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CHAPTER TWELVE
ROSIEWOKEJUSTas dawn was filtering through the windows, opening her eyes to discover Corso hadn’t bothered to activate the electric blinds which usually blotted out the New York morning. He lay beside her, his eyes closed. Dark lashes feathered the autocratic cheekbones and the pale sunlight emphasised the fiery highlights of his dark hair. She thought about snuggling up to him as she usually would have done. Wrapping her arms around his warm body and trailing soft kisses up his neck and reaching down to curl her fingers around his inevitable erection. But something was holding her back. A niggle in the back of her mind, which was refusing to be silenced.
And that was when it hit her.
She thought about Corso’s behaviour last night. His tension at the party when the stranger had walked in and the unmistakable mirroring between the two men. The way he had withdrawn from her in the car on the way home and his chilly distance when they’d arrived back at the penthouse. Whowasthe black-eyed incomer who had arrived after the royal party last night? She sucked in a breath and Corso’s eyes opened so quickly that she wondered if he’d been awake all along.
‘That man,’ she said.
The hardening of his mouth became an ugly slash. ‘Which man?’
Her heart began to pound, because didn’t that sound awfully like evasion? ‘The man at the party. The man who arrived after you. With the black hair.’
‘What about him?’
But he pushed aside the sheet and got out of bed without touching her and that had never happened before. Rosie blinked. His face was forbidding. His expression icy. And this was a Corso she had forgotten existed—or had conveniently allowed herself to forget. The emotionally distant monarch who ruled everyone around him. Who subtly controlled the comments of others by default—even if he had no power over their thoughts. She felt confused—and vulnerable. But she needed to hold it together. She mustn’t jump to conclusions, because perhaps Corso needed her help. He certainly looked as if he neededsomething—for the emptiness in his eyes was making him look so bleak and lost and troubled.
‘You know him,’ she said.
‘I’ve never met him before in my life.’
She wondered whether she should just shut up, which was obviously what he wanted her to do. But she couldn’t just walk away and pretend this wasn’t happening. She was in too deep to be able to do that. She wanted to reach out and comfort him—even if she didn’t know why he seemed to be in need of comfort. Something was driving her on to find out what this was all about...and what did she have to lose? ‘But you know who he is, don’t you?’
The silence was so long that Rosie wondered whether he hadn’t heard her, or was just choosing to ignore her question.
‘Yes, I do,’ he ground out and she saw the lines on his face becoming deep crevices, before he turned away to haul on a pair of jeans and tug a T-shirt over his ripped torso. And when he turned back his eyes were no longer bleak, they were blazing with a pure, bright gold—as if he were about to go into battle. ‘His name is Xanthos Antoniou,’ he grated. ‘And he is my father’s son.’
She stared at him in confusion, trying to make sense of his words. ‘Your father’s son?’ she repeated and immediately thought about all the possible repercussions. ‘Is he—?’
‘Older,’ he bit out, as if correctly anticipating her question.
‘I don’t understand,’ she said. ‘Why is this the first we’ve ever heard of him?’
Corso registered her bewilderment and suddenly he wanted to lash out. Wanted to deflect some of his pain and confusion onto someone else. Someone who wasn’t him.‘We?’he echoed imperiously. ‘Why would you be privy to such knowledge, Rosie?’
‘I’m sorry.’ She flushed. ‘That was presumptuous of me.’
But to Corso’s anger, his icy reaction was not enough to deter her, because she sat up in bed a little, her grey eyes huge in her pinched face.
‘Tell me,’ she urged softly. ‘Tell me what this is all about, Corso.’
He stared at her and felt the tightening of his throat. She looked so soft. So giving. As if she wanted to open up her arms to him and hold him tight. He wanted to tell her to keep her questions to herself and stop being so damned supportive—because he didn’t need her support. He didn’t need anything or anyone—yet he felt as if he might explode if the words stayed locked inside him much longer.
He drew in a ragged breath before baldly presenting the facts—as if that would minimise their impact. ‘It took me a long time to go through my father’s papers,’ he began slowly. ‘And it was only when I was nearing the end that I discovered a letter which had been hidden away. It had been written many years ago.’ He paused. ‘Thirty-four years, to be exact.’
She nodded, pulling up the duvet so it reached her chin.
‘It was a letter from a woman, saying she had just given birth to my father’s child.’ He turned away because he didn’t want to see what was written in Rosie’s eyes. Not pity, nor pain, nor empathy. ‘And attached to the letter was a note in my mother’s handwriting, which ended with the words—are we ever going to talk about this, Joaquin?’
‘Do you think they ever did?’ she questioned at last, into the vast silence which followed.
He shrugged, but his shoulders were heavy. ‘Who knows? From the date of the note, my mother must have been very sick because she died soon after that.’ His words felt painful. Like stones lodged in the dryness of his throat. ‘Nobody knows about it—not even Rodrigo,’ he added harshly as he turned again to look at her. ‘Only the detective who tracked Xanthos down. And now you.’
‘And does he—Xanthos—realise who he really is?’
‘I have no idea.’
She pleated her brow, like someone trying to work out the final clue of a crossword puzzle. ‘So what were you—are you—planning to do with this information? Surely it wasn’t enough to catch a glimpse of him at a party and then just leave?’
