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She shook her head. “No. Not…not anymore.”

In that moment, he felt her loneliness like a palpable thing, like a blanket wrapped around her, a shroud she couldn’t shake off. “I’m sorry,” he said quietly, and he knew he meant it.

“Are you?” she challenged shakily. “When you don’t even know me?” She took a deep breath and then let it out, pushing her hair away from her face. “I’m sorry. I’m not usually so…spiky.” She forced a laugh, an uncertain huff of sound. “It’s just, this is freaking me out a little, you know?” She tried for a smile and couldn’t manage it. “Like…” She faltered before continuing, her voice rising. “Just what is it that you want from me?”

For a second, Christos simply stared at her. Her face was still pale, her eyes huge and glassy, her throat working as she swallowed convulsively, that moment of lightness replaced by pure fear. Fear of him, and the power she must know he had.

“I want you to come to Italy,” he told her finally, keeping his voice even, reasonable. “You and your baby…the Amanti heir.”

* * *

Rose’s lips parted silently as she stared at the man who had said something so outrageous as if it were obvious. Easy. A done deal.

“Italy,” she repeated finally. “You want me to come to Italy.”

He nodded, looking as composed as ever, although his eyes were narrowed, his lips compressed. There was an alertness to him that made her think of a predator…and she was the prey. Her baby was.

“Yes, to Italy,” he confirmed calmly.

“For a visit?”

“At the start, yes,” he told her in the same calm voice, as if this were all so very reasonable, no surprises here, no, none at all. “But ultimately, ideally, my family and I would like to have some significant…involvement…in this child’s life. What that looks like, obviously, will have to be agreed upon.”

“Involvement,” Rose repeated carefully. Significant involvement. That sounded far too nebulous. “What does that mean, exactly?”

Christos shrugged as if it were obvious. “This child is an Amanti. Our hope is he or she will be raised as one, with all the opportunity and privilege that encompasses.” He paused. “It would, of course, mean living in Italy.”

Rose stared at him in shock, even though she realized part of her wasn’t surprised. She’d suspected something like this all along, she knew, some absurd, over-the-top plan, like a tsunami headed toward her, ready to crash over her little life and scatter all her feeble plans, and all because this was his brother’s child? “That’s…” She struggled to think of an appropriate description and finished with, “…ridiculous.”

“It really isn’t,” he replied. He sounded so unfazed, and yet he looked so tense. It was an unsettling combination, and it made Rose wonder what else he was hiding, what darker emotion or nefarious plan. If she lived in Italy… What did that even mean? How would it work? She didn’t want to ask, didn’t want to hear the answers to these questions, because this wasn’t happening. It couldn’t. She could not possibly disrupt her whole life here, even if it was falling apart already, to live in Italy at the behest of a stranger and his family. And what would happen to her child? The so-called heir?

“Your baby,” Christos continued in the same calm, implacable tone, “is my family’s heir, our only heir. He or she will inherit a sizeable fortune one day, as well as be the head of one of the oldest and most distinguished vineyards in all of Europe. An Amanti has been running Nobile Wines for four hundred years. That cannot change.”

Rose stared at him, his face composed but a tension radiating from every powerful and perfect line of his lithe and muscular body. “Why can’t it?” she asked, genuinely curious even amid her shock and confusion. “I mean…families die out, you know.” She knew that more than anybody, to her own deep grief. “The lines, I mean. Not everyone has children…” She trailed off because Christos’s mouth had tightened, his eyes darkening with what liked pain, and he was already shaking his head.

“Not ours,” he stated flatly.

There was a certainty to his tone along with a darkness, and she couldn’t help but feel that for a man so purposeful and powerful, this was a decision that sprang from emotion. Emotion he did not seem to want to acknowledge, and again she felt that flicker of empathy, of remembered grief. This man had just lost his brother. He was clearly in the throes of grief, along with other darkly powerful emotions. There was a lot going on here she didn’t understand, and yet she told herself she could try to be a little understanding, even if she still couldn’t see how this could possibly work.

“So, talk me through this,” she suggested. She rose from the sofa and headed over to the snack table to pluck a pastry from the tray. An almond croissant, one of her favorites. She could certainly use the sugar hit right now. “I come to Italy to live, presumably so my baby can be raised as an Amanti,” she stated before taking a bite of the pastry—delicious—and swallowing it down. “How does that work? What does that look like, in your view, in the day-to-day?”

A light had come into Christos’s eyes, a gleam that felt predatory and triumphant as he settled back against the sofa. He thought she was agreeing, Rose knew, when really she just wanted to know what she was up against. Because it made no sense to let some powerful Italian family control her life, her child’s life. What if the Amantis were in the mafia? This was like one of the thrillers she tore through, staying up late at night to find out what happened to whatever hapless heroine had stumbled into some nightmarish scenario.

Except this was real.

“We can discuss that together, of course,” he said smoothly. “Once we’re in Italy.”

Rose let out a guffaw at that, accidentally spraying croissant crumbs, which she wiped from her mouth as discreetly as she could. “Of course we can,” she agreed, and Christos’s dark, straight brows snapped together.

“Then you agree,” he stated, and she laughed again, fortunately without the spray of crumbs.

Did the man not understand sarcasm, or was he simply so used to getting his way that he couldn’t fathom her facetious response?

“No, I don’t agree,” Rose told him as she flopped back down on the sofa and finished off her croissant. “You spirit me away to Italy, lock me in some dungeon in your ancient family castle, and then take my baby away from me the minute he or she is born, and I never see the light of day again.” She shook her head as she licked her fingers. “I’ve seen that movie, buddy. It was on Netflix last year.”

The look of befuddlement on his face was almost comical. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he informed her with a frown, “but your assertions are preposterous.”

“Are they?” she challenged, folding her arms as she felt her spirit come back. This guy might have intimidated her at first, but she was a fighter, and she was also pretty sure he didn’t have a legal leg to stand on. His brother had been a sperm donor. It was a totally different scenario than if they’d been in a relationship or something like that.