Читать книгу Proof of Their Sin - Dani Collins, Dani Collins - Страница 8

LAUREN HAD PREPARED herself for many reactions: anger, blame, suspicion that she was trying to trap him, even disbelief in the context that this could have happened to a pair of otherwise responsible adults. She had not imagined a denial of any involvement whatsoever.

Behind her burn of outrage raced a trail of humiliation. Did he really imagine she’d taken other lovers besides him and her husband? Well, why not, based on the way she’d made love with him as though she was starved for it? Her throat clogged and mortified pressure built behind her cheeks.

She stumbled out of sync with the music, forcing him to pull her a fraction closer to steady her. He was an iron cage around her, supporting her while trapping her in this farce of a dance.

She moved as though swimming in molasses, a bug caught in sap, soon to be immortalized in amber. Light-headedness combined with the spin of the dance made the room swirl around her while her stomach turned over. Whatever blood had been circulating through her drained into her toes, leaving her chilled to the core.

Somehow she reached through the miasma of shock to locate contempt for a man who dared to denigrate her when he’d been in that bed exactly as long as she had.

“You never struck me as lacking intelligence, Paolo.” Her voice was soft yet layered with frost, frigid as a Canadian winter. “You deserved to know, so I told you. Have a nice life.”

She pushed away from him, head high, tears thick in her throat.

No, Paolo thought. It was the only sound in ears pulsing with his boiling blood. Ryan’s? Another man’s? His?

No, no, no. He was not stupid enough to fall for that again. His ex had pulled this same trick for a direct line to his fortune, complete with another man’s baby conveniently conceived at an appropriate time to make it plausible. He’d unquestioningly done what was right for his child and the payback had been six months of melodrama, scheming and bitterness that kept his heart hard to this day.

He had vowed not to let any woman tear him to pieces again, but as Lauren left him on the dance floor, he felt like an actor who’d been abandoned on stage, the spotlight hot and white upon him, props gone, lines forgotten. He’d felt the same way after their night together, when she’d disappeared into the clutch of grieving Bradleys, leaving him to cope alone.

Despite his exceptional reflexes and honed instincts, he didn’t know how to react to something so unexpected and threatening to his carefully structured life. Especially when lust was clouding his vision and frying his mind. Dancing with her had been as erotic as making love to her.

Then it struck him. She hadn’t said it was his, only that he deserved to know. Because the perception would be that it was his.

A string of violent Italian curses fed through his psyche as he strode after her. To his irritation and disgust, Vittorio stopped her before either of them had wound very far through the crowd.

“I must confess, I didn’t recognize you from your photos,” Paolo heard as he came upon them. “I’m Paolo’s cousin, Vittorio. I knew your husband. I’m deeply sorry for your loss.”

Paolo couldn’t stop the territorial slide of his hand beneath the drape of Lauren’s silk wrap, fingers splaying over lithe back muscles that stiffened at his touch.

The tumultuous instinct to guard her, own her, while his brain reminded him she was the enemy, tangled his thoughts, making him say harshly to Vittorio, “She’s leaving.”

“So soon?” Vittorio was enjoying himself, aware something was afoot and determined to have a piece of it.

“I only wished to put in a brief appearance,” Lauren said with surprising solemnity. “Given this event benefits cardiac research. My grandmother had a heart condition so I wanted to show my support.”

The unexpected revelation set Paolo back on his heels. He was instantly sure the records would show a very generous donation next to her name and even though a string of zeros often meant nothing to people in a crowd of this financial rank, the catch in her voice underlined her sincerity. Her devotion to her grandmother had always been something he respected about her.

The phrase “had a heart condition” pinged inside his skull. The old woman was gone? He unconsciously gentled his touch, offering a caress of comfort.

Lauren shifted her weight, subtly removing herself from contact with Paolo’s fingertips, the only sign she was aware of him, while she continued speaking to Vittorio.

“She passed away earlier this year.” She controlled the hitch in her voice. “The loss was overshadowed by other events, but it does make a night like this quite difficult. I hope you’ll understand and excuse me?”

“Of course,” Vittorio said with a gallant bow before stepping aside.

Paolo slid his arm more securely around Lauren’s waist and tightened it, pinning her to his side before she could sweep herself away.

She flung him a look that lashed like a bolt of lightning, gilding him in an exciting sensation of pleasure-pain. It was completely at odds with the fading spirit and demure manner she’d been projecting seconds ago. No one else saw it, but he tasted the slap of challenge and the hot blood it left in the corner of his mouth.

Everything about this woman provoked a visceral reaction in him and Paolo had to temper a grin of exhilaration. If she wanted a fight, she’d come to the right place.

But she was pregnant, he reminded himself, fighting an impulse to grip her with hard, controlling hands the way he would anything that fought his will: a race car, a powerboat, a fighter jet. At the same time, he thought, Pregnant, and knew he should lift his red-hot palm right off her.

Despite knowing he should never have touched her in the first place, he kept her from moving with a flex of his superior strength. Whether she was actually naming him the father or warning him of the perception, he was facing a firing squad. Perhaps he owned some of the responsibility for that. He’d brought her into his home and made love to her. It had been foolhardy and wrong, but it had been the first time in five years that other spouses had not stood in the way. In his weakened state, he’d let long-suppressed desire overtake him.

It should have been a bittersweet aberration tucked away and forgotten, but she had decided to bring an infant in a basket to his doorstep. Having the baby turn out to be his was the only way he could forgive her for doing this, but he simply couldn’t let himself believe that she was telling the truth. Other motives were too quick to present themselves: his fortune, for starters.

They needed to talk.

“Play host while I escort Mrs. Bradley to her room,” Paolo said without looking at Vittorio, perversely pleased with the flush that poured into Lauren’s cheeks and the way her burgeoning breasts heaved against the line of her dress.

“That isn’t necessary,” she said through her teeth.

“Si, cara, it is. Very much so.”

Lauren refused to speak to him as he accompanied her to the elevator. Part of it was stubborn fury, the rest complete intimidation. She was catwalk height, like her grandmother, five-ten plus more in heels. Somehow Paolo’s looming six-three had never penetrated, probably because she’d rarely stood this close to him.

Threat radiated off him. Not physical threat, but the impression that he was on the prowl to crush her in some way and was merciless enough to do a fine job of it.

“So?” he demanded when the elevator doors enclosed them. “Whose is it?”

She dragged her gaze from his magnetic reflection and looked scathingly up at the man himself, mortified to acknowledge that desire still gripped her. It had always been there of course, sublimated, rejected and ignored. That’s why she’d so rarely stood near him or held a real conversation with him. That’s why, after trying to speak to him at Ryan’s thirtieth birthday and receiving nothing but disparagement, she’d told herself she hated him.

She had convinced herself she would never see him again, but three months ago she’d had nowhere else to turn. At best she’d hoped for a civil phone call that might or might not have shed light on Ryan’s disappearance.

Twenty-four hours after the pleading message she’d left on his voice mail, however, he had walked into the Bradleys’ cold, silent mansion like an avenging angel, eyes only for her. It was the last thing she had expected and inexplicably, despite all the turmoil around her, her inner freeze had thawed into a flood of warmth and relief. Her heart had begun to beat again.

Let me take you out of here, cara. He’d been like a mug of cappuccino, all coffee tones in a fawn leather jacket over dark chocolate pants. His jaw had been sprinkled with a sexy, overnight stubble and his brown eyes had been liquid with empathy and sorrow.

She’d gone with him because she had trusted him. The painfully awkward interactions in the past had fallen away and they’d been two people in the same crisis willing to cling to each other to survive it. She hadn’t gone to his penthouse because she was sexually attracted to him. She hadn’t wanted—

Well, that wasn’t true. She had always wanted on some level. Involuntarily.

She dropped her defiant gaze from his, swallowing back embarrassment over the way she hadn’t stopped herself reaching for him in the dark.

Forget it, she commanded herself, trying to ignore the clamor in her that said, I don’t want to forget. It was over. If he’d had a weak moment of desire then it was her good fortune. She had the baby she’d longed for. Every time she thought of the life growing in her, her heart expanded to fill her chest with the sweetest ache. All she was really concerned with now was proceeding with life as a mother.

“It’s yours, Paolo,” she said in a husky voice aimed at his shoes, then realized she was doing it again, hanging her head as though she had something to be ashamed of. Jerking her chin up, she set her jaw and braced herself against the feeling of teetering like a plate on a stick. “I don’t care whether you believe me,” she declared.

“Good,” he said as the car floated to a halt and the doors opened. “Because I don’t.”

She choked on offended fury. She cared. Of course she cared. This was their baby. All the maternal instincts she’d kept in stasis for years rushed forward to stand up for their child.

“How dare you call me a liar over something so important?” She made no move to exit the elevator.

He put out a hand to hold the doors, his scornful gaze flaying her into sandwich meat. “I’ve been down this road. How could you think I’d take your word for it?”

She didn’t know much about his marriage, only what Ryan had told her: that his ex-wife had plotted with her lover to con Paolo into child-support payments. The plan had backfired when he had insisted on marriage. He had unraveled the subterfuge right before Lauren’s own wedding to Ryan and the marks of being taken advantage of had been carved into his brutally handsome features while he’d stood next to Ryan at the altar. Ryan later admitted that just before the ceremony, Paolo had tried to talk Ryan out of marrying her.

Then, grim and cynical, Paolo had barely been civil at the wedding reception, leaving a strong impression he blamed Lauren for timing the event to happen as his own marriage dissolved.

She didn’t own a crystal ball. She couldn’t have known. She had felt awful and tried to apologize. Now, frozen in the elevator, she unwillingly relived how he’d told her to leave him alone and she hadn’t listened, reaching out instead to try to comfort him. He had brushed her off, started to turn away, then had spun back and pulled her into him like a lifeline.

He had opened her right up for the passionate kiss he’d drawn from her with seductive ease. She’d forgotten everything, most especially that she was newly married. Nothing had come back to her until Paolo had drawn back to murmur something against her lips and Ryan’s voice had interrupted at the same time. Then Paolo’s gaze had turned cold and vindictive. Women were fickle and treacherous and easy, he’d implied with a rake of his gaze down her wedding gown as she had moved to her husband’s side.

After behaving like that, she should have seen that he would lump her in with the woman who’d turned him into such a cynic about female honesty. Lauren put out a hand to steady herself against the cold mirror, biting back a protest that she was different. She had no way to prove it though. Not when she’d been the one to initiate the lovemaking in Charleston.

How obtuse was she that she hadn’t seen this coming? But she’d known she was above women who played foul so it had never occurred to her he’d accuse her of such a thing. Lauren had never been a flirt, or a strategist, or a manipulator. Paolo saw her through his tainted glasses, however, and it made her feel dirty.

Why did she care, though? She’d been prepared to raise this baby alone from the moment she had suspected she was pregnant. She had come to New York convinced she didn’t need or want his support on any level.

While a hidden part of her had basked in the chance to draw a little of Paolo’s attention one more time.

Even though his regard had always scared her a little. Like a possum under a suddenly bright light, she’d always skittered away or curled into herself or into the nearest shadow—preferably those cast by larger-than-life people like Ryan. But she had thought, right up until Paolo’s first caustic remark tonight, and especially after his tenderness in Charleston, that he’d felt at least a little warmth toward her.

His expression held nothing but cynicism and contempt, however, as he waited for her to absorb his rejection of her claim.

She hid her devastation behind a proud posture, keeping her back arrow-straight as she finally preceded him from the elevator, faltering when she realized this wasn’t her floor but a private suite. “What—”

“We need to talk,” he said, stabbing security buttons beside the elevator panel. “In private, and uninterrupted.”

“Are you out of your mind? Dragging me to your room is what started this!” Despite her apprehension, an irrepressible jolt of anticipation hit low in her belly. The unwanted receptiveness to his advances made her feel intensely vulnerable. For another long second, she couldn’t move, couldn’t look at him.

“Throwing Charleston in my face right now is a mistake, I assure you,” he said dangerously. “How far along are you?”

She set a tender hand on her waist, breathless with alarm. She was locked in a situation she should have been smart enough to avoid while sensual memories wouldn’t shake from her scattered mind. And she felt weak. It occurred to her how badly she had neglected this baby today, too preoccupied with facing Paolo to take care of herself and the growing life inside her.

“You can do the math,” she murmured.

“Three months since we were together, but I can see the weight gain starting. Is that why you slept with me? To disguise some married man’s bastard?”

“Oh, stop it!” she spat. “Have I asked you to be a father?” After losing her own and suffering Gerald as a substitute, she’d concluded that father figures were overrated. Her grandmother had filled all the necessary parental roles just fine, thanks.

Wanting to finish with him before her delicate hold over her control slipped completely, she paced into the lounge, bypassing the narrow aisle between the sofa and coffee table for the wider band of area behind the furniture. As she spun, her skirt billowed in a way her lungs couldn’t. She was aware of his scrutiny like a scientist behind a mirrored wall, watching a distressed animal seek escape from its cage.

“Yes, people are going to notice soon that I’m pregnant,” she stated, trying to drag deeper breaths into her compressed lungs. “They’re going to speculate that it’s yours. I owed it to you to prepare you for that, so here I am.”

“So you’re keeping it.” The words were flat and uninflected.

It was an unexpected blow that winded her.

“Of course I’m keeping it! I’ve waited years for a baby.” She tried to say it calmly, but she couldn’t help the residual fury over Ryan’s duplicity, letting her try to explain to his mother why they weren’t conceiving when he had privately known exactly why. “How can you suggest I not keep it? You’re Catholic. And don’t you dare ask if I slept with you to get pregnant. I’ll slap you, I swear I will. I thought I was infertile.”

She spun again, still pacing, feeling like one of those little metal ducks quacking her way along the upper ledge of a carnival tent. Paolo’s laser gaze seemed to track her like the red dot of a sniper’s rifle while he weighed her words.

“I know this baby looks like a disaster, but it’s a miracle.” Her agitation at having to explain without being able to explain kept her blood vessels tight, her muscles tense, her focus dim and narrow on the walls rushing by.

“I’m willing to minimize the damage by leaving the country, but it’s going to come out, Paolo.” She’d managed to ignore her anxiety over that eventuality, but it threatened to overwhelm her as she spoke of it. Her feet moved quicker and she felt the walls closing in. Her mother’s shame and disappointment, Ryan’s mother’s horrified incomprehension…It would be a nightmare and Lauren didn’t even have her grandmother to stand by her.

What she wanted, what she’d come here for, was rescue, she realized. Deep down, she had hoped for the same help and support he’d offered in Charleston.

She wasn’t going to get it though. She really was alone in this.

Eyes stinging at how inexorable it all was, Lauren made herself halt, growing aware that she was gasping breaths in, but was forgetting to let them out. A clammy sweat condensed on her skin and her vision faded to white. She was hyperventilating and even though she tried to make herself stop, panic at not tasting any oxygen stole her self-control, making her try harder to catch her breath.

Paolo said her name in a sharp tone. She blindly looked to where she thought he was, but she couldn’t see him. Her hearing was muffled as though her ears were filling with water. She moved her lips, trying to tell him, trying…

Paolo had never seen anyone crumple like that and it stopped his heart. Somehow he kept her from hitting the floor, catching her in his arms while his knees took the brunt of the marble beneath the thin rug. Gathering up miles of silken fabric with a slender, limp shape inside, he pushed to his feet, heart pounding with dread as he deposited her on the sofa.

Her color was ghastly. All he could think was that she was miscarrying when she’d just called her baby a miracle. He had an inkling of how devastating that sort of loss could be and couldn’t stomach it happening to her.

Razor wire coiled in his chest, squeezing mercilessly as he fumbled his mobile from his pocket and tried with trembling hands to locate the number of the pediatric heart specialist sipping champagne in the Grand Ballroom.

Lauren’s lashes fluttered before he found it. Her dazed eyes blinked open and something warm and lovely shone up at him before confusion clouded in. She automatically tried to sit up, but fell back quickly. Her breaths sounded like anxious gasps, frightening him.

“I can’t breathe.” She reached for her back. “Open my dress.”

“What?” Dio! He could kill her he was so terrified. Clattering his mobile onto the coffee table he rolled her into the sofa back and used both hands to release the tiny hook-and-eye closures down her back. There were a million of them and his fingers were big and clumsy. “I was trying to call a doctor. Are you in pain?”

“No, I—”

He overrode her with a string of curses as the panels of her dress peeled open to reveal a silken cord tied punishingly across her pale back. As he hurried to release the strings, he exposed a pattern of thin welts criss-crossing her satiny skin. “What in hell! The laces have nearly cut through to your ribs.”

“It’s not that bad, is it? It doesn’t hurt.” She ran light fingers over the indents while her rib cage expanded and her body relaxed into softer lines. “I’m fine,” she dismissed on a long, easy sigh. “It was just a little tight.”

“A little?” Appalled, he traced each mark, ensuring they were superficial enough to fade.

Her spine made a subtle arch under his touch. Goose bumps rose across her flexing shoulder blades. Her reaction was so immediate and honest it sent a sexual zing through him, enticing him to slow his stroking into a deliberate caress. He recalled that her skin tasted exactly as smooth and creamy as it looked. The desire to bend and press kisses to her neck and shoulder until she moaned with need nearly overtook him.

He forced himself to stand so he couldn’t touch her, mind reeling at how close a call that was. His body was shaking and his blood sizzling. “Why would you wear something so dangerous?” he charged.

“Dangerous?” she repeated with a gurgle of humor. She rolled onto her back, hugging the loose front of the dress to breasts that remained invitingly plump against the amethyst edging. “Since when are gowns deadly?”

Her smile invited him to join her in laughing at absurdity. Part of him wanted to let it happen. When she forgot to be shy, she was quite animated and fun.

And sensual. Her eyes grew languorous as she gazed up at him. Her color was flowing back in a warm glow.

“Shoes are regular serial killers, but dresses are harmless,” she teased.

He couldn’t help the twitch of humor at the corner of his mouth. “I’ve seen dresses short enough to take a man down. Whiplash is a common occurrence.”

Her smile grew. “I nearly died of embarrassment in a bathing suit once. True story.”

“I would say nothing is safe, but that’s probably riskiest of all.”

He’d taken it too far, his voice lowering to an intimate tone as he pictured her naked. The irrepressible attraction between them rose like a ring of spitting fire, urging him to move closer to her. It took everything in him not to lower onto her and do exactly what he’d done the last time he’d been alone with her. They’d been completely naked, nothing between them, nothing.

And it had been so wrong.

He curled his hands into fists, refusing to let himself absorb the implications. “This isn’t funny, Lauren. None of this is the least bit funny.”

Her mouth flinched in startled hurt at his return to recrimination. She threw her arm over her eyes to block him out and started to say, “I know, I’m s—” but flattened her lips to stop herself. “I was nervous, so I didn’t eat. That’s why I fainted.”

“That was stupid!” His alarm for her climbed into the rafters. “I’ll order something. Are you on a special diet?” He was across the room with the hotel phone in his hand before her plea stopped him.

“Paolo, don’t. Not here. Not like this.” She lowered her arm to reveal a disturbingly unguarded expression and nodded at her state of undress. She wasn’t taking this as lightly as she seemed. “Just pour me a glass of soda. Something with sugar, but no caffeine. And maybe a banana or one of those oranges? Then I’ll go back to my room and have a proper meal sent up.”

He fetched what she’d asked for, assembling her micro-meal on the coffee table then standing by as she carefully sat up.

The intensity of his tension struck him. He watched her pour and sip with a silent will for her to consume faster, like this was anti-venom she was taking in and her survival vitally important to him. The reality was, they were acquaintances through her husband. He didn’t know her well at all and couldn’t afford to trust her no matter how attracted to him she acted or how vulnerable she seemed.

From day one she had thrown out those conflicting signals, seeming interested yet always turning to Ryan. She wasn’t the first woman to feed her ego by using one man’s attention to make another jealous, but she was the only one who had managed to both draw Paolo in and incite his green monster. Paolo refused to be treated as a plaything. It made him all the more certain she was setting him up in some way.

“You need to get back to your party,” she murmured, carrying the icy glass of soda to her temple.

“No one will miss me,” he countered, even though he was distantly aware of the same thing.

“Isabella will,” she admonished. Then, keeping her face averted, asked, “Are you going to marry her?”

He hesitated. This news of Lauren’s was more than even his lightning mind could process quickly, but he couldn’t turn his life upside down without thinking it through. It would be humiliating to believe her and discover he’d been tricked again. Best to stay the course until he had better evidence for a correction.

“It would be a good match,” he said, hammering Isabella’s top qualities for both their benefits. “Her father is at the UN, her mother works with an international aid organization. Isabella understands life on the stage of global politics. Yes, I intend to marry her.”

Lauren made a noise of acknowledgment that almost sounded like the gasp from an absorbed blow.

Her reaction inexplicably caused invisible wires to pull him tighter than his tension already had him. A pike of misgiving speared through him and he instinctively wanted to rethink everything he’d just said.

It was exactly the turmoil he wouldn’t allow her to put him through. He brushed aside the detour into self-doubt as she spoke again.

“I didn’t hear anything about love. That was the problem with your first marriage, wasn’t it?” She kept her attention on the orange she was separating into sections, holding it well away from her gown.

He stared at the top of her head, willing her to look up at him and dare to say that. At the same time, his gut twisted with guilt. It was true, he’d had very little affection for his ex, but she’d still managed to devastate him. It was one reason he was determined to pin his future on Isabella and not a woman he truly loved. To be betrayed was one thing, to love and be betrayed would be impossible to bear.

“Love is for fools,” he muttered.

With a snort of cynicism, Lauren chortled, “Ain’t that the truth.”

Hearing her echo the sentiment irritated him. The way she had turned to him in Charleston had proved to him she wasn’t as devoted to Ryan as she’d portrayed through her marriage. This was further evidence she had scorned a man who had worshipped her.

“I guess that makes Ryan a fool, marrying for love,” Paolo said scathingly.

“Are you serious?” Her amber gaze flashed up like a splash of bourbon, stinging with hot-cold. “If he loved me so much, why did he spend all his time on the other side of the world taking insane chances with his life? He married me because I was raised to wait until I had a ring on my finger and he wanted bragging rights.”

“A clever ploy on your part, seeing as his family is quite well off,” he shot back, while a flash of Ryan’s smug victor’s grin hit him square between the eyes. There could be some truth to her claim. He had another suspicion about his friend’s motives, one that was even less complimentary. They had always been competitive with each other, he and Ryan. It was usually good-natured, but there were times it had been cutthroat and Ryan had been in no doubt that Paolo found Lauren attractive.

No doubt.

“It wasn’t a ploy, it’s the truth,” Lauren bit out defensively, pulling Paolo’s thoughts from a dark place he rarely visited.

It was a place of bitterness he barely understood because he never examined it, but it filled him with enough acrimony to challenge, “You married for sex then?”

Disbelief dropped her jaw before her outrage fell away to wounded pride.

Her stunned silence pricked his conscience. He almost began forming an apology for crossing a line, but a self-conscious flush flooded into her cheeks. She looked naked and culpable, but her expression carried an edge of defiance that gave him a tingle of premonition. He unconsciously braced himself.

With her blush firmly in place, but a disconcertingly frank look sweeping over her, she sat straighter and said defiantly, “Perhaps I did marry for sex. I was curious and not confident enough to believe any other man would be interested, but I did love Ryan, in my immature way.”

That was too much honesty. He looked away, wanting to refute what she was saying by pointing out he had been interested, but that would only muddy already dark waters. Immature he would accept, while the rest he held in reserve. He needed to view her as deceitful to keep his distance. Otherwise he’d have to believe everything she was saying about this baby she was carrying and where would that leave him? Not upholding the honor of his family name the way he’d sworn to do after so disgracing it with his ugly divorce.

He would have to believe that when Lauren had woken him from the first sleep he’d had in forty-eight hours by sliding her caressing hand into his shirt, it had been from genuine desire, not ulterior motives.

The pulse of desire that hit with that possibility was a sledgehammer straight into his gut, bathing him in heat. His hungry gaze moved restlessly to eat up the way her shorn head revealed her slender neck and the graceful slant of her nude shoulders. Her deshabille gave off a sexy, yet ingenuous appearance.

Don’t fall for it, he cautioned himself, but couldn’t help thinking that no matter whose baby grew in her belly, she was still a woman without a husband to provide for her. She was susceptible and he was, at his core, a protective man.

He was duty-bound to protect his family, though. And what did it matter whether she had married for love or not? She was also admitting to resentment that her husband had been away a lot. What she’d done during those long absences was very much up for scrutiny. Perhaps he should take her at her word that she wasn’t asking him to be a father, only wanted to warn him about an impending media storm.

“Where are you planning to go?” he asked, hitching the knees of his pants as he sank into the sofa opposite her.

“I told you. To my room.” She darted out her tongue to catch the juice from the orange that ran down her finger.

She might as well have stroked that tongue where he’d feel it most. His loins were still pooled with simmering heat and he reacted as though she had licked him, the strain turning into an erection so swiftly, he stifled a grunt of pain. If he could have stood, he would have walked out on her.

“You said you were leaving the country,” he reminded in a hostile clip that caused the brightness in her gaze to dim. Good. There was no room for sensuous picnics between them.

“Italy,” she replied stiffly.

He choked, certain he’d misheard. “Like hell you are. That’s my home.”

“I’m sorry, do you own the entire country? The brochures didn’t say.” That sexy mouth had a quick motor behind it, didn’t it?

“Did I misunderstand what you said about minimizing damage? Or do you only intend to be discreet where it affects your interests?” he asked.

“It’s not like I’m going to call up your family and introduce myself! I want to look up my own, if you must know.”

He leaned back, stretching his arms across the sofa so he wouldn’t lean forward and throttle her. A ferocious sensation accosted him each time he came back to her assertion that the baby was his, like poking an abscessed tooth with his tongue. He dismissed it, focusing on the more immediate problem.

“This is the first I’ve heard that you have Italian relatives. Who are they? Where do they live?”

“My mother’s father was Italian, not that she’d admit it.” She broke off a piece of banana and carefully nibbled. “My grandmother came home pregnant. Mom was her love child.”

Lauren’s lashes flickered as her gaze dropped and her brows tugged together. He heard her thoughts. Her baby wasn’t a love child. What was it then? A mistake? The product of a one-night stand? His?

The questions carved an ever-deepening hollow behind his breastbone, one that he pitilessly ignored.

“The man who would be my grandfather was married,” she continued. “His wife was very sick. They had a daughter and he didn’t feel he could leave either of them. That’s what he told Mamie. I don’t know if it was the truth, but Mamie loved him.” A smile of wistful affection quirked her lips. “Until the last day of her life.”

“Odd that you didn’t inherit her sense of loyalty, given how much she meant to you.” It was a nasty thing to say, but he didn’t like how easily she was drawing him into her poignant little web.

She took the insult with a tiny sniff of hurt, then opened guileless eyes and responded, “My Italian blood must have led me astray.”

He ground his teeth. “You have no concept what kind of lion you’re riling, do you, cara? I may wear bankers’ suits, but I know how to scrap.”

She paled a bit as she carefully wiped her fingers on the cloth napkin he’d provided, but she didn’t intimidate. Her gaze was level when she met his.

“Honestly, Paolo? There’s only one thing you could do to truly hurt me. That would be to take this baby away from me. I don’t think you’d harm either of us and it doesn’t sound like you want to fight me for it, either. You’d have to admit it’s yours, and you hate me too much to do that.” Her lips went bloodless as she pronounced that. Her eyelashes flickered as though she didn’t quite understand how that could be.

While he caustically wondered how she imagined it could be otherwise.

For five years she’d been tossing shimmering ropes of curiosity at him even as she attached herself to Ryan. When he’d met her, he’d been days away from his own marriage, but unable to let the wolves prowling the bar they’d been in to consume her. He’d pulled her and her cousin into his booth while he waited for Ryan, entranced by Lauren’s shy, understated wit and killer legs. When Ryan had arrived, Paolo had expected his friend to remove with her cousin to Ryan’s hotel room, but no. His friend had turned his good-ol’-boy charm on Lauren and she had blushed under the attention of two men.

Engaged, there was nothing Paolo could do but warn his friend against being cavalier with an obvious virgin. He’d been shocked six months later when Ryan had announced he was marrying her, partly because Paolo hadn’t realized they’d kept in touch. By then he’d been so deeply entrenched in the loss of his father and minimizing the damage of his marriage imploding, he’d convinced himself that whatever attraction he’d felt toward Lauren had been a bachelor’s last hurrah.

Then he’d glimpsed her arriving at the church and the magnetism had been even stronger than he’d remembered. Unbalanced by it, he’d blurted out a hasty are-you-sure lecture to Ryan that had gone nowhere. Inexplicably, Paolo had been filled with rage as the vows were spoken. The entire ceremony had become a living hell, his abominable desire for Lauren growing like a snowball careening down a hill. He’d tried to drink it away, unable to make sense of his reaction while longing for the evening to be over.

Then Lauren had followed him outside, looking like the most delectable innocent ever sacrificed to a man’s basest hunger. Ryan’s hunger. Paolo had kissed her. The hard, passionate kiss they’d shared burned on his lips and conscience to this day.