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‘And you’ve been living here since her birth?’ His gaze moved around the small kitchen, and Emma prickled.
‘My sister has been very kind—’
‘Yes, of course. But what about your father? Is he still in Budapest?’
So he remembered that too. ‘Yes, he is, but I wanted to be here. And frankly he wasn’t thrilled about me being pregnant, unmarried, and the father—’
‘In prison,’ he finished flatly, and Emma nodded.
‘In any case, we’re fine here.’
‘But you can’t stay here for ever.’
‘Meghan is happy for us to stay,’ Emma shot back. She wasn’t about to admit to Larenzo that she might need to move out. ‘Anyway, I don’t see how this concerns you, Larenzo—’
‘Are you serious?’ He cut her off, his voice harsh. ‘She’s my daughter.’ He paused, struggling to control his emotions while Emma watched in apprehension. ‘What’s her name?’ he finally asked.
She hesitated, reluctant to part with even that much information. What if Larenzo wanted to be a part of Ava’s life, of their lives? How on earth could she cope with that?
‘Emma, I deserve to know her name!’ His voice came out raggedly, and with a shaft of guilt Emma remembered how he’d told her about his childhood in Palermo, how he’d never had a real family. And with that came other memories of their night together, tender ones that she’d tried to keep herself from remembering. They tumbled through her mind in a bittersweet rush of poignant longing and she was helpless against it. No matter what Larenzo had done, she’d loved this man. For a night.
‘Ava,’ she said quietly.
‘Ava,’ he repeated, and she closed her eyes against the wonder she heard in his voice. ‘How old is she?’
‘Ten months. She was born on Christmas Eve.’
‘Would you have ever told me about her?’ he asked after a moment.
She opened her eyes and stared at him helplessly. ‘Larenzo, you were in prison. You were convicted of about a thousand charges all related to being in the Mafia. How could I tell you?’
He gazed back steadily, unmoved by her argument. ‘The charges were dropped.’
‘I didn’t know that. And I still don’t know why they were dropped—’
‘You still think I’m guilty?’ he cut her off, his voice hard.
‘I don’t know,’ she cried. ‘Larenzo, you have to understand how it was for me. The day you were arrested...those men...’
Even now, a year and a half later, the memory of that night made shame and fear roil through her. ‘It was horrible. And then I spent the whole day in the anti-Mafia headquarters in Palermo while they told me you were involved in the Mafia, how they had all this evidence...what was I supposed to believe?’
‘Me. You could have believed me.’
‘You confessed,’ she shot back. ‘I read it in the papers. So I did believe you.’
He pressed his lips together, his gaze narrowed and hard. ‘Of course you did.’
‘And yet you still seem to think I should have believed in your innocence.’
He didn’t answer, and Emma bit her lip. She felt cold inside, so terribly cold. For a year and a half she’d been so certain of Larenzo’s guilt, and yet now, having seen him only for a few minutes, she felt doubt creep in along with the bittersweet memories. Who was the real man—the Mafia monster or the one she’d made love to?
‘But just now,’ he finally said. ‘You wanted me to leave. Even now, when you knew the charges had been dropped, that I was free, you were trying to keep me from my child.’
‘Because as far as I know, you’re still a dangerous man,’ Emma retorted. Larenzo’s eyes narrowed and she almost took a step back. Yet even now she realised she wasn’t actually afraid of him. She didn’t think he’d hurt her, but...
What was she afraid of, then? Because she certainly felt the cold claws of terror digging into her soul, icing over her mind. ‘Even if you are innocent of the charges they laid against you,’ she continued more calmly, ‘you must have Mafia connections, something that made the police—’
‘Not in the way you think,’ he bit out, and Emma just shook her head, overwhelmed with too many terrible emotions to respond. ‘I am a free man,’ Larenzo said in a low voice. ‘And you can’t keep me from my daughter.’
Emma pressed her hand to her forehead. ‘We can’t talk about this now,’ she said. ‘My sister will be home in a few minutes, and Ava is going to wake up soon. I never even expected to see you again, Larenzo. Having you turn up out of the blue...’ She shook her head. ‘It’s a lot to take in.’
