A Castiglione. No one wanted to hang out with me, and even on the rare occasion they did, Dante made quick work of them.”
“But Santo,” she reminisced, her heart pulsing, “walked right up to my table in the cafeteria. Sat down and started chatting away as if it was the most natural thing in the world that the most popular guy in school would want to talk to me.” She sank her teeth into her lip, remembering how tongue-tied she’d been. “I was completely dazzled by him.”
“You fell in love with him,” Delilah concluded.
“It wasn’t so simple. I was promised to Franco. We—” she hesitated, searching for the right words “—became friends. We use to run together in the mornings. Talk afterward in the stands. And there was more,” she conceded. “An attraction that grew between us. Dante caught on to what was going on and my father sent a message through him. That I was not a possibility for Santo. That I never would be.”
She told Delilah how her friendship with Santo had grown into something special. How he’d been the one she’d always run to. The night her sixteenth birthday party had fallen apart at the seams when her new friend, the one she’d thought might actually become a best friend, hadn’t shown up because she’d been forbidden to. The afternoon she’d found out she’d been accepted for a glamorous exchange program to France, only to be told it posed too much of a security risk. The day she’d secured a spot on the track team only to find out her father had ensured it instead with his strong-arm techniques. Santo had always been there.
And then, there had been that night with him that had turned her life upside down. She told Delilah about Franco’s fury, and the promise she had made to him to never see Santo again.
Delilah’s sapphire gaze deepened with understanding. “Which was why your marriage to Franco was so rocky. Because of Leo.”
“Yes.”
Delilah frowned. “How did Santo take the news about him?”
“Not well.” The understatement of the year.
Delilah sighed and took a sip of her coffee. “This is a mess,” she said finally. “You know that. Santo is one of the most powerful men on the planet. Does he want his son?”
She nodded. That much was clear.
“Then I would suggest,” Delilah advised, “that you attempt to reason with him. It’s your only option. And,” she added quietly, eyes on Gia’s, “you might want to figure out how you feel about him while you’re at it. There are clearly some unresolved feelings there between you two.”
She intended to ignore the latter piece of advice completely, because Santo clearly hated her for what she’d done. She wasn’t sure about the first part, either. The Santo who had walked away from her last night had been a cold, hard stranger she couldn’t hope to know. She didn’t think reasoning with him was going to work.
But she had to try, because everything banked on her succeeding. Convincing Santo she had done the right thing.
* * *
Santo stood leaning against the railing of the terrace of his suite as a stunning pink sunset blazed its way across the sky. He’d spent the night before attempting to absorb the mind-numbing news that he had a three-year-old son. Walking for hours on the beach in an effort to work past the emotion consuming him. To figure out his next step. Which had produced a single, yet irrefutable solution to the situation he now found himself in.
He’d gone through it with his lawyer in New York this morning, his proposed solution the one his chief legal counsel deemed “the cleanest one possible.” The complex process of having Leo’s paternity corrected was another story. It was a land mine of red tape to negotiate that left him with a dark cloud in his head. Which hadn’t necessarily been lessened by his brother’s parting words that morning.
You know what I’m thinking.
Yes. And it would never be him. His father had married his mother, a Broadway dancer, when she’d become pregnant with his child. Had been so blindingly in love with her, with the thought of her, he hadn’t considered the consequences of tying himself to a woman who would never be happy. Who had never wanted to be a wife or a mother. Who had married him for his money and then proceeded to make his life miserable from that day forward.
Which was not how his relationship with Gia was going to proceed. His father might have allowed his emotion to rule him, he might have allowed emotion to rule him the first time around with Gia, but this iteration of their relationship would be based on rationality. On putting their child first.
She showed up at six-thirty sharp, exactly as he’d known she would, because he held all the cards in this unspeakably difficult situation she’d created, and he intended to use them. His plan, however, was momentarily derailed when he opened the door and found her on the threshold.
Clad in a knee-length, olive-green dress with a halter-style top, the soft drape of the material accented her perfect curves, doing particular justice to her amazing backside, which had used to make every boy in school stop and stare. Then walk the other way when they remembered who she was.
Hauling his gaze upward, he refused to allow himself to fall into that trap. He focused, instead, on Gia’s pinched face. Bare of makeup, except for a light-coloured gloss on her lips, there were shadows painted beneath her brilliant green eyes. She looked vulnerable. Apprehensive. Scared. Which normally would have tugged at his heartstrings, but not this time.
He waved her into a seat. “Would you like a drink?”
She shook her head. Perched herself on the arm of a chair instead. He moved to the bar, poured himself two fingers of Scotch, because he sorely needed it, added some ice, then turned to face her, leaning a hip against the marble.
Gia dug her teeth into her lip, eyes on his. “Santo,” she began haltingly, “I don’t think we were entirely rational, either of us, last night. It was an emotional discussion. Perhaps we can start over—discuss this situation with a fresh perspective?”
He cradled the glass between his fingers. “Actually,” he murmured, with a contemplative look, “I woke up with excellent perspective. You stole my son from me, Gia. You kept his existence a secret for three years, one you would no doubt have continued to keep had it not been for last night. So, from now on, I will be the one calling the shots and you will be the one listening.”
She swallowed hard, the delicate muscles of her throat pulling tight. “You need to be reasonable.”
“Believe me, this is reasonable after the thoughts that have been going through my head.” He inclined his head. “Who is taking care of Leo while you’re here?”
“His babysitter. I thought it better we spoke in private.”
“And during the day when you work?”
“He goes to the hotel day care.”
“Day care?” He said the words as if they were dirty, which they were to him, because the idea of his son being cared for by strangers was just that unpalatable to him.
“I work,” she pointed out. “I have a successful career, which allows me to support my son. The day care is amazing. Leo loves it. Everyone there is wonderful.”
“So
