Claiming His One-Night Child

by Jackie Ashenden

  He’d never seen that look on a woman’s face in bed before and he’d been riveted. Caught too by the knowledge that she was experiencing this for the first time and he was the one who was giving it to her.

  Maybe it was simply because she’d been trying to kill him that had heightened everything, including the pleasure.

  Whatever it was, one thing had become very, very clear to him: given that she had in fact been trying to kill him, and that he had no guarantee she wouldn’t try again, he couldn’t simply leave her to run around on the loose.

  So for the past month he’d spent most of his efforts on investigating her and, more importantly, finding her. Efforts that had all ended up with frustrating dead ends.

  Until now.

  ‘Dante, for God’s sake,’ Enzo said curtly. ‘You’re giving me a damn headache.’

  Dante blinked then turned around, shoving his hands into the pockets of his suit trousers. Enzo was leaning against the long, sleek black table that dominated the boardroom, his arms folded, his golden eyes disturbingly sharp.

  ‘Are you going to tell me what the matter is?’ he asked. ‘Or are you going to continue to pace around, pretending to be me?’

  His brother wasn’t wrong. Pacing was definitely Enzo’s speciality, not Dante’s.

  With an effort, Dante tried to relax. He didn’t want Enzo to know about Stella, not yet. His brother was happy for the first time in his life and Dante didn’t want anything to worry him, such as attempts on Dante’s life from enemies back in the old country.

  Besides, Enzo would no doubt start taking charge of the operation if Dante did tell him, and there was no way Dante wanted him to do that. This was his problem and he was going to handle it his way.

  Nothing at all to do with wanting Stella Montefiore in your bed again, naturally.

  Naturally. He’d had her once. He didn’t need to have her again, no matter how beautiful she was or exciting he’d found her. He just wanted her found, any threat she presented negated.

  ‘There’s nothing the matter.’ Dante consciously tried to relax his tense muscles. ‘Why would you say that?’

  ‘Because you haven’t listened to a word I’ve said and you’re pacing around like Simon does when he’s restless and wants to go outside and play.’

  ‘Though presumably with fewer tantrums,’ Dante muttered. He loved his nephew but, as Simon was only four, Dante didn’t much appreciate the comparison.

  One of Enzo’s black brows rose. ‘Is that a comment on my son’s behaviour? Because if so—’

  ‘Of course not,’ Dante snapped, unaccountably irritable.

  There was an uncomfortable silence as Enzo stared at him.

  ‘What?’ He stared back. ‘There’s no problem.’

  ‘And our father is alive and well and ruling peacefully at home,’ Enzo commented dryly. ‘Tell me. And it had better be work related. Simon starts school in a couple of months and the last thing he needs is one of his uncle’s scandals all through the media.’

  Since Enzo had married Matilda six months ago, he’d got very protective of his little family. Annoyingly so, in Dante’s opinion. His brother had never minded his affairs before, but in the past few months he’d turned into a damn prude. It was irritating.

  Dante had managed successfully to build a life that consisted entirely of seeing to his own comfort and he was more than happy with the present arrangement. He did not want anything to change it.

  ‘It’s nothing that need concern Cardinal Developments,’ he said, trying to find his usual casual smile. ‘Or Simon. It’s merely a distracting entanglement.’

  Enzo frowned. ‘That doesn’t sound promising. She’s not married, is she?’

  ‘Brother, please. A married woman? It’s like you don’t know me at all.’ There, that sounded more like his usual self, didn’t it?

  Enzo’s gaze narrowed, studying Dante in that sharp way he had. ‘You’re lying.’

  ‘I’m not,’ Dante said with perfect truth.

  ‘She must be very distracting to get you tied up in knots like this.’

  Enzo didn’t know the half of it, but Dante wasn’t going to enlighten him.

  It had indeed been Stella Montefiore who’d drugged him and cuffed him. As soon as he’d got out of the hotel room, he’d called his personal assistant and asked her to find out everything she could about the Montefiore family. She’d given him a complete dossier the next day and he’d spent most of the day going through said dossier, trying to work out why on earth Stella had targeted him.

  Not that it was all that difficult to find out once he knew her family history.

  The Montefiores had been one of the leading aristocratic families on Monte Santa Maria until Dante’s father, the king, had been exiled.

  After that, because the Montefiores had supported the old regime, they’d suffered a terrible fall from grace that had led to Stefano Montefiore sinking everything he owned into Luca Cardinali’s plans to retake his throne. The family had been beggared and then, to add insult to injury, the authorities somehow had found out about Stefano’s machinations. While Stefano had escaped being implicated, his oldest son Matteo had not. Matteo had been imprisoned, along with various other of Luca’s supporters, and then, years later, had died while still incarcerated.

  It didn’t take a genius to work out why Stella Montefiore had been trying to kill him: she and her father wanted Dante’s blood in return for the death of a brother and son.

  It was a vendetta worthy of a Sicilian.

  Except she hadn’t gone through with it.

  ‘You know how it is,’ Dante said aloud. ‘The right woman can be...lethal in certain circumstances.’ Though not so much in his case, except for the lethal blow she’d dealt to his self-control.

  Enzo lifted a brow. ‘Is that a fact? Care to talk about this particular woman?’

  Dante looked back blandly. ‘Not really.’

  ‘In that case, can I please have your attention concerning this—?’

  Dante’s phone buzzed in his pocket and he forgot about his brother entirely, pulling it out and turning round to look down at the screen.

  It was a text from one of the private investigators he’d hired to locate Stella, giving him an address in Rome.

  He smiled, an intense feeling he couldn’t quite name filling him. It was mainly satisfaction, but there was something else there too. An undeniable, feral kind of excitement.

  It had been frustrating not being able to find her, that she’d somehow managed to escape all the people he’d sent out looking for her.

  But now, now, he had her.

  She wasn’t going to escape him again.

  Seems like you do care about something after all.

  Of course he cared when it was about his own life. Though what he was going to do with her once he’d found her, he hadn’t quite decided. Probably, if he was feeling particularly merciful, he’d give her a warning that if she made another attempt on his life he’d report her to the police. And, if he wasn’t feeling merciful, he might just call the police then and there.

  That’s not what you want to do to her...

  Well, no, of course it wasn’t. He wanted to punish her a little too, for how she’d taken up so much space in his head and for the sensual memories that had tormented him for the past month. The memories that she’d given him.

  It wouldn’t be a painful punishment, naturally, but she’d definitely scream. With pleasure.

  ‘You’re looking pleased with yourself,’ Enzo murmured. ‘Does this mean you’re going to listen now or are you going to interrupt me yet again?’

  ‘It means,’ Dante said, putting his phone back in his pocket, ‘that something’s come up. Looks like I have to head back to Italy.’

  ‘I see,’ Enzo said dryly. ‘Nothing at all to do with a woman, I suppose?’

>   He gave his brother a brilliant smile. ‘Not in the slightest. You won’t need the jet? Good. I’m flying out ASAP.’

  Enzo snorted. ‘What about Tokyo?’

  But Dante was already heading to the door. ‘You know what to do about Tokyo,’ he said over his shoulder. ‘Don’t wait up, brother mine.’

  It only took a few hours for him to land in Rome, but he was impatient as he went straight from the jet to the car his assistant had organised for him.

  Dante had never bothered with his own car, or even his own home for that matter, preferring the number of hotel suites in various different cities that he kept for his private use. He didn’t like to stay in one place for too long, as he didn’t like getting too attached to anything, so hotels suited his impermanent lifestyle.

  He gave his driver the address the investigator had sent to him and told the man to get there ASAP. The traffic as per usual was hideous, and Dante tried to curb his impatience but, as the driver turned down increasingly narrower sets of streets lined with rundown-looking apartment buildings, his impatience turned into uneasiness.

  The area reminded him of the dirty tenements in Naples where he and his mother had ended up after she’d dragged him away from his father and Enzo back in Milan. She’d told him they’d be going somewhere exciting where they’d begin a new life. A better life far away from Luca’s petty rages and selfishness. And wouldn’t that be nice? No, he wouldn’t have his brother, but he’d have her and wasn’t that important? Didn’t he love her?

  Naturally, he’d loved her, so he hadn’t argued. Not that he’d minded leaving his frightening father, but he’d been upset at leaving his big brother behind. He’d hidden his distress, though, as it had upset his mother and he hadn’t liked upsetting her. Especially when it had made her drinking worse.

  The driver pulled up onto the narrow footpath and gave a dubious look out of the window at the graffiti on the walls of the nearest apartment block and the garbage in the gutter. ‘You want me to get your bodyguard, Mr Cardinali?’ he asked, glancing at Dante in the rear-view mirror.

  Dante snorted. ‘Please, Giorgio. I was raised in the gutters of Naples. I think I can handle a few tenements in Rome.’

  He pulled open the door and stepped outside, giving the area a quick scan, his unease deepening still further.

  The Montefiores had little money these days, but as far as he was aware they were still on Monte Santa Maria. So why was Stella living here? Presumably because it was easier to hide in a slum, but still. Not a good place for the small, delicate, lovely looking woman he remembered from back in Monte Carlo. Then again, she’d seemed very capable with a gun, so maybe she was perfectly able to fight off all manner of thugs.

  He approached the address the investigator had given him—a large and rundown apartment block—ignoring the group of surly youths standing around outside the door. One of them said something to him as he went past, but all he did was pin the boy with a look. He still remembered the street-fighting skills he’d learned back when he’d been thirteen and he’d been beaten up for the fifth time while his mother had done nothing, passed out from another of her drunken binges. He’d decided that night that he was sick of being the neighbourhood punching bag and so had gone out to find someone to teach him how to defend himself. That was the last time anyone had laid a punch on him.

  The teenagers, making the right choice in deciding they didn’t want to take him on, didn’t say anything else, leaving him to enter the building.

  It was dark and dingy inside, the lift out of order, half the lights in the lobby out.

  He ended up walking all the way to the fifteenth floor, grimacing at the dirty floors, stained walls and huddled shapes of people in the doorways and clustered in the stairwells. It was all too familiar to him. It was the ‘new life’ his mother had promised him when she’d taken him away. Only it had ended up with her dead a few years later, and him alone to fend for himself at sixteen.

  An old anger twisted inside him, but he ignored it, as he’d been ignoring it for years.

  There was nothing to be angry about, not now. Things had turned out well despite that. Enzo had come for him four years later, and together they’d eventually claimed that new life for both of them. His mother would have been proud.

  On the fifteenth floor Dante scanned the hallway for the number the investigator had given him and eventually found it right down the end. He paused outside the door, aware that there was some kind of complicated emotion burning in his veins. However, since he didn’t care to examine his more complicated emotions, he ignored it, lifting his hand to knock hard on the door instead.

  There was silence.

  ‘I know you’re in there, Stella Montefiore,’ he said without raising his voice. ‘So you’d better open up, darling. Or, if you prefer, I can get the police involved. I’m sure your father would love that.’

  There was another brief moment of silence and Dante found his heart rate accelerating for no good reason that he could see.

  He had his hand in his pocket ready to pull out his phone and call the police when the door suddenly opened, a small, fragile-looking woman in jeans and a faded red T-shirt standing in the doorway. Her golden hair was in a messy ponytail, loose strands hanging around her lovely, if rather pale, face. Familiar cool blue eyes fractured through with silver met his.

  And desire hit him in the gut like a freight train.

  ‘There’s no need for that,’ Stella Montefiore said calmly, looking for all the world like she’d been waiting all day for him to show up at her door unannounced. ‘Though, if you’re afraid to be in a room alone with me, then by all means call the police.’

  * * *

  Stella’s heart was racing, fear coiling tightly in her gut. The hard edges of the door handle were digging into her palm, but she didn’t want to let go. Given the weak state of her knees, she’d probably collapse onto the floor without support, and there was no way in hell she was doing that. And definitely not right in front of him.

  He’d found her. Somehow, he’d damn well found her.

  Dante Cardinali stood in the doorway of her grotty apartment, blazing like an angel sent straight from God, the reality of his physical presence hitting her like a blow.

  In the past five weeks, when she’d gone over that night in her memory—and she went over it a lot—she’d told herself that what had happened between them was an aberration. A momentary weakness on her part, brought on by inexperience and a failure to prepare herself properly for what she’d had to do. She’d also told herself that she’d overestimated the intensity of his personal magnetism. But all it took was one look to know that, if anything, she’d underestimated it.

  He was so tall and broad, lounging on her doorstep as though he was at one of his exclusive parties and not in a rundown tenement in the middle of the worst part of Rome. He wore one of those phenomenally expensive custom-made suits he seemed to favour, with a black shirt and a silk tie the same inky blue as the Pacific Ocean. Somehow, the colour made the deep brown of his eyes more intense and highlighted the smooth bronze skin of his throat.

  She’d touched that skin. She’d stared into those eyes as he’d been deep inside her...

  Her breath caught.

  No, she wasn’t going to think of that. She couldn’t think of that.

  You have to. Considering that got you into the situation you’re now in.

  The fear she’d been battling the past few weeks returned with a vengeance, wrapping long fingers around her throat.

  How had he found her? She’d thought she’d been thorough in her efforts to disappear. Initially, after the panic of her failure to complete her mission had worn off and she’d had some time to think about her next move, she’d briefly debated the merits of returning to Monte Santa Maria. But had then dismissed it.

  She hadn’t been able to bear the thought of going home and confess
ing her failure, of having to deal with the weight of her father’s disappointment in her. Of having to tell him that, yes, he’d been right to doubt her. That she hadn’t been strong enough to go through with it after all. That he should have got someone else to do what she couldn’t.

  No, she hadn’t been able to accept that. Matteo’s death would go unavenged and, as it had been her and her stupid soft heart that had got him imprisoned in the first place, she couldn’t give up after just one failure.

  It was true that another attempt on Dante Cardinali’s life would be that much harder, considering he’d be on his guard, but what other choice did she have? Failure was not an option, not again.

  So she’d regrouped, texted her father that it was taking more time than anticipated but would all proceed as planned and started considering her next move. She’d shifted from place to place to hide her tracks in case Cardinali tried to find her, using nothing but cash in an effort to keep her digital trail to a minimum.

  Eventually she’d settled on Rome as a place to lay low for a little while—the apartment she’d found pretty much as low as she could get—to give her time to figure out another way of getting close to him.

  But first her cash had run out, then so had her luck, and now he was here because apparently she hadn’t been as careful as she’d thought at hiding her tracks.

  Yet another failure to add to the list.

  The weakness in her legs threatened to move through the rest of her, making her tremble, blackness tingeing the edges of her vision.

  Oh, God, please don’t let her faint in front of him. She wouldn’t be able to bear the humiliation.

  ‘Ah, there you are.’ His voice was as deep and as rich as she remembered and his smile was just as beautiful. But there was nothing friendly in it or in his dark eyes. ‘You’re a difficult woman to find.’

  Stella clutched the door handle, blackness creeping further along the edges of her vision like a piece of paper held over a flame and slowly burning. She fought to stay upright, but the nausea she’d been battling the past two days—that wasn’t the stomach bug she’d desperately hoped it was—shifted and she had to swallow hard against the urge to be sick.