he viewed her in growing disbelief. ‘That is enough.’
‘No, it’s not enough, and you do not tell me when enough is enough!’ Holly fired back at him, while pointing at him with an angry finger.
‘Ranting at me is not getting us anywhere.’
‘I’m entitled to rant if I want to rant!’ Holly launched back at him an octave higher, shaking with rage and the distress she was fighting off while wondering if Vito ever lost his temper, because he was still so very controlled. ‘And I don’t want to get anywhere with you. I’m done here. I’ve told you that you’re a father and that’s why I came to see you. I saw your photo in a newspaper, incidentally...a lovely way to identify the father of your child! But if you want to think Angelo’s a scam, you’re welcome.’
‘Holly...’
Holly yanked open the door and marched down the corridor very fast because she could not wait to get out of the building. She could feel the tears building up and she didn’t want them to fall in front of an audience. She ignored Vito’s voice when he repeated her name and stabbed the lift button with frantic force.
‘Holly...come back here!’ Vito shouted without warning.
So taken aback was she by that sudden rise in volume from him that she spun round and looked at him. He was only halfway down the corridor, evidently having expected her to return at his urging, and if looks could kill she would have been lying dead at his feet. He did have a temper, though, she registered belatedly, and it made his dark eyes glitter like gold ingots and gave his lean, darkly beautiful features a hard, forbidding edge.
Horribly aware of the number of people openly staring, Holly turned back to the lift just as the doors opened. She dived in as fast as she could but not fast enough to prevent Vito from joining her.
‘You should’ve come back to my office.’
In silence, Holly contemplated his polished shoes because the tears were even closer now and stinging her eyes like angry wasps.
‘I have to look into this situation. I need your phone number and your address,’ Vito breathed in a raw undertone.
‘I wasn’t expecting you to be so offensive—funny, how you get the wrong idea about people. I really didn’t want to get pregnant, Vito, but I love my son and he is never ever going to hear me admit that because now that he’s here he’s the best thing that ever happened to me,’ she bit out shakily, hurriedly stepping out of the lift.
‘Phone number. Address,’ Vito said again, closing a hand to a slight shoulder to prevent her from walking away through the crowded concourse.
With a heavy sigh, Holly dug into her bag and produced a notebook. He handed her a gold pen. She squinted down at the pen, dimly wondering if it was real gold, and then scolded herself for that stupid thought. She printed out the requested details and ripped out the sheet to hand it back to him. ‘Look,’ she muttered uncomfortably. ‘There’s no pressure on you here. If I’m honest I don’t really want you in our lives. You’re not the sort of man I want around my son.’
And having deprived Vito of breath and speech with that damning final indictment of his character, Holly disappeared into the crowds.
WELL, YOU MADE a real screw-up of that, Vito reflected for the first time in his life. But Holly hadn’t given him the smallest preparation for what was to come, so it was scarcely surprising that everything that could go wrong had gone wrong. He didn’t react well to surprises and the delivery of the Santa hat and the holly had seemed suggestively sexual. Was it any wonder he had got the wrong idea? His hard mouth compressed while he wondered about that note she had mentioned. Had she left a note? He had looked in all the obvious places. There had been nothing on the table or the door, and what did it matter now anyway?
What really mattered was that without the smallest warning he was apparently a father...
That was a mind-blowing concept but Vito was primarily ruled by his very shrewd brain and his first call was to his lawyer, who within the hour put him into contact with a London-based specialist in family law. Once all his questions had been answered, Vito was frowning at the realisation that he didn’t really have any rights over his own son. Only marriage granted such legal rights. He didn’t consult Apollo because he knew that his friend would start talking about demanding DNA tests but he and Apollo lived very different lives and Vito was confident that if Holly had given birth to a baby eight months after that night, it could only be his baby.
He didn’t know how he felt about becoming a father, and after he had organised travel to Holly’s home town for the following day and informed her by text of his planned visit, he phoned his mother to break the news.
Concetta Zaffari’s delight at learning that she was a grandmother tumbled through her every word and then there were questions about Holly that Vito found hard to answer, and some he skipped altogether.
‘Obviously you’ll be getting married,’ Concetta trilled cheerfully, and Vito laughed that his mother should even feel the need to say that. Of course they would be getting married. No Zaffari in history had had an illegitimate child and Vito had every intention of being a better parent than his own father had proved to be, although how to go about achieving that ambition he had no very clear idea.
* * *
Holly did not respond to Vito’s text because it annoyed her. Why did he assume that she was free to drop everything to make herself and Angelo available at a time that suited him? She was working an early morning shift the next day because it was a Saturday and Pixie was taking care of Angelo for her.
As a result, when Vito arrived in his limousine, having been picked up from the helicopter ride that had brought him from London, he was taken aback to be met by Pixie and informed that his son was having a nap.
‘Where’s Holly?’ he demanded, frowning down at the diminutive blonde, whose facial expression telegraphed her antagonism towards him.
‘At work.’
‘Where?’
‘The supermarket fifty yards down the road,’ Pixie advanced reluctantly. ‘You can wait in your car. Her shift ends in an hour.’
Infuriated that Holly hadn’t thought to warn him so that he could adjust his arrival time accordingly, Vito strode down the road. He was full of righteous indignation until he walked through the busy shop and caught a glimpse of Holly wheeling a trolley bigger than she was through the aisles and pausing to restock shelves. Tough is working as a shelf-stacker and never getting enough sleep. Abruptly, he spun on his heel and strode back out of the busy shop again, shamed by the reality that the mother of his child was being forced to work so hard to survive.
Vito would have argued that he had not been spoilt rotten, but he had been born rich and with a near-genius-level IQ, and phenomenal success in almost every field was a reward he took for granted. He had never had to struggle, never had to make the best of two bad choices, never had to do anything he didn’t want to do and the sheer undeniable luxury of those realities about his life was finally sinking in on him. With uncharacteristic patience he directed his driver to take him away from the street of tiny terraced houses where Holly lived to a hotel, where he had lunch while imagining Holly going without food, which didn’t improve his appetite.
