Modern Romance February 2020 Books 5-8. Natalie Anderson
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pumped dizzyingly through her head and she quickly dropped her gaze to the floor only to find Tonino’s buffed shoes in her eyeline. He had the biggest feet of any man she’d ever met, and tingles laced her spine and spread to a far more intimate area to suddenly remember another part of his anatomy in proportion to those feet…
‘He has cerebral palsy,’ she hastily added, keeping her eyes fixed on the carpet so he wouldn’t see the flame of colour radiating from her cheeks. How could she feel such things for a man who’d just threatened her with her own child? What was wrong with her? ‘Lots of children with it have epilepsy.’
A long time passed where all he did was stare at the screen of the phone. Orla used that time to concentrate on breathing. She was exhausted. The day had been long and emotionally draining. Her feelings for Tonino were bound to be all over the place. His emotions were bound to be all over the place too. She must remember that threats made in anger were rarely carried out once tempers had cooled.
‘What is cerebral…?’
‘Palsy,’ she finished for him when he struggled to say it. ‘It’s a condition caused by brain damage that basically affects the muscles.’
He turned his head to look at her. ‘My son has brain damage?’
The flash of distress she witnessed in the dark eyes sent a pang through her heart. Her voice softened. ‘Think of it as a brain development issue. Thankfully it doesn’t seem that his mental faculties have been affected; I mean, he can speak and make himself understood, but time will tell on that part.’ Learning difficulties were common for children with cerebral palsy and something Orla was prepared for. If it turned out that Finn did indeed have them then he would have all the help and support he needed.
‘What caused it?’
‘The trauma of his birth. He was born three months early—’
A loud incessant knocking on the door interrupted their talk.
‘I’d better get that,’ she muttered. She hauled herself to her feet and forced her aching legs to take her to the door. She would not let Tonino see how badly she was struggling right then; would not give him any further ammunition to use against her.
She was not in the least surprised to find Aislin there.
Her sister didn’t even attempt to make an excuse for abandoning her own wedding reception, looking straight over Orla’s shoulder into the suite, her nose wrinkling when she caught sight of Tonino. ‘Everything okay in here?’
‘Everything’s fine,’ Orla assured her.
Aislin’s eyes narrowed as she eyeballed Tonino again before turning her attention back to her sister and saying loudly, ‘You look upset.’
Orla gave a rueful shrug. ‘This isn’t the easiest conversation I’ve ever had.’
‘I’ll bet. Shall I stay?’
The temptation to drag Aislin inside was strong. ‘Don’t be silly. Go back to your party.’
‘I saw Finn’s nurse on the dance floor. Are you not coming back down?’
‘I’m sorry, Ash, but I’m shattered.’ And that was the truth. Orla felt wiped out, physically and emotionally.
‘Okay. I’ll leave you to it, then.’ Her voice rose again. ‘I’ll keep my phone on me. Call if you need me.’
‘I will,’ Orla lied. She would rather call their mother for help than ruin Aislin’s big day more than she already had.
‘I’ll see you at breakfast?’
‘Definitely.’
‘Good.’ Then, looking over Orla’s shoulder to stare at Tonino one more time, Aislin smiled brightly and said, ‘If you harm a hair on my sister’s head, I’ll kill you. Got it?’
Orla found herself biting back a laugh of hysteria at the shock on Tonino’s face.
‘Did your sister just threaten me?’ he asked when Orla sat back down, this time on an armchair away from him. She was finding it hard enough to concentrate properly without Tonino’s scent and body heat addling her brain further.
‘Yep.’ The only downside with the armchair was that she was forced to look at him. Looking at him definitely addled her brain because it quickly became a struggle to stop herself from looking at him. To stop herself staring at him.
Her eyes yearned to stare. They wanted to soak in every perfect feature on the face she had come so close to believing she could trust with her heart.
‘Why would she do that?’
‘She’s very protective of me. She didn’t mean it. She wouldn’t actually kill you. Probably just castrate you or something.’
She couldn’t hold back the burst of laughter when Tonino reflexively crossed his legs and nor could she stop the laughter turning into tears.
This was all too much. Seeing Tonino again, remembering what they’d shared, how it had ended, his loathing of her, his refusal to listen, his threats… It had been a long, emotional roller coaster of a day and now her body was telling her enough was enough.
Tonino watched the tears fall down Orla’s beautiful face with a healthy dose of cynicism. When they’d been lovers he would never have imagined her capable of using feminine wiles to save her own skin. He’d believed her to be too genuine for those kinds of games—for any kind of game.
What would she do if he pulled her into his arms for fake comfort? Would she cling to him and produce a few more crocodile tears to soak into his shirt? Would she tilt her head and stare at him with those beguiling eyes, silently pleading with him to kiss her?
And what would he do if that course of action became reality?
The burn in his loins gave him the answer.
Every breath he’d taken in this suite had filled his lungs with Orla’s scent. He was literally breathing her in, and every atom of his body responded to it.
Furious that his attraction for this duplicitous woman still blazed with such luminescence, he jumped back to his feet and helped himself to more wine.
‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered. ‘I’m not usually a cry-baby. I’m just finding it difficult to get my head around everything.’
‘You’re finding it difficult?’ he sneered. ‘How the hell do you think I feel?’
‘I can guess.’
‘I don’t need your fake empathy.’ He took a large swallow of wine with a grimace. ‘I have discovered that I’m a father and that the mother of my child kept him a secret from me for three years and now I have to deal with threats from my oldest friend’s new wife who is also my son’s aunt. I didn’t even know you had a sister.’ And neither had he known she was Salvatore Moncada’s secret daughter. Until that day, he’d had no idea Dante’s recently discovered sister was the lover who’d run away from him.
While outwardly open about who she was, Orla had actually kept her cards very close to her chest. He’d known she’d studied for a degree in zoology—he’d never met anyone who’d studied that subject before so it had stuck in his mind—and that she’d travelled to Sicily in the downtime between ending her graduate job as a veterinary technician and starting her dream job on an Irish conservation project, but it wasn’t until she’d disappeared that he’d realised he knew nothing of importance about her.
‘Well, I didn’t know you had a fiancée so that makes us even,’ she fired back.
‘I didn’t have a fiancée. I ended it with Sophia the day I met you.’
‘You would say that.’ Orla squeezed her eyes shut and rubbed her temples. Her head was now pounding. ‘Even if I accepted that you’re telling me the truth on this…’