She stood there between him and Leo like a defensive lioness. She and Leo didn’t need anyone, even though he had begun to realise he was different from his friends, that he didn’t have a father. She wasn’t about to put her son’s heart on the line just because this man possessed the same charm as Leo’s father. And, as for her, she would never be that foolish again.
‘He is like his father, no?’
Toni’s question as he glanced at her, then at Leo, prised open the door to her past a little bit more and she felt the barrier she’d built around her and Leo strengthening in response, keeping out the threat. Although what exactly that was she couldn’t decipher, but, whatever it was, she wasn’t about to let it near Leo.
* * *
Antonio stood watching the young boy as shock sent coldness through him, followed by hot anger. The calculations he’d just made would put the little boy around three, not that he was familiar with young children. But it wasn’t that which gnawed at him like sand grinding into a wound. His calculations brought the little boy’s birth to around nine months after that wild and passionate weekend he, as Antonio Di Marcello, had shared with Sadie, a young woman who’d newly moved to Italy and had been easy to sweep off her feet.
As the shock sank in he realised exactly what Sebastien’s challenge had been—not to mend his relationship with his estranged parents, or even to try to mend bridges with his ex-wife. It had been all about this woman, the one he’d spoken of with Sebastien after the avalanche in a rare moment of unguarded emotion.
It had been a time of bearing souls, letting out secrets, and he’d declared that Sadie had been the right woman, just at the wrong time in his life. Had Sebastien sent him here knowing Sadie worked at the garage? It was too much of a coincidence to be anything else.
It was all very clear now. His challenge wasn’t anything to do with living on two hundred euros in a cramped and basic apartment. This was about what could have been, about putting right the past—that was what he’d said in the note. Sadie Parker was his challenge, the woman he’d told Sebastien about, who had made him want different things in life.
Sebastien intended that he face the only woman who’d made him want more than the cold compromise marriage he’d entered into out of duty to his family name. But had Sebastien known of the child? Could Sadie’s little boy be a consequence of those few snatched days of passion together? Was he the next generation and Di Marcello heir his parents had longed for from his marriage? He could just imagine the contempt of his mother if she discovered he’d fathered an illegitimate child and, worse than that, the mother wasn’t Italian. He almost laughed.
‘He does not know his father.’ Sadie turned from him and pushed the roundabout again and the dark-haired little boy squealed with delight. The sound snagged at Antonio’s heart, as if someone or something clenched around it, pulling tighter and tighter.
‘That is sad.’ He injected more accent into his words in a bid to hide the rush of unfamiliar emotions which assailed him from every side. ‘A boy should have a father.’
It was exactly what he’d wanted while he was growing up. He had known his father but from a great emotional distance which eventually shut down any feelings for the man he was supposed to love and honour. As a child all he’d ever wished for was a father who cared, a man to look up to, one who’d take time out with his son. Because he hadn’t had that, he’d vowed he would never have children unless he could be the father he himself had wanted but never had, someone like the gardener he’d known as a boy, the only man to show any kindness towards him.
That gnawing hole had gone with him into his marriage and Antonio had been relaxed about his ex-wife’s refusal to sleep with him, glad he didn’t have to bring children into such a cold marriage when he doubted he could be the kind of father he wanted to be.
‘I agree,’ she said, sad resignation trembling in her voice as she turned to look back up at him, Leo happy to sit and go round and round. ‘His father, however, felt very differently about it.’
‘How old is Leo?’ The question had to be asked. He had to know.
Sadie frowned at him, but he couldn’t stand back and do nothing. If this was his child, his son and heir, then he wouldn’t be able to walk away from here without him. Challenge or no challenge.
Antonio looked again at the boy, who chose that precise moment to squeal and demand the roundabout be stopped. Instantly he leapt forward and grabbed the roundabout, stopping it dead, and found himself looking down into sad dark eyes. It was like looking in the mirror and seeing himself as a young boy.
He spoke in Italian, but the little boy’s lips trembled and he reached for his mother. Inwardly Antonio cursed his disguise, cursed the rough and ready appearance of Toni Adessi.
‘He’s not used to men,’ Sadie said, scooping him up and holding him tightly, giving Leo the opportunity to look accusingly at him.
Guilt raced through him. He didn’t need a paternity test to confirm this was his child. Just one look into the little boy’s eyes told him all he needed to know. Leo was most definitely a Di Marcello.
‘Do you choose to bring him up alone?’ Anger stabbed at him. This child was his and only now was he seeing him for the first time. Dio mio, he hadn’t even known of his existence. Who did Sadie think she was to keep something like this from him? And why?
‘His father walked out on me. That hardly fills me with any kind of wild desire to bring another man into our lives. Your charm would be better used elsewhere, Mr Adessi, because it’s wasted on me.’
* * *
Sadie stood her ground, holding Leo tightly and glaring at this man who’d opened the doors of the past she’d thought tightly sealed. All she could see was the reflection of herself in his sunglasses, which only heightened her irritation.
Why was Toni so interested in her and Leo? An uncomfortable sensation slithered down her spine.
‘That is sad—for the boy,’ he said, looking towards Leo once again, who promptly buried his face in her shoulder to avoid the unwelcome scrutiny. ‘If Leo were my child, I’d want to know all about him.’
Sadie sighed in exasperation. Why was she having this conversation with this man? Guilt. The word slithered like a serpent into her mind. Guilt because although she had tried hard to tell Antonio Di Marcello he was to be a father, it hadn’t been enough. She’d just meekly accepted his mother’s horrified denial as she’d slammed the door in her face. She should have done more, tried harder—for Leo’s sake, not hers or Antonio’s.
Pain from the day she’d gone to the grand house that was his family home still jarred her as she looked up at Toni and saw her anger bouncing back from his sunglasses, intensifying it further. ‘I was informed that a child, or I should say an illegitimate child, was not a welcome addition to the mighty family of...’
She cut the words short just in time but thought back to those early days of pregnancy, when she’d tried to get a message to Antonio through his parents, the only way of contacting him she had. They hadn’t wanted to listen to her, a woman who was intent on securing her financial future with such wild claims. They had taken great relish in informing her that their son was to be married and that they wouldn’t do anything to jeopardise such a sought-after union. The marriage of childhood sweethearts, they’d told her.
When she’d seen the photographs in the local papers, she’d known she could never try again, that she
