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‘Actually, no,’ she said. ‘Not really.’
He stilled, because somehow hadn’t he expected—hoped for—a different response? ‘So me being there for you during the birth and afterwards counts for nothing?’
Her gaze was steady. ‘I didn’t realise you were doing it to score Brownie points.’
‘I wasn’t,’ he defended, indignation catching in his throat as he looked at her long dark hair which was blowing in the breeze. And suddenly he wanted to make it very clear to her exactly where he stood on the subject of other women. ‘Don’t you realise that I haven’t looked at another woman since I met you again at Roxy’s wedding?’
‘How would I know that?’ she asked quietly. ‘I’m not a mind-reader.’
‘Let me tell you what it was like when I saw you again after all those years,’ he said slowly. ‘You blew me away—just like you did before. I couldn’t get you out of my mind. I kept telling myself to stay away from you. That we were bad for each other. I knew that. Only the temptation to come and find you was eating away at me.’
She didn’t say anything, because his words didn’t sound like affection or anything close to it. They sounded like addiction. Was Dante addicted to the emotional danger which had always existed between them? Was she?
‘And then I discovered you were pregnant,’ he said. ‘And my desire very quickly became anger. Anger that you didn’t bother to tell me. That you were prepared to keep me in the dark about the fact I was going to be a father.’
‘Surely you can understand why I did that?’
‘Not really, no. Was it power that made you keep it secret?’ he questioned. ‘Or control?’
Standing silhouetted against the dying apricot light of the Tuscan day, Justina thought that she had never seen him looking more indomitable, and yet his inherent arrogance almost took her breath away.
‘I’m amazed you can say all that to me with a straight face,’ she said. ‘You told me that it was never meant to be anything more than a one-night stand—so why would I foist on you the repercussions of that meeting? You were going to have a baby with a woman you despised. No...please.’ She lifted her hand as he opened his mouth to speak. ‘Let me finish, because it’s important. I thought that a baby would be the last thing you wanted and so I didn’t tell you. I can see now that was wrong, but I was trying to be independent.’
‘Of course you were.’
She ignored the sardonic note which had hardened his voice. ‘I should have given you a choice about how much involvement you wanted instead of assuming that you wanted none.’
‘Or was that what you wanted, Justina?’ His voice was silky-soft now. ‘For me not to have any contact with our child?’
She looked into his eyes. Weren’t lies sometimes kinder than the truth? She knew it would be easier all round if she just denied it. Yet she also knew that they had passed the point of twisting the truth in order to spare each other’s feelings. ‘Of course it’s what I wanted,’ she said. ‘I didn’t want you back in my life in any way. You bring with you too many complications, Dante.’
Dante heard the cool determination in her voice and saw the candid gaze from her eyes. Her words hurt far more than he had expected them to, but her honesty was curiously refreshing. It told him exactly where he stood and it told him just what he needed to do. ‘I guess that pretty much concludes all we need to say on the subject of paternity,’ he said. ‘Maybe we should now do something inherently civilised—like going inside to drink some coffee.’
She nodded, shaken by the frankness of the exchange but pleased at the unexpected turnaround which the conversation had taken. ‘That sounds exactly what I need.’
As if on cue, Nico began to stir. Justina looked down at him, a fierce love swelling up in her heart as his long lashes fluttered open. ‘Hello, you,’ she said softly. ‘Are you hungry?’
They walked back to the house, where Justina fed and changed Nico, and soon afterwards Dante’s mother knocked on the door and asked if she might take the baby to show to the staff.
‘And, no, I don’t need you to help me!’ she said very firmly to her son.
There was a moment of silence once Signora D’Arezzo had gone. The two of them stood listening to the echoing sound of her retreating footsteps, and then Dante turned to Justina and lifted her fingertips to his lips.
‘Coffee?’ he questioned.
She shivered, all their disharmony dissolved by that first touch. ‘If you like.’
‘Or bed?’
She told herself that coffee was the safer option—so why was she nodding with that schoolgirl-shy smile and letting him lead her through to the bed, where the sheets were still rumpled from before? She bent to straighten them, but the drift of his fingertips over her bottom halted her.
‘Don’t,’ he said roughly. ‘It’s a waste of time.’
She turned to face him, and he pushed her down on the bed and began to kiss her.
Some of the tenderness of earlier had gone—had been replaced with an unmistakable urgency. He tugged off her clothes with impatient fingers, and somehow she managed to accomplish the same with his. Their bare bodies met in a warm collision of skin, and Justina felt the instant shock of familiarity and lust. He seemed so powerfully dark and dominant as he moved over her, his carved features rigid with restraint as she touched the hard, silken length of him.
‘Don’t,’ he groaned.
