The Secret Kept from the Italian

‘Maisie, I am implying no such thing. Why do you think I want you to come to Milan? Because Ella needs you.’

Maisie leaned her head back against the chair. She knew they had to talk about Milan—that was why she was here in his hotel suite—but she felt as if she couldn’t even begin to get her head around it.

‘Antonio, how can I just move to Milan?’

‘Easily.’

‘I don’t even have a visa.’

‘That could be arranged.’

For a man like him, undoubtedly. Still her mind spun. ‘What would I do? I don’t even speak Italian.’

‘Many people speak English, and you could learn Italian. I’d be happy to provide a tutor.’

He was dealing with her concerns as soon as she’d verbalised them, but that still wasn’t enough. The whole thing was impossible. Unfathomable. And the last thing she wanted was for Antonio to brush aside her concerns, to treat them as if they weren’t important. The last thing she wanted, she acknowledged hollowly, was to feel like this man’s doormat.

But what if it’s best for your daughter?

‘I can’t,’ she said firmly. ‘I have a life here in New York.’

Antonio cocked an eyebrow. ‘Yet your only work is waitressing a few nights a week, and you’ve dropped out of school.’

Stung, she snapped, ‘That’s not my whole life. I have friends, my brother, a life. Maybe it doesn’t seem like much to you, but—’

‘I’m not saying that, Maisie. Only that perhaps you could consider a change, for the sake of our child.’

He made it all sound so reasonable, but Maisie knew it wasn’t. Of course it wasn’t. How could it be? People didn’t just move countries without knowing a soul, or having a job, simply because someone said they should.

‘I can’t afford to move. I can barely afford the rent on my apartment as it is.’

Antonio drew back, affronted. ‘Of course I would pay for all your expenses, including your accommodation.’

Now, that was the first thing that sounded tempting. Not having to worry about money for the first time in for ever? And yet, to be dependent on one person, a man she didn’t know and certainly didn’t trust. A man who didn’t seem to be very concerned with her, just her—their—daughter.

‘You’re asking a lot of me,’ she said after a moment.

‘For Ella’s sake.’

Maisie glanced down at their daughter. She’d fallen asleep, her rosebud lips slackening, her dark eyelashes fanning her plump, pink cheeks. She was beautiful, and Antonio had never even held her. Could she really be so unfair, so unreasonable, to deny him his daughter? Yet how could the alternative be to move to another country?

‘There has to be some compromise.’

‘Where? In the middle of the Atlantic?’

‘What about when she’s older...?’

‘So I’m completely absent from her early life?’

‘You could visit...’

‘I don’t want to be some sort of doting stranger, Maisie,’ Antonio snapped, a savage note entering his voice. ‘I’m her father.’

She stared at him helplessly, swamped by guilt and uncertainty. ‘Can I think about it?’ she asked at last.

‘I leave for Milan in two days.’

‘Two days! Antonio—’