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Picking up the file folder, he started to shove it back in her bag, when he spotted the words typed neatly on the label stuck across the top: Delisantro/De Rossi.
He lowered the mug, his heart beating right into his throat.
What the…? Why did she have a file on him? And who was De Rossi?
He flicked up the flap and peered inside, not caring any more about her privacy. Stapled to the top of a sheath of typed pages was an old press clipping. He recognised the grainy black and white photo at the centre of the layout instantly, even though he hadn’t seen it in more than twenty years.
Coffee sloshed over the rim of his mug as his heart punched his larynx. He placed the mug on the countertop.
The innocuous headline: ‘Family-Run Trattoria Brings Taste of Tuscany to Tufnell Park’ blurred as he stared at the picture of his family below it—or, rather, the people he’d thought were his family—standing outside the tiny Italian restaurant in North London where he’d grown up.
There was his little sister Ruby, eight years old and already stunningly beautiful, showing off her best Sunday Mass dress while grinning precociously at the camera. He stood to her right, looking lanky and uncomfortable as he tugged at the starched collar and tie threatening to throttle him. And on Ruby’s left stood Carmine Delisantro, with the ready smile spread across his robust features Nick would always remember. A band of emotion tightened around his heart as he blinked, noticing that Carmine’s mane of hair was already thinning in his early thirties, and his head had been level with Nick’s. How could they have been the same height? He’d only been twelve when the photo had been snapped by a local journalist doing an article on the family restaurant. Always in his memory Carmine had seemed like a lion of a man, his warm, vocal presence so much larger than life.
Dad.
The word echoed in his head as his thumb touched the faded newsprint. The band squeezed painfully, but just as the guilt and regret threatened to choke him his gaze settled on the woman standing on Carmine’s other side in the far left of the picture, with her arm looped around her husband’s waist and her head tucked on his shoulder. Nick studied her striking face, her statuesque figure, the lush lips, the glorious waves of hair, so like his own, and those dark sultry laughing eyes that had held so many cruel secrets.
Confusion and anguish washed over him, until the tide of grief turned into a wave of resentment.
Isabella Delisantro. His mother.
Eva paused at the entrance to the living room, not sure what to make of the scene before her. Nick stood with his back to her, his head bent. But why was her stuff strewn across the kitchen counter? Had he been going through her things? She tried to feel affronted, but all she could manage was dismay.
However much she might have researched about him in the last fortnight, and however intimate they had been last night. She didn’t know him. And she knew even less about what to do in this situation.
Why had he been so surly when she’d woken up? Was he just not much of a morning person? Or had she done something wrong? Something she was unaware of? Was he entitled to look through her stuff, because they’d slept together? Did it give him certain rights she didn’t know about? Because she’d never been in a relationship with anyone before, she didn’t know if the normal rules of privacy still applied.
She was completely clueless about morning-after etiquette. She crossed her arms over her chest, desperately self-conscious about the plunging neckline of the velvet gown, and her total lack of relationship knowledge.
‘Um… Hi,’ she murmured, talking to Nick’s rigid back. ‘Did my bag explode?’
He spun round, the hard glint in his eyes making her take an involuntary step back.
‘What’s this?’ The frigid tone of voice matched the glacial expression on his face. He held up the papers in his hand, and she recognised the contents from the De Rossi file.
‘Those are my research notes,’ she replied as the shiver of apprehension shimmered up her spine. If he’d seemed surly in the bedroom, he seemed coldly furious now.
‘Your research notes?’ His voice rose to a shout as he emphasised the angry words by slapping the papers down on the counter. She flinched, shocked by the barely suppressed violence in the gesture.
He braced his palms on the countertop. ‘Who the hell are you? And who’s De Rossi?’
She tensed. ‘I’m Eva Redmond. I work for Roots Registry.’ She cleared her throat, ashamed at the quiver in her voice. ‘I… I thought you knew. Vincenzo De Rossi, the Duca D’Alegria is our client. I emailed your agent, countless times.’ She’d only given minimal details, had intended to tell Nick the whole story face-to-face, but even so she’d assumed he knew who she was. Why she had wanted the appointment.
‘I don’t know any Duca D’Alegria.’
‘He’s an Italian duke, the last in the direct line of the house of De Rossi in the province of Alegria.’ She tightened her arms, trying not to be put off by the sharp frown on his face. ‘The duca’s main residence is the Alegria Palazzo on the banks of Lake Garda,’ she babbled on. She should have clarified the situation last night, before she’d got onto his bike. Why hadn’t she? Heat pulsed in her cheeks, swiftly followed by guilt. She knew why. And it had had nothing to do with her job. ‘The family owns sixty-thousand acres, a thriving olive pressing business, two vineyards and several properties in the Tuscan—’
‘Stop right there!’ He held up his hand to emphasise the point. ‘What the hell has any of this got to do with me?’
‘He’s your…’ She paused, her tongue going numb. He looked so angry. Resentment was rolling off him in waves. She couldn’t tell him the rest. Not like this. Not after what they’d done together. Maybe it hadn’t meant much to him, but it meant something to her. And however little she knew about him, she didn’t want to hurt him.
He slapped his hand on the counter. ‘He’s my what?’
‘We have reason to believe…’ She swallowed, the sick feeling in her stomach surging up her throat. ‘We have reason to believe his son, Conte Leonardo Vittorio Vincenzo De Rossi, may have been your biological father.’ But the truth was there was no maybe about it. Having met the duca, and seen photos of his son, as soon as she’d got a good look at Nick Delisantro she hadn’t had a single doubt about his ancestry. ‘Which would make the duca your grandfather,’ she continued. ‘And you his only direct descendant.’
She let out a breath, her throat aching at the thought of what might be going through his mind. About the man he had believed to be his biological father. The man he’d spent the first sixteen years of his life with.
‘I’m so sorry. I realise this news must come as a shock.’
