Married For His One-Night Heir

Delilah frowned. “How did Santo take the news about him?”

“Not well.” The understatement of the year.

Delilah sighed and took a sip of her coffee. “This is a mess,” she said finally. “You know that. Santo is one of the most powerful men on the planet. Does he want his son?”

She nodded. That much was clear.

“Then I would suggest,” Delilah advised, “that you attempt to reason with him. It’s your only option. And,” she added quietly, eyes on Gia’s, “you might want to figure out how you feel about him while you’re at it. There are clearly some unresolved feelings there between you two.”

She intended to ignore the latter piece of advice completely, because Santo clearly hated her for what she’d done. She wasn’t sure about the first part, either. The Santo who had walked away from her last night had been a cold, hard stranger she couldn’t hope to know. She didn’t think reasoning with him was going to work.

But she had to try, because everything banked on her succeeding. Convincing Santo she had done the right thing.

* * *

Santo stood leaning against the railing of the terrace of his suite as a stunning pink sunset blazed its way across the sky. He’d spent the night before attempting to absorb the mind-numbing news that he had a three-year-old son. Walking for hours on the beach in an effort to work past the emotion consuming him. To figure out his next step. Which had produced a single, yet irrefutable solution to the situation he now found himself in.

He’d gone through it with his lawyer in New York this morning, his proposed solution the one his chief legal counsel deemed “the cleanest one possible.”The complex process of having Leo’s paternity corrected was another story. It was a land mine of red tape to negotiate that left him with a dark cloud in his head. Which hadn’t necessarily been lessened by his brother’s parting words that morning.

You know what I’m thinking.

Yes. And it would never be him. His father had married his mother, a Broadway dancer, when she’d become pregnant with his child. Had been so blindingly in love with her, with the thought of her, he hadn’t considered the consequences of tying himself to a woman who would never be happy. Who had never wanted to be a wife or a mother. Who had married him for his money and then proceeded to make his life miserable from that day forward.

Which was not how his relationship with Gia was going to proceed. His father might have allowed his emotion to rule him, he might have allowed emotion to rule him the first time around with Gia, but this iteration of their relationship would be based on rationality. On putting their child first.

She showed up at six-thirty sharp, exactly as he’d known she would, because he held all the cards in this unspeakably difficult situation she’d created, and he intended to use them. His plan, however, was momentarily derailed when he opened the door and found her on the threshold.

Clad in a knee-length, olive-green dress with a halter-style top, the soft drape of the material accented her perfect curves, doing particular justice to her amazing backside, which had used to make every boy in school stop and stare. Then walk the other way when they remembered who she was.

Hauling his gaze upward, he refused to allow himself to fall into that trap. He focused, instead, on Gia’s pinched face. Bare of makeup, except for a light-coloured gloss on her lips, there were shadows painted beneath her brilliant green eyes. She looked vulnerable. Apprehensive. Scared. Which normally would have tugged at his heartstrings, but not this time.

He waved her into a seat. “Would you like a drink?”

She shook her head. Perched herself on the arm of a chair instead. He moved to the bar, poured himself two fingers of Scotch, because he sorely needed it, added some ice, then turned to face her, leaning a hip against the marble.

Gia dug her teeth into her lip, eyes on his. “Santo,” she began haltingly, “I don’t think we were entirely rational, either of us, last night. It was an emotional discussion. Perhaps we can start over—discuss this situation with a fresh perspective?”

He cradled the glass between his fingers. “Actually,” he murmured, with a contemplative look, “I woke up with excellent perspective. You stole my son from me, Gia. You kept his existence a secret for three years, one you would no doubt have continued to keep had it not been for last night. So, from now on, I will be the one calling the shots and you will be the one listening.”

She swallowed hard, the delicate muscles of her throat pulling tight. “You need to be reasonable.”

“Believe me, this is reasonable after the thoughts that have been going through my head.” He inclined his head. “Who is taking care of Leo while you’re here?”

“His babysitter. I thought it better we spoke in private.”

“And during the day when you work?”

“He goes to the hotel day care.”

“Day care?” He said the words as if they were dirty, which they were to him, because the idea of his son being cared for by strangers was just that unpalatable to him.

“I work,” she pointed out. “I have a successful career, which allows me to support my son. The day care is amazing. Leo loves it. Everyone there is wonderful.”

“So he is growing up without a father and a mother?”

Her head snapped back, her green eyes firing. “On the contrary. I start and finish work early every day. I spend the better part of the afternoons with Leo, as well as the evenings. He never wants for love or affection, Santo, and the socialization with the other children is good for him. He needs to learn to bond with other kids.”

Which she never had. He, however, knew the flipside. What it was like to come home to a nanny who had never lasted, and then later, when he’d been a teenager, to come home to nothing at all when his mother had walked out on them.

He’d been thirteen when she’d left after his father’s business had gone bankrupt and his family had lost everything—the house, the car, every piece of solid footing he’d ever known. His father busy drowning his sorrows at a local bar, Nico working to support the family, Lazzero off in his basketball-obsessed world, it had been unspeakably lonely to come home to the empty, dingy apartment they’d lived in. So he’d gone to his friend Pietro’s instead. Enveloped himself in the freely given warmth that had been bestowed upon him there.

Something Leo was never going to have to do.

“I have no problem with my son socializing with other children,” he bit out tersely. “In fact, I’m all for it, Gia. My issue here is that you have not only deprived Leo of his father, you have deprived him of his extended family as well, because you have walked away from yours and stripped him of mine.” He pointed his glass at her. “Nico and Chloe have a two-year-old boy named Jack. A cousin he doesn’t even know. How is that fair?”

Any color that had been in her cheeks fled. She hugged her arms tight around herself, her eyes glittering with emotion. “I am so sorry,” she said huskily. “I am, Santo. I do understand what I did was wrong, despite your opinion to the contrary. But I did what I thought was best for Leo at the time and I would do it a million times over, because I never want him to grow up like I did. As a Castiglione. That was the only thing in my head when I left.”

He absorbed the defiant tilt of her chin. The fire in her eyes. That was what had kept him up all night. The fact that she believed, in her own misguided way, that she’d done the right thing. Because Gia had only ever known one world—a world in which the blood ties that bound her—family, loyalty—meant everything. A world in which power and intimidation reigned supreme—except that she’d held no power in that world. In her mind, there had been no way out.

He regarded her with a hooded gaze. “What were you going to tell Leo when the time came? The truth? Or were you going to tell him that his father was a high-priced thug?”

She flinched. Lifted a fluttering hand to her throat. “I hadn’t thought that far ahead,” she admitted. “We’ve been too busy trying to survive. Making a life for ourselves. Leo’s welfare has been my top priority.”

Which he believed. It was the only reason he wasn’t going to take his child and walk. Do to her exactly what she’d done to him. Because as angry as he was, as unforgivable as what she had done had been, he had to take the situation she’d been in into account. It had taken guts for her to walk away from her life. Courage. She’d put Leo first, something his own mother hadn’t done. And she had been young and scared. All things he couldn’t ignore.

Gia set her gaze on his, apprehension flaring in her eyes. “I can’t change the past, Santo, the decisions I made. But I can make this right. Clearly,” she acknowledged, “you are going to want to be a part of Leo’s life. I was thinking about solutions last night. I thought you could visit us here... Get Leo used to the idea of having you around, and then, when he is older, more able to understand the situation, we can tell him the truth.”

A slow curl of heat unraveled inside of him, firing the blood in his veins to dangerously combustible levels. “And what do you propose we tell him when I visit? That I am that friend you referred to the other night? How many friends do you have, Gia?”

Her face froze. “I have been building a life here. Establishing a career. There has been no time for dating. All I do is work and spend time with Leo, who is a handful as you can imagine, as all three-year-olds tend to be.”

The defensively issued words lodged themselves in his throat. “I can’t actually imagine,” he said softly, “because you’ve deprived me of the right to know that, Gia. You have deprived me of everything.”

She blanched. He set down his glass on the bar. “I am his father. I have missed three years of his life. You think a weekend pass is going to suffice? A few dips in the sea as he learns to swim?” He shook his head. “I want every day with him. I want to wake up with him bouncing on the bed. I want to take him to the park and throw a ball around. I want to hear about his day when I tuck him into bed. I want it all.”

“What else can we do?” she queried helplessly. “You live in New York and I live here. Leo is settled and happy. A limited custody arrangement is the only realistic solution for us.”

“It is not a viable proposition.” His low growl made her jump. “That’s not how this is going to work, Gia.”

She eyed him warily. “Which part?”

“All of it. I have a proposal for you. It’s the only one on the table. Nonnegotiable on all points. Take it or leave it.”

The wariness written across her face intensified. “Which is?”

“We do what’s in the best interests of our child. You marry me, we create a life together in New York and give Leo the family he deserves.”

* * *