by Jennie Lucas
She looked down at her baby, who’d been fed and changed at the clinic and was now happily babbling. She stroked his downy dark hair, looking into the eyes that were exactly like his father’s.
Then she suddenly remembered. Reaching into her diaper bag, she grabbed her phone. Just as she’d expected, she saw multiple messages from her friends.
Are you all right? Is he being nice?
From Tess.
Did he agree to pay child support? How much?
From Lola.
Why aren’t you answering?
Are you being held hostage?
Should we call the police?
Quickly Hallie typed out a response to them both.
All well. Just got a paternity test. He says he wants to be a father to Jack. More later.
She tucked her phone away. Rolling down her car window, Hallie took a deep breath, looking out into the warm, humid July night as their SUV drove into the Lower East Side. She felt sick at the thought of seeing her landlord, who wasn’t a proper landlord at all, just a guy who’d been willing to rent her a room in his apartment at a cut-rate price.
But the man had made it clear to her that morning that he expected her to pay in other, less tangible ways. She gulped. She never would have wanted to come back here, except she’d left behind all her most precious possessions. Her old family photos from West Virginia. Her grandmother’s homemade quilt. Her father’s watch. It was everything she had left of her family now.
Hallie took a deep breath. She’d just pay the landlord off, take all her stuff and then she and the baby could check into a hotel.
“Um...” Hallie bit her lip. “Do you think we could stop somewhere so I could cash my check?”
“You waste no time.” The corners of Cristiano’s lips twitched. “You think some check-cashing store is going to count you out a hundred thousand dollars in twenty-dollar bills?”
“Maybe a bank...”
“The banks are closed. Why do you need money?”
“I’ve been having a small problem with the landlord,” she said quietly. He stared at her.
“Are you under the impression that I’m leaving you and Jack at your apartment?”
She drew back, bewildered. “Aren’t you?”
“We’re getting your things. Jack’s things. Then we’re going back to my penthouse.”
“Oh,” she whispered.
“Put that check away. Rip it up, invest it, cash it tomorrow, whatever you want. But I’ll be providing you and my son with everything you could possibly need.”
His voice was autocratic. Clearly he thought he was still the boss of her. She felt shaken.
“I thought, now that you have the results of the paternity test—now that you have some legal rights—you wouldn’t need to get married.”
“You thought wrong.” The SUV pulled up at the curb in front of the five-story building. “Get what you need for tonight. Tomorrow, I’ll arrange for your lease to be paid in full. That should take care of your landlord. My staff will return to collect anything big or heavy. Cribs, furniture. Or we can leave all that behind and buy new. Whichever you prefer.”
“Um,” said Hallie, who owned neither a crib for the baby nor any actual furniture.
“I’ll wait here with the baby and give you your privacy. Don’t be long.” When she didn’t move, his gaze sharpened. “Well?”
Turning, she blurted, “I don’t need anything. Let’s just go straight to your hotel.”
“But you need clothes—”
“No, I’m fine.”
He looked at her as if she’d lost her mind. “But we’re already here.”
“I don’t want to go in!” Her voice was shrill.
Cristiano looked at her for a long moment. When he spoke, his voice was surprisingly gentle.
“What’s really going on, Hallie?”
With an intake of breath, she looked away. Even at midnight the street was busy, and the neon lights of pizzerias and Laundromats littering First Avenue lit up the sultry summer night.
“After you fired me,” she said softly, “it was hard to find a job. I finally worked as housekeeper for a couple on the Upper West Side. The job included room and board. But when I brought Jack home from the hospital they let me go.”
His eyebrows lowered. “Why?”
She gave a humorless smile. “They said Jack’s crying was causing psychic trauma to their two Chinese Crested show dogs.”
“Are you serious?”
“With a newborn, I couldn’t find a new job. I’ve lived off my savings for the last three months. Even the cheapest apartments were too much.” She looked down at her hands. “So last month, I rented a room in a stranger’s apartment. From an online site. I was amazed it was so cheap. Then...”
She stopped, biting her lip.
Eyes narrowing, Cristiano leaned forward in the back seat.
“Then?” he demanded.
“The man wasn’t bad at first. But over the last few weeks, he started brushing up against me in the kitchen. Trying to catch me coming out of the shower. That sort of thing.” She looked away. It was surprisingly hard to go on. “This morning, he...grabbed me.”
Silence fell in the SUV.
“He attacked you.” Cristiano’s voice was toneless. It gave her the courage to meet his eyes.
“Maybe attack is too strong a word.” She tried to smile, failed. “He tried to kiss me and reach his hand under my dress. When I pushed him away, he told me I wasn’t paying my fair share of the rent so I should pay in other ways.” Trembling, she looked away. “I grabbed the baby and my diaper bag and ran. He yelled after me that I’d signed a lease and he’d be keeping all my things as payment. The only reason I have the stroller is because I’d left it downstairs.” She whispered, “He has everything I own. But I’m not sure I can face him again.”
Silence.
Slowly she looked up.
Then Hallie saw Cristiano’s expression. The fire in his dark eyes. The cold fury that threatened imminent death for the man who’d scared her.
“I’m fine. Really.” Putting her hands on his taut arm, she said hurriedly, “I hardly own anything. All my clothes would fit in a single duffel bag. It’s just family photos and an old quilt...” She realized she was babbling and took a deep breath. “He didn’t hurt me. He never threatened the baby...”
His voice was low and deadly. “He tried to force himself on you.”
“I got away. Everything’s fine, we’re all fine—”
“I’m not fine,” Cristiano bit out, and got out of the vehicle. He looked back at her, his handsome face as implacable as granite. “Which apartment number?”
“Promise you won’t hurt him—”
“His number,” he ground out.
“Four C,” she whispered.
His face was half-hidden in shadow in the gleam from the neon sign of a nearby bar. “Wait here.”
He slammed the car door.
Hallie’s wait seemed to last forever. She nervously watched the minutes pass by on the dashboard. She stroked her baby’s cheek as he smiled up at her from the reverse-facing baby seat. “It’s fine,” she reassured Jack, who in response lifted his chubby arm to bat blindly at the giraffe toy dangling from the handle of his car seat.
Oh, she was being ridiculous. Most likely the two men were having a civilized chat, that was all. Cristiano was likely calmly writing a check—which was, after all, what he did best—and requesting that Mervin Smith, the man who possessed the rent-controlled apartment, would kindly pack up all her things and bring them down.
Right. Not even Tess would have believed that.
Nervously she looked up at Matthews, the driver, who was still sitting at the wheel. “I don’t need to worry about what Cristiano might do, right? He wouldn’t do anything violent. Ri
ght?”
Matthews peered up through his window at the building. “Luther’s not here. That’s a good sign.”
“Luther?”
“His bodyguard.”
Hallie brightened. “That’s true.”
“But Mr. Moretti was a brawler, back when he was young. He fought his way out of the streets of Naples.”
“Oh.” She swallowed. “But that was a long time ago. I’m sure Cristiano has changed—”
“And just last year—” Matthews stroked his beard thoughtfully “—two punks tried to jump him as he was jogging real early through Central Park. He put them in the hospital. And then there was the time—”
“That’s good,” Hallie said in a strangled voice, holding up her hand sharply. “You don’t need to tell me more.”
“Glad to help,” the driver said, straightening his old-fashioned black cap. Then he sucked in his breath and got out of the vehicle.
Hallie jumped as her car door was suddenly wrenched open. She saw Mervin, with dried ketchup still on his chin and his too-tight T-shirt pulling up over his huge belly, on his knees on the sidewalk. He looked terrified.
“I’m sorry,” he choked out. “I’m so sorry, Hallie—”
“Miss Hatfield,” Cristiano corrected coldly, standing behind the man like a dark angel.
“Miss Hatfield,” the man repeated desperately. “I brought down your stuff. Everything is there, totally perfect, I swear—”
“Thank you,” she said anxiously. Her eyes lifted to Cristiano’s. Even after what her landlord had done to her, she’d never wanted him humiliated like this. “It’s all right now.”
Cristiano looked down at the man with a sneer. “If I ever hear that you’ve attacked any woman ever again—”
“Never, ever, I swear,” Mervin cried. Stumbling to his feet, he hurried into the building with one final terrified glance back.
As Matthews stacked the few boxes into the SUV’s trunk, Cristiano calmly climbed into the back seat beside her and the baby. Matthews closed the trunk with a bang. Two minutes later, they were driving north through the streets of Manhattan.
Her heart was still pounding. “What did you do to him?”
Cristiano shrugged. “I asked him to apologize.”
“You just...asked?”
“I asked nicely.”
She thought about pushing the issue, then decided she didn’t want to know. She hadn’t seen visible signs of injury. That was the best she could hope for—and that the man had been sincere when he’d said he’d never try to force a kiss on any woman again. She took a deep breath.
“Thank you,” she whispered. “I don’t care about the clothes. But the pictures of my family mean the world to me.”
He looked at her, then set his jaw. “I’m surprised you even care about your family after they turned their backs on you.”
“What do you mean?”
“They left you and Jack to struggle alone.”
Hallie blinked at him in surprise, and said gently, “They didn’t have a choice. They died five years ago.”
Cristiano’s eyes widened. “Died?”
She swallowed over the lump in her throat. It was still hard to speak of it. “Back home, in West Virginia. I grew up in a tiny village in the mountains. I was nineteen, still living at home, working the overnight shift at a grocery store in a nearby town. A fire had burned much of the forest the previous summer. After a week of hard rain, one night a flash flood came down the mountain and ripped our cabin off its foundation. If I’d been sleeping in my bed, I would have died with my parents and brother.” She looked down. “For a long time, I wished I had.”
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly.
Blinking back tears, Hallie looked blindly out her window. “I came home at dawn and found fire trucks where my house had been. It had floated down the river, knocked to one side, crushed into wood. They found my family later...”
She couldn’t go on, remembering how she’d felt at nineteen when her whole world had fallen apart, when she’d lost her home and everyone she loved without warning.
Suddenly she felt Cristiano’s hand over her own.
With an intake of breath, she looked up. His eyes were black as jet.
“My mother died when I was eighteen,” he said quietly. “The night she kicked me out, I decided if she still wanted her lover even after he beat her, if she cared about him more than me, then fine, I’d go. But at three in the morning, I went back. I found the house on fire.”
“Arson?” Hallie breathed.
He shook his head, his lips twisting. “Nothing so deliberate. Her lover had been smoking in bed. He passed out drunk, and they both burned to death.” He gave her a crooked smile. “It’s funny, really. Your family died of water. Mine of fire.”
“Funny,” she said over the lump in her throat. All this time she’d hated Cristiano, believing him arrogant and ruthless and cold. All of which he was. But she’d never stopped to ask why.
“I’m sorry.” She twined her hand in his, trying in turn to offer comfort. “You know how it feels to lose family, too. To lose a home.”
For a moment, he looked at her. Then he turned, pulling his hand away. Lights moved over them in patterns as they drove toward Midtown.
When the SUV pulled up to the grand porte cohere of the Campania Hotel, Cristiano lifted the baby’s carrier from the back seat. Holding the handle with his powerful arm, he turned back to Hallie, extending his other hand to help her out of the car.
Nervously she put her hand in his. Just feeling his palm against hers as he helped her out made her shiver from her scalp to her toes.
He held her hand as they walked through the lobby with its soaring ceilings and elegant midcentury furniture. The space was filled with glamorous people, hotel guests and patrons of the lobby bar or the jazz club. She saw a sexy sheikh, pouting models and starlets.
All of them turned to stare at Cristiano as he passed. Then their gazes slid in confusion to Hallie, makeup-free and wearing a limp cotton sundress. Even more shocking was the baby carrier hanging from Cristiano’s arm.
People stared and whispered as they passed. A few dared to approach Cristiano with questions in their eyes. He just nodded at them and kept walking.
He stopped only briefly to speak to Clarence Loggia, the hotel manager, as Matthews and a porter headed for the elevator with Hallie’s boxes.
“Good evening, Mr. Moretti.” Mr. Loggia was too well trained to show even the slightest surprise at seeing either a baby or a former hotel maid on his employer’s arm.
“How is it tonight, Clarence?”
“I am pleased to report the hotel is currently at ninety-six percent capacity. The Sultan of Bataar just arrived. He’s taken the presidential suite for the entire summer, along with the rest of the floor for his entourage.”
“Excellent. Please send him my regards and a collection of his favorite brandy and cigars with my personal compliments.”
The man smiled. “Already done, sir.” He hesitated, then lowered his voice. “Also, I thought you would want to know. Prince Stefano Zacco di Gioreale just checked in.”
“Why does he insist on staying here?” A shadow crossed Cristiano’s face, then he shrugged. “I suppose his money is as good as any other’s.”
“I thought you’d say that.” The manager gave an impish smile. “But in light of your past history with the gentleman, I did take the liberty of adding a surcharge to his nightly rate.”
“He deserves it, the Sicilian bastard. Nicely done, Loggia. Anything else?”
“Nothing that requires your attention.”
“I see I’ll be leaving the hotel in good hands when I depart. Buonasera.”
“Good night, sir.”
Cristiano turned back to her. As they walked to the elevator, suddenly Hallie felt very ti
red. Without a word, he stepped ahead of her to press the elevator button.
“Hallie Hatfield!”
A woman’s shrill voice behind her made her jump. Turning, she saw Audrey, who’d once been her supervisor. Not just that. She’d once been a trusted mentor and friend.
“What are you doing here, Hallie?” the other woman demanded. “Looking for another rich man to seduce? You’re no longer employed here and not allowed to be loitering in the lobby with the guests. Get out before I call the—”
Audrey sucked in her breath as Cristiano suddenly turned around.
“Hallie’s with me,” he said mildly. “And I own the hotel, so that makes it all right, does it not, Ms....” He looked at her name tag. “Ms. Johnson?”
Audrey’s shocked face went white, then red.
“Yes, of course. I’m so sorry, Mr. Moretti,” she stammered, backing away. She bowed her head repeatedly. “I didn’t realize Hallie was with you. I’ll, um, return to my duties—”
The woman fled. As Hallie and Cristiano got into the elevator with their baby, he frowned. “That was your old supervisor.”
“Yes.”
“Did she always treat you so poorly?”
She gave a brief smile. “No.”
“Do you want me to fire her?”
Hallie gaped at him. She couldn’t tell if he was joking, but just to be safe she quickly said, “No, of course not. I feel bad for her.”
“Why?”
“When you ordered her to fire me directly, without going through HR, then gave her the mysterious severance envelope she wasn’t allowed to read...” Hallie shrugged. “She’s not stupid. She guessed we’d slept together.”
“Why would she care?”
Did he really not know? “Because she’s in love with you.”
“Is she?” he said carelessly. Hallie gave him a wistful smile.
“Most women are, I imagine. Even I almost was, once.”
Cristiano focused abruptly on her. She felt the intensity of his gaze burn through her soul. “You were in love with me?”
She swallowed.
“For a year, I often cleaned your penthouse—did you know that?”
