Italian Bachelors: Unforgotten Lovers: The Change in Di Navarra's Plan / Bound by the Italian's Contract / Visconti's Forgotten Heir

“Yes, and now it’s time to feed Nicky,” she said, her voice trembling more than she would have liked as she checked the bottle again. It was almost ready, but not quite. She set it back in the water with shaking fingers and then turned to lean against the marble counter. “So tell me all about your evening. Was it fun? Did you see anybody cool?”

He blinked. “Anybody cool?”

“You know. A movie star or something.”

He shrugged. “There might have been. I wasn’t paying attention.”

Holly could only shake her head. Drago was a law unto himself, a man unimpressed with such fickle things as fame. It would take a very great deal to impress him, she imagined.

“Oh, yes, I suppose these things are ever so tedious for you,” she said, with more than a little sarcasm. “Dress up in expensive finery, drink champagne, eat fancy hors d’oeuvres and hobnob with celebrities. What a life.”

“Actually,” he said, “it is tedious sometimes. Especially when the people one is with are shallow and self-absorbed.”

Holly wanted to say something about how he was shallow and self-absorbed, but she suddenly couldn’t do it. She should, but she couldn’t seem to make the words come out. Because, right now, he looked a little lost. A little bleak. She wasn’t sure why, but from the moment she’d turned around and seen him there, she’d been thinking of a lost and lonely soul.

Completely incongruous, since Drago di Navarra didn’t have a soul. She tried to call up her anger with him, but it wouldn’t surface.

She shrugged. “There are shallow people everywhere. I could tell you tales about the casino, believe me.”

His eyes were hot and sharp. “And then there are people like you.”

Her heart sped up. She swallowed the sudden lump in her throat. “What does that mean?”

He came and put his hands on her shoulders, stunning her. A shiver slid down her spine, a long slow lazy glide that left flame in its wake. Her body knew the touch of his. Craved it.

Holly felt frantic. No, no, no. It had hurt too much the last time she’d let him touch her. Not during, but after. When he’d sent her away. When she’d known she would never see him again. When he’d shattered her stupid, innocent heart into a million pieces. She hadn’t been in love with him—how could she have been in only one night?—but he’d made her feel special, wonderful, beautiful. And she’d mourned because his rejection meant she hadn’t been any of those things.

She could not endure those feelings again.

“What do you think it means?” he asked.

Holly sucked in a breath as doubt and confusion ricocheted through her head. “I think it means you’re trying to seduce me again.”

He laughed, and warmth curled deep inside her. She loved his laugh. He seemed a different man when he laughed. More open and carefree. He was too guarded, too cold otherwise. She could like him when he laughed.

“Dio, you amuse me, cara. Perhaps I was too hasty last year.”

She refused to let those words warm her or vindicate her. “Perhaps you were,” she said shakily.

His hands moved up and down her arms. Gently, sensually. She wanted to moan with everything he made her feel. “And yet here we are, with an entire evening to kill.”

His voice was heady, deep and dark, and it made her think of tangled limbs and satiny skin. Of pleasure so intense she must have surely exaggerated it in her mind. Nothing could be that good. Could it?

Holly dug her fingernails into her palms, reminding herself there was pain in his proposition. Because it hadn’t ended well the last time, and she didn’t expect it would end any better now. She could take no risks.

“I’m sorry, but it’s too late, Drago. You lost your chance to make me your sex slave. I am slave to only one man now, and he’s pint-size and ready for his bottle.”

Drago let his hands slide down her arms before he dropped them to his sides. Perversely, it stung her pride that he accepted her pronouncement so easily. As if he hadn’t really wanted her after all.

“He’s lucky to have a mother so dedicated.”

Holly’s pulse thumped. She let her gaze drop as a wave of hot shame rolled through her. “I do my best. I could probably do better.”

Drago put a finger under her chin and lifted her gaze to his. His eyes bored into hers. “What makes you say this, Holly?”

Tears sprang to life behind her eyes and she closed them briefly, forcing herself to push them down again. She would not cry. She would not show a single moment of vulnerability to this man. She had to protect herself. To do that, she had to be strong. Immovable.

She wasn’t so good at that, but she was learning. She had no room for softness anymore. Not for anyone but her son.

“I’ve worked so much,” she said, her voice hoarse. “I haven’t always been there for him. I hated leaving him with a babysitter every day. And I hated where we lived, Drago, but it was the best I could do.”

He sighed again. “Things could have been far worse, believe me. You did what you had to do.”

She didn’t like the look in his eyes just then. Bleak. Desolate. As if he knew firsthand what those worse things were.

“I did the best I could. We weren’t homeless and we had enough to eat.”

A dark look crossed his face, and her heart squeezed in her chest. She almost reached up, almost put her palm on his jaw and caressed it as she’d done once before so long ago. But he took a step backward and put distance between them again.

“And now you are doing better. Working for me will give you a fresh start, Holly. You’ll have more options.”

She let out a shaky breath. “That’s why I’m here.”

He was frowning. Holly gripped the counter behind her until her fingers ached from the effort. She suddenly wanted to go to him, slip her arms around his waist. The only thing stopping her was the stone in her hands, anchoring her.

“You should have demanded help from his father,” Drago said tightly. “He shouldn’t have let you struggle so hard.”

A shiver rolled through her then, stained her with the unmistakable brush of guilt. Oh God. “I couldn’t,” she choked out. “H-he made himself unavailable.”

Drago looked suddenly angry. “Is he married, Holly?”

She was too stunned to react. And then, before her brain had quite caught up to her reflexes, she nodded once, quickly. A voice inside her shrieked in outrage. What was she doing? Why was she lying? Why didn’t she just tell him the truth?

He would understand. He’d just said he knew she’d done her best. He would help her now, he would be a father to their child—

No. She knew none of those things. He was so intense, so powerful, and she had no idea what he would do if she told him the truth. What if he didn’t believe her? What if he threw her out again, before she could earn the first cent? She needed this money too badly to risk it. And she needed to protect her child.

Until she had the contract, that ironclad promise of money, she couldn’t risk the truth. She had to protect Nicky. He came first.

Drago’s gaze was hard and her heart turned over in her chest. It ached so much she thought she might crumple to the floor in agony.

Your fault, her inner voice said.

“I’m sorry if that disappoints you,” she told him, her voice on the edge of breaking. She shouldn’t care what he thought, but she found that she did.

His eyebrows rose. “Disappoints me?” He shook his head. “I wasn’t thinking that at all, 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 have a mother who’d loved him that way? A mother who did everything for his benefit instead of for her own?

He would never know.

“There’s nothing to worry about, Holly,” he said. “Everything will be fine.”

“Of course,” she said. But she didn’t sound reassured.

CHAPTER EIGHT

EVERYTHING WAS NOT going to be fine. Holly sat in the limo with Drago, Nicky tucked into his carrier, as they whisked their way through the streets of New York City on the way to the passport office. In her bag, she had Nicky’s birth certificate and the forms she’d filled out for their passports.

She could still see the box that had made her heart drop to her toes: parents’ names. She’d filled in only her side, because in Louisiana a father had to sign the birth certificate in order to be named. Drago wasn’t on Nicky’s birth certificate. No one was.

Still, it made her nervous. What if the passport office wanted more information? What if Drago were sitting beside her when they demanded it? How would she answer? How could she?

Holly pressed a hand to her stomach and concentrated on breathing in and out. There was still no sign of a contract, and they were on their way to get passports. It could all fall apart here. She could find herself on a plane home in just a few hours.

She would never see Drago again. That thought twisted her belly tighter than before. The scent of her fear was sharp, like cold steel against her tongue. She tried to ignore it, tried to focus on the other scents in the car. Warm leather, soft powdery baby, sensuous man. She closed her eyes and savored that last one as if it would soon be gone.

“What’s the matter, Holly?”

She whipped around to look at Drago. His sharp gaze raked her. Belatedly, she smiled, trying to cover her distress. “Nothing at all.”

One eyebrow rose in that superior manner of his. “I don’t believe you.”

She clasped her hands together in her lap. “Believe what you like, but I’m fine.”

His frown didn’t go away. “Would it help you to know that my lawyers have finished drafting your contract?”

Her heart did a slow thump against her chest. The contract. If only she had that already signed, she wouldn’t worry as much. Wrong. Of course she would. Because she’d been lying to Drago from the moment he’d walked back into her life.

And, as she knew from bitter experience, he didn’t handle deception very well.

“Oh? That’s good.”

His brows drew down. “You don’t sound very enthused. Considering how insistent you’ve been, I find this rather odd.”

Holly swallowed. “I’m very enthused,” she said with false brightness. “What do you want from me? A happy dance right here in my seat?”

“Not precisely.”

She rolled her eyes, tried to play it off. “I’m happy, Drago. Ecstatic.”

He watched her a moment more. “Fine,” he said, before dropping his gaze to his tablet once more.

Holly turned to look out the window at the traffic, her heart thrumming. She had to tell him the truth. Not right now, certainly, but soon. It was the right thing to do, no matter how much it terrified her. Once she had the contract, once it made sense to do so, she would have to find a way.

Provided it didn’t all fall apart before she got that far.

The car pulled to a stop in front of a building on Hudson Street, and Drago opened the door. When they were standing on the sidewalk, Holly holding Nicky’s carrier, she looked over at Drago, who was getting the diaper bag from the limo.

“You can come back and get us,” she said. “I’ll call when I’m done.”

He looked imposing as he straightened to his full height and gazed down at her. He was dressed in a custom suit, navy blue, with a crisp white shirt and no tie. The pale blue diaper bag with the smiling monkey on it looked completely out of place against that elegant backdrop.

And yet he held it as though he could care less that the rich and entitled CEO of one of the most important cosmetics companies in the world might look just a little ridiculous. Or a little too appealing for a tabloid photo.

Holly cast her gaze up and down the street, but nobody with a camera emerged to snap a shot. Thank goodness.

“I’m going with you,” Drago said.

“I don’t see why,” she returned. “I can handle it alone. Or you could send a lackey. Surely you have work to do.”

“I have a cell phone and a tablet, Holly. I can work, I assure you.”

She tried to swallow down her fear. It tasted like bitter acid. “I won’t run away, Drago, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

A preposterous suggestion that he’d be worried about her leaving, but it was the only thing she could think of.

“Holly, for goodness’ sake, just turn around and walk into the building. We have an appointment and you’re going to make us late.”

She glared at him a moment more, her stomach dancing with butterflies—and then she heaved a sigh. “Fine, but don’t blame me if it takes six hours and you’re bored silly. I told you not to come.”

Thankfully, it did not take six hours. But Holly’s fear refused to abate while they waited. When they were finally shown into an office and it was time to hand over the paperwork, Holly snatched the diaper bag from Drago and fished out the papers with trembling hands. Then she handed them directly to the clerk.

The clerk was a typical bureaucrat, going over everything in triplicate. At one point, the woman looked up at Drago. He was flipping through files on his tablet and didn’t seem to notice, but Holly’s heart climbed into her throat as she waited for the woman to say something.

Then the clerk met Holly’s gaze for a long moment. Finally, she seemed to give a mental shrug, and the moment was over. A short while later, they were on their way back to Drago’s apartment, the passports safely tucked away in Holly’s purse.

Holly felt a little shell-shocked over the whole thing. When they arrived at Drago’s, she took Nicky and put him down for his nap. Then she climbed into bed and lay there, staring at the ceiling, her stomach still churning with guilt and fear. It wound its way through her belly, her bones, her heart, curling and squeezing until she thought she would choke on it.

She’d overcome another obstacle, gotten one step closer to the goal. Her luck was holding, but for how much longer?

She needed to tell Drago the truth before her luck ran out, but she was caught in an infinite loop of her own making. There was no scenario in which she could envision telling him and it not exploding in her face.

Once she signed the contract, she would tell him. Once she had the guarantee that she’d have money to take care of her baby, she could admit the truth. And then, even if he threw her out again when it was over, it would be fine. Everything would be fine.

But she couldn’t quite make herself believe it.

When Holly finally emerged from her room a couple of hours later, it was because she was hungry and couldn’t stay hidden any longer. She hoped that Drago would have gone out for the evening, so she didn’t have to face him right now, but of course nothing ever went the way she hoped.

He looked up as she tiptoed into the kitchen. Her stomach slid down to the marble floor and stayed there.

“I was just looking for something to eat,” she said casually.

“There’s Chinese takeout,” he said. “It’s in the warming drawer.”

She couldn’t help but look at him in surprise. “You eat Chinese takeout?”

He shrugged. “Doesn’t everyone?”

Not billionaires, she thought. She expected they ate lofty meals in the kinds of restaurants he’d taken her to the last time she was in New York. Or meals prepared at home by their personal chefs. Which he did happen to have.

“I figured that would be too, um, basic for you.”

He laughed and a trickle of warmth stirred inside her. She loved that laugh more than she should. He was sitting at the expansive kitchen island with papers arrayed around him and an open laptop off to one side. Just a tycoon and his paperwork. Quite a different picture from the one she usually made at her worn Formica table every month, trying to make too little money stretch too far.

Chinese takeout had been a luxury. And Gabi was usually the one who’d bought it, against Holly’s protests.

Save your money, Gabi. Don’t waste it on me.

It’s not a waste. Eat.

The memory of her and Gabi perched on the sofa in front of the television, eating from containers, made her feel wistful. And lonely.

“Holly, I’m a man like any other,” Drago said. “I like lobster and champagne, I like Kobe beef, I like truffles—but I also like Chinese takeout, hotdogs from a cart and gyros sliced fresh at a street fair.”

She very much doubted he was like other men. But the idea of him eating a hot dog he’d bought from one of the carts lining the city streets fanned the warmth inside her into a glow.

“Next you’ll be telling me you like funnel cakes and deep-fried candy bars.”

“Funnel cakes, yes. Candy bars, no.”