their hands once more.
‘And thanks for that offer,’ Dan chipped in. ‘That’s amazingly generous of you.’
‘Not at all.’ Luca brushed Dan’s thanks aside.
The couple moved on and Luca remained standing.
Bronte was looking down at her place setting, her slim shoulders rolled forward, with her teeth gnawing at her bottom lip.
‘We’re leaving,’ he clipped out, throwing some money down on the table to cover their ordered meal.
She looked up at him with a pinched look. ‘But… but people will wonder what’s—’
Luca snatched at her hand and pulled her to her feet. ‘I don’t give a flying you-know-what for what people think,’ he bit out savagely. ‘I am not going to discuss this in a public restaurant.’
Bronte stumbled out of the restaurant with him, desperately hoping Judy and Dan wouldn’t notice from their seats towards the back of the room. The tension in Luca’s hand as he held hers was almost brutal. His fingers were like savage teeth biting into hers as he pulled her along beside him, his mouth set in a hard flat line. His dark eyes were dangerously brooding, his frown equally so. Once they were outside, every step he took pounded the pavement with his fury. The storm that had been brewing earlier was now in full force, as if it had sided with Luca. The flashing lightning and booming thunder mimicked the expression on his face, the electrifying hatred in his gaze zapping her like lightning each time he looked at her.
Bronte ran her tongue over her dry lips. ‘Luca… I was trying to tell you when Dan and Judy arrived.’
His hand tightened like a vice as he swung her to face him. ‘You were trying to tell me what?’ he asked. ‘That you deliberately lied to me from the moment you saw me yesterday? You told me the child was one year old. I did the calculations and you knew I would, didn’t you? That’s why you cut a couple of months off so I wouldn’t suspect she was mine.’
Bronte hung her head. ‘I’m sorry…’
He wrenched her back along the pavement. ‘It’s a bit late for an apology, damn it. You have a hell of a lot of explaining to do. I am so angry at this moment you should be thanking God we are in a public place. But you just wait until we get back to my hotel. You had better have your excuses handy.’
Each of his words was like a blow to Bronte’s chest. She had known he wouldn’t take the news well, but to have heard it the way he did had made it so much worse. He was shocked and angry and rightly so. He had missed out on the most precious first months of his child’s life. Even though he had refused to see her after he ended their relationship, Bronte knew she’d had a responsibility to tell him, even if it had to have been in a letter addressed to his villa or house in London. He would have got it eventually. But her hurt at his rejection had made her act in a passive aggressive way. She could see it now. How she had secretly relished the fact he didn’t know about Ella. It was her little payback for the heartbreak he had caused her. It was an appalling thing to do and she was deeply ashamed.
She couldn’t give back what she had stolen from him. Each day of the fourteen months of Ella’s life was irreplaceable. Sure, she had photos documenting every little milestone, but how could that compensate for the real thing? Even if he had not wanted a part in his child’s life, he should at least have had the right to choose. She had denied him that right and now he was after revenge. She just knew it. Luca Sabbatini was not the sort of man to walk away from something like this with a shrug of his shoulders. He would want her to pay for what she had done and pay dearly.
The lift journey up to Luca’s penthouse felt to Bronte as if she was being led to the gallows. As each floor number flashed past, her heartbeat escalated. She felt sick with anguish, guilt and nerves. Her stomach was curdled with the fear he would take Ella away from her. He’d already said how much his mother longed for a grandchild. And what could be more perfect than a little girl to replace the one she had lost in babyhood? The odds were stacked against Bronte keeping custody. How could she afford to contest such a case? She earned too much to qualify for legal aid and too little to take on the Sabbatini dynasty. But she was not going to give up without a fight. She would do anything to stop him from taking her little girl away from her.
Absolutely anything.
Luca activated the swipe card and practically frogmarched Bronte into the suite. He shut the door with a bang that reverberated like a cannon boom. ‘Why the hell didn’t you tell me you were pregnant?’ he asked.
She looked at him with stricken features. ‘I tried to contact you time and time again but you refused to meet me face to face.’
Luca felt a knife jab of guilt but he pushed it aside to make room for his burgeoning anger. ‘How did it happen? You told me you were on the Pill and, in any case, I always used protection.’
‘I don’t know how it happened,’ she said. ‘I must have missed a dose or something. And then there was that time when the condom broke.’
Luca remembered that time as if it had happened yesterday. He had been so eager to see her after being away on a business trip. He had barely got the condom on in time and then it had broken. ‘When did you find out you were pregnant?’
‘A week after you told me our relationship was over.’ She bit into her lip again and another flick knife of guilt caught him off guard.
Luca took a breath but it felt as if he was breathing through barbed wire. His throat felt raw and his chest so tight it ached unbearably. He scored his hair with his fingers, not surprised to see how unsteady his hand was. He could feel the tremors of rage rolling through him. Rage and remorse, a juxtaposition of emotions that made it hard for him to think clearly.
He had a child.
A little girl.
Fourteen months old and he had not shared a second of it. He had not seen her growing in Bronte’s womb; he had not been at the birth. He knew nothing about the birth, how long the labour was, whether she had given birth naturally or by Caesarean. He didn’t know whether she had fed the child herself or given her a bottle. He knew nothing about his daughter: the sound of her voice, the feel of her baby skin, the softness of her hair or the touch of her little hands. How could he ever get that time back? How could he forgive Bronte for stealing it from him? It had already poisoned what he felt for her. He had come back with such hope at resuming their relationship. But now he felt as if he didn’t know Bronte at all. She had changed. She was a scheming little thief, and his loathing of what she had done made him want to cut her from his life all over again. But he couldn’t because of his little daughter. His heart tightened again at the thought of that little girl in the photos he had seen.
His daughter.
‘I wanted to tell you in person,’ Bronte said in a small voice. ‘But you didn’t return my calls or emails. I went to your villa in Milan but I was turned away at the door. Your housekeeper said you were with your mistress in the US.’
Luca felt an avalanche of guilt come down on him. He had made it impossible for her to contact him. He had covered his tracks so well, not even his family had been aware of where he was and what he had been doing. He had spun them the same tale: a whirlwind affair in the States. And it had worked, perhaps rather too well. ‘You could have sent a letter,’ he said, still not quite ready to take the whole blame.
‘Is that how you wanted to hear you had fathered a child?’ she asked.
