The Alvares Bride
The stairs lead into the cosy open-plan living area, where she found him sat on one of the sagging sofas, flicking through one of her university books. Two steaming mugs of coffee were laid on the table before him. His Goliath-proportioned sidekicks were nowhere to be seen.
His eyes narrowed at her approach and he waited in silence until she had sat herself in the farthest spot from him she could find.
He jabbed a finger onto the opened page of the text book, the place where she had marked her name, as she had done since her school days. ‘Tell me about yourself, Aislin O’Reilly.’
He pronounced her name ‘Ass-lin’, which under normal circumstances would have made her laugh.
She shook her head. For some reason her tongue struggled to work around this man.
He slammed the book on the table, making her jump. ‘You claim to be my sister, so tell me about yourself. Show me your proof.’
She crossed her legs and met the intense green stare head-on. ‘I’m not your sister. My sister, Orla, is your sister. I’m here as her representative.’
His brow furrowed. She could see him trying to work out what that made them in relation to each other.
‘Orla and I have the same mother,’ she supplied. ‘You and Orla have the same father.’
Dante’s lungs loosened at the confirmation that this intruder was not of his blood. The mere sway of her hips as she’d walked down the stairs had sent his senses springing to life. Dante was not particularly fussy when it came to women. He liked them in all shapes and sizes but to think he could find someone who was possibly his own sister desirable would have been enough to drive him straight to the nearest therapist.
‘Where is the proof of this, Aislin?’
The lighting in the cottage against the darkly painted walls left much to be desired but now she sat close enough for him to see that the colour of the eyes ringing their loathing at him was grey. The black outer rim of the eyeballs contrasted starkly, making the grey appear translucent. Along with the angled tilt of her eyes, it gave the most extraordinary effect.
‘It’s Aislin,’ she corrected, pronouncing it ‘Ashling’.
‘Ashling.’ He practised it aloud. ‘Aislin… An unusual name.’
The striking eyes held his without blinking. ‘Not in Ireland it isn’t.’
He shrugged. As unusual and interesting as her name was, there were far more important things to discuss. ‘You say you have proof that…Orla? Is that her name?’
She nodded.
‘That Orla is my sister. Let me see that proof.’
She got to her feet and walked to the small kitchen area, the curve of her bottom in her tight jeans a momentary distraction. From a small bag on the counter she took out an envelope and opened it on her walk back to him.
Pulling a sheet of paper out of the envelope, she handed it to him with a curt, ‘Orla’s birth certificate.’
Dante took the sheet from her with blood roaring in his ears. Slowly, he unfolded it.
He blinked a number of times to clear the filmy fog that had developed in his eyes.
The birth certificate was dated twenty-seven years ago. On the box labelled ‘father’ were the words Salvatore Moncada.
He rubbed his temples.
This didn’t prove anything. This could be a forgery. Or, more likely, Aislin and Orla’s mother—he scanned the certificate again and found Sinead O’Reilly named as the mother—had lied.
From the envelope still in her hand, Aislin plucked out a photograph and held it out to him.
He didn’t want to look at it.
He had to look at it.
The photo was a headshot of two people, a young woman and a toddler boy.
A violent swell clenched and retracted in his stomach.
Both subjects in the photo had thick, dark-brown hair, the exact shade of Dante’s.
The woman had green eyes the exact shade of Dante’s.