The pleasant tingling gave way to a prickle of dismay. ‘There’s not much to tell.’
‘It won’t take long, then,’ he said, his tone dampening her hopes of avoiding a conversation altogether. His gaze dropped to her mouth, the banked heat in his eyes sending a shiver of secret delight through her. ‘And afterwards we will go back to bed, yes?’
She sighed. She hated talking about herself, especially if it made her feel anything less than strong and capable. Knowing what she’d rather do, she pouted her mouth and trailed her fingertip through the dark hair on his chest. ‘Or we could just go straight to bed.’
His deep, sexy chuckle made the muscles in her pelvis contract. He removed her finger from his chest. ‘Nice try, dolcezza.’
She huffed out a resigned breath.
‘Can I have some water, then?’
He guided her to one of the chairs, went to the en suite and returned with a glass of water. As he lowered his tall, bare-chested frame into the other chair, Annah quenched her thirst, then put the glass down and tucked her feet up under her.
‘Your father frightened me, Luca,’ she said quietly, deciding an honest, abbreviated account was the most painless way forward. ‘I didn’t know if the things I’d heard were true, but I knew, having met him in person, that he was not someone to cross. After Ethan was born, I was afraid of what would happen if your father...’ She hesitated before adding, ‘Or you found out I’d gone through with the pregnancy.’
Grim lines bracketed Luca’s mouth, and her heart twisted at the torment in his dark eyes. She knew it hurt him deeply that she’d once believed he’d rejected her and their unborn child and left her at his father’s mercy.
‘And the panic attacks?’ he said.
Annah tugged the robe over her knees. ‘They didn’t happen often. But sometimes anxiety got the better of me. There were days when I found myself looking over my shoulder, worried someone would try to take Ethan.’
Luca’s expression tightened. ‘You should not have had to go through that.’ Repressed anger laced his voice. He leaned forward and captured her hand. Before she realised his intent, he tugged her out of the chair and onto his lap.
She should have protested. But it felt too wonderful, being surrounded by all that heat and muscle. One large hand slipped under the robe and settled on her thigh, making her pulse thrum.
‘Who supported you through your pregnancy, cara?’
She frowned. ‘What do you mean?’
‘When you were tired. Or unwell. Who did you rely on?’
He looked at her a little too intently. Did he wonder if she’d had a boyfriend? She shrugged. ‘I didn’t rely on anyone. But I wasn’t completely alone. I had Chloe.’ They’d shared the flat over the shop to begin with, right up until two years ago when Chloe had moved in with Ben.
‘Your parents didn’t help?’
She dropped her gaze.
‘Annah?’
‘No,’ she said after a pause. ‘My mother and I aren’t close.’
‘And your father?’
Her discomfort grew. ‘I never knew my father,’ she admitted.
‘Did he die?’ Luca asked gently.
Annah began to shake her head, then stopped. The truth was she didn’t know if her father was dead or alive. She had no way of knowing. She took a deep breath, blew it out slowly. Luca had weathered his own discomfort last night to talk about his father. Surely she could do the same?
‘I was the result of a one-night stand,’ she said, staring at her hands. ‘My mother was young and drunk...’ She stopped herself from adding and irresponsible. That was one stone she couldn’t cast. Not when she was guilty of the same transgression. ‘Afterwards, she couldn’t even remember his name or where he was from.’
She looked up, searching for signs of judgement on Luca’s face, but saw none. His expression was simply intent, his gaze steady, encouraging her to go on. ‘She was only nineteen when she had me and not terribly maternal—her words,’ she added, ‘not mine. To be honest, I don’t know why she didn’t give me up for adoption.’
Luca’s thumb moved in soft, tantalising circles on her thigh. ‘Perhaps she loved you too much to do the right thing.’
Annah stared at Luca. It was a strange thing to say. ‘If she did love me, she had an odd way of showing it.’
His brow furrowed. ‘How so?’
She paused, searching for the words to explain, slightly startled to realise she wanted to explain. ‘I think I was a hindrance more than anything. At first because she was young and wanted to party. And then because she wanted a relationship and most of her boyfriends didn’t want the responsibility of another man’s child.’
The vertical crease between Luca’s eyebrows deepened. ‘Most?’ he echoed. ‘How many were there?’
Annah shrugged. ‘I can’t remember. Some weren’t around for long. Some we lived with for a while.’ She’d hated the constant moving. Never feeling settled. Always waiting for the day her mother would uproot them again. ‘Her relationships never lasted. She was...clingy. I think she drove the men away, although...’ She hesitated, old hurt rising, pulling her throat tight. ‘Sometimes she told me it was my fault.’
Luca’s hand stilled on her thigh. ‘Tell me you didn’t buy into that.’
She lifted a shoulder. ‘Children tend to believe what their parents tell them.’ She forced a smile. ‘But, no, as an adult—and a mother—I know better.’
Moving his hand from her leg, Luca cupped the side of her face. ‘You’re a good mother.’
The conviction in his voice made her heart hitch. ‘How do you know?’ she challenged.
‘Because our son is a healthy, well-rounded child,’ he said. ‘That is your doing, no one else’s.’
Annah couldn’t suppress a glow of warmth at his praise, and yet...
Wasn’t she behaving just a little bit like her mother right now? Putting her own desires ahead of her child’s welfare?
Unease filtered through her stomach.
She and Luca should be discussing joint custody arrangements and other matters relating to Ethan’s future. Instead, they’d had sex. And now they were talking about her. As if her childhood mattered a jot.
Luca must have felt her stiffen. ‘What?’ he said.
‘We need to have a conversation about custody,’ she reminded him.
Something enigmatic moved through his dark gaze. ‘We have the rest of the week,’ he said. ‘Plenty of time to talk.’ His hand glided lazily down her neck, delved into the opening of the robe, and closed over her naked breast.
Annah inhaled sharply, the heat from his touch racing through her body. ‘Luca,’ she breathed, but her protest was husky. Half-hearted.
Dark eyes glittering, he pushed the robe open then trailed his hand between her legs, sliding his fingers through her damp heat.
She gasped, her body quickening, the exquisite ache in her pelvis intensified by the feel of his erection hardening and thickening beneath her buttocks.
Luca leaned forward, captured one of her nipples in his mouth, and sucked hard while circling her clitoris with a slick fingertip.
Annah’s head fell back, her eyes closing, any thoughts of resisting swallowed by a fireball of need.
Tomorrow, she promised herself. Tomorrow they would talk.
CHAPTER NINE
OVER THE NEXT few days a deep sense of satisfaction thrummed in Luca’s blood. Things were going better than he’d hoped. For three nights in a row Annah had come to his bed of her own accord, and that pleased him immensely. Yet again he’d proved to her—and himself—that he was nothing like his father. He did not bully and take what he wanted by force simply because he had the power to do so.
The more time he spent with Annah and Ethan, the stronger his conviction grew. Their son deserved a stable home with two parents united in their
efforts to care and provide for him. To ferry Ethan back and forth between countries, disrupt his schooling, force him to choose which parent to spend holidays and important occasions with, was untenable.
‘This view is fantastic.’
Annah sent him a beaming smile that punched the breath from his lungs. He’d seen that magnificent smile often over the last few days, but each time it still caught him like a sucker-punch.
‘You think this is the right spot?’ he said, genuinely interested in her thoughts on the location his winery manager had proposed for a restaurant and/or function venue.
‘Yes.’ She nodded enthusiastically. ‘If you had big picture windows facing this way, and a landscaped outdoor area, then you’d have the view over the orchards and meadows with the sea in the distance, plus all-day sun.’
He nodded, looking across the valley. Yes. She was right about the aspect. He captured her hand and brought it to his lips. He enjoyed her like this. Smiling. Unguarded. Sexy as hell in that little lemon sundress that showed off her legs. He silently thanked the weather gods for the warm desert winds that blew in from the African continent.
They walked back down the rise and returned to the picnic blanket beneath the big spreading branches of an oak tree.
Annah leaned back on her hands. ‘I loved Taormina, and I doubt Ethan will ever stop talking about the helicopter ride over Mount Etna, but I think this is my favourite place of all, right here on the estate. It’s so pretty and peaceful and...’ she glanced sideways at him ‘...there’s no Mario.’
He gave her a deadpan look. ‘I think Mario would be hurt to hear you say that.’
She laughed and the sound trickled through his insides like liquid honey. He held her gaze, and as their humour subsided he saw a flicker of uncertainty and conflict in her sapphire eyes. Guilt needled him. He had to concede he’d not played entirely fair these last few days. Whenever she’d grown serious or seemed about to broach a meaningful conversation, he’d deliberately distracted her.
It wasn’t difficult.
She was so physically responsive to him, and he to her. A single touch could see them both consumed by fire and need.
They were careful in front of others, especially Ethan. Annah let Luca hold her hand in front of their son, but nothing more intimate. And she was gone from Luca’s bedroom by five-thirty each morning, afraid Ethan might wake early and find her absent.
Luca didn’t object. After hearing about her childhood, he understood her better. He’d coaxed even more from her since Tuesday, and it shredded his gut to think of her as an eight-year-old child, cooking her own dinner and sitting home alone because her mother was out with her latest boyfriend.
No wonder she was so fiercely independent.
He reached out, stroked his knuckles down her cheek. ‘Tonight,’ he promised, ‘we’ll talk.’ Convincing her to relinquish some of her independence wouldn’t be easy, but he was confident. Especially now she’d had a taste of the life she could have here with him, sharing his home, his bed.
She nodded, although something he couldn’t identify moved across her features. Her gaze drifted to the meadow below, where Eva was showing Ethan how to fly a small kite.
‘Thank you for inviting Eva to join us today,’ she said.
He shrugged. It had been Annah’s idea, not his, but he’d been happy to indulge her. His reward had been a radiant smile and a kiss behind the closed door of his study that promised even greater rewards tonight.
She considered him for a long moment. ‘Why are you so angry at her?’
The question caught Luca off guard and his stomach clenched. ‘What makes you think I’m angry at her?
Annah hesitated. ‘She told me. But even if she hadn’t,’ she added quickly, ‘I’ve seen how you are with her.’
Luca felt his good mood begin to evaporate. ‘And how’s that?’
‘Stilted,’ she said. ‘The tension between you is obvious, Luca.’
He shook his head. ‘It’s in the past. It’s not important.’
She sent him an incredulous look. ‘How can you say that when it still affects your relationship with her?’
He clenched his jaw.
When he didn’t speak, Annah curled gentle fingers around his left biceps. ‘I’ve told you things that weren’t easy to talk about.’
He glanced down at her hand and resisted the urge to cover it with his. ‘And I’ve talked about my father.’
And didn’t it feel good? Wasn’t it a relief, after five years of isolation and loneliness, to finally feel able to talk to someone?
Ruthlessly, he ignored the voice in his head. ‘Why does it matter?’
‘Because you’re Ethan’s father. And Eva is his grandmother. In time, he’ll come to love you both. If there’s tension between you, it will affect him.’
Luca rubbed his hand over his chin. His mother had spoken of their relationship to Annah? He supposed it was inevitable. The women got along. He was happy they did. It didn’t hurt for Annah to have some female company.
But to make her understand his side of things, he’d have to tell her something ugly.
‘Luca?’ she pressed when he was silent too long.
He hefted out a breath. Fixed his gaze on a distant point across the valley. ‘When I was sixteen my father took me to a meeting. It was in the evening, so I assumed it was a business dinner. My father said it would be my initiation into the business, and I felt...important, I suppose.’ He shook his head. He’d been so naive. So oblivious to what awaited him. ‘But we didn’t go to a restaurant. We went to a warehouse. Some of my father’s men were already there—with a man they’d beaten half to death.’
He heard Annah gasp, felt her fingers tighten on his arm. Her touch comforted. Kept him anchored in the here and now even as the horror of the scene replayed in his head. ‘Franco said the man had betrayed him—betrayed us—and we had to teach him a lesson. Send a message to others who would do the same. He put a hammer in my hand. Ordered me to break the poor bastard’s fingers.’
Another gasp.
Luca dragged his hand across his mouth, swallowed the acrid taste of bile.
‘You didn’t do it.’ Annah’s voice was a fierce whisper, her words a statement, not a question.
Luca looked at her, something tight inside him unravelling at her conviction that he would never commit such an atrocity. ‘No,’ he said, his voice hoarse. ‘I didn’t. I threw the hammer down and walked out.’ He’d been angry. Sick to his stomach. Disillusioned. ‘The next morning I confronted my mother. Asked her if she knew who Franco was. What he was.’ His jaw tightened. ‘She said she’d known since Enzo and I were little.’
He turned his gaze to the meadow. His mother knelt on the ground behind his son, her arms around him, helping to hold the kite’s spool. A memory of her doing the same thing with him flashed unbidden into his head.
‘Did she say anything else?’
He made a rough sound. ‘She said it was “complicated”.’
‘Maybe it was,’ Annah said softly.
He shook his head. ‘It was simple. She lied to me for sixteen years. Let me believe my father was a decent man. Let me idolise him.’
Annah was silent a moment. ‘Perhaps she wanted to protect you.’
He met her eyes. ‘It had nothing to do with me, or Enzo. She loved my father. That was her vice—her weakness.’
Annah’s brows knitted. ‘You think love is a weakness?’
‘I think it clouds people’s judgement,’ he said. ‘Warps their view of things.’ A lesson Luca had learned the hard way and would never forget. Love affected a person’s ability to make the right decisions. The tough decisions. Ones that could ultimately tip the scale between life and death. A man had to be strong to protect the people he cared about. Not weak.
Annah’s hand withdrew from his arm, but he captur
ed her fingers, drew her close to him and stole a brief kiss. ‘Let’s not talk of such things.’ He stroked the underside of her wrist and felt her pulse flutter. ‘It’s a beautiful day. And I have a surprise back at the villa.’
She drew back, gave him an arch look. ‘Isn’t it a little early for bed?’
Luca laughed, a deep chuckle of amusement that expanded his chest, and marvelled at her ability to lift his mood.
* * *
‘You bought him a puppy?’
Annah couldn’t keep the dismay from her voice. But she wasn’t sure Luca noticed or even heard her speak over Ethan’s squeals of delight.
He dropped to his knees on the flagstone terrace, and the little chocolate Labrador pup planted his floppy paws on Ethan’s chest and licked his face. It was the most adorable thing to watch—and it made Annah as mad as hell.
For Ethan’s sake, however, she pasted on a happy expression and kept it up for almost an hour as they took afternoon tea on the terrace. Just when she feared her face would crack from the effort of smiling, Eva, who no doubt detected the tension, suggested to Ethan they go and sort out some sleeping quarters for the puppy.
Annah sent the older woman a grateful look and waited till she and Ethan were out of earshot before speaking. ‘Why did you do that?’
Luca’s expression was perplexed. ‘The dog is a gift,’ he said evenly. ‘And if I am not mistaken, our son is delighted by it.’
‘Why didn’t you ask me first?’
Luca frowned. His tone changed. ‘Do I require your permission to give my own child a gift?’
‘Yes!’ She pushed off her chair and stalked down the steps into the gardens. After a moment, heavy footsteps crunched on the gravel path behind her.
‘Cara.’
She ignored him, even though she knew she was being mulish. She veered onto the path that led through a grove of tall trees to the pond.
‘Annah!’
She couldn’t out-stride him. His legs were too powerful and long. He caught her wrist, spun her round, and pulled her tightly against him.
The Sicilian's Secret Son Page 12