Dante Claiming His Secret Love-Child(11)

"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.





CHAPTER SIX




GABRIELLA had promised herself she would not tell Dante that her baby  was his-but that was when telling him would have meant seeking him out  after Daniel's birth, and what would she have said then?

"Hello, Dante, how have you been and, by the way, here's your son?"

Logic had kept her from something so foolish. Dante didn't want her; why would he want to know she'd had his child?

But this-this was different.

Fate, circumstance, whatever, had brought him back into her life. He had  seen her little boy, asked her a direct question. How could she lie to  him?

Now, waiting for him to react, she realized that she should have lied.

He looked as if he'd been struck dumb.

If this were an old movie, if she was Meg Ryan and he was Tom Hanks,  he'd have gone from shock to joy in a heartbeat. But this wasn't a  movie. More to the point, this was Dante Orsini, the man who lost  interest in a woman after a couple of months. She'd known his  reputation-and she'd wanted him anyway. The part of her that yearned to  be a sophisticate had said she could handle an affair like that.

Wrong. Agonizingly wrong. She had not been able to handle it, especially  when he'd cut her from his life as if she'd never been part of it. How  on earth could she have told him she'd had his child after that?

But she had told him now, only after he'd bullied her into submission.

No, she thought, watching him, no, this was not a movie. It was real life. And Dante's face said it all.

Shock. Disbelief. Horror. His color had drained away until the same  pale-blue eyes she saw in her baby's face glittered like pools of winter  ice in his.

She took a steadying breath. She wasn't feeling very well. The auction.  Ferrantes. Dante turning up and now this. Her head ached. The truth was,  everything ached. Maybe she was coming down with something or maybe she  was simply reacting to the endless, awful day. Whatever the reason, she  wanted Dante out of here. She was not up to trying to explain anything  to him or to hearing him deny that Daniel was his.

But, strange as it might seem, she could understand it.

She'd been in denial, too. Complete denial. She hadn't even admitted the  possibility she might be pregnant when she had missed her period. Her  cycle had never been regular so she hadn't thought anything about being  late. She had no morning queasiness. No tenderness in her breasts.