the truth before his two weeks were up, he would lose his challenge. He’d let them all down and prove Sebastien right, prove they couldn’t last two weeks without their fortunes and everything that went with it. Even in the face of such a personal challenge, that scenario was unthinkable.
No. Sadie Parker would have to wait until Antonio was back in play. But for now Toni Adessi could indulge in a little flirtatious mischief. Test the water.
‘Going somewhere nice?’ he goaded and smiled smugly as she turned to look at him, a grimace of distaste on her face. His rough and ready manner certainly helped to keep in character, maintaining the disguise.
‘Yes, I am. To collect my son from the nursery.’
She had a child?
The news crashed into him. His Sadie and another man? The idea didn’t sit comfortably at all. But what right did he have to feel aggrieved when he’d ended the affair before it had even begun? He’d known all along he had no option but to make the marriage that was expected of him, the duty his family had always pressed on him. He hadn’t foreseen any problems, not when he and Eloisa had known each other since childhood, although for some reason he’d never thought of her as more than a friend. His mother and Eloisa, however, had been so close, already like mother and daughter, and he too had wanted the best for the business as well as the family name. What could go wrong, he’d thought, when he knew he didn’t want to indulge in the elusive emotion of love?
His childhood had been barren and loveless, so a marriage based on friendship for duty hadn’t seemed wrong. It had been the perfect way to avoid the dire consequences he’d seen when marriages were made out of love and then fell apart, often played out on the stage of the media, so he’d eventually agreed. He’d wanted none of that.
That agreement to make the marriage had meant that after just one weekend he’d had to set Sadie free and it appeared she’d done exactly what he’d hoped she would do—move on and find someone new. So why did it spike at him so cruelly?
He glanced down at her left hand. No ring. ‘And what is your son’s name?’
‘Leo,’ she said flatly, but still she didn’t walk away and again he wondered if she recognised him. ‘Not that it’s any of your business.’
‘His father must be very proud,’ he said, needing to know more about the man who’d taken his place in Sadie’s life, the man she’d settled down with, the one who’d been more than the passionate weekend affair they had shared.
‘I’m a single mother.’
Her words charged at him like a high-speed car. She hadn’t found the long-term happiness they’d glimpsed that weekend—just as he hadn’t when he’d married Eloisa.
Her gaze met his and he briefly forgot all about the challenge, the need to be a different man. All he could think about was how another man had left her in such a situation. He never had anything to do with a woman who had a commitment such as a child, but the need to protect Sadie, to look after her and her child was so strong it made any other thought temporarily impossible, as did the desire to give the other man a stern talking-to.
‘I’m finished here,’ he said as he wiped his grease-smeared hands on a cloth, forgetting to deepen his accent and become the brash man he’d invented that morning to complete his disguise. ‘Can I walk you somewhere?’
She looked at him and he knew he’d let the façade of brusqueness and bravado slip too low. He’d spoken as he would normally and he could almost see the questions racing across her face.
‘There’s no need,’ she said, but still she didn’t turn away. Was she tormenting him?
‘I am new to the city,’ he said, laying on the charm thickly and resuming his cover. ‘A pretty woman by my side would be a good end to the day, no?’
‘I don’t have far to go,’ she said, this time turning from him, but he wasn’t about to allow her to slip away so easily and he looked over at his manager for the go-ahead to leave, something he was completely unused to doing. Nobody ruled Antonio Di Marcello. Not any more.
‘Then I will walk with you as far as you go.’
Sadie walked out of the garage without accepting his offer and onto the bustle of the street. He tossed the cloth away and quickly followed her, eventually falling into step beside her, recalling a night when they’d walked hand in hand around the centre of Milan before returning to his hotel room for the most memorable night of his life.
‘You remind me of someone.’
Inside he froze. He was playing a dangerous game getting close to Sadie when she could discover who he was at any moment. If she did, she’d spoil everything, not only for him but for Stavros and Alejandro, who were yet to go undercover for their challenges. The temptation she presented now was even more tantalising than it had been just weeks before his marriage, but Antonio Di Marcello would have to be patient.
Sadie Parker was unfinished business. Unfinished business he fully intended to resume.
‘Someone good, no?’ He laughed as she walked briskly, hardly looking at him at all. Just when he thought he’d blown it, she stopped outside a tall, narrow townhouse, shuttered against the afternoon sun of early summer.
‘This is as far as I go. I will see you at work.’ If that didn’t tell him she didn’t want his company, nothing would.
He looked down at her lips and could taste them against his as a powerful memory of their first kiss, the one which had sealed their fate, rushed back at him. He wanted to kiss her again, to claim her as his once more, but he wasn’t Antonio Di Marcello, the man who had made love to her so wildly; he was Toni Adessi, the rough and ready mechanic she’d only just met.
Would Sadie really be interested in the kind of man he was now?
Did he really want an affair with a woman who had a child? It had been one of his main rules. Single women without any ties or commitment. He didn’t ever seek out complications with women.
‘I will look forward to it.’ He smiled at her, using the famous Antonio Di Marcello charm, and he saw her brows furrow into a frown of suspicion. Thank goodness he’d grown the beard and could hide behind his sunglasses. He was walking a line perilously close to discovery.
‘I am not looking for a man in my life, Mr Adessi,’ she said, startling him with her forthright honesty.
‘I’m not asking to marry you.’ Hell, that was the last thing he’d want, after his previous experience of the state of matrimony. ‘A bit of fun, that’s all.’
‘Single mothers don’t do fun. Now, if you’ll excuse me, my son is waiting.’
With those sharp words she turned and went inside the building, leaving him standing on the street unable to comprehend what had just happened. Antonio Di Marcello had just been turned down by exactly the type of woman he’d vowed not to become entangled with. What was the matter with him? Just because he had to live two weeks as Toni Adessi, it didn’t mean he had to abandon his real identity completely.
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.
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.