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‘Down!’ Connor demanded.
Gianni lowered him to the thick carpet of bark on the ground. Connor got cheerfully down on all fours, stuck his bottom in the air and cried, ‘Woof! Woof!’
‘He’s doing his dog impression. You’re getting his whole repertoire,’ Faith explained tightly. ‘He’s showing off like mad.’
‘He’s so full of life…so sweet,’ Gianni murmured huskily, hunkering down again, careless of the muddy bark welling round his superb Italian leather shoes, to stay close to his son.
Connor got bored with being a dog very quickly. ‘Ducks!’ he reminded his mother.
Gianni regarded Faith enquiringly.
‘On the lake. He likes to see them.’
Connor had already scampered off in the direction of the lake path and Faith hurried after him. The light was fast beginning to fade. Gianni fell into step beside her. The mature trees on the woodland trail cast dark shadows. When a man suddenly stepped into view several feet ahead of them, Faith gave a start of dismay.
Gianni spoke to him in Italian, and only then did she recall the other man who had been standing above the playground.
‘What’s going on?’ she questioned nervously as they moved on. ‘Who are those men?’
‘I was really surprised when I got your message earlier, particularly when you styled yourself “Milly”,’ Gianni admitted.
Faith coloured. ‘It seemed more discreet to do that.’
‘Unfortunately my security staff were convinced the message was a set-up.’
‘Security staff?’ Those men worked for him?
‘The park is swarming with them. They’ve had the time of their lives staking out this place over the past hour. They love stuff like this,’ Gianni conceded with wry amusement.
‘Why a set-up?’ she queried. ‘Why would anybody think that?’
‘People don’t, as a rule, ask me to meet them in such public places. I did wonder if the press had finally got on to us and whether you might have received a similar message purporting to be from me. The tabloids would pay a fortune for a photo of us all together—’
‘Tabloids?’ she exclaimed, thoroughly taken aback.
‘Wake up, cara. The news that I have a child will be a major scoop. And sooner or later it will come out,’ Gianni informed her. ‘I could only protect you from that exposure by staying away from my son, and I’m not prepared to do that. I won’t behave as if Connor is some grubby secret in my life.’
Faith was horrified by what he was telling her. His very arrival had already exploded her quiet life out of existence. Now he was calmly admitting that there would be worse to come. Naturally the press would have an interest in the private life of a male as wealthy and powerful as Gianni. But threat of such public exposure made Faith feel ill. If it happened, her parents would be devastated, and once again she would be responsible for hurting them.
Since Connor had got down on the grass verge to play with the gravel on the path, Faith came to a halt and rested back weakly against the trunk of a tall beech tree. ‘You don’t give a damn, do you?’ she muttered shakily. ‘No matter how it affects me and my family, you’ll still go ahead and demand access to Connor.’
‘Guilty as charged,’ Gianni said drily. ‘I’ve been excluded from my son’s life long enough.’
In the twilight, Faith focused on his lean bronzed features with a heart that was chilled even as its beat involuntarily quickened. His dark, deep-set eyes had an aggressive golden glimmer that challenged. He was tougher than titanium and he wasn’t going to quit. ‘You’re so unfeeling,’ she condemned unevenly.
Moving fluidly forward, Gianni braced one lean hand against the trunk and stared down at her, spiky black lashes low over his slumbrous gaze. ‘Am I?’ he questioned in a lazy undertone as smooth as black silk.
That deep, dark drawl sent tiny little shivers running down her taut spinal cord. Her bemused eyes locked to his and feverish tension snaked through her. For the space of a heartbeat she wanted to move away, and then she wasn’t sure what she had wanted or even why she might have wanted it. As rational thought blurred, other more intrusive physical sensations took precedence.
That close, Gianni truly mesmerized her. Her breathing quickened, her mouth running dry. Dark excitement flowered into being inside her. Her muscles tightened on a delicious thrilling edge. The sudden aching fullness of her breasts and the urgent sensitivity of her nipples made her tremble, every pulse racing at fevered speed.
She could hardly breathe as Gianni watched her with the still golden eyes of a hunter. He brought up his other hand and let his thumb slowly graze the full curve of her lower lip. At the first touch of his hand, heat burst into being low in her pelvis, and she was betrayed into a tiny startled gasp. As Connor played at their feet, Gianni let long fingers curve to her flushed cheekbone and slowly he smiled. Faith braced herself against the tree to stay upright. That smile dazzled her, knocked her sideways, and filled her with an elemental hunger so powerful it hurt.
‘Poor Edward…’ Gianni husked with indolent satisfaction as he withdrew his hand and straightened again with innate grace. ‘This is all about to blow up in his face. Let him go before it gets dirty, cara.’
Only slowly emerging from what felt vaguely like a partial black-out, Faith stared with darkened eyes up at the tall, dark male towering over her as if he had suddenly become the devil incarnate. Now she recognised the studied insolence of that smile. The frantic heat that had filled her with such mindless yearning seconds earlier now engulfed her in shame. How could she be attracted to him like this? How could she be? Maybe it was the disorientating sense of having one foot lodge in the past and the other foot threatening to buckle in the present. All of a sudden it was so difficult to know what she was really feeling.
‘Leave Edward out of this!’ she told him, with all the fierceness of her own guilty mortification.
