babies hadn’t come up, the implication being he needed to find a suitable replacement for the fiancée he’d so callously thrown away. In his parents’ eyes, Sophia had been perfect. Beautiful and rich and from a good Sicilian family. Their engagement had been celebrated in the same way the British celebrated a royal engagement. Their fury at him ending it had been off the charts. They’d taken it personally. They’d accused him of disrespecting the family name and destroying the decades-long friendship with the Messinas. There had been threats. At one point he’d thought his mother was going to slap his face.

      That marriage to Sophia would have seen Tonino spend his life in misery hadn’t concerned either of them.

      With a sigh, he tried to think positively of his parents. He’d had the security of their unconditional love for the first thirty years of his life whereas Orla had never met her father and as for her mother…where was she? She’d missed Aislin’s wedding. Orla rarely spoke of her. She might as well not exist.

      ‘Your father was a man of many contradictions,’ he told her heavily.

      ‘In what way?’

      He thought of the best way to put it before saying, ‘He was a womaniser and a gambler. But he was also a great raconteur. He could tell the most boring story and make it funny. He was not a man anyone would trust to lend money to if they wanted to get it back and definitely not someone any man could trust to leave his wife alone in a room with.’

      Her eyes widened with alarm. ‘He was a sex pest?’

      ‘No. Women loved him. Some loved him a little too much. He broke many hearts.’

      Her lips tightened as she considered this before giving a decisive nod. ‘He didn’t break my mother’s heart.’

      ‘Then she was clever enough not to involve СКАЧАТЬ