The Sicilian's Bought Cinderella

‘His father and my father were friends. His father owned a hotel chain... I would not be surprised if it was one of his hotels that your mother stayed at when she met my father.’

And just like that it came to her why he looked so familiar and she clamped a hand over her mouth.

‘What’s wrong?’ he asked.

She swallowed and, without thinking, said, ‘He reminds me of Finn.’

‘Orla’s son?’

She nodded. ‘Orla came to Sicily six months before her accident. She wanted to meet your father but lost her nerve. That’s all she told me about her time here but a month later she discovered she was pregnant. She always refused to say who the father was and I assumed it was a work colleague or something. She always promised she would tell him after the birth... Oh, how could I have been so blind? The dates fit!’

And then, suddenly realising who she was spilling her spiralling thoughts to, grabbed Dante’s hand and pressed it to her chest to stare at him earnestly. ‘You can’t say anything. I might be completely wrong—I probably am completely wrong—so promise me you’ll keep your mouth shut. Orla would kill me if she knew I’d been speculating like this.’

He didn’t say anything.

‘Please, Dante,’ she begged. ‘Don’t say anything to Orla. Or to Tonino. My imagination’s just gone a little haywire, that’s all. I should have kept my thoughts to myself.’

Yes, she should have, Dante thought grimly. If she didn’t learn to control them better, then one day Aislin’s overactive imagination and unfiltered mouth would get her into trouble. The thought of Tonino Valente being Finn’s father was ludicrous.

But her wild speculation wasn’t the cause of the needles driving through his skin.

He’d seen the way she’d looked at Tonino and then, when she had asked about him, he’d experienced something hot and rancid in his guts he had never felt before.

It had been a feeling he suspected felt much like jealousy would feel.

Dante had never been jealous of anyone or anything in his life.

But what else accounted for the burst of relief when she’d explained why Tonino had caught her attention?

He stared at Aislin with the feeling of a man standing in quicksand.

Barely a week with her, only a couple of days as lovers, and he’d had a moment where he had wanted to rip the head off an old friend’s neck.

Her eyes were pleading with him. ‘Please, Dante, promise you won’t say anything.’

As he had no intention of meeting Orla, it was the easiest promise he would ever make. The stab of guilt he felt when making it was as ludicrous as Aislin’s speculation.

He had made no promises about meeting his father’s secret love-child or her son. He’d been non-committal at best regarding the invitation to Finn’s party, and after this day and the virulent feelings that had almost choked him at seeing his mother, the lies and deceptions of his life brought back to the forefront where his time with Aislin had calmed them, he was relieved he’d made no specific promises.

Dante never wanted to be part of a family unit again and that included one with his secret sister who, he knew, was as great a liar as their father.

He rationalised that all these heated, irrational, jealous feelings and all the needles digging into him had been dredged up by what Aislin represented: their shared sister and his father’s lies.

They were nothing to do with Aislin herself. He liked her company. His struggle to keep his hands off her was due to their time together coming with a predetermined limit heightening the effect.

And, as he thought all this, a modicum of calm settled back into him.

This was a heightened situation. That was all.

He would enjoy the time he had left with Aislin and then say goodbye to her without a second thought.

As great as she was, she was everything he didn’t want. This was a woman who had put her life on hold for three yea

rs to nurture and care for her sister and nephew during a period in which she should have been making the most of her youth and freedom. She’d done it because she loved them. For Aislin, family meant everything, where for him, family meant nothing.

His feelings for her were nothing extraordinary.

* * *