He watched her face, saw the play of emotions across it. She was shivering, from the cool of the night or from anger. He didn’t give a damn. And if it was all he could do to keep from hauling her into his arms again and kissing her until she sighed his name and trembled not with cold or rage but with need, what did that prove except that she was a woman, an incredibly beautiful woman he’d never stopped wanting and—dammit, what did that have to do with anything?
“For the last time,” he said sharply. “Is Daniel mine?”
Perhaps it was exhaustion. Perhaps it was acceptance of the inevitable. Or perhaps, Gabriella thought, perhaps it was hearing her son’s name on the lips of the man who had planted his seed deep in her womb thirteen long months ago.
Whatever the reason, she knew it was time to stop fighting.
“Yes,” she said wearily, “he is. So what?”
Of all the night’s questions, that was the only one that mattered. And Dante knew, in that instant, his world would never be the same again.
CHAPTER SIX
GABRIELLA had promised herself she would not tell Dante that her baby was his—but that was when telling him would have meant seeking him out after Daniel’s birth, and what would she have said then?
“Hello, Dante, how have you been and, by the way, here’s your son?”
Logic had kept her from something so foolish. Dante didn’t want her; why would he want to know she’d had his child?
But this—this was different.
Fate, circumstance, whatever, had brought him back into her life. He had seen her little boy, asked her a direct question. How could she lie to him?
Now, waiting for him to react, she realized that she should have lied.
He looked as if he’d been struck dumb.
If this were an old movie, if she was Meg Ryan and he was Tom Hanks, he’d have gone from shock to joy in a heartbeat. But this wasn’t a movie. More to the point, this was Dante Orsini, the man who lost interest in a woman after a couple of months. She’d known his reputation—and she’d wanted him anyway. The part of her that yearned to be a sophisticate had said she could handle an affair like that.
Wrong. Agonizingly wrong. She had not been able to handle it, especially when he’d cut her from his life as if she’d never been part of it. How on earth could she have told him she’d had his child after that?
But she had told him now, only after he’d bullied her into submission.
No, she thought, watching him, no, this was not a movie. It was real life. And Dante’s face said it all.
Shock. Disbelief. Horror. His color had drained away until the same pale-blue eyes she saw in her baby’s face glittered like pools of winter ice in his.
She took a steadying breath. She wasn’t feeling very well. The auction. Ferrantes. Dante turning up and now this. Her head ached. The truth was, everything ached. Maybe she was coming down with something or maybe she was simply reacting to the endless, awful day. Whatever the reason, she wanted Dante out of here. She was not up to trying to explain anything to him or to hearing him deny that Daniel was his.
But, strange as it might seem, she could understand it.
She’d been in denial, too. Complete denial. She hadn’t even admitted the possibility she might be pregnant when she had missed her period. Her cycle had never been regular so she hadn’t thought anything about being late. She had no morning queasiness. No tenderness in her breasts.
And then one night, alone in her bed because Dante was away on business, it had simply hit her.
Maybe she was pregnant.
She’d thrown on some clothes, rushed to the all-night pharmacy on the next block, bought a home pregnancy test kit, took it home, peed on the little stick…
Two hours and six test kits later, she’d slumped to the cold tile bathroom floor in horror. So, yes, she could see that Dante might react with shock….
“—be mine, Gabriella?”
She blinked, looked at him. His color was back. So was his arrogance. It was in his voice, in the way he was looking at her, even in the way he held himself. Aloof, removed, apart. Once, she’d found that lord-of-the-universe attitude sexy. Not anymore. She was no longer the foolish, impressionable woman who’d fallen for the great Dante Orsini.
“Did you hear me? I said, how could the child be mine?”
She felt the throbbing in her temples increase in tempo. The cold question hurt. She would not let him know that, of course. He had hurt her enough the night he’d handed her those damnable earrings.
“The usual way,” she said with deliberate sarcasm. “Or did you not take Sex Ed 101?”
“This isn’t the least bit amusing,” he said coldly. “I used condoms. Always.”