Married for His One-Night Heir

by Jennifer Hayward

  A smile that wasn’t really a smile twisted his lips. “That he thinks I’m not good enough for you? Oh, that message came across loud and clear a decade ago. Funnily enough though,” he drawled, “we are on an equal playing field now. It will be interesting to see how that plays out.”

  Her stomach curled at the thought of it. But that fear was quickly replaced by the panic that surged up her throat. “You’re going to tell him you are Leo’s father.”

  His black eyes glittered. “You’re damn right I am, because that man is never going to set eyes on Leo again. He needs to know that.”

  Gia felt the world dissolve beneath her feet. This was a nightmare. This could not happen. She needed to do something to stop it before it did.

  She covered the distance between them with shaky steps, coming to a halt just centimeters from him. Her heart jammed in her chest at how gorgeous he was in a white shirt rolled up to the elbows and dark jeans that molded to his thighs to perfection. She had always been able to appeal to his softer side. He had never been able to resist her, and right now, she wasn’t above using whatever means necessary to prevent him from shattering her world apart.

  “Don’t do this,” she said softly, “You’re angry—I understand that. What I did was wrong. But I can’t go back there. I’m never going back.”

  His gaze slid to the fingers she had wrapped around his arm, tensile muscle that vibrated beneath her touch. It was, she recorded silently, her second mistake of the past five minutes, because everything went up in smoke then, the slow rise of heat between them palpable as he lifted his gaze to hers, dark as ebony. And, suddenly, she was so tangled up in him she couldn’t get out.

  “Santo,” she murmured. “No.”

  He leaned forward until his mouth was mere centimeters from hers. Her pulse sped into overdrive, threatening to steal her breath. His warm breath fanning her cheek, his blatant masculinity surrounding her from every angle, his heat bleeding into her skin, her knees went weak.

  “Nice try,” he murmured, “but that isn’t going to work this time, Gia. The only possible course of action here is us together, in New York, making this right the way we should have from the beginning. Your damsel-in-distress act no longer wields any power over me.”

  She took a step back, heat stinging her cheeks. “I was appealing to your sense of reason.”

  “And so I will give some to you. You are the one who created this impossible situation by not coming to me, Gia. You are the one who passed my son off as another man’s child—a complex legal issue that’s going to take months to unravel. You are the one who chose to run rather than to face your problems. So you need to wrap your head around the fact that this is the only option that exists for us.”

  She lifted her chin. “I’m not running. I am free, a concept that neither you nor my father would understand.”

  “Which you will be in New York,” he countered. “You’ll have every resource you could ever want. The ability to do whatever you please.”

  “Except live the life I want.” She hurled daggers at him with her eyes. “I am not one of your side dishes, Santo, out to plunder your pockets. You know the dreams I had for myself.”

  He cocked a shoulder. “Stay, then. Take everything you want. But Leo comes with me.”

  It was a surgical strike. Precise. Deadly. A bolt of fury vibrated through her, her hands clenching into fists at her sides. “And if the courts side with me?” she challenged. “I walked away from my life to protect my son, Santo. I think that’s a very powerful testament to the lengths I am willing to go to, to keep him safe.”

  “Your father is the head of one of the most powerful organized-crime syndicates in the world.” Skepticism razed his face. “What kind of a leg do you think you have to stand on? And then,” he added deliberately, “there’s the part where this would become public if it were to go to court and your life here would be exposed.”

  She sucked in a breath. So he was really going to go there? She hadn’t thought he actually would, but this Santo, she was realizing, was one she didn’t know. Not anymore.

  She tried another tact, because apparently, the gloves had come off. “Your father married your mother because she was pregnant with Nico, and look what a disaster that turned out to be. My parents’ marriage was an arranged match in which my father was never faithful to my mother. My marriage to Franco was equally ill-advised. How can you think this is going to work any better for us?”

  His jaw hardened. “My parents’ marriage was a disaster because my mother was only in it for the money and when that ran out and reality set in, she didn’t care enough to stick. Your father is an incurable megalomaniac who feeds his ego with power and women. Who never prioritized his family. Our marriage will resemble nothing of the sort because we will put Leo first. And,” he added, “we have a history to build on together.”

  “We don’t,” she rebutted desperately. “We don’t even know each other anymore.” She jammed a hand on her hip, eyes fixed on his. “Do you really expect me to believe you’re simply going to abandon your woman-a-week lifestyle to marry me and we are going to live happily ever after?”

  “Yes,” he responded, without missing a beat. “Because it’s in Leo’s best interests that we do. Although you,” he said deliberately, “will play an equal role in making this potential marriage successful. It takes two, Gia, another lesson I’ve learned from the past. So if you agree to my proposal, it will be a real marriage in every sense of the word, because I only intend to do it once.”

  Her stomach bottomed out. All of this was inconceivable—everything he’d just proposed—but the prospect of becoming Santo’s wife in the real sense of the word was the most terrifying thought of all. Because she remembered that night. She remembered how he’d stripped away all of her defenses. How he’d insisted she give him everything. How not one piece of her had remained intact.

  Fear rose up inside of her—swift and all-encompassing. And suddenly, it was all too much. Much too much. “I need time to think,” she breathed. “You are asking for the impossible, Santo.”

  “I’m asking for my son. Whom you should have given me in the first place.” He downed the rest of the Scotch and set the glass on the bar. “You have twenty-four hours to decide, Gia. Make the right choice.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  GIA SPENT THE next morning in a fog. She should have been jumping into a new project—the decor Delilah had asked her to do for her new resort on Paradise Island. It was an exciting, demanding project that would be exceptionally creative, with its fantastical edge. But she found it impossible to concentrate with Santo’s ultimatum consuming her thoughts.

  She understood he was furious with her. She didn’t blame him. But his proposal they marry to give Leo the family he deserved was far from the simple proposition he had positioned it as. Yes, Leo was her priority—had been from day one. But Santo was asking her to walk away from her life for the second time in the space of two years, a life she’d chosen to protect Leo from her past. A life she loved.

  Moving back to New York, exposing Leo to the influence of her family, seemed inconceivable. Almost as inconceivable as being locked into another marriage with a powerful man who only wanted to marry her for convenience. For his son. A man she still had unresolved feelings for, the only man she’d ever had those kinds of feelings for, a man who made her feel the dangerous, scary things she’d spent her whole life avoiding because she knew the rejection that came with it.

  It seemed like insanity. Because eventually, Santo would resent her for forcing him into a marriage he didn’t want and that resentment would eventually splinter them apart, exactly as it had done to her and Franco. Which wasn’t an option when she had just managed to put herself back together.

  Not to mention the fact that it wouldn’t be good for Leo. He would sense the tension between them and it would be damaging to him. She knew it, because sh
e’d lived it every day of her childhood, watching her mother’s broken heart.

  But what choice did she really have? She could fight Santo in court, tie up a custody battle in international red tape, but that would only prolong the inevitable, because she was quite sure that Santo would win. Which meant her only alternative was to get him to see that marriage wasn’t an option for them. That Leo was better off here and that somehow, they could make this work for both of them.

  She gave up any attempts at pretending to work by midafternoon, collected Leo from the day care and packed a cooler with some snacks for them for an afternoon on the beach. A half hour later, they were there, a picture-perfect Caribbean scene unfolding around them. The sky a cloudless blue, the sea a vibrant turquoise, the waves a soothing rhythmic roll against the sand—it calmed her fractured senses.

  Knees drawn up to her chest, arms wrapped around them, she watched Leo play in the sand from the blanket she sat on as a cool, salty breeze slid across her skin.

  “Mommy. Dig.” Leo waved a shovel at her, his golden hair falling over his forehead as he crouched in the sand. Her heart contracted at the blindingly bright smile he bestowed on her. How could she give this up?

  She forced a smile in return, too distracted to contemplate that particular pastime with the chaos going on inside her head. “Give me a minute.”

  Leo looked past her to the house, his eyes widening slightly. “Friend here.”

  Her stomach plummeted. She swiveled around on the blanket and saw Santo striding down the beach. Dressed in a white T-shirt and navy blue shorts emblazoned with a red Supersonic logo, every hard-earned muscle from the sports he played nonstop was on display. Aviator sunglasses shielding his eyes, his blond hair spiky and ruffled, he was outrageously good-looking in the jaw-dropping way that had made women lust after him his entire life.

  She’d seen them do it time and again at school, some of them discreet, some of them not so much. A phenomenon that had only gotten worse by the time Santo had put Supersonic on the Nasdaq in his midtwenties. Every woman had wanted a piece of the business world’s resident golden boy. But even when they’d had success, it had never lasted long with Santo, because although he loved women of all iterations, loved to charm and flirt with them, none of them had ever lived up to his exacting standards of the perfect woman.

  I want a woman who is as interesting inside as she is on the outside, he’d told her once. A soul mate, he’d elaborated on another occasion at a party when yet another candidate had bitten the dust. Which had immediately discounted her. She didn’t have the goodness inside of her that Santo was looking for. She was a Castiglione—something that would never change no matter how far she ran.

  She was not Miss Arkansas, Santo’s last girlfriend, who was a champion of underprivileged kids across the globe. The most stunningly beautiful woman she’d ever seen, inside and out. She was a massive work-in-progress.

  Her stomach, having picked itself back up again, fluttered against her ribs as Santo dropped down beside her on the blanket. “Friend,” said Leo happily, flicking up wet sand with his shovel as he shot Santo another of those curious, big-eyed looks. Gia cringed, but Santo appeared ready for it this time.

  “Yes,” he said evenly. “Are you having fun?”

  Leo nodded and started to dig, keeping one eye on the shovel and one eye on Santo. Gia slid Santo a sideways look, which wasn’t necessarily the smartest move because she found herself all caught up in the hard muscle on display. The way his sunglass-clad gaze slid over her in an unapologetically slow perusal from her bare shoulders in the casual sundress she wore, to the tanned length of her legs and her cherry-tipped toes.

  “We said five,” she blurted out, her bones melting. “My babysitter isn’t here yet.”

  A shrug of a muscular shoulder. “I finished my conference call early. You said you’re always on the beach in the afternoon. I thought I’d join you.”

  Because he’d wanted to see his son. A hot lump formed in her throat as another wave of potent guilt swept through her. She’d compartmentalized her feelings these last couple of years, because it had always been a method of survival for her. Which was exactly what bringing Leo here had been. But now it wasn’t so easy.

  “Dig,” Leo said again, his voice insistent.

  Santo took off his sunglasses. Looked at Leo. “Can I?”

  Her heart turned over at the thick edge to his voice. Leo gave Santo an appraising look. “Yes,” he said finally, and handed Santo a yellow shovel.

  Santo took the shovel and joined Leo in the sand. Leo began giving him imperious, one-word instructions, commanding and sure of his domain. They were building, according to Leo, a supahero’s house. Santo, who had been born with an ingenious brain, as evidenced by the high-tech fabric he’d developed for the sports jerseys that had set Supersonic on the path to stardom, took to the concept like a duck to water.

  “He should live in the middle of the mountains,” he proposed. “A secret hideaway with a supapad to land on.”

  The idea was met with Leo’s wholehearted approval. They began work on the multitiered, elaborate structure. Santo went a bit overboard with the details, heaping sand high around the structure to simulate the surrounding mountains, adding a landing pad for the various aircraft, and a driveway for the high-tech vehicles their superhero would command. Leo ate it up, his eyes sparkling with excitement as he made the requisite sound effects, a chorus of kapows and pishaws filling the air.

  Off went Santo’s shirt as the still strong afternoon sun beat down. Leo gave his playmate’s powerful, chiseled core an astonished look and asked him if he was a superhero. Which made Gia bite down hard on the inside of her cheek, half to prevent laughter and half to prevent other deeper, darker emotions from engulfing her.

  Santo was a complete stranger to Leo, but her son was completely entranced by him. Part of it, to be sure, was Santo’s charm, because he could beguile any living creature in the universe. But the connection between the two of them was also seemingly innate. It was simply there.

  A throb built inside of her, curling her insides. Santo was Leo’s father. How could she have ever convinced herself that her son would never need this? That the love they shared would be enough to replace the bond he and his father could have together?

  She’d spent her whole life trying to earn her powerful, important father’s love, something she’d never quite seemed to do. Maybe she’d convinced herself that because she’d never had it, Leo didn’t need it, either. Maybe it had been a lie she’d been content to tell herself because to stay had been too high a price to pay. And yet, here was Santo ready and willing to offer that love freely to his son. Passionate about it.

  Her heart expanded until it seemed too big for her chest. She had done such a bad thing. An unforgivable thing. And she could never take it back.

  Leo declared the supafort done. Trotting back up to her, he deposited the shovels and buckets in the sand. Gia handed them bottles of water from the cooler. Santo dropped down on the blanket beside her and downed half of his. Leo had a sip, then peered inside the cooler. “Hungry,” he pronounced.

  “That’s my cue.” Desaray materialized on the sand behind them, holding her arms wide for Leo, who ran into them. “I’m sorry I’m late. How is my little munchkin?”

  Leo giggled and twirled a lock of Desaray’s dark hair around his finger. “Good. Bana bread?” he asked hopefully.

  “Banana,” Desaray corrected. “And yes, Mamma sent some.” She slid a curious look at Santo, her dark gaze admiring, before she redirected it to Gia. “School ran late. Sorry. I’ll take him inside and get him changed? Give him a snack?”

  “That would be perfect.” Gia made the introductions to Santo. “I’ll go change,” she suggested, as Desaray and Leo took off toward the villa, “and we can talk?”

  “Why don’t we talk here?”

  Which probably ma
de sense, Gia conceded. It would be more private. But the romantic setting on the beach combined with the emotion clogging her throat didn’t necessarily make for a wise combination. She was about to refuse again when Santo shot her a deliberate look. “Sit down, Gia.”

  She sat down on the blanket, keeping a safe distance between them as she resumed her pose with her knees curled up to her chest, arms slung around them.

  “What’s wrong?” Santo asked quietly.

  Aside from the fact that he was half-naked and her heart was beating a mile a minute? That he was still the most gorgeous, compelling male she’d ever encountered and no amount of time she’d put between herself and that night seemed to enable her to blank it from her head?

  She pushed aside the thought with a determined act of will, because that had been what had gotten her into this situation in the first place.

  “It was seeing the two of you together,” she admitted. “I thought that I was right in the decisions I made. That I could be enough for Leo—that if I just created a love big enough, strong enough, we could be enough for each other. But watching you two just now, I realize how wrong I was in keeping him from you.”

  An emotion she couldn’t read moved through his dark eyes. “You were young and you were frightened.”

  “Yes,” she agreed. “But I still believe Leo is better off here with me, Santo. Away from my family’s influence. There are other ways to approach this than marriage. We can find a way to share custody of Leo that works for both of us.”

  An implacable look moved across his face. “I’ve already told you, you living here and me living in New York is a nonstarter. I’m not interested in some sort of a modern arrangement, Gia. A pseudo family. I want the real thing. I will not compromise on that.”

  Gia trained her eyes on the sea, her stomach a tight knot. Santo’s gaze was hot on her profile. “What?”

  “I’m just figuring out who I am. I like who I am here, Santo. I am good here.”