Italian Bachelors: Unforgotten Lovers: The Change in Di Navarra's Plan / Bound by the Italian's Contract / Visconti's Forgotten Heir. Elizabeth Power
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Holly. I was thinking what a bastard this man is for leaving you so vulnerable.”
Oh, goodness. He looked fierce, angry, as if he would go to battle for her and Nicky right this moment. It made the guilt inside her that much deeper, that much thicker and harder to shake off. She could endure him better when he was arrogant and bossy. She couldn’t endure his empathy.
“I didn’t tell him,” she blurted, and Drago’s expression turned to one of surprise.
She dropped her gaze to the floor. Holy cow, she was digging herself a hole, wasn’t she? A giant hole from which she’d never escape.
“Didn’t tell him? You mean, this man has no idea he has a son?”
She nodded, her heart pounding. “I tried, b-but he wouldn’t listen. He didn’t want to know.”
Drago looked stunned, as if that thought had never occurred to him, and the quicksand under her feet shifted faster. Blindly, she turned and reached for the bottle. She couldn’t stand here another minute. Couldn’t sink deeper into the mire of lies and half-truths.
“I have to go feed Nicky.”
She started to bolt from the room, but Drago’s hand on her elbow caught her up short. “It’s not too late to make this man meet his obligations—”
“It is,” she said sharply. “It just is.”
* * *
Drago sat at his desk and thought of Holly’s face when she’d told him about the father of her baby the night before. She’d seemed so ashamed, so vulnerable. He’d wanted to pull her into his arms and tell her it was all right. Tell her she didn’t need to worry. He’d considered, briefly, finding this man and forcing him to acknowledge his child.
But Holly’s reaction told him everything he needed to know. She was scared of this man, whoever he might be. And as much as that angered him, as much as it made him want to find the bastard and thrash him for hurting her, Drago wasn’t going to press the issue.
Besides, if this man came forward, there’d be someone else in Holly’s life. Someone besides him. He wasn’t quite sure why that thought bothered him, but it did. He didn’t want to share her with another man.
Drago closed his eyes and pulled in a deep breath. No, it wasn’t that he didn’t want to share her. What an absurd thought. They’d had a hot night together, a fabulous night, but she had a baby now and he didn’t see himself getting involved with a woman who had a baby.
The idea was fraught with pitfalls. Yes, he’d certainly like to have sex with her again. He wanted to take her to his bed and see if it was as good as he remembered.
But he couldn’t. She’d shown him a vulnerability last night that had sliced into his chest and wrapped around his heart. She’d been frightened and confused—and worried. He didn’t want or need that kind of intimacy. He wanted the physical without the emotional—and Holly Craig wasn’t capable of that right now.
Drago ran both hands through his hair and turned to stare out across the city. He loved the city, loved the hustle and bustle, the sense of life that permeated the streets every hour of every day. New York City truly was the city that never slept.
But, right now, he wanted to be somewhere that slept. He wanted to be somewhere quieter, where life was more still. He wanted to take Holly and her infant to Italy.
But if he were going to get her to Italy, he had to get the passports taken care of. Drago opened an email from his secretary, who had informed him of what they would need to expedite the process. He made notes of what was required and went on to the next email.
This one contained sales figures for the quarter. Navarra Cosmetics was doing fabulously, thanks to a new skin-care line aimed at the middle-aged consumer. They had also debuted a new palette of colors for eyes, lips and cheeks that was doing quite well.
The numbers on fragrances were good. But Sky wasn’t doing quite as well as he wanted for the new signature fragrance. Other CEOs would be perfectly happy with these numbers. But he wasn’t. Because he knew they could be better.
Drago sat there a moment longer, thinking. And then he logged off his computer and informed his secretary he was leaving for the day. How could he concentrate when he was eager to revamp the Sky campaign? In order to do that, he needed passports for Holly and her child.
By the time Drago walked into his apartment, nearly half an hour later, he was no closer to understanding this strange pull Holly Craig had on him or why he was taking off in the middle of the day to do something he could have sent any number of assistants to do.
But when he strode into the living room and saw her on the floor with her baby, he got that same strange rush of warmth he’d had the first time. She looked up, her eyes wide and wounded, and his chest felt tight.
“Ciao, Holly,” he said, dropping his briefcase on a nearby table.
She smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “I didn’t expect to see you for hours,” she said.
He shrugged. “I am the boss. I make my own hours.”
She looked at her baby and smiled, only this time it was genuine. He tried not to let that bother him. “It must be nice,” she said, her voice a little higher and singsongy as she directed it at the baby.
“Indeed.”
The baby gurgled in response, his little lips spreading in a grin. Drago watched as he picked up a fuzzy toy cat and put the ear in his mouth. Drago had been around babies before, in the commune his mother had once dragged them to on some tiny island somewhere he’d tried to forget, but he’d never really had anything to do with them. The older children had been expected to take care of the babies while their parents worked in the vegetable gardens—and got high in the evenings—but Drago’s one major act of rebellion, before his mother had left the commune and tried to use him to get money from the Di Navarras again, had been to refuse to help with the babies.
Instead, he’d had to pick vegetables and hoe rows. He suppressed a shudder and folded himself into a nearby chair. Holly’s brows rose. And then she turned toward her baby and started to gather him up.
“Why don’t I take Nicky and get out of your way—”
“No. Stay.” She stiffened, and he sighed. “Please stay. I need to talk to you.”
She let the baby go and he threw the cat. Then he picked up a toy banana and started to chew on that.
“I’m all ears,” she said brightly, though her eyes were wary.
“Do you have a copy of his birth certificate?”
The color drained from her face. “Why?”
Drago felt there was something he was missing here, but he wasn’t quite sure what it could be. “For his passport. We have to take him to the passport office and apply in person, because he is a baby and it’s his first.”
She dropped her gaze. “All right,” she said quietly.
“Is his father named on the certificate?”
Her head snapped up again. There was definitely fear in those pretty blue eyes. A wave of violence washed over him. He wanted, more than anything in that moment, to make her feel safe from the bastard who’d abandoned her and her child.
“If he is, then he must approve of you taking the baby from the country,” he explained. “If not, it does not matter.”
Holly seemed to wilt as she shook her head. “No, he’s not named. He would have had to be there to sign it, and that wasn’t going to happen.”
Drago smiled to reassure her. “Good. Then you are safe. All will be well.”
“Yes, I—I suppose so.”
She turned to look at her baby, and his heart pinched. She loved the child so much. What would it have been like to