Kitabı oku: «Her Sicilian Baby Revelation / The Greek's One-Night Heir», sayfa 4
CHAPTER FOUR
TONINO’S THREAT RANG loudly in Orla’s ears then became a siren when he slammed his glass on the bar and strolled towards the bedroom door.
‘What are you doing?’ she beseeched, trying her hardest not to panic.
‘I’m going to see my son.’
He can’t take him from you, she reminded herself. At this moment, he has no legal rights. Don’t panic. Keep calm.
She took a long breath. ‘You’re going to storm into a three-year-old boy’s room and wake him from his sleep?’
The hateful expression he threw at her wounded as deeply as his threats. He placed his hand on the door knob. ‘Do not make me out to be the bad guy in this. I want to see my son.’
‘If you go in there you will wake him and you will frighten him.’
His jaw clenched. Seizing this brief moment of indecision, Orla pointed at her phone, which she’d placed on the coffee table. ‘You can see him through my phone—look, I’m monitoring him as we speak.’
Now his expression became cynical. ‘You watch him sleep?’
‘I am tonight. He has epilepsy.’
Lines creased his forehead. A beat passed before he said, ‘Epilessia…? Fits?’
She nodded. She must keep calm. Placing a hand to her chest in an attempt to temper her clattering heartbeat, she fought to keep her tone even. ‘He has seizures—fits. He’s on medication for it, which has helped a lot, but he’s had an exciting day and I don’t want to risk leaving him unmonitored. Normally the nurse would monitor him but I told her to join the party so we could have some privacy.’
She did not drop her gaze from his cynical, suspicious one and allowed herself only a small breath of relief when he abandoned the door. Then she found she had no breath left to exhale for Tonino had walked over and sat his powerful body beside her.
Her poor clattering heart accelerated into overdrive.
He picked the phone up and studied the live feed on it. After a long pause, he said, ‘His…epilessia…is it linked to his mobility problems?’
‘Yes.’ Orla suddenly found her attention distracted by the fingers holding her phone. Those same fingers had once caressed her naked skin…
Heat pumped dizzyingly through her head and she quickly dropped her gaze to the floor only to find Tonino’s buffed shoes in her eyeline. He had the biggest feet of any man she’d ever met, and tingles laced her spine and spread to a far more intimate area to suddenly remember another part of his anatomy in proportion to those feet…
‘He has cerebral palsy,’ she hastily added, keeping her eyes fixed on the carpet so he wouldn’t see the flame of colour radiating from her cheeks. How could she feel such things for a man who’d just threatened her with her own child? What was wrong with her? ‘Lots of children with it have epilepsy.’
A long time passed where all he did was stare at the screen of the phone. Orla used that time to concentrate on breathing. She was exhausted. The day had been long and emotionally draining. Her feelings for Tonino were bound to be all over the place. His emotions were bound to be all over the place too. She must remember that threats made in anger were rarely carried out once tempers had cooled.
‘What is cerebral…?’
‘Palsy,’ she finished for him when he struggled to say it. ‘It’s a condition caused by brain damage that basically affects the muscles.’
He turned his head to look at her. ‘My son has brain damage?’
The flash of distress she witnessed in the dark eyes sent a pang through her heart. Her voice softened. ‘Think of it as a brain development issue. Thankfully it doesn’t seem that his mental faculties have been affected; I mean, he can speak and make himself understood, but time will tell on that part.’ Learning difficulties were common for children with cerebral palsy and something Orla was prepared for. If it turned out that Finn did indeed have them then he would have all the help and support he needed.
‘What caused it?’
‘The trauma of his birth. He was born three months early—’
A loud incessant knocking on the door interrupted their talk.
‘I’d better get that,’ she muttered. She hauled herself to her feet and forced her aching legs to take her to the door. She would not let Tonino see how badly she was struggling right then; would not give him any further ammunition to use against her.
She was not in the least surprised to find Aislin there.
Her sister didn’t even attempt to make an excuse for abandoning her own wedding reception, looking straight over Orla’s shoulder into the suite, her nose wrinkling when she caught sight of Tonino. ‘Everything okay in here?’
‘Everything’s fine,’ Orla assured her.
Aislin’s eyes narrowed as she eyeballed Tonino again before turning her attention back to her sister and saying loudly, ‘You look upset.’
Orla gave a rueful shrug. ‘This isn’t the easiest conversation I’ve ever had.’
‘I’ll bet. Shall I stay?’
The temptation to drag Aislin inside was strong. ‘Don’t be silly. Go back to your party.’
‘I saw Finn’s nurse on the dance floor. Are you not coming back down?’
‘I’m sorry, Ash, but I’m shattered.’ And that was the truth. Orla felt wiped out, physically and emotionally.
‘Okay. I’ll leave you to it, then.’ Her voice rose again. ‘I’ll keep my phone on me. Call if you need me.’
‘I will,’ Orla lied. She would rather call their mother for help than ruin Aislin’s big day more than she already had.
‘I’ll see you at breakfast?’
‘Definitely.’
‘Good.’ Then, looking over Orla’s shoulder to stare at Tonino one more time, Aislin smiled brightly and said, ‘If you harm a hair on my sister’s head, I’ll kill you. Got it?’
Orla found herself biting back a laugh of hysteria at the shock on Tonino’s face.
‘Did your sister just threaten me?’ he asked when Orla sat back down, this time on an armchair away from him. She was finding it hard enough to concentrate properly without Tonino’s scent and body heat addling her brain further.
‘Yep.’ The only downside with the armchair was that she was forced to look at him. Looking at him definitely addled her brain because it quickly became a struggle to stop herself from looking at him. To stop herself staring at him.
Her eyes yearned to stare. They wanted to soak in every perfect feature on the face she had come so close to believing she could trust with her heart.
‘Why would she do that?’
‘She’s very protective of me. She didn’t mean it. She wouldn’t actually kill you. Probably just castrate you or something.’
She couldn’t hold back the burst of laughter when Tonino reflexively crossed his legs and nor could she stop the laughter turning into tears.
This was all too much. Seeing Tonino again, remembering what they’d shared, how it had ended, his loathing of her, his refusal to listen, his threats… It had been a long, emotional roller coaster of a day and now her body was telling her enough was enough.
Tonino watched the tears fall down Orla’s beautiful face with a healthy dose of cynicism. When they’d been lovers he would never have imagined her capable of using feminine wiles to save her own skin. He’d believed her to be too genuine for those kinds of games—for any kind of game.
What would she do if he pulled her into his arms for fake comfort? Would she cling to him and produce a few more crocodile tears to soak into his shirt? Would she tilt her head and stare at him with those beguiling eyes, silently pleading with him to kiss her?
And what would he do if that course of action became reality?
The burn in his loins gave him the answer.
Every breath he’d taken in this suite had filled his lungs with Orla’s scent. He was literally breathing her in, and every atom of his body responded to it.
Furious that his attraction for this duplicitous woman still blazed with such luminescence, he jumped back to his feet and helped himself to more wine.
‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered. ‘I’m not usually a cry-baby. I’m just finding it difficult to get my head around everything.’
‘You’re 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 that he would have come earlier instead of pacing his own suite impatiently. ‘When will he be back?’
‘I don’t know. It depends if there’s anything out there that captures his interest.’
‘He likes being outside?’ There was so much to discover about his son. A whole three years’ worth of living to be discovered, including his birth date.
‘He loves it.’ Orla padded over to the window and perched herself on the ledge. She cast a quick glance at Tonino before tucking a lock of hair behind her ear and looking out at the early-morning view. ‘Unfortunately Ireland’s reputation for rain is based on fact—we’re not known as the Emerald Isle for nothing—so sunny days are to be cherished.’
‘Marry me and he can have sunshine every day.’
She turned her gaze back to him sharply. ‘What?’
Tonino sat himself down on an armchair and looked straight at her. ‘I have been doing much thinking. I want Finn in my life permanently and the best way I can see to facilitate this is for you to marry me.’
CHAPTER FIVE
ORLA WAS GLAD she was sitting down. There was a good chance she would have fallen over in shock if she’d still been on her feet. ‘Are you drunk?’
He didn’t look drunk. His hair was damp and even sitting far from him on the windowsill she could smell the heady scent of freshly showered Tonino. She was certain that if she’d been placed in a room blindfolded and made to smell his scent, that alone would have been enough to unlock her memories of him.
He hadn’t shaved but still looked razor-sharp, dark eyes clear and focused intently on her. The wedding suit he’d worn the day before had been replaced with charcoal chinos and a crisp navy shirt that fitted and enhanced his tall, muscular frame perfectly.
God help her but the man was a bigger sex bomb than her broken brain had remembered.
The four years that had passed since they’d conceived Finn had not been kind to Orla. The youthful body she’d taken for granted was now marked and scarred, unrecognisable from the body Tonino must remember. She’d never considered herself vain until she’d stood naked before a mirror for the first time after the accident and burst into tears at what had reflected back at her.
Where the time that had passed since Finn’s conception had been cruel to her, for Tonino it had been kind. Incredibly kind. Adonis himself would look at Tonino and weep at the unfairness.
It had been Orla’s suggestion that the nurse take Finn for a walk. She’d guessed Tonino would turn up early—although not this early—and had wanted to be ready for him. She’d wanted to be showered and dressed and armoured behind make-up. Instead he’d arrived at the same moment she’d been about to step into the bathroom for her shower and found her looking like a scruffy cat lady. She hadn’t even brushed her hair. She’d bet good money that he’d done it deliberately to catch her off guard.
She knew she shouldn’t care what she looked like in front of him but she did. Right then, her pride was all she had left.
Her shoddy appearance was just one more disadvantage she had against him and she could feel the heat of colour splash her face under the weight of his blatant scrutiny. At least her headache had gone so that was one small mercy.
‘Marriage makes excellent sense,’ he said with all the confidence of a man used to his words being heeded as if he really were Adonis.
Her stomach twisted violently. She empathised with him, she really did, but did he have to be so entitled and overbearing? And did her heart have to beat so hard and her skin thrum just to share the same air as him?
Speaking through gritted teeth, she said, ‘You’ve known about Finn’s existence for five minutes and you’ve spent most of that time threatening me and calling me a liar and now you want to marry me? Are you sure you’re not drunk?’
His eyes didn’t so much as flicker. ‘I want my son to have my name and to be recognised as his father.’
‘You can have that without marriage.’
‘My son deserves…’
The turmoil that had been with her all the previous day and had still been there the moment she’d opened her eyes that morning reached its peak. ‘Will you stop with all this “my son” malarkey?’ she suddenly exploded. ‘You know nothing about Finn and for you to keep referring to him as yours is doing my head in!’
He straightened, his face twisting with contempt. ‘If you hadn’t selfishly kept him to yourself, I would already know everything about him. I am his father, Orla, and I will damned well be a part of his life and take on all the responsibility being his father entails.’
Her temper evaporated to be replaced by shame at her outburst. Bowing her head, she covered her face with her hands and breathed deeply, in and out, in and out, trying desperately to hold back the threatening tears. Only when she was certain that she could speak without opening the floodgates did she look at him again.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said quietly. ‘I know you’re his father. I know you have every right to be a part of his life but it’s really hard to listen to all your threats and demands when you have no idea what our lives have been like and the struggles we’ve had to deal with. You can’t just snap your fingers and expect me to roll over and go with it. You need to earn your right to be Finn’s father.’
Just as she’d had to earn the right to be Finn’s mother.
When Orla had finally been allowed home from the rehabilitation centre, Finn had been eighteen months old and, although too young to understand the concept of parenthood, he’d regarded Aislin as his mother. She would never admit it to Aislin or anyone but seeing her own child naturally gravitate to her sister had been unbearable. It had taken a good year before Finn had turned to Orla when he needed help or comfort.
Tonino’s eyes narrowed. The weight of his scrutiny increased but she detected a softening in his stance. ‘Then stop fighting me and do what’s best for Finn.’
‘That’s all I’ve ever done.’
‘Then marry me.’
Her heart beating fast, Orla found herself scrutinising Tonino with the same intensity he scrutinised her, trying hard to look past the breathtakingly gorgeous features for what was going on in his head. Unfortunately, the mind-reading powers she’d always hoped to one day achieve were as elusive as ever. ‘Marriage is not the answer. An unhappy marriage does nothing but produce unhappy children. Finn’s a happy child who’s suffered enough disruption in his life.’
‘There is no reason we could not be happy.’ Eyes remaining fixed on her, he reclined back in his seat. ‘We were good together once.’
‘We were together for barely ten days.’ She would not cause another argument by pointing out that in that time he’d actively let her believe a lie. ‘We don’t know each other.’
‘We know the most important thing.’
‘Which is?’
‘Our compatibility.’
‘Sorry?’
‘You and me…’ He hooked an ankle on a muscular thigh. Something glimmered in his eyes that sent Orla’s pulses surging. His voice lowered to an appreciative murmur. ‘I remember us as being extremely compatible.’
Something deep inside her heated and throbbed with such force that whatever she’d been about to say stuck on her tongue. Gazing into his eyes was like looking into a chocolate pool swirling with brilliance, and the tight pulsations heating her core spread through her veins and danced onto her skin, every nerve ending in her body stirring, every atom screaming loudly its agreement at his words.
Suddenly fearful of being hypnotised by the whirling depths, Orla wrenched her gaze from him and stared back out of the window, trying her hardest to breathe normally.
She’d prepared herself for more threats and arguments. She had not been prepared for a proposal or caressing words. Given the sticky turmoil raging through her, she thought she preferred the threats and arguments.
Even with her back turned from him, she could feel the heat of his stare penetrating her skin.
Folding her arms across her chest, she rubbed her feeble biceps and closed her eyes.
She remembered waking in Tonino’s arms the morning after their first night together, dazed but replete. She remembered the sensation that had flooded her veins and heated her skin at his touch.
But the actual memories of them being intimate together remained locked away. She hoped they never returned. She didn’t think she could bear to remember how she had given herself to a man who’d only been using her for his own fun.
Dragging more air into her lungs, she cleared her throat. ‘I don’t want to marry you, period. It would be a disaster.’
Tonino had known getting Orla’s agreement for marriage would be a long shot but once the idea had come to him, he’d recognised it as the answer to all their problems. Marriage would solve everything in a neat, orderly fashion. How could he be an effective father if he lived in a different country from his child?
He would have to work on her and make her see that it would be in Finn’s best interest for them all to live under the same roof. Given a little time to dismantle the barriers between them, Orla would come around to his way of thinking. The chemistry that had drawn them together four years ago still burned. He felt its scorch with every word and look exchanged between them. And she felt it too. Every time she tucked a strand of her hair behind her ears he was reminded of all the times she’d done that before and all the other little gestures he recognised as uniquely Orla.
She’d been a breath of fresh air in a world he’d never recognised as cynical until she’d entered it and liberated him. For ten magnificent days he had lived for the moment with the first woman he’d been intimate with who had no idea who he really was. Her every response had been organic. She’d been a virgin but making love to her for the first time…it had felt as if it were his first time too.
Their chemistry was the one thing he didn’t need a lie detector for. The urge to touch her breathed through his skin and it took all his strength to keep his focus on the job at hand.
‘If you won’t marry me then I will come to Ireland with you and have my name added to Finn’s birth certificate.’ He would not accept anything less than being a true father to his son.
Her body immediately struck a defensive pose. ‘That can wait.’
‘No, dolcezza, it cannot.’ Getting to his feet, he joined her at the window. She must have sensed his closeness for her back stiffened and she tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear.
How many nights had he dreamt of that simple non-seductive gesture?
Orla was the only lover whose scent he could remember simply by closing his eyes. Close his eyes and he could remember the feel of her skin beneath his fingers.
Close his eyes and he could remember the bewilderment to find her gone.
He would close his eyes no more. With Orla, he needed to keep his eyes open and his wits sharpened. Whatever happened from this moment, he would never let her disappear again.
‘I understand why I’ve not been named on it but it has to be done.’ He couldn’t force her to marry him—more was the pity—but he would do whatever was necessary to close off her options to flee.
Her head turned sharply to face him again. Tonino hadn’t realised quite how close to her he’d positioned himself until he saw the sprinkling of freckles across her pretty nose.
‘You understand…?’ She swallowed. ‘You believe me?’
‘I spoke to Dante after I left you last night,’ he admitted. ‘He confirmed your story about the accident and your memory problems.’
Dante’s confirmation had left him with a myriad emotions. There had been definite relief—Tonino’s instincts all those years ago that Orla was of a different mould from the unscrupulous, duplicitous bitches who lived in his world had not been as off the mark as he’d come to believe—but there had been something else there too, something that had made him feel as if acid had been poured into his guts.
Orla’s chest rose sharply then loosened slowly. She pressed her head against the window with a sigh. ‘I suppose it’s understandable you wouldn’t take my word on it.’
‘It doesn’t change how I feel about you not telling me about the pregnancy,’ he warned roughly. He doubted he would ever forgive her for that. ‘However, I feel it is in Finn’s best interest that I put that issue behind me.’
She gave a short bark of shaky laughter. ‘Your magnanimity does you much justice.’
Eyeing her carefully, he rested his hands on the windowsill either side of her thighs, effectively trapping her. ‘Are you being funny?’
Fresh colour heightened her cheeks. ‘I’m wondering where the proof is that you ended your engagement to Sophia before you took me to bed.’
‘I am not a cheat. I have never been unfaithful.’
‘I’m supposed to take your word on this?’
‘Sì. In my world, honour is everything. A man who cannot be taken at his word is no man at all.’
‘Now you’re being the funny one. Seriously? A man of your word? When you let me believe you were a humble hotel manager rather than a gazillionaire hotel owner?’
‘I never lied to you, Orla. Not in words.’
‘Well, that makes everything all right, then!’ She smiled brightly but her breaths had shallowed. He moved his face closer to hear her next words. ‘You didn’t lie to me with words. Grand. You’re only prepared to believe me about my amnesia because Dante’s backed me up, but I’m supposed to take you at your word on everything simply because you say so. Can you not see why that makes me uncomfortable having you named as Finn’s father on his birth certificate?’
A man could drown in the emerald-green pool swirling before him. Orla’s robe had parted at her waist, exposing her smooth legs. His blood thickened to see her thighs covered only by a pair of pyjama shorts.
‘All I want is to be a father to him.’ Dio, his voice was hardly above a whisper either. ‘Having legal recognition is important to me. I don’t want to be forced into taking legal action to get it.’
She swallowed a number of times then croaked, ‘That sounds like a threat.’
He clenched his tingling fingers into fists. If he extended either thumb he would be touching those delectable thighs. They were as close as they’d been on the dance floor and yet not a single part of their bodies touched.
Now he was the one to swallow, ridding himself of the moisture that had filled his mouth. ‘A threat I have no wish to act on.’
Last night, when he’d been full of anger, all he could think about were his rights and the fact that she had so cruelly kept him from his son. While his anger was still there—her insistence that she’d intended to tell him about the birth after the fact was something he doubted he’d ever believe—he could not escape the conclusion that she was correct that he didn’t know his son. And his son didn’t know him. Tonino and his mother’s relationship might be strained these days but as a child he’d worshipped the ground she’d walked on. To have been ripped from her arms would have destroyed him.
