that how you’re going to play this?’ He didn’t bother to temper the acid in his tone. ‘You’re going to pretend you don’t know anything about that child you just rescued downstairs? The child with eyes the same colour as mine?’ He took a step towards her. ‘Perhaps you’re going to pretend that you don’t know who I am either.’
She held her ground, even though she didn’t have anywhere to go, not when there was a wall behind her. ‘No, of course not.’ Her gaze didn’t flicker. ‘I know who you are, Enzo Cardinali.’
The sound of his name in her soft, husky voice made a bolt of lightning shoot straight down his spine, helplessly reminding him of other times when she’d said it.
Such as on the daybed of the villa, when he’d been deep inside her and her legs had been wrapped around his waist. Or out beside the private pool, on the sun lounger, where he’d spent a long time tasting her, his name echoing off all those tiled surfaces, drowning out the sound of the waves of the beach beyond.
She’d turned him inside out, made him think that perhaps there was more to him than the ruthless, selfish businessman he’d always accepted he was. A man more like his father than he should have been comfortable with.
That perhaps he was something else, something better.
Only to have that hope ripped away by her disappearing the next day.
He’d searched the resort for her, thinking that maybe she’d simply gone to the pool, the gym or the restaurant. But she hadn’t been in any of those places. She hadn’t been anywhere. And it hadn’t been until a good hour later that he’d come back from his search and realised that all her belongings had gone.
She’d left the island entirely.
He hadn’t chased her. It had been her choice to leave and so he’d let her go. There were plenty of other women he could find the same kind of release with; after all, it wasn’t as if he had a shortage.
He’d been wrong to think that perhaps he was a different man. Wrong to believe that she was special. He wasn’t different, she wasn’t special and he was done with her.
Except right now, with her standing in front of him—those soft red curls falling around her face and with the way that T-shirt draped reminding him of how the silky curves of her breasts had felt in his palms—done was the last thing he felt.
It made him want to snarl at the same time as it made him want to push her against the wall, pull those jeans off her, lift her up and sink into the tight wet heat that he’d never been able to forget.
‘Good.’ He kept his voice hard, trying not to let the heat creep into it. ‘Then if you know who I am you can explain to me why you didn’t tell me that I have a son.’
She was already pale; now she went the colour of ashes. But that defiant slant to her chin remained, the expression in her eyes guarded. ‘Like I said, I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
Enzo’s rage, already inflamed by his body’s betrayal, curdled into something very close to incandescence and it burned like fire in his blood, thick and hot.
He’d never been so angry in all his life, some distant part of him vaguely appalled at the intensity of his emotions—a reminder that he needed to lock it down, since his iron control was the only thing that set him apart from his power-hungry father.
But in this moment he didn’t care.
This woman, this beautiful, sexy, infuriating woman, hadn’t told him he had a son and, more, she’d kept it from him for four years.
Four. Years.
He took another step towards her, unable to help himself, the heat in his veins so hot it felt as if it was going to ignite him where he stood. ‘I see. So you are going to pretend you know nothing. How depressingly predictable of you.’
‘Simon is my son.’ Her hands had gone into fists at her sides and she didn’t move, not an inch. ‘And H-Henry’s.’ Her gaze was as cool as winter rain, but that slight stutter gave her away.
‘No.’ Enzo kept his voice honed as a steel blade. ‘He is not. Those eyes are singular to the Cardinali line. Which makes him mine.’
‘But I—’
‘How long have you known, Matilda? A year? Two?’ He took another step, forcing her back against the wall. ‘Or did you know the moment you returned to England? With my seed inside you? Come to think of it, is that why you married him? Because you were ashamed? Because you didn’t want my son to be a bastard? Did you think he would make a better father than I would?’
Fear flickered through her expression like lightning through clouds at the relentless barrage of questions, but he wasn’t sorry.
He was only inches away from her now, the heat of her body and the subtle scent of jasmine suddenly filling his senses. A familiar sweetness. He remembered how it had mixed with the musk of her arousal, making him hard almost instantly.
Dio, it was making him hard now.
He tried to control it the way he controlled all parts his life because, really, his responses seemed disproportionate. Especially considering that children had never been part of his plan, or at least not immediately. He’d wanted to find a home first before he settled down with a family.
But now he had a son. A son. A child he’d never known existed and would never have known about if he hadn’t come to this house party. If the boy hadn’t wandered into that room at that very moment.
Enzo was a king with no kingdom. His inheritance had been denied him, his birth right taken from him. His mother had walked out not long after they’d left Monte Santa Maria, taking Dante with her, leaving Enzo alone with his bitter, enraged father. A father who’d then ignored his existence. Both parents had since died and, though he didn’t mourn them, they’d taken his history with them. And, despite the fact that he still had his brother and his billion-dollar company, it wasn’t enough. It had never been enough.
But now he had a child and this child was his. A part of him in a way that nothing and no one else could ever be, and he was furious—no, he was enraged—that she’d even entertained the possibility that she could keep him from the child.
If she recognised his anger she either didn’t let it get to her or she dismissed it, because even backed up against the wall she gave him nothing but cool self-possession. ‘Simon is Henry’s. Like I told you. And that’s all there is to it.’
Oh, no, she wasn’t doing that. Not when the truth of it was so easy to spot a blind man could have seen it.
Enzo put a hand on the wall at one side of her silky red head and leaned in close so she had no choice but to stare straight at him. ‘Look at me, cara. Look at me and tell me that you don’t see your son staring back.’
Her gaze flickered as it met his and, as he watched, her pupils dilated. Her breathing had got faster and he could hear the slight hitch in it.
The air around them grew dense, heavy.
She was looking at him the way he remembered. The way she had when he’d been deep in her wet heat and her thighs had been wrapped tight around him, as if she’d been
