The Sicilian's Secret Son

By all accounts, Ethan’s grandfather was little better than a modern-day gangster. Admittedly, those accounts were based on rumour and originated from an Italian chef with a flair for dramatics whom Chloe had briefly dated in London. But Annah hadn’t needed much convincing. She’d met Franco Cavallari, and he’d terrified the living daylights out of her. She’d never met anyone more formidable or intimidating—or so devoid of compassion.

‘Annah—’

She held up a hand, closing her eyes, light-headed all of a sudden. ‘I... I just need a moment,’ she said, because the conversation they were about to have was one she’d believed would never happen. Which meant that she, the woman Chloe had dubbed the Queen of Preparedness, was woefully ill prepared.

She opened her eyes and mentally braced for the visual impact of him. Predictably, her pulse spiked at the sight of all that dark, chiselled masculinity. But at least he wasn’t touching her now, inflaming the nerves in her wrist and making her body tingle in very inappropriate places.

She did not want to feel sexually attracted to this man.

‘Are you all right?’ he said suddenly. ‘Your head. Perhaps it should be checked?’

He shifted towards her, lifting his hands, and she instinctively shrank back. Having Luca Cavallari run his fingers over her scalp would undo her completely.

‘My head’s fine,’ she said hurriedly. ‘I’m just a little...overwhelmed. I never imagined having this conversation, to be honest.’

His eyes narrowed. ‘You never imagined I would one day wish to know my son?’

Annah didn’t like how that question made her insides twist, as if she had some reason to feel guilty. It made her want to push back. ‘You haven’t met my son. What makes you so certain he’s yours?’

‘I’ve seen his birth certificate. And photos.’

Annah blinked. Photos of Ethan? How? She was always so careful. She only used social media for business and she never posted photos of her or Ethan online.

Luca slid his hands into the pockets of his expensive-looking coat. With his dark looks, his lean, broad-shouldered physique and his stylish attire, he wouldn’t have looked out of place on a catwalk in Paris or Milan. In Hollyfield, he looked about as alien as Annah had felt the first time she and Chloe had driven into the quaint country village.

‘Your son was born at the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital exactly thirty-six weeks and five days after you and I spent a night together in London,’ he said. ‘I’m no expert on pregnancy, but I can do the math. Unless you slept with another man around the same time who looks remarkably like me, or you were already pregnant by immaculate conception when we met...’ he paused just long enough for Annah’s face to flame at his reference to how innocent she’d been ‘...I am reasonably confident without the aid of a DNA test—which I’m not ruling out, by the way—that Ethan Sinclair is not only your son but my son, as well.’

She glared at him, hating that she had no comeback to any of that. ‘What photos?’ she said instead.

He hesitated for a beat. ‘Surveillance photos.’

Annah sucked in a breath. ‘You’ve been having us watched?’ Her voice rose in horror. Did he have photos of her, too? The sense of violation made her stomach roil.

‘Not me.’

‘Then who?’ she demanded.

His jaw hardened. ‘My father.’

A chill ran up her spine. ‘Why?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said tightly.

She shook her head, confused. ‘Haven’t you asked him?’

‘No,’ he said.

‘Why not?’

‘Because he’s dead.’

CHAPTER TWO

LUCA WONDERED WHAT, if anything, it said about him that he could announce his father was dead and feel nothing but loathing for the man.

Annah’s blue eyes widened, but she didn’t offer any trite words of condolence, and her silence strengthened Luca’s suspicions that his father had done a damn sight more than place her and their son under surveillance.

At some point she and his father had met. Luca didn’t know when or why, but Franco had clearly put the fear of God in her. Why else had her reaction to seeing Luca been to draw a weapon? That the sight of him could provoke fear and panic in anyone, let alone in this woman—the mother of his child—made him feel physically ill.

It’d taken his investigator three days to locate her, during which time he’d gradually come to terms with the knowledge—or the ninety-nine percent certainty at least—that he’d fathered a son.

Travelling by private jet from Palermo to Exeter, and then by road to this deathly quiet English backwater, had given him time to mentally prepare as much as he could for something so far outside his realm of experience.

It was a luxury he had denied Annah by turning up here unannounced, so he’d expected shock and even defensiveness and guilt, given she’d raised his son without his knowledge for the last four years.

But abject fear?

Even his touch, meant only to calm and gently restrain after disarming her, had induced a wild, trapped look in her eyes. And at the first mention of their son she had turned fierce and possessive, like a tigress protecting her cub. Protecting his cub.

For some reason he’d found that inordinately sexy.

The bell over the door jingled and, just like when he’d arrived and again when his man had come and gone, the sound evoked memories of the old-fashioned ice-cream parlour he and his brother had frequented in a small fishing village near their childhood home.

As did anything relating to his brother, the memories stirred a sense of disquietude, and he cast them aside and looked towards the entrance, hoping his bodyguard had not returned. Mario’s muscle-bound physique intimidated most people, men included, and Luca had noted how Annah’s fear had escalated in response to the big man. Luca had told him to go back to the vehicle and stay there. Mario’s job was to put himself between Luca and danger, but Annah was no more a physical threat to Luca than he was to her.

However, it wasn’t Mario but a wiry, bald-headed man who entered the shop and crossed to the counter.

Annah turned to him, subtly putting distance between her and Luca. ‘Hi, Brian. I’m so sorry but I’m running behind. If you can wait I’ll have it ready in a couple of minutes.’

‘No problem, see to your customer first,’ he said, acknowledging Luca with a courteous nod.

Annah shook her head. ‘I’ll do Caroline’s now. She wants the bouquet for a client meeting at three.’ She sent Luca a stiff smile. ‘I’m sorry. Perhaps you could come back in ten minutes?’

Luca gave her a look. She would not get rid of him that easily. ‘I can wait.’

‘Great,’ said Brian. ‘I’ll just pop over to Dot’s. Back in a tick.’

The solid workbench behind Annah stretched along the wall at a right angle to the counter. Luca chose a spot at the end, leaned his hips back against the wooden edge, and crossed his arms over his chest.

Annah jammed her hands on her hips and narrowed her eyes at him.

He stared back. ‘You and I are going to have a conversation.’

‘Fine,’ she said in a tone that told him it wasn’t. She pointed to a spot behind him. ‘I need my shears.’

Luca glanced over his shoulder at the ‘weapon’ he’d wrested from her earlier. He picked up the shears and held them out, one eyebrow raised. ‘Can I trust you with these?’

She gave him a withering look and snatched them out of his hand, then set to work, her nimble fingers moving quickly as she snipped and pruned.

He looked around. The shop wasn’t large but the space was well utilised, the décor stylish and contemporary. An elegant logo stencilled on the large front window read ‘Scent Floral Boutique’. His investigator’s report had revealed that Annah co-owned this business. Luca recalled her talking that night in London about her ambition to open a floral studio with her friend.

‘Congratulations on the business,’ he said.

She paused her work and stared at him.

He added, ‘It was your goal, was it not?’

After a moment’s hesitation, she said, ‘Yes. It was.’

‘You should be proud.’ As soon as he said it he realised the words sounded patronising. It wasn’t how he’d meant them. He knew well the challenge of building a business from the ground up. He’d built a successful private equity firm in New York. It had taken five years of relentless work, but he didn’t regret a single minute. There was something deeply satisfying about earning a legitimate living—a concept his father had never embraced despite Luca’s attempts to steer him down a respectable path.

A village floristry shop and a billion-dollar investment firm were light years apart on the business spectrum, but the over-arching principles for success were the same.

And Annah wasn’t only running a business, she was raising a child.

His child.

A responsibility she shouldn’t have to shoulder alone—and wouldn’t have to from now on.

She resumed her work. Luca pulled out his phone. If he didn’t occupy himself he would stand there watching her and his mind would end up going where it shouldn’t. As it was he had noticed too much. Her exquisite bone structure; her flawless complexion; her slim yet curvaceous figure. Her eyes were still that startling shade of blue, her long hair still golden and glossy.

Five years ago, he wouldn’t have believed Annah Sinclair could grow more beautiful. But she had.

Frowning, Luca stared at his phone and concentrated on his email until Brian returned. Annah handed him the large bouquet she’d skilfully fashioned out of the flowers and greenery on her workbench and, after Brian had left, locked the door and flipped an open/closed sign on the glass to ‘Closed’. She strode to the rear of the shop, untying and removing her red apron as she went, leaving a plain outfit of slim-fitting black trousers and a long-sleeved white top.

She hung the apron on a hook. ‘I can give you half an hour, but then I need to pick up my son.’

He put his phone in his pocket. ‘From where?’

‘Nursery.’ She turned. ‘We can talk up here,’ she said over her shoulder, and started up a flight of stairs.

Luca followed. The stairwell was narrow and the steep stairs creaked under his weight. He concentrated on where he put his feet rather than looking at Annah’s backside swaying above him. At the top she paused on a small landing, opened a door, and led him into a large room.

A rush of warmth and sunlight greeted him. He looked around. The long open-plan space incorporated lounge and dining areas and a small kitchen with a breakfast bar.

The investigator’s report had listed the same physical address for Annah’s home and business, and suddenly Luca realised he was standing in his son’s home, on a rug that Ethan had probably walked and crawled across a thousand times.

A strange sensation tugged at Luca’s gut. He surveyed the room again, this time noticing a box filled with toys next to the sofa, a blue and white plastic truck under the coffee table, and a cat—a real cat with ginger fur—curled up on an armchair. A large framed photo of Annah and Ethan hung on the wall. Mother and child both grinned into the camera lens. It was a beautiful photo.

Luca dragged his gaze from it. ‘How long have you lived here?’

‘Since before Ethan was born.’

He glanced back towards the stairs and tried to imagine tackling them with an armful of shopping bags, or a stroller and a baby or toddler in tow.

Annah closed the door. ‘I’ll put the kettle on and make some tea.’

Ah, yes. The quintessentially English answer to every problem. A cup of tea. Luca would have welcomed an espresso or even a shot of whiskey, but if the ritual of making tea settled Annah’s nerves and eased the way for a difficult conversation, he’d happily drink a gallon of the stuff.

Annah went to the kitchen, and Luca crossed to a window overlooking the back of the property. Outside the kitchen was a roof terrace with a small wrought-iron table, two chairs, and a bunch of potted plants. The terrace was accessible from both the kitchen and a set of external steps leading down to a courtyard, where a dark blue hatchback was parked. A narrow driveway snaked around the side of the building and a brick wall separated the rear of the property from dense woodland.

From a safety perspective, Luca was glad the upstairs flat had another route of access. But he couldn’t help surveying the concrete courtyard and the tiny terrace and comparing them to the outdoor space he and Enzo had enjoyed growing up, including landscaped gardens, citrus and olive groves, and even a vineyard.

A fierce desire rose in him for his son to experience that, too. To have the freedom to run and play and explore the land that would one day be his. Land that Luca had thought was lost to him, along with everything else associated with the Cavallari legacy, until recently. Now he had the opportunity to shape that legacy in the way he saw fit. To take what Franco Cavallari had sullied and turn it into something good. Something worth passing on to the next generation.

Hearing the electric kettle turn off, he glanced towards the kitchen. Annah stood on the other side of the breakfast bar, her back to him. He wandered over. A teapot sat on the bench, lid off, waiting to be filled.

She stood motionless.

‘Annah?’

She swung around and looked at him. ‘You could leave.’

He frowned. ‘Excuse me?’

‘You could just go,’ she said, stepping closer, eyes wide as she looked up at him, ‘and we could both pretend you were never here. You’ll never hear from us—I promise. I’ll never contact you. Never ask for money. Never ask you for anything ever.’

Anger flickered. She thought he was the kind of man who could walk away and pretend his son—his own flesh and blood—didn’t exist?

He clenched his jaw. ‘Make the tea, Annah.’

‘Luca...’ She spoke his name like a husky entreaty, and it reached inside him, evoking a memory as scorchingly vivid as if she’d lain beneath him only yesterday, driving him to the brink with her soft, seductive pleas.

Don’t stop, Luca. Please...don’t stop.

He nearly had. When her body’s tight resistance and her stifled cry of pain had given rise to a shocking realisation, Luca had frozen mid-thrust, then almost reflexively withdrawn. But it was too late by then. He couldn’t unbreach her innocence. He was deep inside her and she was clinging like a limpet, stubbornly—and sexily—refusing to let him go.

Thrusting the memory aside, Luca unbuttoned his coat, took it off, and draped it over the back of a dining chair. ‘Black,’ he said, sliding his hands into his trouser pockets. ‘No sugar. And I’ll have it strong, thanks.’

Annah blinked, and the pleading look vanished from her eyes. She finished making the tea in silence. Only once they were seated at the small dining table, steaming mugs in front of them, did she speak again. ‘When did your father die?’ she asked quietly.

‘Two months ago.’

She nodded slowly. Her hands were wrapped around her mug, and she stared into her tea for so long his patience began to unravel.

‘Are you going to tell me what happened, Annah, or will I have to drag it out of you?’

Her gaze snapped up. ‘It’s obvious what happened, isn’t it? I didn’t do what you wanted.’

He frowned. ‘I don’t know what that means.’

‘Oh, come on, Luca.’ The way she said his name this time wasn’t husky; it was hard and bitter, saturated with scepticism. ‘You might not have had the nerve to try paying me off in person, but your father made it clear he was representing your interests.’

Dread knotted Luca’s stomach. He needed the truth, but at the same time he wanted to close his ears, sensing that whatever was coming would destroy any lingering shred of the love he’d once felt for his father.

‘When?’ he said.

Annah’s eyebrows knitted. ‘I’m sorry?’

‘When did you speak to my father?’

‘Why are you asking—?’

‘Please, Annah,’ he cut in. ‘Just tell me.’

She pulled her hands away from her mug, sat back and clasped her arms around her middle. ‘Late March. In London. At the Cavallari offices.’

Luca’s lungs locked as if someone had sucker-punched him in the chest.

Annah frowned. ‘What?’

He took a moment to collect his thoughts, get the air moving in his lungs again. ‘Do you remember what I told you that night in London? About leaving for the States the next day?’

‘Yes. You’d left your job. You were moving to New York the next day.’

As much as he had wanted her that night, his conscience had forbidden him to seduce her with false promises. His flight to New York had already been booked. There had been nothing left for him in Europe. In Sicily. His father had declared him an outcast, made it brutally clear that Luca would never be welcomed back. He’d been upfront with Annah about his impending departure. One night of pleasure was all he offered. Nothing more.

He pushed his tea aside and sat forward. ‘Three days before you and I met, my father and I had a falling-out. The job I’d left was my position in the London office of Cavallari Enterprises.’ He’d vacated both his office and the company apartment on the same day, checking into a hotel and taking only his personal effects with him. He hadn’t wanted anything that was paid for with Franco Cavallari’s ill-gotten gains. ‘After I left, I had no contact whatsoever with anyone in the company, my father included.’

Annah stared at him. ‘What are you saying?’

‘My father and I never spoke again. The next time I saw him, he was lying in a casket.’ Luca paused, giving her a minute to process his words. ‘What did you mean about a pay-off? A pay-off for what?’

Annah hesitated, her eyes wide. ‘An abortion,’ she whispered.

* * *

Annah and Luca stared at each other across the table.

‘Tell me everything,’ he said, his expression grim.

She sucked in her breath, her mind grappling with the implications of what he’d told her. If it was true, everything she’d believed about him in the last five years was wrong.

‘Start at the beginning,’ he said, his tone gentling as if he realised just how deeply he’d shocked her. ‘When did you discover you were pregnant?’

‘Four weeks later.’ Her voice was not as steady as she hoped. ‘It didn’t occur to me before then that I might be pregnant. I mean...we used protection.’

Her face heated and she glanced away. She didn’t want to think about sex with Luca. Not while he was sitting at her dining table looking so handsome and compelling.

Bringing him up here had been a calculated risk. They could have gone to the cosy café at the Wilkinsons’ farm shop half a mile down the road, or even sat on a bench in the local park to talk. But they wouldn’t have had complete privacy like they had here.

And she wasn’t concerned for her safety. Despite her knee-jerk reaction downstairs, her gut told her Luca wasn’t a physical threat to her or Ethan.

‘But you weren’t on the Pill?’

‘No,’ Annah confirmed.

‘And condoms aren’t foolproof,’ he added, voicing all the same thoughts that’d run through Annah’s head in the beginning, when she’d struggled to accept she was pregnant.

‘Apparently not.’ She took another deep breath. ‘You were entitled to know and I wanted to tell you—but I had no idea how to contact you.’ That last sentence sounded faintly accusatory, and she cringed inwardly. She didn’t want to sound petulant because he hadn’t given her his number. He’d told her he was leaving the country. Annah had understood what he was offering: one night, no strings attached.

Luca brushed a hand over his face, dragging his thumb and fingers down the sides of his jaw. He was clean-shaven, but his five o’clock shadow was already growing in. Annah could hear the scrape of fine stubble under his hand. ‘I hadn’t thought about the need for contact in case there were...consequences,’ he said, his expression pained.

They were both silent.

After a moment, he said, ‘Tell me how—and why—you ended up meeting with my father.’

Annah picked up her mug and swallowed a mouthful of tea, then kept the mug in her lap, hands wrapped around it, trying to absorb the lukewarm heat from the china. ‘Does it matter now?’ she said, her chest tightening at the prospect of reliving the encounter. ‘What’s done is done. The last five years can’t be reversed.’

‘It matters,’ said Luca, the sudden obdurate angle of his jaw not unlike Ethan’s whenever he dug his little heels in about something.

Annah sighed. ‘I tried to find you on social media,’ she said, omitting to mention she’d actually searched the more popular sites before discovering she was pregnant. After their night together, forgetting about him had been difficult. Eventually, curiosity had won out, although it didn’t get her far. She knew his name but not much else, and she quickly discovered dozens of online profiles for men named Luca Cavallari. Not one of them was the dark, sexy stranger she’d spent a night with in a plush hotel room in London.

‘I’m not on social media.’

‘So I discovered.’ She put her half-drunk tea on the table. ‘I searched the Internet using your name combined with New York and then Rome, since that’s where you said you were originally from.’ But that had been a lie; Luca was Sicilian. ‘It took ages, but eventually I came across a photo of you at a gala fundraiser in Rome.’

Annah’s heart had leapt at the two-dimensional image of him, gorgeous and suave in a tuxedo, then plunged when she’d seen the glamorous woman on his arm. The photo had been two years old at the time, but her stomach had still twisted with silly jealousy. ‘The caption mentioned your family’s company. I discovered there was an office in London and called to see if someone could give me a phone number or email address for you.

‘I got the runaround, though. The receptionist said you’d left and they didn’t have forwarding details. I couldn’t believe that no one in your own family’s company was able to contact you. I kept calling back, but I just got transferred to a different person with the same story.’

It had been so frustrating—and humiliating. ‘In the end I lost my cool and did something stupid,’ she confessed. ‘I blurted out that I was pregnant with your child and suggested somebody might like to pass on the information.’ She huffed out a humourless laugh. ‘It got a reaction at least. A woman called me within an hour and invited me to go in for a meeting two days later.’

Annah looked down at her hands. ‘Until I got there, I’d thought maybe I was going to meet you,’ she said, stopping short of confessing that a part of her had fizzed with anticipation at the prospect despite the awkward circumstances. ‘But it was your father.’

She glanced at Luca. A deep groove had settled between his eyebrows, and a muscle flickered in his jaw.

‘He wasn’t very kind,’ she said, vastly understating Franco Cavallari’s demeanour. ‘He treated me like a gold digger. Wrote a cheque for ten thousand pounds and told me to go have an abortion.’ Her voice wobbled at the memory. ‘I tried to leave without taking it, but he pushed it into my bag and then had me escorted out of the building. I ripped the cheque up as soon as I got home,’ she added.

‘What else did he say?’

‘Not much.’

‘Annah.’

She sighed again. ‘He said you would have handled it yourself if you were still in the country. Then he said you wished me well and hoped this would put an end to the matter.’

Those words had cut deeper than any others. After a burly man had shown her the door, she’d hurried away on shaky legs, found a toilet in a shopping mall and promptly thrown up.

‘Did he threaten you?’

‘Not exactly—not in words. But he was...intimidating.’ And convincing. Annah had gone home believing the worst—that Luca had spurned her and his unborn child and not had the courage or decency to do it in person.