Sarah Morgan - Italian Mavericks - Forbidden Nights With The Italian

‘No!’ Fia’s voice bordered on desperate. ‘Not now. Can’t you see that this is a really bad time?’

‘Oh, it’s fine,’ Gina gushed helpfully, blushing under Santo’s warm, approving gaze. ‘I can take him. I’m his nanny.’

‘Nanny?’ The word stuck in Santo’s throat. No one in his family had ever employed outside help to care for their children. ‘You look after him?’ He didn’t trust himself to use the words ‘my son’. Not yet.

‘It’s a team approach,’ Gina said cheerfully. ‘We’re like meerkats. We all look after the young. Only in this case there is only one young so he’s horribly spoiled. I look after him when Fia is working, but I knew she’d finished cooking tonight so I thought I’d bring him for a cuddle. Now he’s calmed down he’s going to be just fine. He’ll go straight off again the moment I put him in his bed. Come to Auntie Gina—’ Cooing at the sleepy child, she drew him out of Fia’s reluctant arms and snuggled him close.

‘We still have customers—’

‘They’re virtually all finished,’ Gina said helpfully. ‘Just waiting for table two to pay the bill. Ben has it all under control. You have your chat, Boss.’ Apparently oblivious to the tension crackling around them, Gina cast a final awestruck glance at Santo and melted from the room.

Silence reigned.

Fia stood, her cheeks pale against the fire of her hair, dark smudges under her eyes.

Words were some of the most deadly tools in his armoury. He used them to negotiate impossible deals, to smooth the most difficult of situations, to hire and fire, but suddenly, when he needed them more than ever before, they were absent. All he managed was a single word.

‘Well?’

Despite his heightened emotional state, or perhaps because of it, Santo spoke softly but she flinched as if he’d raised his voice.

‘Well, what?’

‘Don’t even think about giving me anything other than the truth. You’d be wasting your breath.’

‘In that case why ask?’

He didn’t know what to say to her. She didn’t know what to say to him.

Their situation was painfully difficult.

Before tonight they’d never actually spoken. Even during that one turbulent encounter, they hadn’t spoken. Not one word had been exchanged. Oh, there’d been sounds. The ripping of clothes, the slide of flesh against flesh, ragged breathing—but no words. Nothing coherent from either of them. He was a man confident in his sexuality, but he still didn’t really understand what had happened that night.

Had the whole forbidden nature of their encounter acted as some sort of powerful aphrodisiac? Had the fact that their two families had been enemies for almost three generations added to the emotion that had brought them together like animals in the darkness?

Possibly. Either way, their relationship had been like a blast from a rocket engine, the sudden heat tearing through both of them, burning up common sense and reason. He should have known there would be a price. And clearly he’d been paying that price for the last three years.

‘Why the hell didn’t you tell me?’ His tone was raw and ragged and he watched as her breathing grew shallow.

‘For a supposedly clever man you ask stupid questions.’

‘Nothing— nothing —that has happened between our two families should have prevented you from telling me this. ’ With a slice of his hand he gestured towards the open door. ‘This’ had vanished into the night with the accommodating Gina and letting him out of his sight was one of the hardest things Santo had ever done. Soon, he vowed. Soon, the child would never be out of his sight again. It was the only sure thing in this storm of uncertainty. ‘You should have told me.’

‘For what purpose? To have my son exposed to the same bitter feud that has coloured our entire lives? To have him used as some pawn in your power games? I have protected him from all of that.’

‘ Our son—’ Santo spoke in a thickened tone ‘—he is my son, too. The product of both of us.’

‘He is the product of one night when you and I were—’

‘—were what?’

Her gaze didn’t falter. ‘We were foolish. Out of control. We did something stupid. Something we never should have done. I don’t want to talk about it.’

‘Well, tough, because you’re going to talk about it. You should have talked about it three years ago when you first realised you were pregnant.’

‘Oh, don’t be so naive!’ Her temper flared as hot as his. ‘This was not some cosy romance that had unexpected consequences. It was complicated.’

‘The decision whether or not to tell a man he’s the father of your child is not complicated. Cristo —’ Floored by the monumental issues facing them, he let out a long breath and dragged his hand over the back of his neck, seeking calm and not finding it anywhere within his grasp. ‘I cannot believe this. I need time to think.’ He knew that decisions made in the heat of anger were never good ones and he needed them to be good ones.

‘There is nothing to think about.’

Santo cast his mind back to that night, a night he never allowed himself to think about because the good was irrevocably entwined with the really, really bad and it was impossible to unravel the two. ‘How did it happen? I used—’

‘Apparently there are some things even a Ferrara can’t control,’ she said coolly, ‘and this was one of them.’

He looked at her blankly. The whole night had merged for him. Pulling out details was impossible. It had been crazy, wild and—she was right—ill-advised. But what they’d shared hadn’t been the product of rational decision-making. It had been sheer animal lust, the like of which he’d never experienced before or since.

She’d been upset.

He’d put his hand on her shoulder.

She’d turned to him.

And that had been it—

Such a small spark to light such a raging fire.

And then, even before the heat had cooled, she’d had the call telling her that her brother had been killed. That single tragic phone call that had sliced through their loving like the blade of a guillotine. And after, the fallout. The recriminations and the speculation.

The young waiter appeared in the doorway, his eyes on Fia. ‘Is everything OK? I saw Luca awake, which is always nice because I managed to snatch a lovely cuddle, but I heard raised voices.’ He shot Santo a suspicious look, which Santo returned tenfold. The news that everyone appeared to be cuddling his son except him simply fuelled his already fiercely burning temper. An unfamiliar emotion streaked through him—the primal response of a man guarding his territory.

So his child was called Luca.

The fact that he’d learned the name from this man drove him to the edge of control.

What exactly was his relationship with Fia?

‘This is a private conversation. Get out,’ he said thickly and he heard Fia’s soft intake of breath.

‘It’s OK, Ben. Just go.’

Apparently Ben didn’t know what was good for him because he stood stubbornly in the doorway. ‘I’m not leaving until I know you’re all right.’ It was like a spaniel challenging a Rottweiler. He glared at Santo, who would have given him points for courage had he not been way past admiring the qualities of another man. Especially a man who was making puppy eyes at the woman who, only moments earlier, had been clutching his child.

‘I am giving you one more opportunity to leave and then I will remove you myself.’

‘Go, Ben!’ She sounded exasperated. ‘You’re just giving him another reason to throw his weight around.’

Ben gave her one last doubtful look and melted away into the darkness of the night, leaving the two of them alone.