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

‘Hello,’ she murmured in reply, praying he wouldn’t see the evidence of her tears. ‘Come in.’

Had he called at a bad time? Dante speculated. Her beautiful brown eyes appeared slightly moist. He guessed she would rather have put off his visit until tomorrow, but the fact of the matter was he couldn’t wait until then to see her and talk to her again. Ever since Anna had walked into that office he’d ached to get her alone, find out what she’d been doing all these years… maybe even ask if she’d ever thought about him since that extraordinary night they’d spent together.

Folding her arms, she stood squarely in front of him, leaving him with the distinct notion he wasn’t going to be invited in any farther. Fighting down the sense of rejection that bubbled up inside him, he swept his glance hungrily over her pale oval face. The dazzling fire-lit brown eyes were wary, he noticed, and the softly shaped mouth that was barely glazed with some raspberry-coloured lipgloss was serious and unsmiling.

‘You said you wanted to talk…what about? ‘

It wasn’t a very promising start. Apprehension flooded into the pit of Dante’s stomach.

‘What a greeting. You make it sound like you’re expecting an interrogation.’ He shrugged, momentarily thrown off balance by her cool reception.

‘It’s just that I’m busy.’

‘Cooking, you said?’ He quirked a slightly mocking eyebrow and sniffed the air.

‘Look… how do you expect me to greet you after all this time? The truth is you’re the last person I ever expected to see again! For you to show up now, because you’re the new investor in the Mirabelle, is obviously a shock…a shock that I was totally unprepared for.’ Pursing her lips, she was clearly distressed. ‘I don’t know how to put this any other way, Mr Romano, and please don’t think me presumptuous, but I think that whatever else happens round here our relationship should remain strictly professional for as long as we have to work together.’

‘Why? Afraid you might be tempted to instigate a repeat performance of the last time we got together?’

Stung by her aloof air, and the distance she seemed so eager to put between them, Dante said the first thing that entered his head. Trouble was, he’d be lying if he said the thought of them being intimate hadn’t crossed his mind. It was practically all he’d been dwelling on since setting eyes on her.

Blushing hard, Anna gazed down at the floor. When she glanced up at him again her dark eyes were spilling over with fury.

‘What a hateful, arrogant thing to say! Bad enough that you only thought me good enough for a one-night stand, but to come here now and assume that I—that I would even—’ She gulped in a deep breath to calm herself. ‘Some of us have moved on.’

Dante nodded, sensing a muscle flex hard in the side of his cheek. ‘And you have moved on, haven’t you, Anna? Assistant Manager, no less.’

‘If you’re suggesting I got the position by any other means than by damned hard work then you can just turn around and leave right now. I certainly don’t intend to meekly stand here while you mock and insult me!’

His lips twitched into a smile. He couldn’t help it. Did she have any idea how sexy she was when she was angry? With that fiery-red hair spilling over her shoulders and those dark eyes flashing. it would test the libidinous mettle of any red-blooded heterosexual male. To Dante it felt as if a lighted match had been dropped into his blood, and it had ignited as though it were petrol.

‘I didn’t come here to insult you, Anna. I merely wanted to see you again in private…that’s all.’

‘I heard you shouting, Mummy.’

A little girl with the prettiest corkscrew blond curls Dante had ever seen suddenly emerged from a room along the hall. Deep shock scissored through him. She’d addressed Anna as ‘Mummy’.

Definitely flustered, Anna ran her fingers over the child’s softly wayward hair, captured a small hand in hers and squeezed it.

‘Tia…this is the man I told you about. Mr Romano.’

‘Why are you calling him Mr Romano when you told me his name was Dante?’

The girl was engagingly forthright. Dante smiled, and the child dimpled shyly up at him.

‘Hello, Tia.’ Staring into her riveting misty-coloured eyes, he frowned, not knowing why she suddenly seemed so familiar. Quickly he returned his attention to Anna. ‘You got married and had a child?’ he said numbly. ‘Was that the “moving on” you referred to?’

‘I’m not married.’

‘But you’re still with her father? ‘

Her cheeks pinking with embarrassment, she sighed. ‘No…I’m not.’

‘Obviously things didn’t work out between you?’ Dante’s racing heartbeat started to stabilise. So she was alone again? It must have been tough, raising her child on her own. He wondered if the father kept in touch and assumed the proper responsibility for his daughter’s welfare. Having had a father who had shamelessly deserted him and his mother when it didn’t suit him to be responsible, Dante deplored the mere idea that the man might have turned his back on Anna and the child.

‘Perhaps—perhaps you’d better come in after all.’ Saying no more, Anna turned back towards the room along the hallway, Tia’s hand gripped firmly in hers.

Barely knowing what to make of this, Dante followed. The living room was charming. The walls were painted in an off-white cream-coloured tone, helping to create a very attractive sense of spaciousness and light. It was the perfect solution in a basement apartment where the long rectangular windows were built too high up to let in much daylight.

‘Please,’ she said nervously, gesturing towards a plump gold-coloured couch with toys strewn at one end, ‘sit down. Can I get you something to drink?’

She’d gone from hostile to the perfect hostess in a couple of seconds flat. It immediately made Dante suspicious. He dropped down onto the couch.

‘No, thanks.’ Freeing his tie a little from his shirt collar, he gave Tia a smile then leant forward, his hands linked loosely across his thighs. ‘What’s going on, Anna? And don’t tell me nothing. I’m too good a reader of people to buy that.’

She was alternately twisting her hands together and fiddling with the ends of her bright auburn hair. The tension already building in Dante’s iron-hard stomach muscles increased an uncomfortable notch.

‘Tia? Would you go into your bedroom for a minute and look for that colouring book we were searching for earlier? You know the one—with the farm animals on the front? Have a really good look and bring some crayons too.’

‘Is Dante going to help me colour in my book, Mummy?’ The little girl’s voice was hopeful.

‘Sure.’ He grinned at her. ‘Why not?’

When Tia had left them to run along the hallway to her bedroom, Anna’s dark eyes immediately cleaved apprehensively to Dante’s. ‘That night—the night we were together.’ She cleared her throat a little and his avid gaze didn’t waver from hers for a second. ‘I got pregnant. I didn’t lie when I told you I was on the pill, but because I’d been working so hard I missed taking one… Anyway…Tia’s yours. What I’m saying—what I’m trying to tell you—is that you’re her father.’

He’d heard of white-outs, but not being enamoured of snow or freezing weather had never experienced one. He imagined the blinding sensation of disorientation that currently gripped him was a little like that condition. Time ticked on in its own relentless way, but for a long moment he couldn’t distinguish anything much. Feelings, thoughts—they just didn’t exist. He quite simply felt numb. Then, when emotions started to pour through him like a riptide, he pushed to his feet, staring hard at the slender redhead who stood stock-still, her brown eyes a myriad palette of shifting colours Dante couldn’t decipher right then.

‘What are you up to? ‘ he demanded. ‘Has someone put you up to this to try and swindle money from me? Answer me, damn it!’ He drove his shaking fingers through his hair in a bid to still them. ‘Tell me what you just said again, Anna—so I can be sure I didn’t misunderstand you.’

‘Nobody put me up to anything, and nor do I want your money. I’m telling you the truth, Dante. That night we spent together resulted in me becoming pregnant.’

‘And the baby you were carrying is Tia? ‘

‘Yes.’

‘Then if that’s the truth, why in God’s name didn’t you find me to let me know?’

‘We agreed.’ She swallowed hard. Her flawless smooth skin was alabaster-pale, Dante registered without sympathy. ‘We agreed that we wouldn’t hold each other to anything…that it was just for the one night and in the morning we’d both move on. You were—you were so troubled that night. I knew you were hurting. I didn’t know what had happened, because you didn’t tell me, but I guessed you might have just lost someone close. You weren’t looking for anything deep…like a relationship. I knew that. You didn’t even tell me your last name. You simply wanted—needed to be close to someone and for some reason—’ She momentarily dipped her head. ‘For some reason you chose me.’

Barely trusting himself to speak, because his chest felt so tight and he was afraid he might just explode, Dante grimly shook his head.

‘You could have easily found out my last name by checking in the reservations book. From there you could have found a contact address. Why didn’t you? ‘

She hesitated, as if she was about to say something, but changed her mind. ‘I—I told you. I didn’t because we’d made an agreement. I was respecting your wishes. that’s all.’

‘Respecting my wishes? Are you crazy? This wasn’t just some simple mistake you could brush aside, woman! Can’t you see what you’ve done? You’ve denied me my own child. For over four years my daughter has lived without her father. Did she never ask about me?’

‘Yes…she—she did.’