Married For His One-Night Heir

CHAPTER TWO

GIA PLEADED A headache and escaped the party shortly after her conversation with Santo and Delilah ended. She’d barely managed to keep it together during that encounter with Santo, terrified she’d say something she shouldn’t, reveal something she couldn’t. But the need to ensure he didn’t blow her cover had been paramount.

She’d thought she was safe. That she was finally free after all of this time spent creating a new identity for herself, avoiding any kind of a social life where she might have been recognized. Delilah would have comprehensively vetted the guest list. But Delilah couldn’t have known about Santo. No one knew. Apart from her mother and Franco.

She said good-night to Desaray, her babysitter, then went to check on Leo. Her son was fast asleep, his thick, long lashes shading his cheeks, his thumb stuck in his mouth, his sturdy little body curled in the fetal position in his cozy, white-framed bed. She smoothed a hand over his glossy blond hair and pressed a kiss to his soft, scented cheek.

He was so peaceful, her love for him so all-encompassing, he calmed her nerves. But she still couldn’t settle enough to sleep, so she changed and got ready for bed, then headed to the kitchen for some warm milk.

She had the feeling Santo hadn’t bought her story for a minute. That he’d thought it was as full of holes as she’d known it was. But she was also sure he would never betray her trust—that he would keep her secret. The bigger problem was the business he was conducting with Delilah. If he was considering putting his Supersonic boutiques in her hotels, he would have ongoing interests in the Bahamas. Which would never work.

Dismay clogged her throat. Surely, he would send one of his minions to oversee the project? Chances were, he’d never be here.

But what if he was?

A rap at the door brought her back to reality. Thinking Desaray must have forgotten something, as she was apt to do, she turned off the burner under the milk, padded to the front door and swung it open. “What did you—” She stopped dead in her tracks at the sight of Santo, lounging against the door frame.

Her heart slammed against her ribs. Acutely aware of the expanse of bare skin her silk nightie revealed, she wrapped her arms around herself as the humid, floral-scented air pressed in on her lungs. “Santo,” she croaked, “what are you doing here?”

“Getting some answers.” He brushed past her into the house before she’d even registered he’d moved. Scared her heart might jump right through her chest, she turned to face him.

“How did you know where I live?”

“Your joke to Delilah about sliding down the hill to get home.”

Dammit. She bit the inside of her mouth. Really, she hadn’t been in her right head. She’d simply been desperate to get out of there.

She had to get rid of him. But how?

She looked up at him, then wished she hadn’t, the connection between them crackling like an electrical storm. It reverberated all the way through her, right down to the tips of her toes. Sucking in a deep breath, she corralled her racing thoughts, reaching desperately for the aura of outward calm she had perfected as a Castiglione. “About what?” she enquired evenly, pressing a palm against the frame of the door.

“About why you are really here. What’s really going on with you.”

“We’ve been through that already. It is also,” she said pointedly, “far too late for this type of a discussion.”

“I wholeheartedly agree. I would have preferred to have had it four years ago, but better late than never.”

Her stomach dropped. He wasn’t going to give up. She knew Santo. He was like a dog with a bone when he wanted something. “My head is pounding,” she prevaricated. “If you insist on doing this, can we do it in the morning?”

“I’m flying out tomorrow, so no.” He gestured toward the living room. “Should we talk in there?”

Panic surged through her veins. “No,” she said as calmly as she could manage. “We can do it on the porch. It’s cooler out there.”

He waved a hand at her. “Lead the way.”

She closed the door. Directed him out onto the veranda that ran the length of the villa and overlooked the sparkling midnight waters of the bay. A gentle breeze lifted the leaves of the palm trees, the sweet smell of bougainvillea and frangipani filling the air. But she was too frozen to take in any of it as Santo lounged back against the railing and regarded her with a silent look.

Feeling far too exposed, she wrapped her arms around herself and lifted her chin. “What would you like to know?”

“Why the hell you are hiding in the Bahamas when your mother must be worried sick about you. What were you thinking, Gia?”

She hadn’t been thinking. She’d been doing what she’d needed to do to protect Leo. And she’d do it a million times over.

“I left them a note. They know I’m safe.”

A flicker of dark emotion moved through his gaze. “Why didn’t you come to me?” he growled, the undertone of frustration raking a path across her skin. “You know I would have helped you.”

Her lashes lowered. “We were over, Santo. We had both moved on. What was the point?”

“That’s a lie,” he countered softly. “Why did you leave that morning without saying goodbye, Gia? Why run?”

“Santo,” she breathed. “Don’t.”

His mouth twisted. “Don’t ask why you walked into my arms that night and gave me your innocence? How we could have shared what we shared only for you to walk away and marry another man? Why I woke up the next morning alone, without an explanation? Not a note. Nothing.” A lift of his eyebrow. “Which of those things do you imagine confounds me the most?”

She closed her eyes, a hot, searing pain moving through her until it hurt to breathe. “You knew I was promised to him, Santo. You knew I was going to marry him. There was never any doubt about that.”

“I thought you’d changed your mind.” He threw the words at her in a charged voice that skittered through her insides. “You were emotional that night, Gia. Intensely vulnerable. You didn’t want that kind of a life for yourself. You wanted better.”

“And then I realized what I was doing. I was getting engaged in front of half of Las Vegas the next night. How was I going to walk away? It would have destroyed my father’s honor. His reputation. The Lombardi family’s reputation... It was not undoable, no matter how much I wanted it to be.”

She was Sicilian. A Castiglione. That she would marry Franco Lombardi, the heir to a Las Vegas gambling dynasty, was a fact that had been cast in stone since the day she’d turned fourteen, when her father had approved the match between his only daughter and the eldest Lombardi son. A match that would cement his empire.

Pursuing the career she’d always wanted, marrying a man she loved and walking away from her destiny had never been options for her, something she’d foolishly forgotten during that impulsive, explosive night with Santo.

There had been no more time left to wonder what if. To look for solutions that didn’t exist. To want what she could never have.

She drew in a deep breath. Then exhaled as she met Santo’s dark, tumultuous gaze. “I convinced myself it would be easier if I simply left,” she said huskily. “There was no future for us, Santo. You know that.”

He stepped closer, his expensive aftershave infiltrating her senses with devastating effect. “You know what I think?” he murmured, his warm breath skating across her cheek. “I think we will never know because you walked away, Gia. Because it was easier for you to surrender to the inevitable than to face what was between us.”

The brush of her bare leg against the muscled length of his thigh unearthed a shiver that reverberated through her. Heat pooled beneath her skin at the memory of what all that hard muscle could do. How it could take her to heaven and back. How it might have been worth every disastrous moment that had followed.

She watched, hypnotized, as his gaze darkened to midnight. As the power of what they created together took hold. One step and she would be in his arms. One tilt of her head and her mouth would be on his.

It would be magical. Unforgettable. Which had always been the problem between her and Santo. Because if he knew what she really was, who she was at her core, what she’d done, he wouldn’t want her anymore.

Her pulse was a frantic, flurried beat she couldn’t seem to control, and she took an unsteady step backward. “You’re right,” she agreed breathlessly, staring up into all that black heat. “It’s history under the bridge. You have moved on and so have I. So maybe we should agree on that and call it a night.”

A myriad of emotions flickered across his hard-boned face. As if he was debating whether or not to agree with her. She drew in a breath and waited, only to have his attention captured by something behind her, a bemused expression moving across his face.

An ominous thud started somewhere in the region of her heart. Warning bells rang in her head as she turned around slowly to find Leo padding out onto the porch, his thumb stuck in his mouth, his blue blanket trailing behind him. Clearly woken by their raised voices, he directed a big dark-eyed stare at Santo.

Gia stepped toward him, desperate to head off disaster. But there was no way to prevent it. Her son, cheeks flushed from sleep, golden hair ruffled, took his thumb out of his mouth, walked the last couple of steps toward her and held his chubby arms out to her. “Up.”

She picked him up and cuddled him close to her chest, her pulse pounding so loud in her ears it was like a freight train running through her head. Santo took in the scene, a frown creasing his brow. The curiosity in his gaze deepened as he stared at Leo. Then his eyes widened, shock flaring in those midnight depths.

It was like looking at two mirror images of each other.

She saw the moment realization dawned in Santo’s eyes. Watched the blood drain from his face.

* * *

Santo took an unsteady breath as he stared at velvety dark eyes that could have been his own. At the noticeable cowlick that had infuriated all three of the Di Fiore brothers as they’d grown into adulthood. He ruffled the hair of the child in front of him.

It could not be. The child could be Lombardi’s... Except there was no sign of the angular-faced Italian in the little boy clinging to Gia—there was only the identical image staring back at him. A bone-deep recognition echoed through him—a deep, primal pull in his gut unlike anything he’d ever felt in his life.

And then there was the panic arrowing through Gia’s eyes. The stark fear painted across her face as she held the little boy close. The events of the night started piling up in quick succession, bombarding him with the impossible. Why Gia had been so terrified to see him. Why she’d been so anxious to get rid of him.

Because she’d been guarding a secret she’d spent four years preserving.

Somehow, he found the presence of mind to pull himself together. “I didn’t know you had a little boy.” He set his gaze on Gia’s stricken face. “How old is he?”

She didn’t answer. For so long, so damn long, his heart climbed into his throat. “Dannazione, Gia. Answer the question.”

“He is three years old.”

The earth gave way beneath his feet, any reality he’d thought he’d ever known replaced by a grey haze that threatened to envelop him whole. But the little boy had settled now and was staring at him with big, dark, curious eyes that held the slightest bit of apprehension, and the silence on the porch was deafening.

“Friend?” the little boy whispered, looking up at Santo.

Friend? Santo almost choked on the word.

A strangled look crossed Gia’s face. “Yes,” she murmured. “A friend. And you should be in bed.” She glanced at Santo. “I need to—”

“Go,” he instructed curtly, as if she wasn’t about to carry his son away from him. As if the world wasn’t disintegrating beneath his feet. “We’ll talk when you get him settled.”

It was the longest ten minutes of his life as he paced the length of the porch, a chorus of cicadas keeping him company as a red haze built in his head. He had used a condom that night—he was sure of it. Except the night had been long, condoms had been known to fail and, quite honestly, the last thing he could remember was Gia stripping down to a skimpy piece of lace and then there had been nothing after that except the hot, sensual explosion that had followed.

Uncertainty dogging his every step, he forced himself to keep a lid on the violent emotion coursing through him until he confirmed what he already knew.

Gia’s face was deathly pale when she returned, slipping quietly onto the porch. Dressed now in cropped yoga pants and a T-shirt, she smoothed her palms over her thighs as she came to a halt in front of him.

“He is mine.”

The muscles in her throat convulsed. “Yes.”

A fury, unlike any he’d ever known, rose up inside of him. He clenched his hands into fists at his sides, attempted to control it, but it escaped his bounds, rising up into his throat until all that emerged was a primal sound of disbelief.

“Santo,” Gia said haltingly, “you need to let me explain.”

“Explain what?” he exploded. “That I have a three-year-old son you haven’t told me about? There isn’t one possible reason on this earth you could give me which would explain why you would keep something like this from me.”

“Franco,” she choked out. “He was going to kill you.”

His jaw dropped. “What are you talking about?”

She sank back against a pillar. Pressed a hand against her temple. “I found out I was pregnant a couple of weeks before I married Franco. I was scared, terrified. It was a disaster, given the circumstances. I had no idea what to do. I couldn’t go to my father—that was inconceivable. So I went to my mother. She told me I had to tell Franco.”

“You should have come to me,” Santo grated out. “It was the obvious choice, Gia.”

“And done what?” Fire flared in her eyes. “I was about to marry one of the most powerful men in the country. A pivotal match that would cement my father’s business interests in Las Vegas, which were, at the time, in jeopardy. There was no way out.”

He gave her a thunderous look. “And so you simply chose to marry Lombardi instead, when you were pregnant with my child?”

“There was nothing simple about it.” She threw the words at him with a ragged heat. “Franco was beside himself with fury. My impulse, my walk on the wild side had put the entire partnership in jeopardy.” She dragged a hand through her hair. Sucked in a deep breath. “Once Franco had finally calmed down, he told me we would have to make it work. That he would take my son as his own and give him his name. As long as no one ever found out the truth. As long as I never saw you again.”

Her eyes glittered a deep green as they lifted to his. “He said if I did, he would find out, he would hunt you down and he would kill you.”

Maledizione. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “I can protect myself,” he rasped. “You should have come to me, Gia.”

She shook her head, eyes bleak. “Nothing would have protected you against him. He had the power to eliminate anyone he liked. He could and would do it. There was no doubt in my mind he would.”

His brain buzzed with incomprehension. He understood Gia was intimidated by her powerful, charismatic father. Always had been. It was why she’d married Lombardi in the first place. To humiliate her father by walking away from her marriage would have been unthinkable. But to have passed his son off as Lombardi’s? To lie to the world about his parentage? It was unfathomable to him.

He fixed his gaze on hers, his fury a hot pulse against his skin. “So you allowed my son to be raised by Franco Lombardi? In the same culture of violence you were brought up in? That same culture of violence you hated so much?”

She shook her head. “I protected Leo. He was never exposed to any of it, Santo. I wouldn’t tolerate it. Franco knew that.”

Leo. His son’s name was Leo. He absorbed that mind-boggling fact. “Why leave then? After Franco died? Why walk away from your family?”

An emotion he couldn’t read flickered over her face. “Franco was murdered in broad daylight. I didn’t feel safe. I didn’t trust Leo’s safety with anyone but myself. So I ran.”

He bit back the surge of anger that coursed through him at the thought that his son could have been in danger. “To Delilah?”

“Yes.” Her lashes lowered. “I had known Delilah from some work I’d done on Franco’s hotels. We’d become friends even. I think she always knew there was something wrong with my marriage, but she never said anything. She just said if I ever needed anything, I could come to her. So I did. I explained my situation with Leo, that I didn’t want him to live that kind of a life, and she offered to get us out.”

“So your mother knows where you are?”

“Yes,” she acknowledged. “She’s the only one who does. We keep in contact via Delilah.”

He rubbed a hand against the stubble on his jaw, brain reeling. Addressed the one point he couldn’t wrap his head around. The obvious, simple choice she should have made. “If Franco was out of the picture, what stopped you from coming to me then?”

Color rode high on her delicate cheekbones. “You were with a different woman every week. In a different city on a different continent building Supersonic, Santo. You were not, in any way, prepared to settle down, that was clear. And you had obviously moved on.”

“Gia,” he growled, feeling himself slipping over the edge of reason. “Tell me the truth.”

Her beautiful eyes shone a luminous green. “I was afraid,” she admitted quietly, “that you would never forgive me for what I’d done. That you might take Leo away from me.”

She might have been right. Because right now, all he could feel was the fury burning through his veins. The anger that rose in a wild flood, stripping him of the ability to think.

He was a father. He had a three-year-old son. He had missed so many moments, so many milestones, things he would never get back. Priceless memories.

It was so far from the vision of the perfect family he’d had for himself, he couldn’t even begin to contemplate it. Because that was what he’d always wanted—the family he’d never had. A family like his best friend Pietro’s growing up—a warm Italian brood he’d been enveloped in when his own family had been shattered apart. Instead, he had a son he hadn’t known about, a woman who’d chosen another man over him, a woman he couldn’t trust. A woman with whom the complications ran a mile deep.

He wanted to scream.

Nothing should have prevented Gia from telling him the truth about his son no matter what the circumstances had been. Nothing. But he was also smart enough to know that he wasn’t in any condition to be attempting rational thought at the moment.

He turned and braced his hands on the railing while he stared out at the sparkling bay. He was supposed to be leaving in the morning. He could safely say that wasn’t happening. In fact, he didn’t want to let his son out of his sight. But Gia and Leo—who he assumed had been named after her grandfather—were safe for the night, since Delilah’s security was second to none. And he needed a chance to breathe.

Gia set a nervous gaze on him as he turned around, clearly attempting to anticipate his next move. “What are you thinking?”

“That I need time to think.”

She gave him a beseeching look. “We have a good life here, Santo—Leo and I. He is happy. Well adjusted. He plays on the beach every afternoon and he loves his friends. He won’t ever have to suffer the stigma of being a Castiglione.”