The Italian's Love-Child: The Italian's Stolen Bride / The Marchese's Love-Child / The Italian's Marriage Demand

‘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.

‘It does to me,’ he shot at her.

‘You don’t count,’ she flung back. ‘You ceased to count for anything in my life a long time ago.’

He grimaced, sucked in a deep breath, then slowly nodded. ‘Fair enough.’ The concession was swiftly followed by more resolute purpose. ‘But the fact of your pregnancy was kept from me until Roberto revealed it. And I now know there is a child to consider. Our child, Skye.’

‘No. Mine!’

Everything within her revolted at any claim of possession from him. His ignorance of her pregnancy had no bearing on Matt’s life—the life she had given Matt—the life the Peretti family had wanted to snuff out, along with all involvement with her.

Luc gestured an appeal for reason. ‘DNA tests can prove—’

‘Have you spoken to your father about this?’ she cut in, needing to know if Luc was acting alone, without the backing of the very powerful and wealthy Maurizio Peretti. The threat he embodied was bad enough, but if he had his father’s approval to make this approach…

‘It’s none of his business,’ came the terse reply.

‘He made it his business,’ Skye corrected him, relieved to be able to use her last piece of ammunition against any claim on Matt. ‘Your father paid out a thousand dollars for an abortion. He killed your child, Luc.’

‘No!’ He shook his head, appalled at the accusation. ‘He wouldn’t do that. He’d never do that.’

‘He did. So don’t think you can resurrect a paternity issue six years down the track. My son is my son. I chose to have him.’

‘Skye—’ an anguished appeal in his eyes ‘—I had nothing to do with any of this.’

She hardened her heart against him. ‘Yes, you did, Luc. You didn’t believe me. You accepted what your family told you. Go back to them and the life they planned for you. You’re not wanted here.’

The gate was still open.

He was clearly in shock over what she had revealed.

Skye took the chance he wouldn’t try to stop her. With bristling dignity she stepped past him, closed the gate behind her without so much as a glance at him and proceeded up the path to the front door, her ears alert to any sound that might indicate pursuit, her heart pounding hard with the fear of not making good her escape.

Matt had left the key in the door for her.

Good boy! she thought in fierce relief.

Her whole body was tense, expecting a call or some preventative action from Luc, but it didn’t come. She unlocked the door, moved into the protective shelter of the house and closed out the man who should never have re-entered her life.

It wasn’t fair.

It wasn’t right.

Luc Peretti could only bring her more grief.

CHAPTER THREE

LUC barely controlled a burning rage as he drove up the grand carriage loop to the neo-Gothic mansion his father had bought at Bellevue Hill. Twenty million dollars he’d paid for it five years ago, and he could probably sell it for thirty now, given its heritage listing and commanding views of the Sydney Opera House and Harbour Bridge.

Twenty million for a piece of personal property.

Next to nothing for a grandson!

Paid off, Roberto had said. That hadn’t added up to Luc when the private investigator had found Skye and her son living in a cheap rental at Brighton-Le-Sands. She hadn’t even completed her physiotherapy course, working as a masseur to make ends meet. No car. No credit rating. No evidence of a nest-egg account anywhere.

He’d wondered if she’d torn up his father’s cheque, scorning to take anything from a family who’d made her out to be little better than a whore. Her whole demeanour this afternoon had been stamped with steely pride, determined on rejecting anything he offered. Their child was her son. Hers alone. Sold to her for a thousand dollars—a measly thousand dollars!

Luc still could not bring himself to believe his father had paid her that sum for an abortion. Such an act was totally against Italian culture and Maurizio Peretti was nothing if not traditionally Italian. He might want an unwanted bastard child to disappear, especially if it could become a glitch in the Peretti-Luzzani master plan, but demanding its life be ended?

No.

Nevertheless, Luc was determined on confronting his father with the accusation, given Skye’s belief in it.

He’d lost her—lost five years of his son’s life—because he hadn’t believed her. He was not about to repeat that mistake. Let his father answer for what had been done. And not done. Maybe then the truth could be pieced together.

He brought the Ferrari to a crunching halt at the front entrance to the huge sandstone home. Forty-five rooms, he thought derisively, more than enough to house a large extended family in the grandeur his father’s ambition demanded. Roberto would have obliged with the desired grandchildren, but Roberto was dead and his childless widow had returned to the bosom of the Luzzani family for comfort. The nursery rooms were empty. So many rooms empty.

Luc felt the emptiness echoing all around him as he walked down the great hall to the sitting room his mother favoured. She was occupying her usual armchair, dressed in mourning black, drowning her sorrows with Bristol Cream Sherry as she watched the early evening news on television.

‘Where’s Dad, Mamma?’ he asked from the doorway.