The Italian's Doorstep Surprise

Could Nico have fathered a child with—well, not a maid, but with his gardener’s granddaughter? Could Honora Callahan be telling the truth?

No. He would remember!

He’d never had an affair with an employee. He preferred the women he slept with to have power that matched his own. His mistresses before Lana Lee had been supermodels. Heiresses. A chemist. A makeup millionaire. They were women who wanted hot sex, who wanted to see and be seen, but who wouldn’t demand emotional intimacy he couldn’t give. For the entirety of their six-month engagement, he’d never felt emotionally close to Lana; he’d assumed she preferred it that way, too.

The idea of anyone sacrificing their own self-interest for the sake of someone else seemed like total insanity to Nico.

Like when Patrick Burke became guardian to his orphaned granddaughter thirteen years before. Nico had thought it was sheer lunacy for an elderly widower to raise an eleven-year-old child. But it didn’t affect the man’s work, so Nico had never said so. He had no right to an opinion.

But the old man sure seemed to have an opinion about his employer, coming here with a hunting rifle.

Going to the window, Nico looked past the silk curtains. In the dim light from the windows, he saw Honora talking to her grandfather some distance from the house, beneath the lightning and rain. There was another dark figure hovering nearby. What the hell? Was that his chauffeur, who’d apparently driven the murderous old gardener here to kill him, in Nico’s own Bentley?

He saw the old man waving the rifle around, seeming to point it toward the house. He couldn’t hear his words.

There was another flash of lightning, and he saw Honora’s pleading face before she turned away, trying to block her grandfather from approaching the house.

Patrick Burke seemed very sure that Nico was the father. Honora had seemed so, too. You know I came to your bed a virgin.

But he would remember sleeping with her, wouldn’t he? Yes, he’d slept with many beautiful women, and some people called him a player. But even with a bad concussion, even hallucinating from insomnia, even on sleeping pills washed down with Scotch, he’d remember—

Her long, dark hair spread across his pillow. Her emerald eyes glowing up at him as she whispered, I can’t believe this is happening... The softness of her skin as he slowly stroked down her naked body, cupping her breasts, then moving down farther still, as he lowered his mouth to taste her sweetness...

Oh, my God. Nico’s eyes went wide.

Turning abruptly from the window, he pushed open the door and went out into the dark, wind and rain.

Behind him, he heard Bauer shouting, “Sir?”

The Bentley was parked in the circular driveway, with his chauffeur standing behind it. Nico went straight to where the old man stood with Honora.

The old gardener sobered when he saw Nico. He quit waving the rifle around, even as he lifted his chin defiantly.

“You think you can just take whatever you want, Mr. Ferraro?” His voice broke. “Even seduce an innocent girl, and then toss her callously aside, when she’s pregnant with your child?”

“I didn’t know,” Nico ground out. “She never told me.”

Her eyes narrowed. “I tried.”

“Well, now that you know,” Patrick Burke said pointedly, “what are you going to do about it?”

Honora nervously placed herself between the two men, as if she were afraid of what they might do. “I don’t need him to do anything, Granddad. He made it clear he’s not interested in being a father. I can raise my baby alone.”

Not interested in being a father. It was jarring. He had a sudden flash of a memory of his own mother holding him tight when he was a boy, and they were evicted from their tiny apartment outside Rome.

Why won’t your father pay for you? Why doesn’t he want you? How does he expect me to do this on my own?

Now, Nico felt oddly suspended in time as the storm pelted him with rain and lightning flashed across the wide dark sky. In the distance, he could hear the roar of the ocean against the shore.

For six months, he’d been lost, even to himself, after the failure of a lifetime’s worth of plans. Just when ultimate triumph had been within his grasp, he’d lost his last chance at victory. His father was dead, and would never recognize Nico’s right to exist, much less claim him as his son.

Nico couldn’t inflict the same pain his father had. He could claim his own child.

If this baby was his, he had the opportunity to be better than his father ever was.

Nico could never inherit the title of prince, or the aristocratic Caracciola name. But he could sire his own dynasty. Build his own legacy. And make sure that his own children never felt as he had—rejected, adrift, alone.

“You will do something about it,” Patrick Burke told him fiercely, his whiskers shaking beneath the rain as he shook his rifle in Nico’s direction. “You’ll take responsibility for what you’ve done! Or meet the short end of this stick!”