Italian Bachelors: Unforgotten Lovers: The Change in Di Navarra's Plan / Bound by the Italian's Contract / Visconti's Forgotten Heir

He leaned back and sipped his wine. “I didn’t force you to do anything you didn’t want to do, Holly. As I recall, you wanted to do the same things I did. Very much, in fact.”

Holly tried to suppress the heat flaring in her cheeks. Impossible, of course. They were red and he would know it. “The wine is delicious,” she said, picking up the glass and studying the color. “The top notes are blackberry and cassis. The middle might be rose, while the bottom hints at oak and coffee.” A small furrow appeared between Drago’s brows.

“Ah, you are embarrassed by what happened between us,” he said softly.

Her heart skipped a beat. “Embarrassed? No. But I see no need in discussing it. It’s in the past and I’d like to just forget the whole thing.”

As if she could.

His nostrils flared, as if he didn’t quite like that pronouncement. “Forget? Why would you want to forget something so magnificent, Holly?”

She picked up the wine and took another sip, kept her eyes on the red liquid instead of on him. “Why not? You did. You refused to listen to me and threw me out. I’m sure you promptly forgot about me once I was gone.”

His handsome face creased in a frown. “That doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy our evening together.”

“I really don’t want to talk about this,” she said. Because it hurt, and because it made her think of her innocent child in the other room and the fact that his father sat here with her now and didn’t even know it. Hadn’t managed to even consider the possibility.

No, he thought she’d spent the night with him in order to sell her fragrances. And then, when that didn’t work, he thought she’d run home and got pregnant right after. As if she had the sense of a goat and the morals of an alley cat.

Yes, she could tell him the truth...but she didn’t know him, didn’t trust him. And Nicky was too precious to her to take that kind of chance with.

“What you see here is not who I have always been,” he said, spreading an arm to encompass the roof with its expensive greenery. “It may appear as if I were born with money, but I assure you I was not. I know what it’s like to work hard, and what it’s like to want something so badly you’d sell your soul for it. I’ve seen it again and again.”

Holly licked suddenly dry lips. Was he actually sharing something with her? Something important? Or was he simply trying to intimidate her in another way? “But Navarra Cosmetics has been around for over fifty years,” she said. “You are a Navarra.”

He studied the wine in his glass. “Yes, I am a Navarra. That doesn’t mean I was born with a silver spoon, as you Americans say. Far from it.” He drew in a breath. “But I’m here now, and this is my life. And I do not appreciate those who try to take advantage of who I am for their own ends.”

Holly’s heart hardened. She knew what he was saying. What he meant. Her body began to tremble. She wanted to tell him how wrong he was. How blind. But, instead, she pushed her chair back and stood. She couldn’t take another moment of his company, another moment of his smugness.

“I think I’m finished,” she said, disappointment and fury thrashing together inside her.

Of course he wasn’t telling her anything important. He was warning her. Maybe he hadn’t been born rich, maybe he’d been adopted or something, but she didn’t care. He was still a heartless bastard with a supreme sense of arrogance and self-importance. He could only see what he expected to see.

If she didn’t need the money so much, she’d walk out on him. Let him be the one to suffer—not that he would suffer much if she didn’t do the Sky campaign. He’d find another model, like he had last year, and he’d eventually give up the idea of her being the right person for the job.

No, the only one who would suffer if she walked out was Nicky. She wasn’t walking out. But she wasn’t putting up with this, either. She was going back inside and collecting her baby. Then she was going to her room and staying there for the evening.

Before she could walk away, Drago reached out and encircled her wrist with his strong fingers. They sizzled into her, sending sparks of molten heat to her core. Her body ached when he touched her, and it made her angry. Why hadn’t she ached when Colin had touched her? Why hadn’t she wanted him the way she wanted Drago di Navarra?

Life would be so much easier if she had. Lisa Tate would have never entered the picture. Nicky might be Colin’s son, and they might be married and living in her cottage in New Hope while he worked his lawn-care business and she made perfume for the little shop she’d always wanted to open.

They could have been a happy little family and life could have been perfect. She might have never gotten a chance to sell her fragrances to a big company, but Gran would have understood. Gran had only ever wanted her to be happy. She knew that now. A year ago, she’d thought she had to succeed in order to carry on Gran’s legacy. That Gran was counting on her somehow.

But she knew Gran wouldn’t have wanted her to suffer. She wouldn’t have wanted Holly to work so hard, to scrape and scrape and barely get by. She’d have wanted Holly happy, living in their cottage and making her perfumes.

Except that living in the cottage hadn’t been an option, had it? Gran’s health had suffered in the last few years and she’d had to borrow against the house to pay her bills. Holly had hoped to save the only home she’d ever known when she’d gone to New York.

What a fool she’d been. She’d left the big city broke and pregnant and alone.

“So long as we know where we stand, there’s no need to get upset,” Drago said, his voice smooth and silky and hateful to her all at once. “Sit. Finish eating. You’ll need your strength for the coming days. I can’t afford for you to get sick on me.”

Her wrist burned in his grip. She wanted to pull away. And she wanted to slide into his lap and wrap her arms around his proud neck. Holly blinked. Was she insane? Had she learned absolutely nothing about this man?

She hated him. Despised him.

Wanted him.

Impossible. Wanting him was a threat to her well-being. To her baby’s well-being.

Holly closed her eyes and stood there, gathering her strength. She would need every bit of it to resist his touch. So long as he didn’t touch her, she could remain aloof. She could remember the hate. Feel it. Soak in it. That was how she would survive this. By remembering how it had felt when he’d kicked her out. How she’d felt when she’d lost everything and given birth with only Gabi and the medical staff for company.

There’d been no happy new father, no roses, no balloons for the baby. No joy, other than what she’d felt when she’d held Nicky.

“I am finished,” she said coolly. “And I’d appreciate it if you’d let go of me.”

Drago’s jaw was tight. He looked as if he were assessing her. Cataloging her flaws and finding her lacking, no doubt. “Sit down, Holly. We have much to discuss.”

“I’d rather not right now, thanks.”

His grip tightened on her wrist. Then he let her go abruptly, cursing in Italian as he did so. “Go, then. Run away like a child. But we will have a discussion about what I want from you. And quite soon.”

Holly gritted her teeth together and stared across the beautiful terrace to the sliding-glass doors. Freedom was almost hers. All she had to do was walk away. Just go and get Nicky and go to her room for the night.

But it was simply postponing the inevitable. She knew that. It was what she wanted to do, and yet she couldn’t. She had to face this head-on. Had to fight for this opportunity before he changed his mind.

Holly Craig wanted to be the kind of woman who didn’t back down.

She would be that kind of woman. She sank down in her chair like a queen and crossed her legs, in spite of her racing heart. Then she picked up the still-full wineglass and leveled a gaze at Drago.

“Fine. Talk. I’m listening.”

CHAPTER SIX (#u7a4c4a26-b33e-537e-bdd9-bc5118cd1434)

DRAGO HAD NEVER met a more infuriating woman in his life. Holly Craig sat across from him at the table, with golden sunlight playing across her face and her pale hair, setting flame to the strands, and looked like a sweet, innocent goddess.

An illusion.

She was not sweet. She was most definitely not innocent. Remembering the ways in which she was not innocent threatened to make him hard, especially after he’d just had his hand on her soft skin. He forced the memory of making love to her from his mind and focused on the stubborn set of her jaw.

So determined, this woman. So different compared to last year. He sometimes had glimpses of that innocent girl under the veneer, but mostly she was hard and weary. Changed.

Or perhaps last year had been nothing more than an act. Perhaps she’d been just as hard then but had pretended not to be. He’d learned, over the years, that women would do much in an attempt to snare a wealthy man. Holly might have been a virgin, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t been a virgin with a plan. Innocence in sexual matters did not imply innocence overall.

Nevertheless, he still wanted her for Sky. She had the face he needed. An everywoman face, but pretty in the way every woman wanted to be. No, she was not perfect. She wasn’t the sort of gorgeous that a top supermodel was.

But she was perfect for what he wanted her for.

And that was why he put up with her, he told himself. With her hostility and her loathing and her refusal to cooperate.