She was shown to a large corner room filled with antiques, Oriental carpets, gilded mirrors and overstuffed couches and chairs. There was a television in a cabinet, and a huge four-poster bed against one wall.
“I will need a crib,” she said to the woman who was explaining how the television worked.
The woman blinked. “There is no need, Signorina Craig,” she began in her perfect English. “The child is to stay in the nursery.”
For the first time, Holly realized Sylvia was not right behind her, carrying Nicky. She’d been so tired, so lost in her own thoughts, that she hadn’t noticed they were no longer with her. Holly’s blood beat in her ears as fresh panic shot through her. “The nursery? And where is that?”
The woman, a pretty woman with dark hair coiled on her head, continued to smile. As if she’d been told to always be polite to the guests, no matter how frantic they sounded.
“It is not far,” she said.
Ice formed in Holly’s veins. “Not far? I’m afraid that’s unacceptable.”
The woman inclined her head in that slight manner that reeked of studied politeness. “Signore Di Navarra has ordered it, Signorina Craig. I cannot contravene il padrone’s orders.”
Holly didn’t even bother to argue. She simply turned on her heel and strode from the room. There was a shocked silence behind her, and then the woman called her name, rushing after her. Holly picked up her pace, roving blindly through the corridors, taking turns that led into dead ends and empty rooms, doubling back on herself and trying again.
She didn’t realize she was crying until she stopped in a hallway she’d already been in once before, looking right and left, and heard a sound like a sob. It took her a minute to realize the sound had come from her.
She squeezed her eyes shut, gritted her teeth. She would not lose control. She would not. She would find Nicky—or she would find Drago and give him a piece of her mind he wasn’t likely to ever forget.
Holly came upon a set of stairs and dashed down them until she found herself in the huge circular entry. The foyer was quiet now, compared to just a few minutes ago, but she stood in the cavernous space until she heard a sound. A footstep, the clink of a glass, something. She moved toward it until it she heard a voice.
And then she burst into a room ringed with tall shelves that were lined with books. It took her a moment to realize the damn man had a library. A light burned softly on a desk, and a man stood behind it, his back to her, talking on a phone.
Drago.
Rage and longing filled her, rushing through her body in twin waves. She didn’t understand how she could be so angry and so needy at the same time. How she could want to rage at him and hold him at once. She took a step forward, and Drago turned at the sound, his silvery eyes gleaming with anger when he saw her. He finished the call and set his phone on the desk.
“What do you want, Holly?”
She took another halting step forward, her lungs burning, her chest aching. “How dare you?” she spat. “How dare you!”
Drago looked bored. “How dare I what, cara mia? You must say what you mean. Or get out until you can.”
“Nicky. You’ve put him in the nursery. Away from me.” She could hardly get the words out she was so angry.
A muscle leaped in his jaw. “He is a baby. The nursery is where he belongs.”
“He is my son, and I want him with me,” she growled.
“He is my son, too, and I want him in the nursery. He is safe there.”
Violence rocked through her. “Are you trying to say he’s not safe with me?”
“And if I am?”
She couldn’t answer that. Not without committing violence. “Why do you even have a nursery? You aren’t married, you don’t have children—”
The look on his face could have melted steel. “I do now, don’t I?”
Holly swallowed. “You know what I mean.”
“I do indeed.”
She ignored the taunt in his voice. He was doing this deliberately. Trying to prove his mastery over her. His power. He wanted her scared. “How can you have a nursery?”
He came around the desk, too cool for words, and leaned against it. Then he folded his arms over his chest, and the fabric of his dark shirt bulged with muscles. Where had he gotten a physique like that? Clearly, he worked out—but she had no idea when he had the time, since he always seemed to be running his business.
Holly shook her head to clear it. She did not need to worry about Drago’s muscles. They weren’t hers to explore. Nor did she care.
“This estate has been in my family for generations, cara. There has always been a nursery. It’s been in disuse for quite some time, but a phone call fixed that. Did you think my son would have nowhere to stay once we arrived? Did you believe I would not even think to see to his comfort and care? Such a low—and dangerous, I might add—opinion you have of me.”
There was menace in his voice. And heat. Oddly, it was the heat that interested her. She studied his face, the hard planes and angles of his perfectly sculpted features, and her pulse thrummed.
She needed to focus, and not just on this man before her. “I want my baby with me. He’s not used to being alone.”
“He is not alone, Holly. He has a nanny.”
“He doesn’t need a nanny,” she blurted. “He only needs me.”
Drago straightened to his full height. She wanted to take a step back, but she held her ground. “He needs more than a mother who struggles to make ends meet.” His voice was like a whip. “More than a mother who leaves him with strangers while she works twelve to sixteen hours a day.”
Pain exploded in her chest. She sucked in a deep breath and willed herself not to cry. Of course he would hit her where it hurt the most. Of course. “I gave him the best I could, Drago. I will always give him the best I can.”
“Yet I can give him more. Better. How can you wish to deny him that?”
“I never said I did. But you will not separate us. Not ever.”
His eyes narrowed. “Such conviction. And yet I wonder where this conviction stems from. Have you found your own golden goose, Holly? Will you cling to this child until you’ve bled as much money from his existence as you can?”
Holly didn’t even think before reacting. The distance between them shrank too quickly for her to be aware of what she was doing. The next thing she knew, she was standing right in front of him and Drago was holding her wrist in an iron grip. Her open hand was scant inches from his face.
She jerked in his grasp, but he didn’t let her go. Instead, he yanked her closer, until their bodies were pressed together, breast to belly to hip. It was the first time they’d been this close in a year, and the shock ricocheted through her.
Her palms came up to press against his chest—that hard, masculine chest that had filled her dreams for months. Holly forced herself to concentrate on her anger, not on the way it felt to be this close to Drago again—as if she’d come home after years away. As if she’d found water in the desert after going without for so long.
It was an illusion.
“You’re a cruel bastard,” she spat. “I love my son more than my own life. There is nothing I wouldn’t do for him. Nothing!”
“Prove it.”
She blinked up into his cold, handsome face. “What do you mean?”
“Walk away, Holly. Give him to me, and I will make sure he has the best money can buy for the rest of his life.”
A shudder racked her. And then the heat of anger filled her. How dare he try to manipulate her emotions this way?
“I won’t,” she said. “No matter what you do to me, I won’t.”
His eyes glittered. One dark eyebrow lifted. “Are you certain?”
Her heart thumped. “Very.”
Drago pushed her aw
ay and walked back around the desk. Then he sat down and opened a drawer, ignoring her for the moment. Her nerves stretched tight.
Finally he looked up, his handsome face cold and blank. “There is a party tomorrow night for some industry people. You will attend.”
Holly folded her arms across her chest, hugging herself as the wind dropped from her sails. “A party?”
His gaze was sharp, hard. “Yes. You signed a contract. You are the new face of Sky. You will be by my side tomorrow night.”
Her throat ached. She couldn’t very well refuse, and they both knew it. “Where is my son?”
Drago’s look changed to one of supreme boredom. “The nursery is down the hall from your room. To the right. I imagine you went left when you departed, yes?”
She felt like a fool. How did he do that to her? “Yes.”
His gaze dropped to his papers. “We are done. Good night.”
* * *
When she was gone, Drago dropped his head into his hands and sat there at his desk, being very quiet and very still. Quite simply, she turned him upside down. This morning, his world had been right. He’d enjoyed having Holly in his home, oddly enough. He’d looked forward to talking to her. To watching her mother her baby.
His baby.
Drago swallowed. It felt like razor blades going down his throat. His entire day on the plane had been spent working in his office, making calls, viewing reports, talking until his voice gave out. He’d tried to distract himself, but all the while his chest had been tight and his eyes had stung and he’d wanted to go back into the main cabin and wrap his hands around Holly Craig’s pretty neck.
And then he’d wanted to strip her naked and take her up against the wall. Bend her over a table. Lay her spread-eagled on the floor.
He hadn’t cared how he would have her. He’d just wanted her.
And it angered him. How could he want a woman like her? A woman who’d lied to him, who’d kept his child hidden from him for the sake of a damn contract? She’d had every chance to tell him the truth, starting from the first moment when he’d walked into that hovel of an apartment and ending with the moment he’d discovered the truth for himself.
She hadn’t done so, and he didn’t believe she’d had any intention to—or at least not until it most benefited her. When she needed more money, when she’d spent everything she had, just like his mother had always done, she’d come with her hand out.
But even if she’d wanted to tell him, even if he gave her the benefit of the doubt, how could he forgive her for the lie for the past year? She said she’d written to him—who the hell wrote letters these days?—and tried to call.
He wasn’t easy to get in touch with—but it wasn’t impossible. Just last month, a woman he’d met at a party had managed to get a call through to his home number. He was not impossible to find. And Holly Craig had been to his home, unlike most of the women he went out with.
What if he’d never gone to New Orleans? When would she have come to him?
Drago shuddered. His mother hadn’t taken him to his uncle for money until he’d been nearly four years old. He could still remember the look on Paolo’s face when they’d shown up here at the villa. Shock, anger and confusion. And then Uncle Paolo and his mother had gone into his uncle’s office while he was supposed to have played outside.
Instead, he’d stood in the foyer and listened to the raised voices. He’d been too young to know what they were fighting about, but he remembered the tension—and he remembered being scared and feeling as if it was his fault.
He would never allow his son to feel that way. As if he was the source of everyone’s problems. As though he was a commodity to be bartered again and again.
Drago shoved back from the desk and stood. One way or the other, he was taking control of his child’s life immediately. Holly Craig had stood in his way long enough. No more.
He would own her completely—or he would send her away for good.
* * *
Holly was nervous. She stood just inside the house, listening to the sounds of laughter and music and chatter on the terrace outside, and felt as if her heart would pound from her chest. Drago had informed her only this morning that the party was taking place here, at his villa—and all her plans to beg out of the event with a headache or a stomachache or something else had come crashing down around her head.
She’d had no idea how she was supposed to attend a party when all she had were jeans and tennis shoes, but a tall, elegant woman—accompanied by three assistants—had arrived immediately after Drago’s announcement with a selection of gowns and shoes and jewelry. Within two hours, Holly had a gown for the event and all the accessories to match—even down to the fine, lacy underwear.
She’d wanted to wear her own undergarments, but the woman—Giovanna—had looked at her in horror when she’d suggested it. When everything arrived that afternoon, Holly had still intended to wear her own things—until she’d taken a good look at the dress and realized the underwear was designed to go with it, and that her own would not be flattering to the cut of the gown at all. Vanity won out over stubbornness, and now she stood there in the shadows in a strapless flowing white gown, sewn with iridescent cream sequins, and felt so very out of her element that it frightened her.
She’d never worn anything so beautiful or expensive in her life. Her senses, already highly tuned, were sharpened tonight. Every scent bombarded her with sensation until she was afraid she’d have a pounding headache before the night was through. After she’d dressed, she’d taken one sniff of the bottle of Sky that Drago had sent up for her and knew she couldn’t wear it.
There was nothing wrong with the fragrance, but it wasn’t her. Instead, she spritzed on Colette and, head high and heart pounding, left her room and made the descent to the first level. She’d thought Drago would be waiting for her, but there was no one. The party was outside, in the glowing Tuscan evening. The sun was behind the horizon, but the sky was still golden and the landscape below undulated in darkening shadows of green and black.
Holly felt like a spy watching through the windows. And she felt as if she didn’t belong. She wanted to go back upstairs to the nursery and curl up on the couch there with Nicky. Holly lifted her head. She was doing this for Nicky. For his future.
“I don’t especially like crowds, either,” a voice said, and Holly spun around to find a man standing behind her. He hadn’t been in the room when she’d walked in. He was tall, handsome—not so handsome as Drago—and he was smiling at her. He held out his hand as he walked up. “I don’t believe we’ve met. I am Santo Lazzari.”
Holly held out her hand as butterflies swirled in her belly. Santo Lazzari of House of Lazzari was powerful in his own right. House of Lazzari wasn’t a cosmetics firm, though they did sell a selection of designer perfumes in their stores to go along with their clothing and handbags. “Holly Craig. But how did you know...”
“That you weren’t Italian?” He laughed. “My dear, Drago has spoken of nothing else since this party began.” His eyes narrowed as he studied her. “You are the new face of Sky.”
Holly dropped her gaze as a blush spread over her cheeks. She was going to have to get used to this, even if she felt like an imposter. Even if she felt as if Santo Lazzari was mocking her, picking her apart and finding her lacking.
“I did tell Drago I’m not a model, but he seems to believe I’m what he wants.” Her skin heated further as she realized what she’d said. “For the campaign,” she added hastily.
Santo laughed. “Yes, Drago is like that.” He took a step closer, sniffing the air around her. “Is this the perfume? It smells different from how I remembered.”
“Um, well, no,” she stammered. “I mean, yes, it’s perfume. But it’s not Sky.”
Santo’s gaze sharpened. “A new fragrance? Drago has not mentioned this befo
re.”
Beads of moisture rose on Holly’s skin. Should she tell this man what she was wearing? Or should she change the subject? But how could she let a chance like this go by, especially when Drago was threatening to take her baby away? Telling Santo Lazzari about Colette could be insurance against the future. Drago was certain not to buy her perfume now, no matter that she had an ironclad appointment to pitch it to him.
“It’s my own blend.”
Santo’s eyebrows lifted. “Is it, now?” His eyes gleamed with sudden interest. He held out his arm to her. “Come, Holly Craig, tell me more about this scent as we enter the party. I want to hear all about it.”
Holly hesitated a moment longer. What would Drago think if she entered the party on another man’s arm? But then the truth hit her, and it made her ache.
Drago would not care in the least. He despised her now. No doubt he would think she was searching for another rich victim.
She told herself she did not care what he thought. She told herself it didn’t matter, that the tentative closeness she’d thought they were building had been only an illusion. Drago did not care about her. He cared only about punishing her.
Holly smiled and put her arm through Santo’s.
* * *
Drago stood with some of his best clients, telling them about his plans for Sky, when a collective hush fell over the gathering. Male eyes gleamed with appreciation as they gazed at a point beyond his shoulder. Drago turned to see what new arrival had caught their attention so thoroughly—
And gaped in stunned silence at the vision in white gliding across the terrazzo on the arm of Santo Lazzari. For a moment, he wondered who the woman was—but he knew. He knew it in his bones, his blood. He knew it in his soul.
Holly Craig did not look like the Holly Craig he knew. The Holly Craig he preferred, he realized with a jolt. No, this Holly was sleek and lovely, with her blond hair piled on her head to reveal her elegant neck, and her body-hugging dress shimmering in the torches that were beginning to glow on the perimeter of the terrazzo.
The Change in Di Navarra's Plan Page 13