LITMIR.BIZ

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grabbed the first object to hand—her florist shears—and stuck them out in front of her.

      He looked down at the small pair of secateurs and then back at her, his expression more quizzical than alarmed. He spoke softly. ‘You would stab me, Annah?’

      ‘Maybe.’ She firmed her grip on the shears. Of course she wouldn’t stab him, but he didn’t know that. He didn’t know her. They were strangers, regardless of the fact that they’d created an amazing little person together.

      Anyway, people were capable of all sorts of things when something dear to them was threatened. Annah would do anything to protect her son, especially from the people who’d wanted him gone long before he’d drawn his first breath.

      The bell over the door tinkled and Annah glanced towards the entrance. Mistake, she realised as Luca Cavallari seized her wrist and deftly disarmed her, tossing the shears down the far end of the bench beyond her reach. ‘No!’ she cried, tugging her wrist, but his one-handed grip was too strong.

      Annah cast a panicky look at the newcomer—a thick-necked behemoth dressed in black—and her stomach plummeted. She glared at Luca with false bravado. ‘Really? You brought reinforcements?’

      He frowned as if her hostility perplexed him, and that incensed her. What had he expected? Not a warm reception, surely. If only she’d had the presence of mind to act as if she didn’t recognise him. She’d spent one night with him five years ago; it was entirely plausible that his face had faded from her memory.

      Except the truth was it hadn’t.

      How could she forget the man she’d recklessly given her virginity to—the only man she’d ever slept with—when every day she looked at a tiny, living replica of him?

      Thoughts of Ethan spiked her anxiety. Her one chance to play it cool was gone. She’d overreacted. Tipped her hand by revealing her fear. If he hadn’t already known she had something to hide, he knew now.

      She looked at the man in black, her heart beating so hard her chest hurt, then back to Luca, whose eyes narrowed as he scrutinised her face.

      His frown deepened. He switched his gaze to the other man and said something in Italian. Immediately, the man exited the studio and crossed the street to a big black SUV parked up by the village shop, two wheels perched on the footpath so it didn’t block the narrow road.

      The shop owner was nowhere in sight, and Annah felt a glimmer of relief. She liked Dorothy Green. The fifty-something widow was kind and well meaning, but she was also incurably nosy. Little happened in Hollyfield without Dot knowing, and new faces always garnered special attention.

      ‘You have nothing to fear,’ Luca said in that crushed-velvet voice she knew better than to trust. ‘I simply wish to talk.’

      And yet he still held her wrist as if he didn’t trust her not to reach for a sharp object again. Annah put her shoulders back, pretending her skin wasn’t tingling where he touched her and her hormones weren’t leaping with awareness of those chiselled good looks and thick-lashed, espresso-coloured eyes.

      Setting her jaw, she made herself recall his father’s callous treatment of her. His cold dismissal of the child who at the time had been little more than a lentil-sized embryo in her womb, but his grandchild nevertheless!

      Where had Luca been then, when she wanted to talk? Conveniently absent. In the arms of another woman for all Annah knew, his memory of her already gathering dust while she came to terms with a far more permanent reminder of their night together. Of the one time in her life she’d chosen desire and spontaneity over the inclination to be sensible.

      ‘Talk about what?’ she said, clinging to the possibility, remote as it was, that his walking into her floral studio in the middle of the Devon countryside was just a crazy coincidence and he knew nothing of Ethan’s existence.

      A flimsy hope at best, and Luca crushed it with two words.

      ‘Our son.’

      His gaze challenged her to look him in the eye and deny it.

      ‘My son,’ she said, more ferociously than she’d intended. But he didn’t get to show up on her doorstep after four years and pretend he was interested in the son he hadn’t wanted. She tugged her wrist again. ‘Let me go.’

      He released her, and she clasped her arms around her middle, a thousand questions hammering her brain. How and when had he found out she’d gone through with the pregnancy? Why show up now? More specifically, what did he want?

       Not Ethan. Please, not Ethan.

      She didn’t want her little boy anywhere near his paternal family!

      By all accounts, Ethan’s grandfather was little better than a modern-day gangster. Admittedly, those accounts were based on rumour and originated from an Italian chef with a flair for dramatics whom Chloe had briefly dated in London. But Annah hadn’t needed much convincing. She’d met Franco Cavallari, and he’d terrified the living daylights out of her. She’d never met anyone more formidable or intimidating—or so devoid of compassion.

      ‘Annah—’

      She held up a hand, closing her eyes, light-headed all of a sudden. ‘I... I just need a moment,’ she said, because the conversation they were about to have was one she’d believed would never happen. Which meant that she, the woman Chloe had dubbed the Queen of Preparedness, was woefully ill prepared.

      She opened her eyes and mentally braced for the visual impact of him. Predictably, her pulse spiked at the sight of all that dark, chiselled masculinity. But at least he wasn’t touching her now, inflaming the nerves in her wrist and making her body tingle in very inappropriate places.

      She did not want to feel sexually attracted to this man.

      ‘Are you all right?’ he said suddenly. ‘Your head. Perhaps it should be checked?’

      He shifted towards her, lifting his hands, and she instinctively shrank back. Having Luca Cavallari run his fingers over her scalp would undo her completely.

      ‘My head’s fine,’ she said hurriedly. ‘I’m just a little...overwhelmed. I never imagined having this conversation, to be honest.’

      His eyes narrowed. ‘You never imagined I would one day wish to know my son?’

      Annah didn’t like how that question made her insides twist, as if she had some reason to feel guilty. It made her want to push back. ‘You haven’t met my son. What makes you so certain he’s yours?’

      ‘I’ve seen his birth certificate. And photos.’

      Annah blinked. Photos of Ethan? How? She was always so careful. She only used social media for business and she never posted photos of her or Ethan online.

      Luca slid his hands into the pockets of his expensive-looking coat. With his dark looks, his lean, broad-shouldered physique and his stylish attire, he wouldn’t have looked out of place on a catwalk in Paris or Milan. In Hollyfield, he looked about as alien as Annah had felt the first time she and Chloe had driven into the quaint country village.

      ‘Your son was born at the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital exactly thirty-six weeks and five days after you and I spent a night together in London,’ he said. ‘I’m no expert on pregnancy, but I can do the math. Unless you slept with another man around the same time who looks remarkably like me, or you were already pregnant by immaculate conception when we met...’ he paused just long enough for Annah’s face to flame at his reference to how innocent she’d been ‘...I am reasonably confident without the aid of a DNA test—which I’m not ruling out, by the way—that Ethan Sinclair is not only your son but my son, as well.’

      She glared at him, hating that she had no comeback to any of that. ‘What photos?’ she said instead.

      He hesitated for a beat. ‘Surveillance photos.’

      Annah sucked in a breath. ‘You’ve

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