by Jennie Lucas
Now, Honora looked between Nico and his bodyguards anxiously. “So you agree? When my grandfather gets here, you’ll keep your guns down and let me go out there alone?”
Nico came closer to her in the foyer. “You can’t be serious.”
She looked up at him, the billionaire playboy she’d once thought so exotic and wonderful. Her hands tightened at her sides. “I told you, this is no joke. Granddad’s already on the way, but they’re taking the long route—”
“I can’t possibly be your baby’s father,” he interrupted. “I never touched you.”
Honora’s mouth fell open. Never touched her?
It was one possibility she’d never considered. For him to deny he’d made love to her! As if she were lying about their night together. As if she were some gold digger trying to trap him into marriage under false pretenses!
In February, after she’d discovered she was pregnant, she’d tried to do the right thing and let him know, but he’d ignored all the messages she’d left at his office in Rome and his villa on the Amalfi Coast. Resigned, she’d known she’d have to raise this child alone. If Nico wouldn’t take responsibility, so be it. She was a grown-up. She’d known the risks of sex.
But hearing him deny their night together, she realized Nico Ferraro had taken full advantage of her schoolgirl crush. He’d helped himself to her virginity, then meant to toss her and the baby—his baby—aside like trash.
It was the final straw.
Fury filled her, rushing like fire all the way to her fingertips and toes, burning her heart to ash.
“How dare you,” she said in a low, trembling voice. She clenched her hands into fists. “I have been nothing but honorable—unlike you—and this is how you treat me? By calling me a liar?”
Nico’s forehead furrowed, his expression turning perplexed as he stared down at her. “If I’d slept with you, I would remember.”
He was tall and broad-shouldered and so handsome, in spite of—or perhaps even because of—his dark hair being uncombed and wild. His tailored white shirt and black trousers were unkempt and wrinkled. He smelled of Scotch and leather and smoke from the fire and rain, everything masculine and untamed. She breathed it in and yearned for him, still, in spite of everything.
She hated herself for that, but not as much as she hated him. She’d never let herself want him again. Never, ever.
“So you don’t remember my name and you don’t remember our night,” she choked out. “How can you be so heartless and cold?”
His dark eyes narrowed as he said acidly, “And when do you claim you conceived this miracle baby?”
“Christmas night.”
He snorted. “Christmas—” Then his expression changed. His forehead furrowed, as if straining to remember a half-forgotten dream. For a moment, he looked bewildered. Then he lifted his chin defiantly. “Even if it happened, which I’m not saying it did, how could you be sure I’m the father?”
She looked at him, nearly speechless with anger. “You think I slept with other men the same week?”
“It’s the twenty-first century, and you’re a free woman...”
“You know I came to your bed a virgin!” She knew his men were listening, but she was too enraged to care. Her cheeks burned. “How dare you!”
Then their eyes widened at the noise of a car outside, and doors slamming.
“Get out here, Ferraro!” she heard her grandfather’s voice holler above the wind and rain. “Get out here right now so I can shoot you right between the eyes!”
She looked at the two bodyguards by the door, who’d already put their hands on their holsters.
“Please, don’t hurt him,” she pleaded. “I told you. I’ll go out and talk to him.”
The older bodyguard stared at her, then glanced at his boss. She saw Nico Ferraro give him a tiny nod, and she hated him for that. How awful to have to ask him for favors!
“Keep him outside,” the head bodyguard said. “If he doesn’t shoot at us, we won’t shoot back.”
“Thank you,” Honora said, but fear caught at her throat. How could she guarantee Patrick wouldn’t start taking potshots at the house in his current emotional state? Trembling, she hurried to the front door.
Then she suddenly stopped, whirling back to face Nico.
“I’m doing this to protect Granddad, not you,” she said. “Personally, I think I’d be happy to see you shot.”
And opening the door, she ran out into the dark summer storm, beneath the torrent of rain and howling wind on the wild Atlantic shore.
CHAPTER TWO
PERSONALLY, I THINK I’d be happy to see you shot.
As Honora disappeared out the beach house’s front door into the storm, Nico stared after her in shock. Standing in the foyer, he felt his men’s gaze on him, before they discreetly turned away. He felt a twist in his solar plexus.
So you don’t remember my name and you don’t remember our night. How can you be so heartless and cold?
Her scornful words made him feel hollow inside, reminding him of similar words from Lana when he’d called her film set in Paris on Christmas Eve to end their engagement.
You heartless bastard. You never loved me at all, did you? Lana had yelled into the phone.
No, he’d replied shortly. Sorry.
Being woken earlier that morning with news of his estranged father’s death had felt like being submerged in ice water. Prince Arnaldo Caracciola had dropped dead of a heart attack in Rome, right before he would have been forced to fly to the Hamptons to beg for Nico’s mercy.
What point was there in being engaged to a movie star if he couldn’t rub the old man’s face in it?
After hanging up with Lana, Nico had tried to go to work as if nothing had happened, but he’d found himself shouting at, even firing, several of his most valued employees. “It’s Christmas Eve. Go home before you ruin us,” his vice president of operations had said quietly, then handed him two sleeping pills. “Get some rest. You look like you haven’t slept in days.”
It was true; he’d barely slept all week in anticipation of his father’s visit. But Nico didn’t need sleep. He was fine. Never better. To prove it, he’d gone to his gritty downtown gym and sparred against a former heavyweight boxing champion. Nico had pushed himself in the ring, insulting his bigger, better-skilled opponent, until he’d gotten himself knocked out twice. The second time, when he sat up, he hadn’t been able to see anything for nearly three minutes. But as soon as his sight returned, he’d started to get back in the ring.
The owner of the gym would not allow it. “You want to destroy your brain, Mr. Ferraro, go do it somewhere else. I’m not running a morgue. And get a doctor to look at that concussion!”
Doctor. Nico had sneered at the idea, but his head had ached as he walked back the long city blocks to his midtown penthouse.
Late afternoon on Christmas Eve, his home had been deserted, all the employees gone home to spend the holiday with their families. The dark, empty rooms had echoed inside him. He’d reached for a bottle of Scotch, sent to him by a rival congratulating him on his recent acquisition of beachfront land in Rio, which would soon be developed into a world-class hotel. He’d paced all Christmas Eve night, looking out at the city lights, his soul howling with fury.
He didn’t remember much after that. He’d started to hallucinate and imagine things. At some point, he must have taken the two sleeping pills and washed them down with Scotch, because when his housekeeper arrived early the day after Christmas, she’d found him collapsed in the hallway with a smashed bottle of Scotch on the floor. Alarmed, she’d called an ambulance.
Nico had woken up in the hospital to see his doctor standing over him with worried eyes. “You need to take better care of yourself, Mr. Ferraro. You’ve had a severe concussion, which was not helped by alcohol and sleeping pills.” He’d paused delicately. “Perhaps
you’d find it beneficial to talk to someone. Or I could recommend a residential facility that would help you rest and work through whatever you’re—”
“I’m fine,” Nico had said, detaching himself from the monitors. Against medical advice, he’d checked himself out of the hospital and rolled onto his private jet, just in time to make it to the old man’s funeral in Rome.
His father, who’d denied him everything all his life, couldn’t stop him from doing it, now he was dead. Nico had had the last word. But as his evil stepmother glared at him with tearful, accusatory eyes over the grave, Nico had felt otherwise. He’d felt heartsick that wintry day in Rome, as if his father had won, contriving to die of a heart attack just when Nico finally had him by the throat.
Now, Arnaldo would never be forced to admit that his abandoned son had surpassed him, or to say that he was desperately sorry for seducing his maid, Nico’s mother, then tossing her out like trash. The married prince had known Maria Ferraro was pregnant, but he’d still refused to take responsibility. He’d left her and Nico to starve. The man deserved to be punished for—
Personally, I think I’d be happy to see you shot.
Nico sucked in his breath. Was it possible that he was doing the same thing as the man he’d despised?
Could Nico have fathered a child with—well, not a maid, but with his gardener’s granddaughter? Could Honora Callahan be telling the truth?
No. He would remember!
He’d never had an affair with an employee. He preferred the women he slept with to have power that matched his own. His mistresses before Lana Lee had been supermodels. Heiresses. A chemist. A makeup millionaire. They were women who wanted hot sex, who wanted to see and be seen, but who wouldn’t demand emotional intimacy he couldn’t give. For the entirety of their six-month engagement, he’d never felt emotionally close to Lana; he’d assumed she preferred it that way, too.
The idea of anyone sacrificing their own self-interest for the sake of someone else seemed like total insanity to Nico.
Like when Patrick Burke became guardian to his orphaned granddaughter thirteen years before. Nico had thought it was sheer lunacy for an elderly widower to raise an eleven-year-old child. But it didn’t affect the man’s work, so Nico had never said so. He had no right to an opinion.
But the old man sure seemed to have an opinion about his employer, coming here with a hunting rifle.
Going to the window, Nico looked past the silk curtains. In the dim light from the windows, he saw Honora talking to her grandfather some distance from the house, beneath the lightning and rain. There was another dark figure hovering nearby. What the hell? Was that his chauffeur, who’d apparently driven the murderous old gardener here to kill him, in Nico’s own Bentley?
He saw the old man waving the rifle around, seeming to point it toward the house. He couldn’t hear his words.
There was another flash of lightning, and he saw Honora’s pleading face before she turned away, trying to block her grandfather from approaching the house.
Patrick Burke seemed very sure that Nico was the father. Honora had seemed so, too. You know I came to your bed a virgin.
But he would remember sleeping with her, wouldn’t he? Yes, he’d slept with many beautiful women, and some people called him a player. But even with a bad concussion, even hallucinating from insomnia, even on sleeping pills washed down with Scotch, he’d remember—
Her long, dark hair spread across his pillow. Her emerald eyes glowing up at him as she whispered, I can’t believe this is happening... The softness of her skin as he slowly stroked down her naked body, cupping her breasts, then moving down farther still, as he lowered his mouth to taste her sweetness...
Oh, my God. Nico’s eyes went wide.
Turning abruptly from the window, he pushed open the door and went out into the dark, wind and rain.
Behind him, he heard Bauer shouting, “Sir?”
The Bentley was parked in the circular driveway, with his chauffeur standing behind it. Nico went straight to where the old man stood with Honora.
The old gardener sobered when he saw Nico. He quit waving the rifle around, even as he lifted his chin defiantly.
“You think you can just take whatever you want, Mr. Ferraro?” His voice broke. “Even seduce an innocent girl, and then toss her callously aside, when she’s pregnant with your child?”
“I didn’t know,” Nico ground out. “She never told me.”
Her eyes narrowed. “I tried.”
“Well, now that you know,” Patrick Burke said pointedly, “what are you going to do about it?”
Honora nervously placed herself between the two men, as if she were afraid of what they might do. “I don’t need him to do anything, Granddad. He made it clear he’s not interested in being a father. I can raise my baby alone.”
Not interested in being a father. It was jarring. He had a sudden flash of a memory of his own mother holding him tight when he was a boy, and they were evicted from their tiny apartment outside Rome.
Why won’t your father pay for you? Why doesn’t he want you? How does he expect me to do this on my own?
Now, Nico felt oddly suspended in time as the storm pelted him with rain and lightning flashed across the wide dark sky. In the distance, he could hear the roar of the ocean against the shore.
For six months, he’d been lost, even to himself, after the failure of a lifetime’s worth of plans. Just when ultimate triumph had been within his grasp, he’d lost his last chance at victory. His father was dead, and would never recognize Nico’s right to exist, much less claim him as his son.
Nico couldn’t inflict the same pain his father had. He could claim his own child.
If this baby was his, he had the opportunity to be better than his father ever was.
Nico could never inherit the title of prince, or the aristocratic Caracciola name. But he could sire his own dynasty. Build his own legacy. And make sure that his own children never felt as he had—rejected, adrift, alone.
“You will do something about it,” Patrick Burke told him fiercely, his whiskers shaking beneath the rain as he shook his rifle in Nico’s direction. “You’ll take responsibility for what you’ve done! Or meet the short end of this stick!”
Reaching out, Nico yanked the rifle away in a swift, easy movement. For a moment, the old man stared at him, shocked and outraged.
Backing up a step, Nico held the rifle almost casually, pointing it upward. “I take your point, Mr. Burke. I believe we can come to some arrangement.”
“Arrangement?” Those bushy gray eyebrows shook. But it wasn’t just his eyebrows, Nico realized. The man’s hands were shaking, as well. He was upset. And why shouldn’t he be if he truly believed his boss had coldly taken Honora’s virginity and then refused to take responsibility? “What kind of arrangement?”
Nico looked at Honora, who was watching with big eyes as rain fell, all of them so wet they might as well have been swimming in the sea. “Why don’t you come inside where it’s warm, and we can discuss it.”
The old man scowled. “If you think my granddaughter will ever accept a payoff...”
“No. If she is pregnant with my baby, there can be only one answer.” Lifting his chin, Nico looked straight at Honora’s lovely, worried face. “I will marry her.”
* * *
Honora’s jaw fell open. She felt dizzy.
Behind her, Benny Rossini, the young chauffeur, said harshly, “You don’t have to do that, Mr. Ferraro...”
But her grandfather was staring only at Nico. “Do you give me your word, sir?”
Nico Ferraro’s handsome face was deadly serious. “I do.”
“Well, then!” Her grandfather was suddenly beaming. A flash of lightning crackled in a sizzling line above them, cracking the sky. He came toward Nico, holding out his hand. “Welcome to the family.”
“Thank you,” said Nico, shaking his hand gravely, still holding the rifle upright with the other.
And just like that, it seemed, Honora’s fate was sealed.
Was she losing her mind?
“What century are we living in?” she said incredulously. She looked at Nico. “I’m not going to marry you!”
Her grandfather, whom she’d always trusted and obeyed, turned to her almost chidingly. “That’s no way to talk to your husband, little one...”
“My future husband. Which he isn’t!”
Patrick waved his hand airily. “You two kids have a lot to talk about.” Turning to Benny, he said, “We should give the happy couple time to discuss wedding plans.”
“Wedding plans?” she sputtered.
“But there’s no reason to remain out here in the cold and rain.” Nico nodded toward his sprawling Hamptons beach house. “Come inside.”
As Benny started to step forward, Patrick stopped him with his hand on his arm.
“No.” Her grandfather’s shoulders sagged in his old coat, as if he’d just aged twenty years in five seconds. “I’m exhausted, as only an old man can be. Please, Benny.” He looked at the young chauffeur plaintively. “Just take me home.”
Honora looked at her grandfather sharply. Other than a touch of arthritis, Patrick Burke was more energetic than some men half his age. Was he up to something? Or had the worry of her unwed pregnancy truly exhausted him?
“All right,” Benny said grudgingly. Turning to Honora, he said, “You coming?”
She bit her lip. She was grateful the young driver had helped her keep Granddad from harm, but she was afraid Benny felt more for her than friendship. And she’d never love him back, no matter how many times he offered to run down to the local bodega to buy her ice cream and pickles. No matter how many times he tenderly offered to marry her and be the father her baby “obviously needed.”
