Elizabeth Power - Italian Bachelors - Unforgotten Lovers - The Change in Di Navarra's Plan / Bound by the Italian's Contract / Visconti's Forgotten Heir

He turned back to her, his silvery eyes giving nothing away. “It appears to be safe,” he told her, standing back so she could enter her own home. A home that, she knew, would have fit into the foyer of his New York apartment.

She slid the door quietly closed behind her, not because she wanted to shut him in, but because she wanted to keep her presence from Mrs. Turner until he was gone.

Fury slid into her bones, permeating her, making her shake with its force. She spun on him and jerked her keys from his hand. “How dare you?” she sputtered. “How dare you assume that because I live in a place that doesn’t meet with your approval, you have a right to think I need your help to enter my own home?”

“Just because you’ve entered without incident in the past doesn’t mean there won’t come a night when someone has broken in to wait for you,” he grated. “You’re on the second floor, cara. You’re a beautiful woman, living alone, and—” here he pointed “—these windows aren’t precisely security windows, are they? So forgive me if I wanted to make sure you were safe. I could no more allow you to come in here alone than I could jump out that window and fly. It’s not what a man does.”

“First of all, I don’t see why you care. And second, I don’t live alone,” she grated in return, her heart thrumming at everything he’d just said.

He blinked. “You have a boyfriend?”

“A best friend, if you must know. And she’s at work right now.”

He glanced around the room again. Gabi had left a lamp burning, as she always did, but it was a dim one in order to save electricity. Drago flicked a switch on the wall, and the overhead light popped on, revealing the apartment in all its shabby glory.

It was clean, but worn. And there was no way to hide that. His gaze slid over the room—and landed squarely on the package of diapers and jars of baby food sitting on the dinette. Holly closed her eyes and cursed herself for not putting everything away this afternoon. She’d been too caught up with her fragrances in the little free time she’d had after returning from the store.

Drago’s brows drew down as he turned his head toward her. “You have a baby in this apartment?”

Before she could answer him, tell him she was collecting for charity or something, there was a knock on the door.

“Holly?” Mrs. Turner called. “Are you home, sweetie?”

CHAPTER FOUR

DRAGO WATCHED AS the color drained from Holly Craig’s face. She pushed her hair behind her ear and turned away from him, toward the door.

“Coming, Mrs. Turner,” she said sweetly, and he felt a flicker of annoyance. She’d been nothing but cross with him since the moment he’d first spoken to her in the casino. He understood why she would be angry with him, since he’d ruined her plans last year, but she should be perfectly amenable now that he was offering her the job of modeling for Sky. If she was ambitious, and she must be to undergo the deception she had, why wasn’t she softening toward him?

His gaze landed on a table tucked into one corner of the room. It was lined with testers and other paraphernalia she must use to make her fragrance. Clearly, she was serious about it. And her grandmother was from Grasse, the perfume capital of the world. That didn’t mean the woman had had any talent, or that she’d been a nez. Those were highly prized. If she’d been a nose, she would have gone to work in the industry, husband or no.

But Holly was certainly convinced she had what it took to succeed in his business. He glanced at the shabby furnishings and wasn’t persuaded. If she had talent, why was she here? Why hadn’t she kept trying even after he’d turned her down? There were other companies, other opportunities. They weren’t the best, but they were a leg up.

Which she desperately seemed to need, he admitted. He refused to feel any remorse for that. She might have spent all her money coming to New York, but he was not responsible for her choices.

And yet, this place depressed him. Made him feel jumpy and angry and insignificant in ways he’d thought he’d forgotten long ago. He hadn’t always lived the way he did now—with everything money could buy at his fingertips—and this dingy apartment was far too familiar. He thought of his mother and her insane quest for something he’d never understood—something she’d never understood, either, he’d finally come to realize years after the fact.

Donatella Benedetti had been looking for enlightenment, the best he could figure. And she’d been willing to drag her only son from foreign location to foreign location, some of them without electricity or running water or any means of communicating with the world at large. He’d held a hat while she’d busked on the streets, playing a violin with adequate-enough skill to gain a few coins for a meal. He’d curled up in a canoe while they’d floated down an Asian river, moving toward a village of mud huts and deprivation. He’d learned to beg for money by looking pitiful and small and hungry. He’d known how to count coins before he’d ever learned to read.

Holly took a deep breath and opened the door to greet an older woman standing on the other side. The woman held a baby carrier, presumably containing a baby, if the way Holly bent down and looked at it was any indication.

The beginnings of a headache started to throb in Drago’s temple. Babies were definitely not his thing. They were tiny and mysterious and needy, and he hadn’t a clue what to do with them.

“I thought I heard you come up,” the woman was saying. “He was a good baby tonight. Such a sweetie.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Turner. I really appreciate you helping out like this.”

The other woman waved a hand. “Pish. You know I’m a night owl. It’s no problem to keep him while you work.” She looked up then, her gaze landing on him. Drago inclined his head while her eyes drifted over him. “Oh, my, I didn’t know you had company,” she said.

Holly turned briefly and then waved a hand as if to dismiss him. “Just an old acquaintance I ran into tonight. He’s leaving now.”

He was not leaving, but he didn’t bother to tell her that. Or, he was leaving, but not just yet. Not until he figured out what was happening here.

There was a baby, in a carrier, and Holly was taking it from the woman. Was it her baby? Or her roommate’s? And did it matter? So long as she modeled for Sky, did he care?

“Go ahead and take care of the baby,” he said evenly. “I can go in a moment, once everything is settled.”

The woman she’d called Mrs. Turner nodded approvingly. “Excellent idea. Get the little pumpkin settled first.”

Mrs. Turner handed over a diaper bag, as well as the carrier, and Drago stepped forward to take the bag from Holly. She didn’t protest, but she didn’t look at him, either. A few more seconds passed as Holly and Mrs. Turner said their goodbyes, and then the door closed and they were alone.

Or, strike that, there were three of them where there’d been four. Drago gazed at the baby carrier as the child inside cooed and stretched.

“He’s hungry,” Holly said. “I have to feed him.”

“Don’t let me stop you.”

She gazed at him with barely disguised hatred. “I’d prefer you go,” she said tightly. “It’s late, and we need to get to bed.”

“Whose baby is this?” he asked curiously. He thought of her in New York, sweet and innocent and so responsive to his caresses, and hated the idea she could have been with another man. He’d been her first. Yet another thing about her that had fooled him into thinking she hadn’t had ulterior motives.

Drago tried very hard not to remember her expression of wonder when he’d entered her fully for the first time. She’d clung to him so sweetly, her body opening to him like a flower, and he’d felt an overwhelming sense of honor and protectiveness toward her. Something she’d been counting on, no doubt.