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

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      Orla was thankful for the bossy photographer. He clearly saw himself as an artiste and spent ages framing each shot in the cathedral’s picturesque grounds. This allowed her to hide in plain sight with her family, safe amid their huge numbers. That she had barely spoken to any of them in the last three years was neither here nor there. She felt no animosity towards them. They simply picked up where they’d left off, catching up on their lives in snatches of conversation.

      Snatches of conversation were all she could manage. Everything inside her had become so tight it was a struggle to get any words out.

      One of the small bridesmaids had taken a shine to Finn and stuck to his side, gabbling away to him in her own language. Finn didn’t have much in the way of a vocabulary but the rapture on his face only proved that language was inconsequential.

      Too scared to look at Tonino, Orla kept her gaze far from him but still felt the heat of his stare upon her. It had been hard enough feeling it every second of the wedding ceremony but outside, his solid form a good head taller than most of the other guests, she felt his attention like a malevolent spectre haunting her. She sensed his loathing, which only added to the cold needles digging into her skin.

      What had she done to provoke such animosity?

      Deep in her bones she knew the moment opportunity presented itself, he would pounce. She had to be ready for it. She had to remember.

      Frustration at her Swiss cheese memory made her want to scream.

      She’d been waiting for her baby to be born before telling the father. That was something she knew only because Aislin had told her so. Aislin had been unable to tell her the father’s name or Orla’s reasons for waiting until after the birth to tell him because Orla had never disclosed it to her.

      Why was that? Orla never kept secrets from her sister so why would she have kept something of such importance to herself?

      There were so many things she’d spent three years trying to understand about her own thoughts and actions during the pregnancy, desperately trying to remember, even undergoing hypnosis to unlock the crucial hidden memories.

      The most crucial memory of all, the identity of Finn’s father, had now been unlocked but there was still a heap of others to bring to light.

      As soon as the photos were done and the bride and groom had ridden off to the hotel on their horse-drawn carriage, Orla latched onto Aislin’s friend Sabine and used her as a shield while she wheeled Finn to their waiting car.

      She unstrapped him and carefully lifted him into her arms. He was small for his age and light in weight but it wouldn’t be long before her still-weak muscles would struggle to carry him any distance. She would carry him for as long as she could physically manage. She’d missed out on so much of his short life, days and nights spent aching to hold her baby, days and nights spent hating the body that had entrapped her in a living hell, fighting with every breath to get herself well enough that she could at least live under the same roof as her child.

      Once Finn was secured in his car seat, she hurried to the other side and slid in beside him.

      Only when the driver pulled away did she turn her head to look out of the window.

      Tonino was staring straight at her, not a flicker of emotion on his handsome face.