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Then today, while she was helping her grandfather tend the rooftop garden, the housekeeper told them that after six months away, Nico Ferraro had finally returned to the US. His private jet had just landed in the Hamptons, a three-hour drive from New York City.
After more than a decade of working for him, Patrick Burke knew his employer’s playboy ways. He’d taken one look at Honora’s stricken face and dropped his shovel, muttering that he was going to their apartment to get his antique hunting rifle.
Honora had been terrified, imagining Nico Ferraro’s security team would take one look at her gray-haired grandfather waving his rifle like a maniac, and shoot the old man down immediately in an act they could reasonably claim was self-defense. Her only hope had been to get there first and reason with her grandfather’s employer.
It had taken all of Honora’s efforts to talk the older man out of his lunatic plan of jumping on an eastbound train with the big rifle slung openly over his shoulder. “At least have Benny take you,” she’d said desperately. “It will be faster than the train.”
When her grandfather grudgingly agreed, she’d rushed downstairs to ask the young chauffeur for help with her plan.
Benny had been shocked, then angry, to learn the identity of her baby’s father. But he’d recovered quickly and agreed to give her grandfather a ride to the Hamptons in the boss’s Bentley, and “accidentally” get lost on the way. He’d added with a nervous laugh, “Just make sure they don’t shoot us when we get there.”
But her drive had taken longer than she expected. She’d borrowed Benny’s personal car, a vintage Beetle, and it had broken down three miles from the house. Terrified of arriving too late, she’d run here. At six months pregnant. In a sleeveless stretchy dress and strappy sandals, in a rain storm with the wind pushing against her every step.
Now, Honora looked between Nico and his bodyguards anxiously. “So you agree? When my grandfather gets here, you’ll keep your guns down and let me go out there alone?”
Nico came closer to her in the foyer. “You can’t be serious.”
She looked up at him, the billionaire playboy she’d once thought so exotic and wonderful. Her hands tightened at her sides. “I told you, this is no joke. Granddad’s already on the way, but they’re taking the long route—”
“I can’t possibly be your baby’s father,” he interrupted. “I never touched you.”
Honora’s mouth fell open. Never touched her?
It was one possibility she’d never considered. For him to deny he’d made love to her! As if she were lying about their night together. As if she were some gold digger trying to trap him into marriage under false pretenses!
In February, after she’d discovered she was pregnant, she’d tried to do the right thing and let him know, but he’d ignored all the messages she’d left at his office in Rome and his villa on the Amalfi Coast. Resigned, she’d known she’d have to raise this child alone. If Nico wouldn’t take responsibility, so be it. She was a grown-up. She’d known the risks of sex.
But hearing him deny their night together, she realized Nico Ferraro had taken full advantage of her schoolgirl crush. He’d helped himself to her virginity, then meant to toss her and the baby—his baby—aside like trash.
It was the final straw.
Fury filled her, rushing like fire all the way to her fingertips and toes, burning her heart to ash.
“How dare you,” she said in a low, trembling voice. She clenched her hands into fists. “I have been nothing but honorable—unlike you—and this is how you treat me? By calling me a liar?”
Nico’s forehead furrowed, his expression turning perplexed as he stared down at her. “If I’d slept with you, I would remember.”
He was tall and broad-shouldered and so handsome, in spite of—or perhaps even because of—his dark hair being uncombed and wild. His tailored white shirt and black trousers were unkempt and wrinkled. He smelled of Scotch and leather and smoke from the fire and rain, everything masculine and untamed. She breathed it in and yearned for him, still, in spite of everything.
She hated herself for that, but not as much as she hated him. She’d never let herself want him again. Never, ever.
“So you don’t remember my name and you don’t remember our night,” she choked out. “How can you be so heartless and cold?”
His dark eyes narrowed as he said acidly, “And when do you claim you conceived this miracle baby?”
“Christmas night.”
He snorted. “Christmas—” Then his expression changed. His forehead furrowed, as if straining to remember a half-forgotten dream. For a moment, he looked bewildered. Then he lifted his chin defiantly. “Even if it happened, which I’m not saying it did, how could you be sure I’m the father?”
She looked at him, nearly speechless with anger. “You think I slept with other men the same week?”
“It’s the twenty-first century, and you’re a free woman...”
“You know I came to your bed a virgin!” She knew his men were listening, but she was too enraged to care. Her cheeks burned. “How dare you!”
Then their eyes widened at the noise of a car outside, and doors slamming.
“Get out here, Ferraro!” she heard her grandfather’s voice holler above the wind and rain. “Get out here right now so I can shoot you right between the eyes!”
