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But the receptionist at the hotel didn’t seem to know whether they had a Gianni D’Angelo staying or not. Yet she still requested Faith’s name and address before she might condescend to pass on such privileged information. Exasperated, because she was afraid she might lose her nerve, Faith decided to leave a message instead.
‘Tell him Milly would like to see him. I’ll be…I’ll be in the park at four,’ she dictated tautly, and hurriedly replaced the receiver.
Cloak and dagger stuff, but why give her own name when it wasn’t necessary? And this way she would get the worst over with, she told herself bracingly. She would let him see Connor and find out exactly what he wanted. She was dealing with a very rich and powerful male, who was already hostile towards her. At this point, antagonising him without good reason would be foolish.
An hour later, Faith drew into the car park. There was no limo, so Gianni hadn’t arrived yet. In fact there were no other cars parked at all. With Connor holding her hand, Faith walked down the sloping path that ran between the steeply banked wildflower meadows towards the playground and the artificial lake. Her heart was now beating so fast she pressed a hand against her breast.
She rounded a corner and saw a man in a dark suit talking into a radio. She tensed, wondering what he was doing, suddenly appreciating t
hat she had come to a very lonely place at an hour when it was likely to be deserted. The man fell silent as she moved past. Connor pulled free of her hold and ran ahead into the playground, his sturdy little legs carrying him towards the slide he loved at a steady rate of knots.
‘See me, Mummy!’ he shouted breathlessly as he reached the final step, his face ablaze with achievement.
And at that exact moment Gianni appeared, striding down the path she had just emerged from. Something disturbingly akin to excitement flashed through Faith, freezing her in her tracks. The man with the radio spoke to him, but Gianni slashed a silencing hand through the air. Gianni’s entire attention was already fixed on the little boy carefully settling himself to the top of the slide, tiny hands holding the toddler grips tight.
The whole atmosphere seemed to charge up. Faith couldn’t take her eyes off Gianni. She watched him swallow, slowly shake his gleaming dark head in an almost vulnerable movement, and suddenly ram his hands into the pockets of his exquisitely tailored trousers. He stared at Connor as if he was the Holy Grail, and he did it with a raw intensity of emotional response that shook Faith to her innermost depths.
Did he ever look at me like that? she found herself wondering. She wouldn’t have credited that Gianni D’Angelo had that much emotion in him. But the stark prominence of his superb bone structure, the shimmering brilliance of his ferociously intent eyes and the hands that he didn’t seem to know what to do with any more as he jerked them back out of his pockets again all spoke for him.
Her throat thickened. Suddenly she felt on the outside, looking in. She had picked a guy who loved children but she had run away with his child. Why had she done that? He had known she was pregnant before she left him. Why had she left him? Hadn’t she realised that he might feel like this about their baby?
Without the slightest warning or expectation, Faith was beginning to feel guilty.
He had known her by another name. Clearly she had lied to him and given him that false name. Why had she done that? Had she been ashamed of the life she was leading with him? Had she been trying to ensure that nobody could ever connect Faith Jennings with Gianni D’Angelo’s mistress? Well, her lies must have hampered his every attempt to find them again. He couldn’t possibly have known where her parents lived, or indeed anything about them.
‘Whee!’ Connor screeched as he whooshed down the slide, scrambling off at the foot to race back round to the steps to do it again, totally uninterested in the adults watching him.
‘He’s blond…’ Gianni breathed gruffly from his stance several feet away, still not sparing her an actual glance. ‘Somehow I never thought of that.’
Faith’s breath feathered in her tightening throat. ‘He has dark eyes and dark brows and he takes a tremendous tan,’ she squeezed out unevenly. ‘And he’s pretty tall for his age, which he certainly didn’t get from me—’
‘He’s just tremendous,’ Gianni incised almost roughly, his foreign accent far more noticeable than it had been earlier in the day.
One day, in fact considerably less than twelve hours, Faith acknowledged. But today, in the space of those few hours, Gianni D’Angelo had changed her whole life.
Suddenly he turned his proud head, cold, dark flashing eyes seeking out hers in a look as physical as a blow. ‘I’ve missed out on two and a half years of my son’s life. You owe me…’ he murmured in sibilant condemnation.
Faith went pale and crossed her arms jerkily. ‘I didn’t know…I didn’t remember.’
‘You knew when you did your vanishing act,’ Gianni reminded her darkly. ‘Now go and get Connor and tell him who I am!’
Faith blinked in disconcertion. ‘I can’t do that—’
‘Why not?’ Gianni shot back at her.
‘I mean, he doesn’t know you…it’s far too soon,’ she argued.
‘I won’t allow you to introduce me to my own child as some passing stranger,’ Gianni spelt out. ‘I’m his father. At his age, he’s hardly likely to be traumatised by the news!’
Put squarely on the spot, Faith studied him with strained eyes. She hadn’t been prepared for that demand. Foolishly, she hadn’t thought beyond letting him see Connor, and even that decision, she recognised now with sudden shame, hadn’t been made for the right reasons. Playing for time, she had dangled Connor like a carrot, in an effort to soothe Gianni and prevent him from taking any other form of action.
‘Porca miseria!’ Gianni suddenly gritted in a fierce undertone, striding forward, dark eyes flaming threat. ‘Does he call your fiancé Daddy?’
Faith backed off a startled step and trembled. ‘No, of course not!’ she gasped.
Equally as suddenly, Gianni stilled. Dark, feverish colour had sprung up over his spectacular cheekbones as he surveyed her: a slight, shivering figure with replaited hair, drawn features and frightened confused eyes. Now clad in an ugly mud-coloured jacket, flat walking shoes and a shapeless denim skirt, she looked like a waif. The bitter anger sparked by his first emotive sight of a son who didn’t know him drained away. One thing hadn’t changed, he acknowledged ruefully. Without him around she was still a fashion disaster, choosing comfort and practicality over style.
‘It’s all right, cara,’ Gianni murmured quietly. ‘Really, it’s all right.’
