“I’d like to see you try.”
“No!” Hana pushed anxiously between them, separating them before either could throw the first punch. She looked at them pleadingly. “No, please—don’t!”
The two men glared at each other. Antonio itched to shove the other man aside. He was shocked by his own rage. He’d never felt so possessive about any woman before.
But Hana was different. And Antonio suddenly knew, with stunning clarity, that he’d never let Ren Tanaka—or any other man on earth—have her.
Because Hana Everly was his.
CHAPTER THREE
HOW HAD THINGS spiraled so far out of control, so fast?
“Stop it! Both of you!” Hana cried. “This isn’t helping anything!”
“It would help if I punched his smug face,” Ren muttered in Japanese.
Glancing swiftly at Antonio, she saw that even though he didn’t speak the language, he’d understood Ren’s meaning perfectly. He narrowed his dark eyes.
The last few hours had been exhausting. Going from that ghastly scene with Antonio on the sidewalk to coming here to talk to Ren had been a classic case of frying pan to fire. She’d never forget the look on Ren’s face when she’d told him she was pregnant by her boss.
“I knew it,” Ren had breathed, then his eyes had flashed fire. “I’m going to kill him.”
It hadn’t been easy to talk him out of immediately going to find Antonio and start a fight.
It was almost funny. Hana had come here looking for comfort. But instead, she’d spent the last few hours trying to make Ren feel better.
“Are you sure?” he’d kept asking incredulously. “Are you really sure you’re pregnant?”
To shut him up, she’d finally let him take her to the hotel’s on-call doctor, who had an office down the street. They’d just barely returned from the appointment, where Hana had learned what she already knew: she was two and a half months pregnant.
But she’d heard the baby’s heartbeat for the first time, which had been wondrous to her. And bittersweet. She’d kept thinking of her baby’s father, and thinking Antonio should have been there, then remembering with fresh pain how he’d rejected them both.
Ren didn’t exactly offer much solace. All the way back from the clinic, Ren had demanded over and over, “And you told Delacruz? But he abandoned you? He denied being the father? Then he fired you?”
None of it was very comforting.
Just a few minutes earlier, as they returned to his family’s small hotel where he was manager, Ren had growled again that he was going to go look for Delacruz and make him regret treating her so badly. To distract him, Hana had asked for a glass of water, and a quiet place to sit down and catch her breath. He’d immediately become solicitous and led her to the darkened, empty bar while he went to fetch her water.
Then, like some apparition of a demon brought by the speaking of his name, Antonio himself had appeared in the doorway.
Now, the two men were bristling like full-grown stags ready to clash at each other with sharp, murderous antlers.
“Stay out of this, Tanaka.” Then Antonio turned to her, and his voice became gentle. “Can we go somewhere to talk, Hana?”
“What more could you possibly say to me?” she said, at the same time Ren snarled, “She doesn’t want to talk to you!”
“Please,” Antonio said, looking only at her. She took a deep breath.
“Fine.” She put a restraining hand on her friend’s sleeve. “It’s all right. I’ll talk to him.”
Ren’s face was a glower. “He doesn’t deserve it.”
Hana gave a rueful smile. “He’s my baby’s father. I have to hear him out.” She turned to Antonio. “Here?”
Antonio shook his head. He started to reach his hand toward her, then abruptly stopped himself. Turning away without touching her, he said gruffly, “Follow me.”
Outside the hotel, the sky had turned blue and the sun was shining, in the bright changeability of early April.