‘Are you sure?’ the man said.
She pushed to her feet. She would look at him and prove she was being ridiculous. With any luck he’d be short and rotund, nothing at all like the tall, dark-haired devil who’d seduced her with hot chocolate and a hint of torment in his deep brown eyes on a cold night in London five years before.
More importantly, he’d be nothing like Ethan’s paternal grandfather—a man she hoped never to have the misfortune of meeting again.
‘Yes, thank you,’ she said, placing the reel of ribbon on the counter. The top of her head throbbed, but she turned towards the man with a professional smile. He was probably passing through and had stopped to buy flowers for his girlfriend or wife. ‘How can I help?’
The lapels of a sleek, single-breasted camel coat worn over a black polo-neck jumper confronted her at eye level, along with a set of extremely broad shoulders. Although Annah couldn’t see the body beneath the coat, her immediate impression was of solidity and power.
Her smile faltered, and, in the same way people peek through their fingers at a scary movie, afraid to look yet helplessly compelled to do so, she lifted her gaze.
A pair of dark brown eyes, deep-set in a brutally handsome face, connected with hers.
‘Hello, Annah.’
She gasped, her heart lunging into her throat, and stumbled backwards, colliding with the workbench.
Luca Cavallari moved towards her. ‘Careful—’
‘Don’t touch me,’ she blurted, and grabbed the first object to hand—her florist shears—and stuck them out in front of her.
He looked down at the small pair of secateurs and then back at her, his expression more quizzical than alarmed. He spoke softly. ‘You would stab me, Annah?’
‘Maybe.’ She firmed her grip on the shears. Of course she wouldn’t stab him, but he didn’t know that. He didn’t know her. They were strangers, regardless of the fact that they’d created an amazing little person together.
Anyway, people were capable of all sorts of things when something dear to them was threatened. Annah would do anything to protect her son, especially from the people who’d wanted him gone long before he’d drawn his first breath.
The bell over the door tinkled and Annah glanced towards the entrance. Mistake, she realised as Luca Cavallari seized her wrist and deftly disarmed her, tossing the shears down the far end of the bench beyond her reach. ‘No!’ she cried, tugging her wrist, but his one-handed grip was too strong.
Annah cast a panicky look at the newcomer—a thick-necked behemoth dressed in black—and her stomach plummeted. She glared at Luca with false bravado. ‘Really? You brought reinforcements?’
He frowned as if her hostility perplexed him, and that incensed her. What had he expected? Not a warm reception, surely. If only she’d had the presence of mind to act as if she didn’t recognise him. She’d spent one night with him five years ago; it was entirely plausible that his face had faded from her memory.
Except the truth was it hadn’t.
How could she forget the man she’d recklessly given her virginity to—the only man she’d ever slept with—when every day she looked at a tiny, living replica of him?
Thoughts of Ethan spiked her anxiety. Her one chance to play it cool was gone. She’d overreacted. Tipped her hand by revealing her fear. If he hadn’t already known she had something to hide, he knew now.
She looked at the man in black, her heart beating so hard her chest hurt, then back to Luca, whose eyes narrowed as he scrutinised her face.
His frown deepened. He switched his gaze to the other man and said something in Italian. Immediately, the man exited the studio and crossed the street to a big black SUV parked up by the village shop, two wheels perched on the footpath so it didn’t block the narrow road.
The shop owner was nowhere in sight, and Annah felt a glimmer of relief. She liked Dorothy Green. The fifty-something widow was kind and well meaning, but she was also incurably nosy. Little happened in Hollyfield without Dot knowing, and new faces always garnered special attention.
‘You have nothing to fear,’ Luca said in that crushed-velvet voice she knew better than to trust. ‘I simply wish to talk.’
And yet he still held her wrist as if he didn’t trust her not to reach for a sharp object again. Annah put her shoulders back, pretending her skin wasn’t tingling where he touched her and her hormones weren’t leaping with awareness of those chiselled good looks and thick-lashed, espresso-coloured eyes.
Setting her jaw, she made herself recall his father’s callous treatment of her. His cold dismissal of the child who at the time had been little more than a lentil-sized embryo in her womb, but his grandchild nevertheless!
Where had Luca been then, when she wanted to talk? Conveniently absent. In the arms of another woman for all Annah knew, his memory of her already gathering dust while she came to terms with a far more permanent reminder of their night together. Of the one time in her life she’d chosen desire and spontaneity over the inclination to be sensible.
‘Talk about what?’ she said, clinging to the possibility, remote as it was, that his walking into her floral studio in the middle of the Devon countryside was just a crazy coincidence and he knew nothing of Ethan’s existence.
A flimsy hope at best, and Luca crushed it with two words.
‘Our son.’
His gaze challenged her to look him in the eye and deny it.
‘My son,’ she said, more ferociously than she’d intended. But he didn’t get to show up on her doorstep after four years and pretend he was interested in the son he hadn’t wanted. She tugged her wrist again. ‘Let me go.’
He released her, and she clasped her arms around her middle, a thousand questions hammering her brain. How and when had he found out she’d gone through with the pregnancy? Why show up now? More specifically, what did he want?
Not Ethan. Please, not Ethan.
She didn’t want her little boy anywhere near his paternal family!
By all accounts, Ethan’s grandfather was little better than a modern-day gangster. Admittedly, those accounts were based on rumour and originated from an Italian chef with a flair for dramatics whom Chloe had briefly dated in London. But Annah hadn’t needed much convincing. She’d met Franco Cavallari, and he’d terrified the living daylights out of her. She’d never met anyone more formidable or intimidating—or so devoid of compassion.
‘Annah—’
She held up a hand, closing her eyes, light-headed all of a sudden. ‘I... I just need a moment,’ she said, because the conversation they were about to have was one she’d believed would never happen. Which meant that she, the woman Chloe had dubbed the Queen of Preparedness, was woefully ill prepared.
She opened her eyes and mentally braced for the visual impact of him. Predictably, her pulse spiked at the sight of all that dark, chiselled masculinity. But at least he wasn’t touching her now, inflaming the nerves in her wrist and making her body tingle in very inappropriate places.
She did not want to feel sexually attracted to this man.
‘Are you all right?’ he said suddenly. ‘Your head. Perhaps it should be checked?’
He shifted towards her, lifting his hands, and she instinctively shrank back. Having Luca Cavallari run his fingers over her scalp would undo her completely.
‘My head’s fine,’ she said hurriedly. ‘I’m just a little...overwhelmed. I never imagined having this conversation, to be honest.’
His eyes narrowed. ‘You never imagined I would one day wish to know my son?’
Annah didn’t like how that question made her insides twist, as if she had some reason to feel guilty. It made her want to push back. ‘You haven’t met my son. What makes you so certain he’s yours?’
‘I’ve seen his birth certificate. And photos.’
Annah blinked. Photos of Ethan? How? She was alwa
ys so careful. She only used social media for business and she never posted photos of her or Ethan online.
Luca slid his hands into the pockets of his expensive-looking coat. With his dark looks, his lean, broad-shouldered physique and his stylish attire, he wouldn’t have looked out of place on a catwalk in Paris or Milan. In Hollyfield, he looked about as alien as Annah had felt the first time she and Chloe had driven into the quaint country village.
‘Your son was born at the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital exactly thirty-six weeks and five days after you and I spent a night together in London,’ he said. ‘I’m no expert on pregnancy, but I can do the math. Unless you slept with another man around the same time who looks remarkably like me, or you were already pregnant by immaculate conception when we met...’ he paused just long enough for Annah’s face to flame at his reference to how innocent she’d been ‘...I am reasonably confident without the aid of a DNA test—which I’m not ruling out, by the way—that Ethan Sinclair is not only your son but my son, as well.’
She glared at him, hating that she had no comeback to any of that. ‘What photos?’ she said instead.
He hesitated for a beat. ‘Surveillance photos.’
Annah sucked in a breath. ‘You’ve been having us watched?’ Her voice rose in horror. Did he have photos of her, too? The sense of violation made her stomach roil.
‘Not me.’
‘Then who?’ she demanded.
His jaw hardened. ‘My father.’
A chill ran up her spine. ‘Why?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said tightly.
She shook her head, confused. ‘Haven’t you asked him?’
‘No,’ he said.
‘Why not?’
‘Because he’s dead.’
CHAPTER TWO
LUCA WONDERED WHAT, if anything, it said about him that he could announce his father was dead and feel nothing but loathing for the man.
Annah’s blue eyes widened, but she didn’t offer any trite words of condolence, and her silence strengthened Luca’s suspicions that his father had done a damn sight more than place her and their son under surveillance.
At some point she and his father had met. Luca didn’t know when or why, but Franco had clearly put the fear of God in her. Why else had her reaction to seeing Luca been to draw a weapon? That the sight of him could provoke fear and panic in anyone, let alone in this woman—the mother of his child—made him feel physically ill.
It’d taken his investigator three days to locate her, during which time he’d gradually come to terms with the knowledge—or the ninety-nine percent certainty at least—that he’d fathered a son.
Travelling by private jet from Palermo to Exeter, and then by road to this deathly quiet English backwater, had given him time to mentally prepare as much as he could for something so far outside his realm of experience.
It was a luxury he had denied Annah by turning up here unannounced, so he’d expected shock and even defensiveness and guilt, given she’d raised his son without his knowledge for the last four years.
But abject fear?
Even his touch, meant only to calm and gently restrain after disarming her, had induced a wild, trapped look in her eyes. And at the first mention of their son she had turned fierce and possessive, like a tigress protecting her cub. Protecting his cub.
For some reason he’d found that inordinately sexy.
The bell over the door jingled and, just like when he’d arrived and again when his man had come and gone, the sound evoked memories of the old-fashioned ice-cream parlour he and his brother had frequented in a small fishing village near their childhood home.
As did anything relating to his brother, the memories stirred a sense of disquietude, and he cast them aside and looked towards the entrance, hoping his bodyguard had not returned. Mario’s muscle-bound physique intimidated most people, men included, and Luca had noted how Annah’s fear had escalated in response to the big man. Luca had told him to go back to the vehicle and stay there. Mario’s job was to put himself between Luca and danger, but Annah was no more a physical threat to Luca than he was to her.
However, it wasn’t Mario but a wiry, bald-headed man who entered the shop and crossed to the counter.
Annah turned to him, subtly putting distance between her and Luca. ‘Hi, Brian. I’m so sorry but I’m running behind. If you can wait I’ll have it ready in a couple of minutes.’
‘No problem, see to your customer first,’ he said, acknowledging Luca with a courteous nod.
Annah shook her head. ‘I’ll do Caroline’s now. She wants the bouquet for a client meeting at three.’ She sent Luca a stiff smile. ‘I’m sorry. Perhaps you could come back in ten minutes?’
Luca gave her a look. She would not get rid of him that easily. ‘I can wait.’
‘Great,’ said Brian. ‘I’ll just pop over to Dot’s. Back in a tick.’
The solid workbench behind Annah stretched along the wall at a right angle to the counter. Luca chose a spot at the end, leaned his hips back against the wooden edge, and crossed his arms over his chest.
Annah jammed her hands on her hips and narrowed her eyes at him.
He stared back. ‘You and I are going to have a conversation.’
‘Fine,’ she said in a tone that told him it wasn’t. She pointed to a spot behind him. ‘I need my shears.’
Luca glanced over his shoulder at the ‘weapon’ he’d wrested from her earlier. He picked up the shears and held them out, one eyebrow raised. ‘Can I trust you with these?’
She gave him a withering look and snatched them out of his hand, then set to work, her nimble fingers moving quickly as she snipped and pruned.
He looked around. The shop wasn’t large but the space was well utilised, the décor stylish and contemporary. An elegant logo stencilled on the large front window read ‘Scent Floral Boutique’. His investigator’s report had revealed that Annah co-owned this business. Luca recalled her talking that night in London about her ambition to open a floral studio with her friend.
‘Congratulations on the business,’ he said.
She paused her work and stared at him.
He added, ‘It was your goal, was it not?’
After a moment’s hesitation, she said, ‘Yes. It was.’
‘You should be proud.’ As soon as he said it he realised the words sounded patronising. It wasn’t how he’d meant them. He knew well the challenge of building a business from the ground up. He’d built a successful private equity firm in New York. It had taken five years of relentless work, but he didn’t regret a single minute. There was something deeply satisfying about earning a legitimate living—a concept his father had never embraced despite Luca’s attempts to steer him down a respectable path.
A village floristry shop and a billion-dollar investment firm were light years apart on the business spectrum, but the over-arching principles for success were the same.
And Annah wasn’t only running a business, she was raising a child.
His child.
A responsibility she shouldn’t have to shoulder alone—and wouldn’t have to from now on.
She resumed her work. Luca pulled out his phone. If he didn’t occupy himself he would stand there watching her and his mind would end up going where it shouldn’t. As it was he had noticed too much. Her exquisite bone structure; her flawless complexion; her slim yet curvaceous figure. Her eyes were still that startling shade of blue, her long hair still golden and glossy.
Five years ago, he wouldn’t have believed Annah Sinclair could grow more beautiful. But she had.
Frowning, Luca stared at his phone and concentrated on his email until Brian returned. Annah handed him the large bouquet she’d skilfully fashioned out of the flowers and greenery on her workbench and, after Brian had left, locked the door and flipped an open/closed sign on the glass to ‘Closed’.
She strode to the rear of the shop, untying and removing her red apron as she went, leaving a plain outfit of slim-fitting black trousers and a long-sleeved white top.
She hung the apron on a hook. ‘I can give you half an hour, but then I need to pick up my son.’
He put his phone in his pocket. ‘From where?’
‘Nursery.’ She turned. ‘We can talk up here,’ she said over her shoulder, and started up a flight of stairs.
Luca followed. The stairwell was narrow and the steep stairs creaked under his weight. He concentrated on where he put his feet rather than looking at Annah’s backside swaying above him. At the top she paused on a small landing, opened a door, and led him into a large room.
A rush of warmth and sunlight greeted him. He looked around. The long open-plan space incorporated lounge and dining areas and a small kitchen with a breakfast bar.
The investigator’s report had listed the same physical address for Annah’s home and business, and suddenly Luca realised he was standing in his son’s home, on a rug that Ethan had probably walked and crawled across a thousand times.
A strange sensation tugged at Luca’s gut. He surveyed the room again, this time noticing a box filled with toys next to the sofa, a blue and white plastic truck under the coffee table, and a cat—a real cat with ginger fur—curled up on an armchair. A large framed photo of Annah and Ethan hung on the wall. Mother and child both grinned into the camera lens. It was a beautiful photo.
Luca dragged his gaze from it. ‘How long have you lived here?’
‘Since before Ethan was born.’
He glanced back towards the stairs and tried to imagine tackling them with an armful of shopping bags, or a stroller and a baby or toddler in tow.
Annah closed the door. ‘I’ll put the kettle on and make some tea.’
Ah, yes. The quintessentially English answer to every problem. A cup of tea. Luca would have welcomed an espresso or even a shot of whiskey, but if the ritual of making tea settled Annah’s nerves and eased the way for a difficult conversation, he’d happily drink a gallon of the stuff.
Annah went to the kitchen, and Luca crossed to a window overlooking the back of the property. Outside the kitchen was a roof terrace with a small wrought-iron table, two chairs, and a bunch of potted plants. The terrace was accessible from both the kitchen and a set of external steps leading down to a courtyard, where a dark blue hatchback was parked. A narrow driveway snaked around the side of the building and a brick wall separated the rear of the property from dense woodland.
The Sicilian's Secret Son Page 2
