‘And how would that work, exactly?’ she said, willing her voice to stay calm. ‘We live in different countries, Luca.’
‘Sicily is three hours away by plane.’
‘Plus travel time to London, two-hour check-in, travel delays. It’s quite a journey for a young boy—and presumably you’re suggesting he do this on a regular basis?’
Luca’s expression was smooth. Unperturbed. ‘He’ll travel on my corporate jet via Exeter. As you pointed out yourself, it’s only a thirty-minute drive away.’
Of course he’d already worked out the logistics—and of course he had a private plane. She sat back. ‘He starts school later this year. What then? Do we disrupt his schedule to suit you? Children need structure. Routine.’
‘He can come to me in the holidays.’ Luca’s voice was calm, but a hard, determined glint shone in his eyes. ‘If you’re concerned about his schooling, I will arrange for him to have tutors when he’s in Sicily.’
Annah’s stomach cramped. How foolish she’d been to think she’d come prepared for this conversation. She wasn’t prepared in the slightest.
Her mind raced with a hundred questions. A hundred objections.
‘Will he even be safe in Sicily?’
He frowned. ‘Ethan will always be safe with me. I’ve told you this.’
‘Is that why you travel with a bodyguard?’
‘Mario is here as my driver.’
‘And when you’re at home? In Sicily? Is he just a driver then?’
Luca pulled in a breath, blew it out slowly. ‘Annah. I know the things you heard about my father frightened you. But he’s gone. I am in charge now. Things are different. Better.’
His voice was low and soothing, but she didn’t want to be soothed. She wanted all of this to go away. She wanted Luca to disappear as suddenly as he’d arrived. She wanted to keep her beautiful boy all to herself.
A lump formed in her throat. She couldn’t lose her little boy. He was everything to her. Everything. ‘I think I need some air,’ she choked out.
He reached a hand across the table, but she pulled her wrist back, her pulse leaping at the very thought of his strong, warm hand touching hers again. She pushed her chair back from the table.
‘Where are you going?’ he demanded.
‘Outside.’
His brow creased. ‘It’s cold outside.’
‘I don’t care.’ She shot up from the table, turned and almost collided with the waiter delivering their dessert menus. ‘Sorry,’ she mumbled, and then she fled the restaurant, descended the stairs, and slipped out through a set of French doors that she knew led to a terrace overlooking manicured gardens and a heated pool.
When she finally came to a stop, she breathed deeply, fighting the irritating sting of tears. A sense of futility swept over her. It didn’t matter how many arguments or counter-arguments she threw at Luca, he had a ready answer for everything.
And on one thing at least he was right, dammit: it was cold out here.
She hunched her shoulders, rubbed her bare arms, and considered her options. She could seek legal advice, but lawyers weren’t cheap. And even if the law supported her—which she suspected it might, because surely she wasn’t obligated to send her child overseas—Luca could still tie her up with legal proceedings for God knew how long.
And legalities aside, what about the moral dilemma? Was it right to deny Ethan that time with his father?
The back of her neck tingled, and she tensed as a presence loomed behind her. Then her coat came around her shoulders.
‘Cara.’
Luca. Still with that crushed-velvet voice that made her melt from the inside out. Annah had a childish urge to plug her fingers in her ears so she couldn’t hear him.
Big hands curled around her upper arms and gently pulled her back against a solid, muscular body. ‘Don’t make this harder than it needs to be,’ he said.
She wanted to shrug him off, but he was wonderfully warm, and the too-delicious sensation of being this close to him made her languid and weak-willed. ‘It’s too much,’ she said quietly, staring out over the illuminated gardens. ‘Too fast. I need time to get my head around all of this.’
‘I don’t have time. I need to return to Sicily. I want us to reach an understanding before I go.’ He took a deep breath, his chest expanding against her back. ‘I’ve tried to be understanding, Annah. Patient.’
She stiffened. ‘Patient? It’s been little more than twenty-four hours since you arrived!’
‘Which is twenty-four hours more than I can afford to spare,’ he said sharply. ‘I have obligations, work responsibilities in Sicily.’
‘Oh! Well!’ She spun, anger uncharacteristically getting the better of her. ‘Heaven forbid your son should keep you from your work!’ she snapped, pushing her face close to his.
A mistake, she realised two seconds before his jaw clenched and unclenched and a dangerous cocktail of anger and heat flashed like sheet lightning in his dark eyes. He growled low in his throat, and then he pulled her roughly against him, dipped his head, and covered her mouth with his.
For a second she froze, and then heat slammed through her body, wiping her brain of everything but her awareness of Luca’s powerful body flush against hers and the incredible sensation of being kissed by him again after all these years.
It was everything she remembered and more. More intense. More intimate. Hotter. So hot she could no longer feel the cold night air against her skin. Before she realised what she was doing, she rose on tiptoe and wrapped her arms around his neck, pressing her breasts against his chest and parting her lips in wanton encouragement.
He went deeper and their tongues tangled intimately—and then the sounds of multiple voices and boisterous laughter carried from the gardens below.
Their mouths jerked apart.
Shocked back to her senses, Annah pulled out of his embrace.
Luca swore in Italian and shoved his hand through his hair.
On trembling legs, Annah turned back to the view of the pool and gardens, leaning against the wrought-iron railing for support, her whole body quivering in the aftermath of their kiss.
After a long moment, Luca came and stood beside her, his hands gripping the iron railing. ‘Is this what you want for Ethan?’ he said in a low, controlled voice. ‘Two parents arguing over him?’
‘No,’ she whispered, feeling drained and utterly wretched all of a sudden. ‘It’s not.’
Silence reigned for a full minute.
‘Come to Sicily,’ Luca said.
She turned her head to look at him. ‘What?’
‘Bring Ethan for a holiday. Stay for a week, two weeks, however long you want. You can see the family estate for yourself. See that it’s safe. We’ll have more time to discuss custody arrangements. And you can meet my mother.’
His mother. The wife of Franco Cavallari.
As if he’d read her thoughts, Luca said, ‘She didn’t know about you or Ethan. She was devastated to learn what my father had done. It would mean a lot to her to meet her grandson.’
Annah pursed her lips. Emotional blackmail? Unfair. ‘When?’
‘Return with me tomorrow.’
She stared at him. ‘I can’t. Chloe and I are doing a wedding on Saturday. And Ethan and I don’t even have passports.’
‘I can expedite those. How long will you need on Saturday?’
‘We’re usually done by midday.’
‘Then we can fly in the afternoon.’
Annah’s head spun at a dizzying rate. Private jets. Expedited passports. A week in Sicily.
A little voice told her she could say no, but what then?
Luca was in her and Ethan’s lives now, and he’d made it abundantly clear he wasn’t going away. Sooner or later she’d have to deal with him—or his lawyers.
She
dragged in a breath of the cool night air and puffed it out on a single word of surrender. ‘Okay.’
CHAPTER FIVE
BY THREE-FIFTEEN P.M. on Saturday, Luca’s jet was cruising above the clouds over continental Europe, one hour and fifteen minutes into its three-hour flight from Exeter to Palermo.
He looked up from his laptop, his focus shifting from the report on his screen to Annah as she emerged from the bedroom at the rear of the aircraft and returned to the lounge area in sock-clad feet.
She wore a pale grey soft jersey top and stretchy black leggings that moulded to her long legs like a second skin. She’d probably chosen the outfit for comfort over style or sex appeal, but Luca’s body hummed with appreciation nevertheless, ratcheting up the desire that had burned like a low-grade fever in his blood ever since his self-control had slipped and he’d kissed her on the terrace at Fendalton Hall.
‘Is he asleep?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’ She dropped into the leather recliner opposite him where she’d spent the first hour of the flight either reading a magazine or entertaining Ethan in the seat next to hers. She produced a tired-looking smile. ‘He doesn’t usually need an afternoon nap, but last night he was so excited about the trip I couldn’t get him to sleep.’
He scrutinised her face. Judging from the blue shadows underscoring her eyes, she hadn’t got much sleep, either.
Guilt flickered for a moment before he ruthlessly shut it down. He knew he was pushing hard, urging things forward at a pace she was struggling to accept. He wasn’t unsympathetic to her position, but she needed to appreciate his position. He had missed the first four years of his son’s life. He wasn’t prepared to sit back and wait weeks or months for her to get comfortable with the idea of his claiming his parental rights.
Luca knew the brutal cost of not being there for the people he had a responsibility to protect.
Never again.
He closed his laptop and set it aside. Suggesting she bring Ethan to Sicily was, he’d thought, a fair and generous solution. It gave them additional face-time to discuss and agree on a shared custody arrangement, while she essentially got an all-expenses-paid, week-long vacation and he got to see more of Ethan.
Win-win.
Except they weren’t going to get anywhere fast if Annah kept her barriers up and didn’t start to trust him.
‘And you?’ he enquired. ‘How did you sleep?’
She lifted a slim shoulder. ‘I’ve never been a good sleeper.’
‘Even as a child?’ he said, realising he knew nothing at all about her childhood or family background.
She tucked her feet under her. Long suede boots had accompanied her outfit, but she’d removed them shortly after take-off. ‘Yes. But Ethan’s a good sleeper ordinarily. Once he’s out, nothing wakes him.’ A hint of curiosity entered her blue eyes. ‘I sometimes wondered if he might have inherited that from you.’
Luca cast his mind back to his early childhood. At thirty he was hardly an old-timer, but those days of boyhood innocence felt like several lifetimes ago.
‘I was an extremely sound sleeper,’ he said, the recollection surprising him. He found his lips curving into a smile. ‘My mother used to say she could put me on Mount Etna during an eruption and I still wouldn’t wake.’ As quickly as it emerged, his smile faded. That had been a different time for him and his mother. A happier time. Now they were the only ones left, and some days they barely exchanged a word. ‘It’s different now,’ he said. ‘I only ever sleep for a few hours at a time. When I lived in New York, I rarely got more than four to five hours a night.’
Her head tilted to the side. ‘What did you do there?’
‘Dabbled in stocks, backed a couple of technology start-ups that went big, then started my own private equity firm.’
Her eyebrows lifted. ‘So you’re running two companies now?’
‘No.’ Although he had tried and then realised within weeks it wasn’t feasible. Legitimising the family business, weeding out the corruption, was a gruelling full-time endeavour. ‘I’ve recently appointed a CEO to replace me in New York.’
‘Did you ever visit Sicily?’ she asked. ‘In those five years you lived in America?’
He hesitated. ‘Once.’
‘And you didn’t speak to your father then?’
‘No.’
‘Why did you go back?’
Discomfort pressed on his chest. He’d wanted to get Annah talking about herself. Instead, she’d turned the tables somehow and they were talking about him. ‘For my brother’s funeral,’ he told her.
Shock spread over her features, followed swiftly by sympathy. ‘I’m so sorry, Luca.’
‘It was three years ago,’ he said, his tone dismissive, as if his brother’s violent, totally unavoidable death was ancient history and not still a dark, festering wound on his soul.
The plane juddered briefly, rattling a glass of water on the table beside him before stabilising again.
Annah’s hands gripped her armrests so tightly, the skin over her knuckles appeared in danger of splitting.
‘It’s only turbulence,’ he reassured her.
She nodded, her grip on the chair easing. ‘I’m not used to flying.’
He frowned. He’d put her lack of a passport down to her having let an old one expire, as opposed to being a novice traveller. ‘You’ve never flown before?’
‘Only once. A long time ago.’
Her wan smile stirred an acute craving in him to see the more radiant version he knew existed. The one so incandescent it could chase the shadows from the corners of the darkest room—or the blackest soul.
He waited for her to elaborate.
She didn’t.
‘A family holiday?’ he prompted, her reticence becoming a touch irksome. Women liked to talk, didn’t they?
‘A school trip.’ She unfolded her legs, as long as a model’s but without that stick-insect look he’d never found appealing. Annah’s legs actually had definition and shape. ‘I should check on Ethan.’
‘It’s only been a few minutes,’ he pointed out.
‘I know.’ Her gaze skipped away from his. ‘But the turbulence might have woken him. It’s his first time on a plane.’
Luca stood. ‘Relax. I’ll go.’
‘No.’ She jumped up. ‘It’s all right. I—Oh!’
The plane jolted as they hit another rough pocket of air. Like before, the turbulence lasted only seconds, but the motion was more jarring this time, ending with a sharp dip and bump.
Luca kept his footing, but Annah stumbled and pitched forward—straight into his arms. Her hands landed on his chest; his went to her hips to steady her, settling over luscious curves that enticed him to pull her closer, not set her away.
He didn’t move, and neither did Annah. She stared up at him, her face scant inches from his.
His brain said let go.
His body said don’t.
His hands—as if they weren’t attached to a man who prided himself on his self-control and his ability to resist his baser urges—strengthened their hold, his thumbs finding the delicate protrusion of her hip bones and his fingers splaying until his pinkies brushed the swell of her backside.
Her pupils dilated, her gaze dropped to his mouth, and an unmistakable flush of desire stained her cheeks.
A corresponding heat blasted through Luca’s body. A visceral acknowledgement of the stunning chemistry between them. He wanted to kiss her again like he had the other night and to hell with the complications.
‘Signor Cavallari?’
A soft female voice, respectful and slightly apologetic, came from behind him. He felt Annah’s body tense and then she blinked, snatched her hands off his chest and stepped back as if he were suddenly radioactive.
Cursing inwardly, willing the heat inside him to disperse, he turned to look
at his flight attendant. ‘Yes?’
‘The pilot is anticipating more turbulence,’ she informed him. ‘He suggests everyone fasten their seat belts for the next half-hour.’
He nodded. ‘Thank you.’
Annah said, ‘I’ll get Ethan.’
‘I will,’ he told her. ‘Sit down and strap in.’
Her forehead creased. ‘Don’t give me orders, Luca. Not where it concerns Ethan. I’m his mother.’
‘And I am his father,’ he said, a surge of frustration sharpening his tone. Was this how it would always be? Her getting her hackles up over every tiny thing? Getting possessive over their son? ‘Ethan is as much my responsibility as he is yours. The sooner you come to terms with that, the easier this will be for all of us—including Ethan.’
Luca brushed past her and strode to the bedroom. His heart pounded. His blood thrummed in his veins. How did she manage to anger him and kindle his desire to kiss her at the same time? He had no answer. No logical one, at any rate.
And that irritated him even more.
* * *
The sight of Luca holding a sleepy Ethan in his strong arms made something shift in Annah’s chest.
Given that he was a bachelor who probably had little to no experience with children, she hadn’t expected him to look as comfortable as he did carrying Ethan, neither had she expected Ethan to look quite so content in Luca’s arms.
As they got closer, Ethan blinked sleepy eyes at her, and she waited for him to hold out his arms to her, but they remained looped around Luca’s neck.
She looked at them both. Two dark heads. Two sets of beautiful, dark brown eyes—one pair completely innocent and trusting, the other wiser and disconcertingly astute.
Somehow, man and boy looked right together.
Like father and son.
Inwardly, Annah sighed. It was beyond silly to feel jealous and possessive. She was Ethan’s mother and nothing was going to change that. But up until three days ago she’d been the only parent her son had ever known, and now, suddenly, Luca was encroaching on her territory. It made her want to draw a firm boundary around her and Ethan and shove Luca onto the other side of it.
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