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He was so beautiful, physically perfect, strong and vital.
Her breath was rushed, her lungs too tight.
She couldn’t speak. Words were beyond her.
“It’s late.” His voice was gravelled.
Her pulse sped up.
“Is it?” The words were too fast, too high-pitched.
His half-smile was derisive. “After one.”
She nodded, turning to look back inside, as though she could see her bedside table from where she stood.
What could she say in response? That she couldn’t sleep?
And let him wonder why?
“I like late nights.”
His eyes glittered in his handsome face. “Do you?”
She nodded jerkily, turning her attention back to the view of Rome, the sparkling lights, but now, she barely saw it. Every single part of her was absorbed by this man, swallowed up by his nearness beneath the spectacular starlit night.
“I didn’t know you were there.”
“I’ve been here all along.”
She swept her eyes shut. “I meant, I didn’t know your bedroom was there. Beside mine.”
Nothing. Silence.
And when she turned to look at him, his expression was impossible to comprehend. “You say you were going to tell him about me?” The words travelled through the evening air, landing against her with a dull thud. She nodded, anguish on her features.
“Yet you gave him your name. Not mine.”
She blanched visibly. “Yes.”
“So he wouldn’t know about me?”
“So the press wouldn’t know about him,” she responded tautly. “Montebello isn’t exactly a name you give your kid if you want them to fly under the radar. Plus with his looks, it wouldn’t take anyone long to put two and two together…”
“So you were actively hiding the truth of his identity?”
“You make it sound so sinister.” She lifted her fingertips to her temples. “Neither of us meant for me to fall pregnant, right?” She stared at him, waiting for him to respond. When he didn’t, she shook her head. “You were so careful with protection, Fiero. This wasn’t your fault.”
“Christo, my fault? You see our son as something you want to blame someone for?”
“Don’t twist my words. That’s not what I meant. But you don’t bear any of the responsibility for this, for him.” She swallowed. “I chose to have him, to raise him. That was my choice.”
He glared at her, his expression forbidding. She was making it all so much worse. “You think I would ever have dodged this ‘responsibility’?”
“No,” she sighed. “But I wasn’t going to foist it on you, Fiero. It was quite clear that all you wanted from me was sex, and then discovering you were married…”
A muscle jerked in his jaw and something in his expression shifted, so for the briefest moment she felt like perhaps she was getting through to him, like maybe he understood. But his next words were a growl.
“And if he asked about me?”
