“What are you talking about?”
“You never answered the one question that matters.”
She kept her eyes on his, but her face lost a little color. “What question?”
“Gabriella. No games.” He took a step toward her; his eyes grew suddenly dark. “Is the child his?” He paused. “Or is it mine?”
His words hit her with an almost physical force. When she’d first realized she was pregnant, she’d imagined this scene endless times.
It had never ended well.
That was the reason she hadn’t fallen apart that terrible night Dante had taken her to dinner and told her he didn’t want her anymore, just seconds before she’d been about to tell him she was carrying his child.
He had not wanted her then. He did not want her now. So, why was he asking the question?
Better still, how should she answer it?
He came closer, close enough so she had to tilt her head back to look at him.
“It’s a simple question, Gabriella. Whose kid is it?”
Her heart was pounding. His voice was hard. So was his face. Hard and threatening. What did he want? If only she knew.
His hands closed on her wrists.
“Answer the question.”
Why should she tell him now? She’d gone through the worst alone. Pregnant. No longer able to model. Coming home because she had no other choice, coming home to her father’s cold derision, to the illness and death of first him and then her brother.
Gabriella tossed her head, searched and found the you’re-boring-me look she’d perfected for her stints on the runways of Paris, Milan and New York.
“Why ask when you already supplied the answer?”
His hands gripped her harder. She could sense the tightly controlled anger all but pouring off him.
“Answering a question with a question is a load of bull and you know it,” he said grimly. “One more time. Who does the kid belong to?”
“The ‘kid,’ as you so charmingly put it, belongs to me. That’s all you need to know. Now, get out!”
She gasped as he put a little twist on her wrists, lifted her to her toes. “Get out?” he said very softly, and flashed another of those thin, dangerous smiles. “Aren’t you forgetting something, baby? This isn’t your house. It’s mine.”
Her heart gave a thump so loud she was amazed he didn’t seem to hear it.
“The advogado—Senhor de Souza said I did not have to vacate for forty-eight hours.”
“You’ll vacate when I say so.” His mouth twisted. “You want those forty-eight hours? Tell me what I want to know.”
Gabriella jerked against his grasp; he slid his hands to her shoulders, cupped them hard enough so she could feel the imprint of his fingers.
“It is none of your business.”
“How old is the kid?”
“Four months. You see? I have given you an answer. Now, get—”
“Four months. And you left me a year ago.”
“I left you?” She laughed. “You left me, Dante. You…you discarded me like…like a toy you’d tired of.”
His mouth twisted. “I never thought of you as a toy.”
“‘It’s been fun, Gabriella,’” she said, in uncanny imitation of his message if not his exact words, “‘but it’s time I moved on. There are so many women out there—’”
“I never said that,” he shot back, but he could feel the color rising in his face.
“It was what you meant.”
She tossed her head; her damp curls flew about her face in wild abandon.
God, she was so beautiful!
Her robe was made of cotton. It was not fashionable. It looked old, a little worn, but she made it look regal. The thin fabric clung to her body like silk, outlining her breasts, cupping them as his hands had once had the right to do. Her nipples poked against the cotton. He remembered their shape, their size, their color.
Their taste.
Sweet. Incredibly sweet. How he had loved to lick them. Suck them. Bite gently on them while she buried her hands in his hair and sobbed his name. He’d feast on her breasts until she trembled in his arms and then he’d slide his hand down, down, down until he cupped her, felt her heat, felt her body weep with need for his.
His erection was swift and almost painful. He let go of her, turned his back, strode across the room while he fought for control, furious with himself for losing it, with her for making him lose it. Seconds passed. At last he swung toward her again.
“How long do you think it will take me to get answers, Gabriella? An hour? A day? One call to my lawyer and he’ll set the wheels in motion. I’ll know where the kid was born—”
“Stop talking about him that way! He has a name. Daniel.”
“And on his birth certificate? What’s his surname?”
“Reyes,” she said, lying, hating herself for the instant of weak sentimentality that had made her list Dante Orsini as her son’s father.
“Fine.” Dante took his mobile phone from his pocket and flipped it open.
“What are you doing?”
“Calling my attorney. You want to do this the hard way, we will. But I promise you, you’re only making me even more angry than I already am.” His lips twisted. “And that’s not what you want. I promise you it isn’t.”
He was right. She knew that. He would be a formidable enemy. Besides, what would it matter if she told him the truth? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Nothing was what she wanted from him. She had reached that decision the night he’d cast her aside.
Really, what was she protecting but her pride?
And yet…and yet he was a powerful man. A complex man. That he had returned to ask her about the baby proved it. If she admitted he was Daniel’s father, anything was possible.
“Gabriella.” His voice was soft but his eyes were ice. “What’s it going to be? Do we do this my way—or the hard way?”
He watched her face, saw the play of emotions across it. She was shivering, from the cool of the night or from anger. He didn’t give a damn. And if it was all he could do to keep from hauling her into his arms again and kissing her until she sighed his name and trembled not with cold or rage but with need, what did that prove except that she was a woman, an incredibly beautiful woman he’d never stopped wanting and—dammit, what did that have to do with anything?
“For the last time,” he said sharply. “Is Daniel mine?”
Perhaps it was exhaustion. Perhaps it was acceptance of the inevitable. Or perhaps, Gabriella thought, perhaps it was hearing her son’s name on the lips of the man who had planted his seed deep in her womb thirteen long months ago.
Whatever the reason, she knew it was time to stop fighting.
“Yes,” she said wearily, “he is. So what?”
Of all the night’s questions, that was the only one that mattered. And Dante knew, in that instant, his world would never be the same again.
GABRIELLA