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. She didn’t want to be lured into thinking about the man who had turned his back on her and his child with such cold-hearted disregard.
‘Mamma!’ Leo squealed in delight as she turned the roundabout gently for him, but his attention became fixed beyond her. Apprehension rushed over her and she turned quickly.
‘Buon giorno.’ Toni’s deep and rough voice visibly jolted her. His dark brows pulled together and even behind his sunglasses she knew he was making more assumptions about her. Was he accepting she hadn’t been telling him lies, that she did have a child and therefore he wasn’t interested any longer in flirting so outrageously with her? Perhaps he’d go now he’d seen the proof and leave her and Leo to get on with their day.
‘What are you doing here?’ she demanded hotly in English. He made her feel so confused she couldn’t keep her mind straight enough to use a foreign language she was still trying to master. The fact that she’d enrolled in an Italian course when she and her parents had relocated to Italy when she was almost eighteen had earned her nothing but praise from the man she’d foolishly lost more than her heart to. But this man wasn’t Antonio and she’d do well to remember that.
‘I missed speaking to you at work this week.’ He took a step closer, his long jeans-clad legs making him appear tall and powerful and the sleeves of his T-shirt stretched over muscled arms evoking yet more sensual memories. Hot memories, of lying in the strength of Antonio’s arms after he’d so passionately taken her, making her completely his for evermore.
She pushed the vivid images aside and chastised herself for studying this man so intently. Only once had she fallen for such charm, allowing herself to be seduced by the moment and the man, and look what had happened. A short passionate fling she would be reminded of for ever. She’d never be able to completely escape Antonio and the memories.
He’d calmly walked away, suddenly developing a conscience that he was due to marry another woman, an heiress more suited to his position. A marriage his parents wanted, he’d explained. One that would unite two families which for the last two generations had sought such an alliance in marriage. It was his duty and as the Di Marcello heir he would always do his duty. He had scorned the very idea of love, killing hers for him and destroying her dreams of a happy future with the man she’d fallen in love with so easily.
She’d been so hurt, so utterly devastated by his rejection she hadn’t at first been able to accept what her body had been trying to tell her. She hadn’t wanted to know she carried the child of a man who’d made loving him all too easy before walking away without a backward glance.
‘I was busy working,’ she said, irritated by the way this mechanic made her think of a man who had no regard or feelings for her. His harsh rejection and inability to subsequently own up to being a father rushed back at her from where she’d hidden it away for the last four years, making her heart break all over again.
‘Then I hope you will not be so busy next week,’ he said, his brows lifting suggestively behind the sunglasses he permanently favoured. In fact she hadn’t seen him without them and with that beard it was almost impossible to see his face. Not that you want to. She reminded herself sharply of her vow to never let a man hurt her again and especially not to let Leo ever know that pain of rejection.
‘I will always be too busy, Mr...?’ she declared so hotly she couldn’t recall his full name.
‘Mr Adessi,’ he put in quickly.
‘As I said, I will always be busy, either with work or with Leo.’ She looked at Leo as the roundabout began to slow, horrified that for the briefest of moments Toni Adessi had made her forget her little boy, that he’d dragged her back to the past and the passionate weekend Leo had been created.
‘He is a fine boy.’
‘He is.’ She didn’t want to discuss Leo with this man, not when he’d already made her feel so uncomfortable, so caught up in emotions that wouldn’t help her at all.
Toni looked at her and she was irritated by the fact she couldn’t read the expression in his eyes. She stood there between him and Leo like a defensive lioness. She and Leo didn’t need anyone, even though he had begun to realise he was different from his friends, that he didn’t have a father. She wasn’t about to put her son’s heart on the line just because this man possessed the same charm as Leo’s father. And, as for her, she would never be that foolish again.
‘He is like his father, no?’
Toni’s question as he glanced at her, then at Leo, prised open the door to her past a little bit more and she felt the barrier she’d built around her and Leo strengthening in response, keeping out the threat. Although what exactly that was she couldn’t decipher, but, whatever it was, she wasn’t about to let it near Leo.
* * *
Antonio stood watching the young boy as shock sent coldness through him, followed by hot anger. The calculations he’d just made would put the little boy around three, not that he was familiar with young children. But it wasn’t that which gnawed at him like sand grinding into a wound. His calculations brought the little boy’s birth to around nine months after that wild and passionate weekend he, as Antonio Di Marcello, had shared with Sadie, a young woman who’d newly moved to Italy and had been easy to sweep off her feet.
As the shock sank in he realised exactly what Sebastien’s challenge had been—not to mend his relationship with his estranged parents, or even to try to mend bridges with his ex-wife. It had been all about this woman, the one he’d spoken of with Sebastien after the avalanche in a rare moment of unguarded emotion.
It had been a time of bearing souls, letting out secrets, and he’d declared that Sadie had been the right woman, just at the wrong time in his life. Had Sebastien sent him here knowing Sadie worked at the garage? It was too much of a coincidence to be anything else.