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

“I don’t think you’re a monster,” she said softly.

“I’m not sure I believe you.”

Impulsively, she put her hand on his arm. His skin was warm beneath his sleeve, the muscle solid. His eyes were hooded as he stared at her, and a wave of fire sizzled through her body, obliterating everything in its path except this feeling between them.

This hot, achy feeling that made her body sing.

She dropped her hand away, suddenly uncertain. Why did she want to tempt fate again? Why did she want to take the risk and immolate herself in his flame?

Drago tilted her chin up when she would have looked away. “I don’t understand you, Holly Craig. You are hot and cold, fierce and frightened. One minute I think you want...” He shook his head. “But then you don’t. And I’ll be damned if I can figure it out.”

She tried to drop her chin, but he wouldn’t let her. He forced her to meet his gaze. It was unflinching, penetrating. She trembled inside, as if he were reaching deep inside her soul and ferreting out all her secrets.

Except, he wasn’t. He couldn’t know what she kept hidden.

“It didn’t end so well the last time,” she told him. “Maybe that’s what scares me.”

He blew out a breath and closed his eyes for a long moment. “I make no apologies for what happened, Holly. You lied to me.”

“I know. And I’m sorry for it. But I already told you why.”

“Yes, you did.” He sank onto the stool beside her and rubbed his palms along his jeans. “I don’t like being lied to. And I don’t like being used.”

She wondered if he could see her pulse throbbing in her throat. Her palms were damp, but she didn’t dare to wipe them dry while he watched her.

“I understand,” she said.

“I don’t think you do,” he replied. He picked up a glass of some kind of liquor that had been sitting beside his paperwork and took a drink. She watched the slide of his throat, wondered how on earth such a thing could make her gut clench with desire.

“I’ve always been a Navarra, but I haven’t always lived as one,” he said quietly, after a long moment of silence.

Holly wrapped her arms around herself, her gut aching with the loneliness of his words.

“My parents were not married. My father was a playboy, a wastrel. My mother was easily corrupted, I think. When he wouldn’t marry her, she might have had a bit of a breakdown.” He shrugged, and she wondered what he did not say. “They were together for a couple of years, at least. I was a baby when he left her. He died in a car accident not too long after that. And that’s when my mother started trying to use me to get things from his family. She spent years trotting me out in front of my uncle, demanding money and then spending it all foolishly.”

“Babies need a lot of things,” she said. “Maybe she didn’t have enough, and...”

The fire in his eyes made her words die. She swallowed, her soul hurting so much for him. And for the woman who’d tried to raise him alone.

“She had enough, Holly. But not enough for her to get what she wanted.”

“What did she want?”

His throat worked. “I wish to hell I knew.” He threaded a hand through his hair, dropped it to his side again. “My uncle offered to take me in, but she refused to give me up.”

Holly’s stomach tightened. “I understand that. I wouldn’t give Nicky up, either.”

Drago leaned toward her. His expression was filled with pain and confusion. “She refused because she knew what she had. I was the golden goose, and periodically I brought her a golden egg. Eventually, my uncle offered her enough to let me go.”

Holly’s heart thudded painfully for him. But she understood why a mother wouldn’t give up her child. Why she tried and tried to make it work before she finally gave in. What must Drago’s mother have felt when she’d realized she couldn’t keep him? That he would be better off with the Di Navarras than with her?

And why wouldn’t Drago’s uncle take them both? Why didn’t he provide them with a home instead of an unthinkable option for a mother?

“I’m so sorry, Drago.” What else could she say?

His features were bleak, ravaged. She wanted to put her arms around him and hold him tight. But she didn’t. She didn’t know if he would welcome it. If she could be strong enough to do it without confessing her own sins.

Oh, God, how could she ever tell him about Nicky now? He would never comprehend why she’d kept it a secret.

“I don’t like to be used, Holly. I don’t like the way it makes me feel.”

“I understand,” she said, her throat aching, her eyes stinging with tears. “And I’m sorry.”

For so many things.

He sighed again. And then he shook his head as if realizing how much he’d said. “You should finish your dinner.”

She looked at the food congealing on the plate. There was no way she could eat another bite. “I’m finished.”

He stood again, shoved his hands into his pockets. He looked more lost than she would have ever thought possible.

“Do you see your mother much now?” she asked tentatively, imagining him as a little boy who must have felt so alone and confused when his mother had finally given in to his uncle’s demands.

His eyes glittered as he turned to look at her. “I have not seen her since I was eleven and my uncle finally convinced her to sign over custody. And I never will again. She committed suicide six years ago.”

Holly’s heart hurt. “I’m sorry.”

He shrugged with a lightness he could not possibly feel. “This is life.”

“But...your mother,” she said, her throat aching.

He reached out and slid his finger over her cheek, softly, lightly. “I believe you are a good mother, Holly Craig. But not all women are as dedicated as you.”

His words pierced her in ways he would never know. What kind of mother kept a son from his father? What kind of mother struggled to raise him, to provide for him, when he could be the heir to all of this wealth? When he could have everything?

“Drago, I—” But she couldn’t say it. Her throat closed up and nothing would come out.

He smiled, but it was not a real smile. It didn’t reach his eyes. “Go to bed, Holly. Tomorrow will be a long day.”

Like a coward, she fled.

CHAPTER NINE

HOLLY DIDN’T SLEEP very well. She kept waking up for myriad reasons. First, she couldn’t stop thinking about Drago telling her, his eyes stark and lonely, that his mother had given him to his uncle and that he’d never seen her again. Then she kept worrying about Nicky, wondering if he was safe in his crib or if he was awake and crying and feeling alone.

She knew he wasn’t crying, because she had a baby monitor. But every time she’d drift off to sleep, she’d hear him crying. Lost little boy. Lonely little boy. So she’d pop awake to silence—or as silent as the city could be with the cars rolling by far below, the honk of horns and squealing of brakes reaching high into the sky and finding her ears even in this protected environment.

She thought about Drago and Nicky and wondered how she would ever—or could ever—broach that topic. And she thought about getting on a plane and flying across a vast ocean to a place she’d never been. A place where she knew no one. Where she would be as lost as if she’d been plunked down on another planet.

Finally, Holly gave up and got out of bed. She showered and dressed in her best pair of jeans and a silky top with a cardigan she could put over it if she got chilled. She looked at herself in the mirror and felt woefully inadequate in her simple clothes.

Unsophisticated. Plain.

She leaned closer to the mirror, peering into it, trying to figure out what it was about her face that Drago wanted for his perfume. Freckles? She had a few of those, but she thought of them as imperfections rather than characteristics.