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Luca’s lungs locked as if someone had sucker-punched him in the chest.
Annah frowned. ‘What?’
He took a moment to collect his thoughts, get the air moving in his lungs again. ‘Do you remember what I told you that night in London? About leaving for the States the next day?’
‘Yes. You’d left your job. You were moving to New York the next day.’
As much as he had wanted her that night, his conscience had forbidden him to seduce her with false promises. His flight to New York had already been booked. There had been nothing left for him in Europe. In Sicily. His father had declared him an outcast, made it brutally clear that Luca would never be welcomed back. He’d been upfront with Annah about his impending departure. One night of pleasure was all he offered. Nothing more.
He pushed his tea aside and sat forward. ‘Three days before you and I met, my father and I had a falling-out. The job I’d left was my position in the London office of Cavallari Enterprises.’ He’d vacated both his office and the company apartment on the same day, checking into a hotel and taking only his personal effects with him. He hadn’t wanted anything that was paid for with Franco Cavallari’s ill-gotten gains. ‘After I left, I had no contact whatsoever with anyone in the company, my father included.’
Annah stared at him. ‘What are you saying?’
‘My father and I never spoke again. The next time I saw him, he was lying in a casket.’ Luca paused, giving her a minute to process his words. ‘What did you mean about a pay-off? A pay-off for what?’
Annah hesitated, her eyes wide. ‘An abortion,’ she whispered.
* * *
Annah and Luca stared at each other across the table.
‘Tell me everything,’ he said, his expression grim.
She sucked in her breath, her mind grappling with the implications of what he’d told her. If it was true, everything she’d believed about him in the last five years was wrong.
‘Start at the beginning,’ he said, his tone gentling as if he realised just how deeply he’d shocked her. ‘When did you discover you were pregnant?’
‘Four weeks later.’ Her voice was not as steady as she hoped. ‘It didn’t occur to me before then that I might be pregnant. I mean...we used protection.’
Her face heated and she glanced away. She didn’t want to think about sex with Luca. Not while he was sitting at her dining table looking so handsome and compelling.
Bringing him up here had been a calculated risk. They could have gone to the cosy café at the Wilkinsons’ farm shop half a mile down the road, or even sat on a bench in the local park to talk. But they wouldn’t have had complete privacy like they had here.
And she wasn’t concerned for her safety. Despite her knee-jerk reaction downstairs, her gut told her Luca wasn’t a physical threat to her or Ethan.
‘But you weren’t on the Pill?’
‘No,’ Annah confirmed.
‘And condoms aren’t foolproof,’ he added, voicing all the same thoughts that’d run through Annah’s head in the beginning, when she’d struggled to accept she was pregnant.
‘Apparently not.’ She took another deep breath. ‘You were entitled to know and I wanted to tell you—but I had no idea how to contact you.’ That last sentence sounded faintly accusatory, and she cringed inwardly. She didn’t want to sound petulant because he hadn’t given her his number. He’d told her he was leaving the country. Annah had understood what he was offering: one night, no strings attached.
Luca brushed a hand over his face, dragging his thumb and fingers down the sides of his jaw. He was clean-shaven, but his five o’clock shadow was already growing in. Annah could hear the scrape of fine stubble under his hand. ‘I hadn’t thought about the need for contact in case there were...consequences,’ he said, his expression pained.
They were both silent.
After a moment, he said, ‘Tell me how—and why—you ended up m
eeting with my father.’
Annah picked up her mug and swallowed a mouthful of tea, then kept the mug in her lap, hands wrapped around it, trying to absorb the lukewarm heat from the china. ‘Does it matter now?’ she said, her chest tightening at the prospect of reliving the encounter. ‘What’s done is done. The last five years can’t be reversed.’
‘It matters,’ said Luca, the sudden obdurate angle of his jaw not unlike Ethan’s whenever he dug his little heels in about something.
Annah sighed. ‘I tried to find you on social media,’ she said, omitting to mention she’d actually searched the more popular sites before discovering she was pregnant. After their night together, forgetting about him had been difficult. Eventually, curiosity had won out, although it didn’t get her far. She knew his name but not much else, and she quickly discovered dozens of online profiles for men named Luca Cavallari. Not one of them was the dark, sexy stranger she’d spent a night with in a plush hotel room in London.
‘I’m not on social media.’
