Sense prevailed. The challenge had to come first. Nothing else mattered—at least not until the two weeks were up. After that it would be very different.
CHAPTER TWO
AFTER TELLING THE overeager and dominating new mechanic she was a single mother, Sadie had spent the remainder of the week feeling more relaxed as he kept his distance. He hadn’t spoken to her once since that first day. Although they had exchanged a few glances across the workshop, his suspicious frown reminding her ever more of Leo’s father, something she wasn’t at all happy about.
As today was Sunday and the sun was shining with the promise of summer, all she’d wanted to do was put the new mechanic’s uncanny resemblance to Antonio to one side and spend time with Leo at the local playground. She didn’t want to be lured into thinking about the man who had turned his back on her and his child with such cold-hearted disregard.
‘Mamma!’ Leo squealed in delight as she turned the roundabout gently for him, but his attention became fixed beyond her. Apprehension rushed over her and she turned quickly.
‘Buon giorno.’ Toni’s deep and rough voice visibly jolted her. His dark brows pulled together and even behind his sunglasses she knew he was making more assumptions about her. Was he accepting she hadn’t been telling him lies, that she did have a child and therefore he wasn’t interested any longer in flirting so outrageously with her? Perhaps he’d go now he’d seen the proof and leave her and Leo to get on with their day.
‘What are you doing here?’ she demanded hotly in English. He made her feel so confused she couldn’t keep her mind straight enough to use a foreign language she was still trying to master. The fact that she’d enrolled in an Italian course when she and her parents had relocated to Italy when she was almost eighteen had earned her nothing but praise from the man she’d foolishly lost more than her heart to. But this man wasn’t Antonio and she’d do well to remember that.
‘I missed speaking to you at work this week.’ He took a step closer, his long jeans-clad legs making him appear tall and powerful and the sleeves of his T-shirt stretched over muscled arms evoking yet more sensual memories. Hot memories, of lying in the strength of Antonio’s arms after he’d so passionately taken her, making her completely his for evermore.
She pushed the vivid images aside and chastised herself for studying this man so intently. Only once had she fallen for such charm, allowing herself to be seduced by the moment and the man, and look what had happened. A short passionate fling she would be reminded of for ever. She’d never be able to completely escape Antonio and the memories.
He’d calmly walked away, suddenly developing a conscience that he was due to marry another woman, an heiress more suited to his position. A marriage his parents wanted, he’d explained. One that would unite two families which for the last two generations had sought such an alliance in marriage. It was his duty and as the Di Marcello heir he would always do his duty. He had scorned the very idea of love, killing hers for him and destroying her dreams of a happy future with the man she’d fallen in love with so easily.
She’d been so hurt, so utterly devastated by his rejection she hadn’t at first been able to accept what her body had been trying to tell her. She hadn’t wanted to know she carried the child of a man who’d made loving him all too easy before walking away without a backward glance.
‘I was busy working,’ she said, irritated by the way this mechanic made her think of a man who had no regard or feelings for her. His harsh rejection and inability to subsequently own up to being a father rushed back at her from where she’d hidden it away for the last four years, making her heart break all over again.
‘Then I hope you will not be so busy next week,’ he said, his brows lifting suggestively behind the sunglasses he permanently favoured. In fact she hadn’t seen him without them and with that beard it was almost impossible to see his face. Not that you want to. She reminded herself sharply of her vow to never let a man hurt her again and especially not to let Leo ever know that pain of rejection.
‘I will always be too busy, Mr...?’ she declared so hotly she couldn’t recall his full name.
‘Mr Adessi,’ he put in quickly.
‘As I said, I will always be busy, either with work or with Leo.’ She looked at Leo as the roundabout began to slow, horrified that for the briefest of moments Toni Adessi had made her forget her little boy, that he’d dragged her back to the past and the passionate weekend Leo had been created.
‘He is a fine boy.’
‘He is.’ She didn’t want to discuss Leo with this man, not when he’d already made her feel so uncomfortable, so caught up in emotions that wouldn’t help her at all.
Toni looked at her and she was irritated by the fact she couldn’t read the expression in his eyes. She stood there between him and Leo like a defensive lioness. She and Leo didn’t need anyone, even though he had begun to realise he was different from his friends, that he didn’t have a father. She wasn’t about to put her son’s heart on the line just because this man possessed the same charm as Leo’s father. And, as for her, she would never be that foolish again.
‘He is like his father, no?’
Toni’s question as he glanced at her, then at Leo, prised open the door to her past a little bit more and she felt the barrier she’d built around her and Leo strengthening in response, keeping out the threat. Although what exactly that was she couldn’t decipher, but, whatever it was, she wasn’t about to let it near Leo.
* * *
Antonio stood watching the young boy as shock sent coldness through him, followed by hot anger. The calculations he’d just made would put the little boy around three, not that he was familiar with young children. But it wasn’t that which gnawed at him like sand grinding into a wound. His calculations brought the little boy’s birth to around nine months after that wild and passionate weekend he, as Antonio Di Marcello, had shared with Sadie, a young woman who’d newly moved to Italy and had been easy to sweep off her feet.
As the shock sank in he realised exactly what Sebastien’s challenge had been—not to mend his relationship with his estranged parents, or even to try to mend bridges with his ex-wife. It had been all about this woman, the one he’d spoken of with Sebastien after the avalanche in a rare moment of unguarded emotion.
It had been a time of bearing souls, letting out secrets, and he’d declared that Sadie had been the right woman, just at the wrong time in his life. Had Sebastien sent him here knowing Sadie worked at the garage? It was too much of a coincidence to be anything else.
It was all very clear now. His challenge wasn’t anything to do with living on two hundred euros in a cramped and basic apartment. This was about what could have been, about putting right the past—that was what he’d said in the note. Sadie Parker was his challenge, the woman he’d told Sebastien about, who had made him want different things in life.
Sebastien intended that he face the only woman who’d made him want more than the cold compromise marriage he’d entered into out of duty to his family name. But had Sebastien known of the child? Could Sadie’s little boy be a consequence of those few snatched days of passion together? Was he the next generation and Di Marcello heir his parents had longed for from his marriage? He could just imagine the contempt of his mother if she discovered he’d fathered an illegitimate child and, worse than that, the mother wasn’t Italian. He almost laughed.
‘He does not know his father.’ Sadie turned from him and pushed the roundabout again and the dark-haired little boy squealed with delight. The sound snagged at Antonio’s heart, as if someone or something clenched around it, pulling tighter and tighter.
‘That is sad.’ He injected more accent into his words in a bid to hide the rush of unfamiliar emotions which assailed him from every side. ‘A boy should have a father.’
It was exactly what he’d wanted while he was growing up. He had known his father but from a great emotional distance which eventually shut down any feelings for the man he was supposed to lo
ve and honour. As a child all he’d ever wished for was a father who cared, a man to look up to, one who’d take time out with his son. Because he hadn’t had that, he’d vowed he would never have children unless he could be the father he himself had wanted but never had, someone like the gardener he’d known as a boy, the only man to show any kindness towards him.
That gnawing hole had gone with him into his marriage and Antonio had been relaxed about his ex-wife’s refusal to sleep with him, glad he didn’t have to bring children into such a cold marriage when he doubted he could be the kind of father he wanted to be.
‘I agree,’ she said, sad resignation trembling in her voice as she turned to look back up at him, Leo happy to sit and go round and round. ‘His father, however, felt very differently about it.’
‘How old is Leo?’ The question had to be asked. He had to know.
Sadie frowned at him, but he couldn’t stand back and do nothing. If this was his child, his son and heir, then he wouldn’t be able to walk away from here without him. Challenge or no challenge.
Antonio looked again at the boy, who chose that precise moment to squeal and demand the roundabout be stopped. Instantly he leapt forward and grabbed the roundabout, stopping it dead, and found himself looking down into sad dark eyes. It was like looking in the mirror and seeing himself as a young boy.
He spoke in Italian, but the little boy’s lips trembled and he reached for his mother. Inwardly Antonio cursed his disguise, cursed the rough and ready appearance of Toni Adessi.
‘He’s not used to men,’ Sadie said, scooping him up and holding him tightly, giving Leo the opportunity to look accusingly at him.
Guilt raced through him. He didn’t need a paternity test to confirm this was his child. Just one look into the little boy’s eyes told him all he needed to know. Leo was most definitely a Di Marcello.
‘Do you choose to bring him up alone?’ Anger stabbed at him. This child was his and only now was he seeing him for the first time. Dio mio, he hadn’t even known of his existence. Who did Sadie think she was to keep something like this from him? And why?
‘His father walked out on me. That hardly fills me with any kind of wild desire to bring another man into our lives. Your charm would be better used elsewhere, Mr Adessi, because it’s wasted on me.’
* * *
Sadie stood her ground, holding Leo tightly and glaring at this man who’d opened the doors of the past she’d thought tightly sealed. All she could see was the reflection of herself in his sunglasses, which only heightened her irritation.
Why was Toni so interested in her and Leo? An uncomfortable sensation slithered down her spine.
‘That is sad—for the boy,’ he said, looking towards Leo once again, who promptly buried his face in her shoulder to avoid the unwelcome scrutiny. ‘If Leo were my child, I’d want to know all about him.’
Sadie sighed in exasperation. Why was she having this conversation with this man? Guilt. The word slithered like a serpent into her mind. Guilt because although she had tried hard to tell Antonio Di Marcello he was to be a father, it hadn’t been enough. She’d just meekly accepted his mother’s horrified denial as she’d slammed the door in her face. She should have done more, tried harder—for Leo’s sake, not hers or Antonio’s.
Pain from the day she’d gone to the grand house that was his family home still jarred her as she looked up at Toni and saw her anger bouncing back from his sunglasses, intensifying it further. ‘I was informed that a child, or I should say an illegitimate child, was not a welcome addition to the mighty family of...’
She cut the words short just in time but thought back to those early days of pregnancy, when she’d tried to get a message to Antonio through his parents, the only way of contacting him she had. They hadn’t wanted to listen to her, a woman who was intent on securing her financial future with such wild claims. They had taken great relish in informing her that their son was to be married and that they wouldn’t do anything to jeopardise such a sought-after union. The marriage of childhood sweethearts, they’d told her.
When she’d seen the photographs in the local papers, she’d known she could never try again, that she had to move forward with her life and bring up her child alone. Antonio Di Marcello had married his childhood sweetheart just weeks after their passionate weekend. It had been nothing more than a pre-marriage affair for him. A final fling. The scandal of a love child would be unwelcome and she hadn’t been able to put herself or the baby through that. Especially after the threats made to her family by his.
‘Are you sure?’ His accented voice growled with irritation and a dark thought clouded in on her, like an approaching storm.
‘Why are you here, Mr Adessi? At the garage, I mean.’ She plucked up the courage to ask the question which had been niggling at her conscience since he’d first looked at Leo. There had been shock on his face for the briefest of seconds that even his sunglasses had been unable to conceal.
Did Antonio Di Marcello have a brother or cousin? Had he sent someone to check out her claims and, if so, why now? Why wait this long?
Four years she’d wasted, hoping and dreaming, but she’d finally been persuaded by her mother that a life in Milan wasn’t what she or Leo needed. She’d given up on the notion that she had to remain close to Leo’s father and was preparing to return to England with her parents in just a few weeks’ time. Had that been what had prompted this? Was she even now being watched and information relayed back to Antonio of the child he so obviously didn’t want? Just what did he have to gain, though? Confusion muddled her thoughts.
‘I took this job to prove a point.’ Toni’s voice had a calm steadiness in each word and he sounded suddenly very different. He spoke in the same way Antonio had spoken to her when he’d told her it was over. He was using that same decisive and totally in control voice.
Antonio’s words surged from her memory, playing again in her mind as if he stood before her right now.
Our weekend, fun as it was, has finished and we must go back to our normal lives.
Except she hadn’t been able to. That luxury was taken from her before he’d even walked out of the door. The legacy of their affair had changed her life from that moment on.
‘And what point is that?’ Sadie asked as suspicion and unease battled for supremacy inside her.
Toni stepped back a pace and looked at her, then at Leo, which only added to the unease. ‘To prove that I can.’ He looked back at her and a sensation of outrage lingered in the air. ‘And I will do exactly that.’
CHAPTER THREE
AS THE FIRST week turned into the second, Antonio was forced to admit it was going to be even harder than the first and it had nothing to do with the tiny apartment or the work. It had everything to do with Sadie.
Last weekend in the park he’d almost come clean, almost blown his cover. The temptation had been huge. As soon as he’d realised that Sadie’s little boy was almost certainly his child, he’d wanted to insist they return to Rome with him right there and then. It was only his loyalty to Sebastien, as well as Stavros and Alejandro, which had halted that impulse. That loyalty had been far stronger than the need to prove Sebastien wrong. Now he knew for sure their challenges had nothing to do with surviving without their fortunes. Sebastien had more than done his homework setting this challenge for him and no doubt had something of a similar nature planned for Stavros and Alejandro.
Now, at the end of his last week, he wiped his hands on a cloth and tossed it impatiently aside, eager to leave Toni Adessi behind, eager to put into motion what he needed to do.
As he slipped on his sunglasses he didn’t have to turn around to know that Sadie was coming down the steps from the office to the workshop. Every nerve cell in his body alerted him to her presence.
‘I understand you are leaving today.’ Sadie’s silky-soft voice so close to him caught him unawares after she’d spent the last week avoiding him. ‘Is this not the job for you after all? Have you failed in your mission to prove
you can?’
Antonio channelled the gruff mechanic he’d been concealed behind for the last two weeks and turned to look down at Sadie’s face, her beautiful green eyes sparkling with mischief. Was she flirting with him, emboldened by the knowledge he was leaving?
‘I never fail, Sadie, but I am leaving today. I have much more important matters to deal with.’ Finally he was able to say something truthful to her.
‘So where are you going?’ A hint of anxiety sounded in her voice, despite her light and playful tone. Why was she suddenly so interested? She’d barely glanced his way since that afternoon in the park. The day he’d nearly blown it all, risked everything he, Stavros and Alejandro had agreed to, in order to claim what was his. Leo. The dark-haired little boy whose eyes were the intense black which all Di Marcellos seemed to possess.
‘I think I’m more suited to living in Rome.’ He had to stifle the smile which threatened to form at her obvious shock.
‘You live in Rome?’
‘Sì.’ He could feel Antonio sliding back into place as he thought of his modern offices and the luxury apartment with views across the city he’d made his home. From the city he would often drive out in one of his highly collectable cars and enjoy the freedom of the road. He longed to get back to all of that, back to normality. Except what he’d discovered whilst working here undercover had changed things—changed him.
Sadie’s eyes narrowed in suspicion, highlighting those deliciously long eyelashes. ‘So why are you here, Mr Adessi? Why work here in a small garage in Milan for just two weeks?’
The accusation in those questions was as clear as the sparkle on the Mediterranean Sea in the summer. Did she know who he was? A frisson of panic rushed through him. He couldn’t blow it now on the final day, not when so much more was at stake. This went far beyond Sebastien’s donation to the search and rescue charity, far beyond the need to prove anything to anyone.
‘I was helping out a friend.’ He had to force the roughness he’d adopted for the last two weeks to stay in his voice. He was so close to completing Sebastien’s challenge and there was no way he’d risk it all now. Not when Stavros was about to start his two weeks and Alejandro was yet to discover where he would be sent. Besides, Antonio Di Marcello never failed—at anything.
Di Marcello's Secret Son (Di Marcello?s Secret Son) Page 3
