The Italian's Stolen Bride

Callous people, uncaring of the lives of others.

She fiercely told herself Luc couldn’t be sure Matt was his child. Yes, he had olive skin, very dark hair and long thick eyelashes, but he also had her blue eyes, her mouth, and certainly her more sunny personality. Luc would have to get a DNA test to be sure. Could she refuse it, fight it?

‘Do you know that man at our gate, Mummy?’

No point in denying it. Luc was bound to address her by name. ‘Yes. Yes, I do, Matt.’

‘Can I ask him for a ride in his red car?’

‘No!’ The word exploded from the volcano of fear inside her. She instantly halted and dropped into a crouch, turning Matt for an urgent face-to-face talk. ‘You must never get in his car. Never go with him anywhere. Do you hear me, Matt?’

Her vehemence frightened him. She could see him trying to understand and her heart ached for the simplicity of their life which was being so terribly threatened.

‘Is he a bad man?’ His voice quavered, reflecting her alarm.

Was Luc bad? She had loved him once, loved him with an all-consuming intensity that had made his disbelief in her integrity totally devastating. Even now she couldn’t bring herself to say he was bad, though he’d let himself be deceived by his family, making himself one of them, against her.

‘You just mustn’t go with anyone unless I say it’s all right. No matter how much you want to, Matt.’ Her hands squeezed his anxiously. ‘Promise me?’

‘Promise,’ he repeated, troubled by her intensity.

‘I’m going to give you the door-key now. When we get to the front gate, you go straight inside and wait for me. Have your milk and cookies. Okay?’

‘Are you going to talk to the man?’

‘Yes. I’ll have to. He won’t go away until I do.’

Matt shot a frowning look at Luc. ‘He’s big. I can call the ’mergency number for help, Mummy.’

She’d taught him that—a necessary precaution since she was the only adult in the house and if something happened to her…Skye tried to calm herself, realising Matt was picking up on her fear, wanting to fix what he sensed was a bad situation.

‘No, there’s no need for that,’ she assured him. ‘I’ll only be a few minutes.’ She took the door-keys out of her pants pocket and pressed them into his hand. ‘Just do as I say, Matt. Okay?’

He nodded gravely.

She straightened up and they resumed their walk, hands tightly linked, mother and son solidly together. And let no one try to separate them, Skye thought on a savage wave of determination.

Luc had shifted his gaze to her, a dark burning gaze that made her pulse race and her inner muscles quiver. She lifted her chin high in a proud defiance of his power to affect her in any way whatsoever. The time had long gone when she had giddily welcomed him into her life, when she had so completely succumbed to his many seductive attractions.

He was big in Matt’s eyes but in Skye’s, that translated to powerful…tall, broad-shouldered, slim-hipped, a strong muscular physique with not an ounce of flab anywhere. He had the kind of perfect masculinity that automatically drew a woman’s attention, looking strikingly sexy in any clothes, especially none at all.

He was wearing black jeans, no doubt with a designer label. A black sports shirt showed off the impressive width of his chest and the bared strength of his forearms. One hand was gripping the top of her gate, as though ready to block any escape from him.

He had no right to. No rights at all where she was concerned. And he still had to prove he had any paternal right to Matt. She glared furious independence at him, shifted her gaze pointedly to the trespassing hand, then back to him with a belligerent challenge. He dropped his hold on her property, moving the offending hand into a gesture of appeal.

‘Could I have a word with you, Skye?’

The deep timbre of his voice struck more painful memories, how he’d used it to make her believe he loved her, intimate murmurs in bed, reinforced by how he’d touched her, kissed her. A flood of heat raced up her neck and scorched her cheeks—shame at having let him remind her of how it had once been between them.

She kept a safe distance, halting a metre away from him, a blazing demand in her eyes. ‘Please move aside from the gate. I’ll stay and have a word with you but my son needs to go inside.’

He opened it before stepping back, giving Matt free passage. ‘I’d like you to introduce us,’ he said, smiling down at the boy that might be his, pouring out all his Italian charm in case it was.

Steel shot up Skye’s backbone. ‘He’s my child. That’s all you need to know.’ She released Matt’s hand and nudged his shoulder forward. ‘Go on now. Do as I told you.’

He obeyed, at least to moving past the opened gate. Then he stopped and turned, delivering his own childish challenge to Luc Peretti. ‘Don’t you hurt my Mummy!’

Luc shook his head, a surprisingly pained look on his face. ‘I didn’t come to hurt her. Just to talk,’ he answered gently.

Matt glared at him a moment longer, then glanced uncertainly at Skye who gestured for him to leave them. Much to her relief, he did, running up the front path to the door. She watched him unlock it and close it behind him before she looked back at the man who had no right to be here. No moral right. And he had to know it!

‘What do you want to say?’ she clipped out, hating him for what he’d put her through, was putting her through now with this intrusion on their lives.

‘He’s my child, too, Skye,’ he stated with not the slightest flicker of uncertainty in the darkly burning eyes.

‘No, he’s not,’ she retorted vehemently, needing to sow doubt, to make him leave them alone.

‘I’ve seen a copy of his birth certificate,’ he started to argue. ‘The date alone…’

‘No father was named on it,’ she whipped back. ‘I wrote unknown. After all, I was a bed-hopping slut, remember?’

He flinched at the hit. ‘I was wrong about that.’

She raised a derisive eyebrow. ‘A bit late to revise your opinion, isn’t it?’

‘I’m sorry. I should have believed you, Skye. You weren’t the woman in the photos. I know that now.’

She wrenched her gaze away from the glittering apology in his. It didn’t change anything. Nothing could change the deep, bitter hurts of the past, the grief, the hardships, the loss of all he’d taken from her on that one life-shattering night. And she would not let him soften her up with a facile apology.

Regathering her defences against the insidious attraction that could still tug at her, Skye swung her gaze back, hard and straight. ‘How do you know it?’ she mocked. ‘Your brother was a starring player in those photos. Who better to believe?’

His jaw tightened. The expression in his eyes clouded, taking on a bleak distance. ‘My brother…died…a month ago.’

Roberto dead?

So young?

The shock of Luc’s flat statement completely smashed Skye’s concentration on rejecting him as fast and as effectively as she could. An image of Roberto Peretti flew into her mind—a head of riotous black curls, wickedly flirtatious eyes, teasing smiles backing up his playboy charm, not as tall nor as solidly built as Luc, not as strikingly dynamic, but with a quicksilver energy that had instant appeal. She had liked him, laughed with him, but as far as serious attraction went, he’d always faded into insignificance beside Luc.

Roberto had been fun.

Until she’d seen him in the damning photos.

That reminder swiftly brought Skye back to her current crisis. ‘I’m sorry for your loss, Luc,’ she said stiffly. ‘But it has nothing to do with me.’

‘You were on his conscience just before he died. His last words were about you, Skye,’ he said quietly.

So Roberto had confessed the truth, removing the totally undeserved stain on her character. And, of course, Luc would believe his brother’s deathbed confession. ‘It makes no difference,’ she muttered.