Lynne Graham - The Sicilian's Mistress

He raised his hands to capture her taut cheekbones and she shivered because he was so very close. ‘That’s the name I knew you by,’ he murmured softly.

‘Please let go of me…’

‘You’re shaking like a jerry-built building in an earthquake,’ Gianni countered drily.

She realised that she was. Involuntarily, she braced her hands on his chest. Instantly the heat of him sprang out at her and she swiftly removed her hands again, almost off-balancing in her eagerness to put some distance between them. But the distinctive scent of him still flared in her nostrils. Clean, warm, intrinsically male and somehow earthy in a way Edward was not. Edward always smelt of soap. Oh, my God, Edward, a voice screamed inside her pounding head.

Another moan was dredged from her. She covered her distraught face with trembling hands in growing desperation. Connor, whom she loved beyond life itself. Connor’s father was here to stake a claim in his son’s life. What else could he be here for? Why else had he searched for them?

‘Let me tell you something…’ Gianni breathed in a charged undertone that reeked of menace but somehow didn’t frighten her. ‘Three years without me has turned you into a basket case! I’m taking you back to my hotel and getting a doctor to look you over!’

By sheer force of will he got her down the path and out onto the pavement. She wasn’t capable of matching the speed of his reactions, but she dimly registered that what he thought he acted on simultaneously, with terrifying decisiveness. She gawped at the sight of the long silver limousine waiting, not to mention the chauffeur surging round the bonnet as if he was running a race to get the passenger door open in time.

‘Your hotel…?’ she repeated belatedly, her brain functioning only in tiny, cripplingly slow bursts of activity. ‘I can’t go to your hotel!’

Gianni ducked her head down as carefully as an officer of the law tucking a suspect into a police car and settled her onto the rich leather-backed seat. He swung in beside her, forcing her to move deeper into the opulent car, and a split second later the door slammed on them both.

‘I’m not going anywhere with you!’ Faith protested frantically. ‘I’ve got to get back to the shop—’

‘I’m sure your partner will manage without you for a couple of hours.’

‘I have to pick up Connor from the nursery…no, I don’t…I forgot,’ she lied jerkily. ‘The kids are out on a trip today and they won’t be back until—’

Gianni subjected her to a derisive appraisal. ‘Wise up,’ he breathed in cool interruption. ‘You can’t hide Connor or keep him from me. When I want to meet my son, I will, but I’m unlikely to stage that meeting when you’re on the edge of hysteria.’

He had seen right through her, and that terrified her. ‘I’m not on the edge of hysteria…my car…the house…it wasn’t locked up—’

Gianni held up the keys. ‘I pulled the door shut behind us. If you give me your car keys, your car will be picked up and driven over to the hotel. You’re in no condition to drive.’

Faith surveyed him with huge haunted eyes. She passed over her car keys. He was like a tank, rolling over her to crush her deeper and deeper into the dust. And so cold, so very, very cold, she sensed with a shiver. He had tried to calm her, gripped her hands, made an effort to show that he understood why she was so distressed. But none of that had worked. Why? There was no human warmth in him. His brilliant, beautiful dark eyes now chilled her to ice.

Connor’s eyes were lighter in shade, but his skin always had that same golden tint even in winter, she reflected numbly. Maybe he was lying about Connor being his child! Even as her head pounded unmercifully into what felt like the onset of a migraine attack she discarded that faint hope. Gianni D’Angelo wouldn’t be wasting his time tracking down a child he didn’t know to be his.

Stray, unconnected thoughts kept on hitting her from all directions. She had shared his bed. She shifted on the seat, totally unable to look at him any more. She had bathed in his bath. It had to have been his bath. Nothing would convince her that she had ever been in the bracket of owning so luxurious a bath. But he had avoided the usual word ‘relationship’ to describe their former intimacy. ‘A certain bond’. That was the phrase he had used. Such an odd choice to describe their…their what?

Not an affair, not a relationship? Oh, dear heaven, had she been a one-night stand? Or worse? And she knew what was worse. No, no. She discarded that melodramatic suspicion. If she’d been a hooker, he would hardly be so sure her son was his. Dear heaven, what was she thinking? It was as if her brain had just been unhinged, torn open to let all her most deep-seated anxieties flood out.

In silence, Gianni reached into the built-in bar and withdrew a glass. He poured another brandy and settled it meaningfully into her trembling fingers.

Had she drunk a lot when he knew her? Been a real boozer with a strong head? She raised the glass to her lips, the rim rattling against her teeth. The nightmare just went on and on. What did he want from her? She was too terrified to ask, was in a state of complete panic, incapable of rational dialogue.

She didn’t even notice where the limo had been going until he helped her out of the car. It was a big country house hotel about three miles out of town. Faith had dined there on her twenty-sixth birthday. Even her father, who liked to make a show of sophistication, had winced at the cost of that meal.

‘I don’t want to go in here…just take me home,’ she mumbled. ‘I’m not feeling very well.’

‘You can lie down for a while,’ Gianni assured her. ‘Get your head together.’

‘You’re not listening to me—’

‘You’re not saying anything I want to hear.’

‘Did I ever?’ she heard herself whisper as he pressed her into the lift and the doors slid shut on them.

His superb bone structure tautened. ‘I don’t remember,’ he said flatly.

Her tummy twisted. Was he making fun of her?

Gianni stared down at her from his imposing height. His mouth curled. ‘I guess you could say I don’t want to remember. It’s irrelevant now.’

Her head felt woozy, her legs weak and wobbly. As the lift disgorged them into a smoothly carpeted reception area containing only one door, he settled a bracing hand on her spine. ‘I don’t want to be here,’ she told him afresh.

‘I know, but I have a habit of getting what I want.’ He made her precede him into an incredibly spacious and luxurious suite. Closing the door, he bent, and without the slightest hesitation scooped her off her feet.

‘What are you doing?’ she gasped.

‘You should’ve said no to that second drink. But possibly I did you a favour. The alcohol has acted on you like a tranquilliser.’ Thrusting open another door, he crossed the room beyond and laid her down on a big bed. ‘The doctor will check you out in a few minutes. I brought him down from London with me.’

‘I don’t need a doctor.’

Gianni studied her without any expression at all and strode back out of the room, leaving the door slightly ajar.

A doctor did come. He was middle-aged and suave. If he gave her his name, she didn’t catch it. She was finding it impossible to concentrate, and she was so tired, so unbelievably tired, it took almost incalculable effort to respond to his questions…

Gianni watched Milly sleep. Grudging pity stirred in him. She looked so fragile, and it wasn’t an illusion. Right now, Milly was like a delicate porcelain cup with a hair-fine crack. If he wasn’t very careful, she would break in half, and he might never get her glued back together again. Connor needed his mother. Connor did not need a mother having a nervous breakdown over the identity crisis that was soon to engulf her.