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

“It’s gratifying that you know so much about me already,” she said, a razor edge to her voice. “But perhaps you didn’t know that my grandmother was born in Grasse and trained there for years before she met her husband and moved to Louisiana. She gave up her dreams of working for a big house, but she never gave up the art. And she taught it to me.”

It wasn’t the kind of formal instruction he would expect, but Gran had been extremely good at what she did. And Holly was, too.

She heard him pull in a breath. “That may be, but it still does not make you an expert, bella mia.”

The accusation smarted. “Again, until you’ve tried my scents, you can’t really know that, can you?” She crossed her arms and tilted up her chin. Hell, why not go for it? What did she have to lose? “In fact, I want that in the contract. You will allow me to present my work to you if I model for your campaign.”

He laughed softly. The sound scraped along her nerve endings. But not quite in a bad way. No, it was more like heated fingers stroking her sensitive skin. She wanted more.

“You realize that I will say yes to this, don’t you? But why not? It costs me nothing. I can still say no to your fragrances, even if I agree to let you show them to me.”

“I’m aware of that.”

She believed him to be too good a businessman to turn her fragrances away out of spite. He hadn’t built Navarra Cosmetics into what it was today by being shortsighted. She was counting on that.

And yet there was much more at risk here, wasn’t there? They were getting closer and closer to her home, and she had a baby that was one half of his DNA.

But why should that matter?

He was the sperm donor. She was the one who’d sacrificed everything to take care of her child. She was the one who’d gone through her entire pregnancy alone and with only a friend for support. She was the one who’d brought him into the world, and the one who sat up with him at night, who worried about him and who loved him completely.

This man hadn’t cared enough about the possibility of a child to allow her even to contact him. He’d thrown her out and self-importantly gone about his life as if she’d never existed.

A life that had included many trysts with models and actresses. Oh, yes, she’d known all about that even when she hadn’t wanted to. His beautiful, deceptive face had stared out at her from the pages of the tabloids in the checkout line. While she’d been buying the few necessities she could afford to keep herself alive and healthy, he’d been wining and dining supermodels in Cannes and Milan and Venice.

She’d despised him for so long that to be with him now, in this car, was rather surreal. She had a baby with him, but she didn’t think he’d like that at all. And she wasn’t going to tell him. He’d done nothing to deserve to know.

Nothing except father Nicky.

She shoved that thought down deep and slapped a lid on it. Yes, she absolutely believed that a man ought to know he had a child. But she couldn’t quite get there with Drago di Navarra. He wasn’t just any man.

Worse, he’d probably decide she was trying to deceive him again, and then her chances of earning any money to take care of her baby would be nullified before she ever stepped in front of a camera. He’d throw her and Nicky to the wolves without a second thought, and then he’d step into his fancy limo and be ferried away to the next amazingly expensive location on his To See list.

No, she couldn’t tell him. She couldn’t take the chance when there was finally a light at the end of the tunnel.

The car pulled to a stop in front of her shabby apartment building. Drago looked out the window—at the yellow lights staining everything in a sickly glow, the fresh graffiti sprayed across the wall of a building opposite, the overflowing garbage bins waiting for tomorrow’s pickup, the skinny dog pulling trash from one of them—and stiffened.

“You cannot stay here,” he said, his voice low and filled with horror.

Holly sucked in a humiliated breath. It looked bad, yes, but the residents here were good, honest people. There were drugs in the neighborhood, but not in this building. Mr. Boudreaux ran it with an iron fist. It was the safest thing she could afford. Shame crawled down her spine at the look on Drago’s face.

“I am staying here,” she said quietly. “And I thank you for the ride home.”

His gaze swung toward her. “It’s not safe here, bella mia.”

Holly gritted her teeth. “I’ve been living here for the past seven months,” she said. “It’s where I live. It’s what I can afford. And you have no idea about safe. You’re only assuming it’s not because it’s not a fancy New York neighborhood like you’re used to.”

He studied her for a long moment. And then he pressed an intercom button and spoke to the driver in Italian. After that, he swung the door open and stepped out.

“Come then. I will walk you to your apartment.”

“You don’t have to do that,” she protested, joining him on the pavement with her duffel in tow. “The door is right here.”

The building was two stories tall, with three entrances along its front. Each stairwell had two apartments on each floor. Hers was on the second floor, center stairwell. And the driver had parked the limo right in front of it. A dog barked—not the one in the garbage, but a different one—and a curtain slid back. She could see Mrs. Landry’s face peering outside. When her gaze landed on the limousine, the light switched out and Holly knew the old woman had turned it off so she could see better.

She was a nosy lady, but a sweet one.

“I insist,” Drago said, and Holly’s heart skipped a beat. She had to take her things to her apartment, and then she had to go to Mrs. Turner’s across the hall and get Nicky.

“Fine,” she said, realizing he wasn’t going away otherwise. If she let him walk her to the door, he’d be satisfied, even if he walked her up the steps to her apartment. And it wasn’t as if her baby was home.

She turned and led the way to the door. She reached to yank it open, but he was there first, pulling it wide and motioning for her to go inside.

“Better be careful you don’t get your fancy suit dirty coming inside here,” she said.

“I know a good cleaner,” he replied, and she started up the stairs—quietly, so as not to alert Mrs. Turner, who might just come to the door with her baby if she heard Holly arrive.

He followed her in silence until she reached the landing and turned around to face him. He was two steps behind her, and it put him on eye level with her. The light from the stairwell was sickly, but she didn’t think there was a light on this earth that wouldn’t love Drago di Navarra. It caressed his cheekbones, the aristocratic blade of his nose, shone off the dark curls of his hair. His mouth was flat and sensual, his lips full, and she remembered with a jolt what it had felt like to press her lips to his.

Dammit.

“This is it,” she whispered. “You can go now.”

He didn’t move. “Open the door, Holly. I want to make certain you get inside.”

He didn’t whisper, and she shot a worried glance at Mrs. Turner’s door. She could hear the television, and she knew her neighbor was awake.

“Shh,” she told him. “People are sleeping. These walls are thin, which I am sure you aren’t accustomed to, but—”

He moved then, startling her into silence as he came up to the landing and took her key from her limp hand. “You’d be surprised what I have been accustomed to, cara,” he said shortly. “Now, tell me which door before I choose one.”

Her skin burned. She pointed to her door and stood silently by while he unlocked it and stepped inside. Humiliation was a sharp dagger in her gut then. A year ago, he’d dressed her in beautiful clothes, made her the center of attention, taken her to a restaurant she could never in a million years afford and then taken her back to his amazing Park Avenue apartment with the expansive view of Central Park. None of those things was even remotely like what he would see inside her apartment and she burned with mortification at what he must be thinking.