LITMIR.BIZ

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proud and arrogant, possibly grim and unsmiling. It hadn’t once crossed her mind that he’d kiss her, and then walk her into his home and shut the door and create this awful air of privacy. Intimacy. She swallowed hard and struggled to think of something to say. “Does your mother live here?”

      “Part of the year. During the winter she likes to go to her sister’s in Sorrento.” He rose from his chair and walked toward the wall of tall windows, pausing before one window, his gaze fixed intently on a distant point.

      She wondered if he was looking for the photographers, or if there was something else happening on the lagoon. She used the opportunity to study him. He was easily six-two, maybe taller, and his shoulders were broad, his spine long, tapering to a lean waist and powerful legs. Even from the back he crackled with authority and power. He was not the recluse she’d imagined.

      Still staring out, Gio added, “I confess, I’m surprised you never reached out to her. I would have thought that in your desperation you would have approached her. Who to better love and accept a bambino than the grandmother?”

      She folded her hands in her lap. “I did reach out.”

      He turned to look at her. “And?”

      “She wasn’t interested.”

      “Is that what she said?”

      “No. She never responded.”

      “She probably didn’t get your messages then.”

      “I didn’t just call. I wrote letters, too.”

      “All sent to the Marcello corporate office in Rome?”

      Rachel nodded.

      His shoulders shifted. “Then that is why she didn’t receive them. Anything to my mother would go to my assistant, and my assistant wouldn’t forward.”

      “Why not? It was important correspondence.”

      “My assistant was under strict instructions to not disturb my mother with anything troubling, or upsetting. My mother hasn’t been well for a while.”

      “I would imagine that she’d be delighted to discover that Antonio had left a piece of him behind.”

      “I can’t—and won’t—get her hopes up, not if she is being used, or manipulated.”

      “I wouldn’t do that to her.”

      “No? You wouldn’t have asked her for money if she’d responded? You wouldn’t have demanded support?” He saw her expression and smiled grimly. “You would have, and you know it. I do, too, which is why I had to protect her, and shield her from stress.”

      “I would think that having a beautiful grandson—Antonio’s son—in her arms would help her heal.”

      “If the child in question really was Antonio’s...maybe.”

      “Michael is Antonio’s.”

      “I don’t know that.”

      “I have proof.”

      “DNA tests?” he mocked, walking again, now prowling the perimeter of the room. “I’ll do my own, thank you.”

      “Good. Do them. I’ve been waiting for you to do your own!”

      He paused, arms crossing over his chest. “And if he is Antonio’s, what then?”

      “You accept him,” she said.

      His dark head tipped as he considered her. “Accept him. What does that even mean?”

      She opened her mouth to answer, and then closed it without making a sound. Her heart did an uneven thump and suddenly it hurt to breathe. Michael needed support—not just financial, but emotional. She wanted to be sure Michael wasn’t forgotten, not by her family, or Antonio’s.

      It was bad enough that Michael had been left an orphan within months of his birth, but the way Juliet died... It was wrong, and it continued to eat at Rachel because she hadn’t understood how badly Juliet was doing. She’d been oblivious to the depth of Juliet’s despair. Rachel could now write an entire pamphlet on postpartum depression, but back in November and December she hadn’t understood it, and she hadn’t been properly sympathetic. Instead of getting Juliet medical help, she’d given her sister tough love, and it was absolutely the wrong thing to do.

      It had only made everything so much worse. It was without exaggeration, the beginning of the end. And it was all Rachel’s fault.

      Rachel had failed Juliet when her sister needed her most.

       CHAPTER THREE

      GIOVANNI WATCHED RACHEL’S eyes fill with tears and her lips part, then seal shut, her teeth biting down into the soft lower lip as though she was fighting to stay in control.

      He didn’t buy the act, as it was an act.

      Adelisa had been the same. Beautiful, bright and spirited, she’d captured his heart from the start. He’d proposed before the end of the first year, and delighted in buying her the pretty—but expensive—trinkets her heart desired.

      Her heart desired many.

      Diamonds and rubies, emeralds and sapphires—jewels she ended up liquidating almost as quickly as he gave them to her. Not that he knew what happened to them until much later.

      His family warned him that Adelisa was using him. His mother came to him privately on three different occasions, sharing her fears, and then reporting on rumors that Adelisa had been seen with other men, but he didn’t believe it. He was sure Adelisa loved him. She wore his engagement ring. She was eagerly planning their wedding. Why would she betray him?

      Six months later he heard about a pair of stunning diamond earrings for sale, a pair rumored to come from the Marcello family. He tracked down the earrings and the jeweler, and they were a pair of a set he’d given Adelisa the night of their engagement party. They were worth millions of dollars, but more than that, they were family heirlooms and something he gave with his heart.

      He was stunned, and worse, humiliated. His mother had been right. He’d been duped. And everyone seemed to have known the truth but him.

      It’d been ten years since that humiliation, but Gio still avoided love and emotional entanglements. Far better to enjoy a purely physical relationship than be played for a fool. And now his narrowed gaze swept over Rachel, from the classic oval shape of her pretty face to the glossy length of her ponytail with the windswept tendrils. She was neither tall nor petite, but average height and an average build, although in her dark coat, which hit just above her black knee-high leather boots, she looked polished and pretty.

      He didn’t want her to be pretty, though. He didn’t want to find anything about her attractive or desirable, and yet he was aware of her, just as he was aware that beneath her winter coat, there were curves, generous curves, because he’d felt them when he’d drawn her against him, her body pressed to his. “So what is your plan?” he asked tautly. “Have you sorted out how you intend to get us to accept the child? Because a family is not just DNA. A family is nurture, and relationships, and those develop over years. You can’t simply force one to accept an outsider—”

      “Michael is not an outsider. He’s Antonio’s son.” She’d gone pale, her expression strained. “And my sister’s son,” she added after a half beat, “and I know you have no love for my sister, but she cared for your brother, deeply—”

      “We’re in private now. You can drop the script. There’s no need for theatrics.”

      “You don’t even know the facts.”

      “I know enough.”

      “Well, I thought I did, too, but I was wrong, and Juliet’s no longer here because I got it wrong. Michael has no one but us and you can think what you want of Juliet,

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