New Arrivals: One Secret Child: Mistress, Mother...Wife? / Wealthy Australian, Secret Son / Her Prince's Secret Son

Jason, the Cathcarts’ slightly built son and manager, smiled diffidently at Dante as he sat down opposite him at the meeting table. He was clutching a pen and a spiral notebook and his hand shook a little. What was the story with him? Dante wondered. Was the manager’s role too big an ask for him, or was it just that he struggled to assert himself under his parents’ guardianship of the hotel?

‘Was she informed about the meeting?’

‘Yes…of course. It’s just that she—’

‘Then she should be here on time, like everyone else.’

His chastising glance encompassed them all, but Dante nonetheless tempered it with a trace of a smile. He heard the door behind him open and turned expectantly. A woman with hair the same hue as a bright russet apple stepped inside, bringing with her the faint but stirring scent of oranges and patchouli.

His thoughts careened to an abrupt halt…like a driver applying the emergency brake before hitting a wall. He stared in shock. Anna…dear God, she still worked here?

‘I’m so sorry I’m late,’ she breathed, porcelain skin flushing. ‘I was—’

The startled leap in her sherry-brown eyes told Dante she recognised him. His heart—which had all but stalled—pumped a little harder as he realised he’d been genuinely afraid she might have forgotten him. What a blow that would have been to his pride, when out of all the women he’d seen over the years she was the one that haunted him…

‘Mr Romano,’ Grant Cathcart was saying, ‘I’d like to introduce you to our stalwart assistant manager…Anna Bailey.’

Rising automatically to his feet, Dante extended his hand, praying hard that his voice wouldn’t desert him. Anna’s palm was fragile and slightly chilled as it slid into his. Their gazes locked as though magnetized, and though he sensed her tremble, inside he believed that he trembled more.

‘Miss Bailey…I’m very pleased to meet you,’ he heard himself announce.

‘The feeling is mutual, Mr—Mr Romano,’ she replied politely.

Her warm velvet voice bathed his senses in liquid honey. Arresting memories of their unforgettable night together came pouring back in a disturbing heated rush. Realising that his hand still covered hers, Dante reluctantly withdrew it.

‘Why don’t you come and sit down, Anna love? ‘ Anita invited. ‘There’s plenty of coffee in the pot if you’d like some.’

‘I’m fine, thanks,’ Anna murmured distractedly.

As Dante watched her, she moved like a sleepwalker to a seat at the opposite side of the table, next to Jason, and he didn’t miss the spark of warmth in the other man’s dark eyes as he silently acknowledged her. Was something going on there? A hot flash of jealousy hit Dante a glancing blow as he resumed his seat.

‘Well, if everybody’s ready, we’ll make a start, shall we? ‘ With a respectful glance in their visitor’s direction, Grant Cathcart organised his notes and prepared to address the meeting.

Dante Romano. No wonder she’d never been able to find him! What had instigated the name-change? she wondered. Underneath, was he still as ruthless and cutthroat as it had said in the newspaper reports she’d read when she’d been searching for him? But what did it matter when it had already been decided by the Cathcarts that he was going to be their saviour?

As well as investing a substantial amount of money in the Mirabelle, Dante Romano was taking the hotel, its owners and its staff firmly under his wing. Being satisfied that Anita and Grant were completely happy with the arrangement was one thing. Only time would tell if Anna would be equally happy. There was a very big—in fact a huge hurdle she had to cross before then.

Shaking her head, she emitted a small groan as she added chopped up red and green peppers to the stir-fry she was busy cooking for herself and Tia.

She’d half believed she was hallucinating when she’d walked into the office to find Dan, or Dante as he called himself now, sitting there. And she’d had such a jolt when his incredible winter-coloured eyes had bored into hers. In those electrifying few seconds the world could have ended, and she hadn’t been able to drag her hypnotised gaze away.

Five years ago she’d never even asked him his full name. When he’d asked her to stay with him for the night but not to expect anything more she’d agreed—and she’d promised herself she wouldn’t speculate on where he would go or what he would do when he left her, even if it ultimately meant he was going from her arms to someone else’s.

Consoling herself that she’d helped comfort him in his hour of need, and that no matter how emotionally painful it was it would have to be enough, Anna had never intended to try and track him down afterwards. But when she’d found herself pregnant with his child she’d reasoned that she owed it to him to let him know. However, discovering that the suite’s occupant Dan Masterson was a veritable ‘shark’ in the world of international business, who didn’t care who he brought down in his empire-building quest, had definitely given her pause. He might have been tender with Anna that night they’d spent together, and he might have been troubled, but could she knowingly risk inflicting such a driven ruthless man on her child?

She’d decided no, she couldn’t. Besides, she’d definitely received the impression from her one-night lover that he wasn’t interested in a relationship, so why would he be interested in the fact that he’d left his one-time-only lover pregnant? she’d reasoned.

Leading up to that night five years ago she’d been working so hard, what with all the different jobs she did at the hotel—sometimes even working double shifts back to back—and because she’d been extremely tired, she’d absent-mindedly forgotten to take one of her daily contraceptive pills. It had only dawned on Anna to check when early-morning nausea had become a worrying recurrence.

Some months after Tia had been born she’d revised her decision not to get in touch with Dan and decided to try once more to locate him. It had been as though he had vanished. The only information about him she’d been able to glean was stuff from the past. There had been nothing to indicate what he was doing nearly eighteen months after they’d met.

From the living room came the delighted chuckle of her small daughter as she knocked down the building blocks she’d had as a toddler that she’d been happily shaping into a wobbling tower for the past ten minutes or so. A wave of sadness and terror deluged her mother all at once. What would Dan—or Dante, as she should call him now—think when he found out that their passionate night together all those years ago had made him a father? How poignant that he hadn’t had the privilege of knowing his own delightful daughter. Anna had no doubt that it would have enhanced his life in a myriad different ways. But what could she have done when it had seemed as though he didn’t exist any more?

With genuine regret she squeezed her eyes shut, then quickly opened them again. Her terror came from the fact that she knew he was a very rich and influential man indeed—rich enough to invest in a major share of the hotel that was the means of her employment and her place to live. How would it reflect on Anna if Dante’s was the controlling share? What if he decided she wasn’t up to her job—or, worse still, that he wanted to try and take Tia away from her? A man as wealthy as him must have access to all kinds of power…particularly legal power.

Abruptly switching off the burner beneath the wooden-handled wok, Anna wrapped her arms protectively round her middle as she crossed the tiled kitchen floor to examine the collage of baby and toddler photographs of Tia that were framed on the wall there. Behind her, the suddenly ringing telephone made her jump.

‘Hello?’

‘Anna? It’s me—Dante. I’m still in the hotel. You rushed off rather quickly after the meeting and I think we need to talk. I believe you have a flat downstairs—can I come down and see you?’

CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_640b2bd6-2c36-5cfe-ad18-9dfafaef5286)

ANNA was struck dumb by Dante’s request. What should she do? If she agreed for him to come down to the flat, how to prepare him for her news when Tia was there, large as life, playing happily in the living room? There was no time to prepare for anything!

‘I’d love to talk to you—I really would—but—’

‘But?’

She could imagine him sardonically curling his lip. He knew she was hedging. God, why couldn’t she be a better actress?

‘I’m making dinner at the moment. Why don’t we arrange to meet up tomorrow? You’re coming in to start working with Grant and Anita, aren’t you?’

‘I think I’d rather come and talk to you right now, Anna. I’ll be with you in about five minutes.’

He put down the phone. Anna was left staring at the receiver in her hand as if it was a grenade she’d just pulled the pin from.

‘Tia, we’re going to have a visitor in a minute. We’ll have dinner after he’s gone, okay?’

She sped round the compact living room, sweeping up strewn toys into her arms like a whirlwind, then throwing them onto the end of the faded gold couch as if she was aiming to knock down coconuts at a carnival stall. When Dante arrived she would hide her emotions as best she could, she promised herself, yanking her oversized emerald sweater further down over her hips. Yes, she would hide behind her assistant manager’s mask—be unflustered and professional, as if she could totally handle whatever he cared to throw at her. No matter that she hadn’t been able to so much as look at another man since he’d left, because her heart had been irrevocably stolen by him.

She didn’t have a hope of concealing her feelings behind a managerial mask under the circumstances. How could she?

‘Who’s coming to see us, Mummy?’ Feeling a tug on her trouser-leg, Anna’s gaze fell distractedly into her daughter’s. The child’s big blue-grey eyes—eyes, she realised with another frisson of shock, that were identical to her father’s—were avid with curiosity. ‘Is it Auntie Anita?’

‘No, darling. It’s not Auntie Anita.’ Chewing anxiously down on her lip, Anna forced herself to smile. ‘It’s a man called Dante Romano and—and he’s an old friend of mine.’

‘If he’s your friend, why haven’t I seen him before?’ Tia’s husky little voice was plaintive.

‘Because—’

The knock on the hallway door just outside completely silenced whatever it was that Anna had been about to say. Rolling up her sweater sleeves, she reached for Tia’s hand and led her as calmly as she was able over to the couch, where she sat her down. Crouching in front of her, she tenderly stroked back some golden corkscrew curls from her forehead.

‘Don’t be nervous, will you? He’s—he’s a very nice man, and I’m sure he’ll be very pleased to meet you.’

As she hurried out into the hallway a surge of irrepressibly strong emotion made tears flood into her eyes. Not now! she moaned silently, wiping them away with the back of her hand. Why don’t you wait to hear what he has to say before you start crying?

‘Hi.’ His handsome smile was devastatingly confident, and Anna could scarcely contain the anger that suddenly rose up inside her, let alone analyse it.