The Mediterranean Billionaire's Blackmail Bargain (19 page)

She felt weak and had to cling to the door for support. Melanie was obviously exhausted but stretched out a hand, tears glistening in her eyes. ‘Lissy, you're an aunt. You've got a beautiful baby niece called Lucia. She's tiny but strong, a little fighter. She's going to be fine.'

Alicia hugged Melanie so tight that she had to pull back for fear of hurting her. ‘Oh, Mel, I've never been so worried in all my life…'

‘We didn't bother calling because we knew you and Dante were on the way.'

Tears ran unchecked down her cheeks. Her sister seemed so different, so grown up…and so did Paolo, he looked like he'd become a man since she'd seen him last.

A shadow darkened the door. Dante. Alicia couldn't look. She barely heard Melanie telling Dante that he was an uncle, blissfully unaware of Dante's suspicious mind that would doubt the outcome until he had the results of the paternity test. The man had so many reasons to be mistrustful, but Alicia couldn't forgive him, not yet. Not when she knew he was going to put them through this final test.

She focused on Melanie and barely noticed Paolo leave the room to talk to his brother.

 

When Paolo came out into the corridor Dante was struck initially by how much more mature he seemed. Paolo stood in front of him, tall and proud and distant, and, for the first time, Dante regretted that he had been the one to put that distance there. Ever since his experience with Sonia he'd protected Paolo, dreading the day he too would be taken in. And he'd thought that, despite his best efforts, he had, but now…

‘I'd like you to see something, Dante.'

He nodded and followed his brother down the corridor but then suddenly Paolo stopped in his tracks and looked at him.

‘You don't even know how I met Melanie, do you?' Paolo answered himself with a sharp laugh. ‘Of course not. You don't know that it wasn't even at work. We actually met at a fund-raiser for your charity…do you remember? Late last year when you were in South America for a few weeks and you asked me to be your envoy. She was there, Dante, because she does charity work in her spare time with a local orphanage that we subsidise. And do you know why?'

Dante could feel himself going pale, a sick feeling spreading outwards from his chest. He couldn't keep pretending to himself any more that it wasn't true.

But Paolo continued, oblivious. ‘Because Melanie grew up in an orphanage too, Dante. With Alicia. Their mother left them, just like ours did.' His young mouth twisted and Dante hated to see the cynicism in his eyes. ‘No doubt you don't believe that, though, probably think it's too convenient—'

‘Paolo, stop.' His brother's words were too painfully reminiscent.

Paolo closed his mouth.

‘I do. I do believe you. Alicia told me herself.'
I just didn't want to believe her…

Paolo looked at him for a long moment and then kept walking until they got to a window. Just inside the glass were incubators and Paolo pointed to the nearest one. Dante saw a tiny olive-skinned baby with a head of thick dark hair. She wriggled and stretched and yawned, tiny hands opening and closing. And then he saw the name tag: Lucia D'Aquanni. The name of their mother.

He could feel a surge of such emotion rip upwards from his feet that he swayed and had to put a hand on the glass to steady himself. The only way he could deal with it and stay standing was to push it down. Deep.

Paolo faced him. ‘Dante, you're my brother, I love you. I too went through what you did but it's not your job to keep protecting me.' His brother's eyes flashed. ‘If you really want me to go ahead with the paternity test I will, but know this, it will only be for you and I will
never
look at it. I do not need proof that this is my baby. I
know,
and I love Melanie. We will be getting married.
No matter what.
'

Dante felt as if he were trying to climb up an incredibly steep and slippy slope. He put a heavy hand on Paolo's shoulder. ‘I don't want you to do the test. And I'm sorry for ever asking you and putting you through this.'

His eyes asked his brother to forgive him and Paolo did, without question, straight away. Because he had been there too and he understood.

A
LICIA'S BACK TENSED
when she sensed the brothers coming back into the room. She glanced up quickly and the bleak look on Dante's face made her blood run cold. She avoided Melanie's eye and looked at her hands.

Dante came to the end of the bed and Alicia could hear the breath he took. When he spoke his voice was clipped. ‘Melanie, please accept my congratulations on your baby. You and Paolo have my best wishes and I am truly sorry for any hurt I may have caused.'

Alicia sensed his eyes settle on her for a moment, like a flash of sun passing through the parting clouds, but she kept looking resolutely down at her hands.

Her sister spoke with quiet dignity. Alicia saw Paolo take her hand. ‘Mr D'Aquanni, thank you. You have no need to apologise. I know what…' She stopped for a second. ‘It doesn't matter what I know. We're all fine, Paolo and I are together and our baby is healthy; that's all that matters.'

Nobody moved for a long moment and then Alicia felt compelled against her will to look up. Her eyes clashed with Dante's dark, intense gaze and she couldn't look away. She started shaking her head even before the words came out. ‘Dante I'm not—'

‘Alicia, please, come with me now.' His voice sounded strained.

Alicia looked from one set of speculative eyes to the other. They didn't need to hear this—this was between her and Dante. She remembered his look just now after seeing the baby and it had hardened and firmed her resolve.

Before walking out of the clinic, though, she went and looked in on her niece for a long emotional moment. Dante watched her from a distance; he didn't trust himself to go back and look at that tiny baby again.

 

Outside the clinic Alicia felt a curious calm settle over her. Nothing could disguise the fact that seeing the baby—
seeing his baby niece—
had had little or no impact on Dante. And that meant that Alicia had to face facts. She couldn't go on like this. It would kill her.

She turned to face him as he was about to open the car door for her. His easy action angered her. Did he really think she was going to meekly jump into the car, pretend that the last twenty-four hours hadn't happened?

When Alicia didn't move Dante looked at her sharply. ‘What is it?'

Something in her expression made ice settle around his heart—the ice that had lodged there when he'd seen baby Lucia. Paolo and Melanie's happiness had been almost too much to bear. It was so alien to him, that image…He needed to get back to terra firma. Away from here. With Alicia. He would take her back with him; they would sort things out, go on from there.

‘I'm not going with you.'

Her voice cut through his thoughts. ‘What?' He frowned and then an impatient look crossed his face. ‘Of course you are. I have to be back in Rome tonight. Come on, get in, it's freezing.'

Alicia was oblivious to the cold weather, the leaden skies.

She shook her head. ‘No, I'm not going back. This is it, Dante. The end.'

His hand fell from the car door. ‘Alicia, come on. We can talk about whatever is wrong in the car.'

Whatever is wrong? Where would they start?
This had nothing to do with Paolo and Melanie any more. This was
them.
The fact that Dante had been wrong all along was laughably beside the point.

She shook her head and backed away slightly, arms around her belly, her eyes huge.

A feeling moved through him, panic mixed with relief. ‘If you want to stay for a few days, that's fine. I can send the plane back to get you when you're ready…' his mouth quirked tiredly ‘…or you can come economy if you insist, I know how you feel—'

‘No!' She had to stop him, had to make him see. ‘You don't understand. I mean I'm not coming back—
at all.
I want you to go now. I want to stay here. I know we'll have to see each other again, at the wedding or…or whatever…' already a knife was piercing her heart at that thought ‘…but that's it, Dante. This affair is over.'

A fierce elemental wave of possessiveness moved through him and he stepped forward. ‘No, it's not. You don't say when—
I
do.'

‘That's just the problem,' Alicia said sadly. ‘You will, one of these days, and I won't be able to bear it.'

He stopped advancing, exactly as she'd known and feared he would. She knew there was only one way to make Dante walk away—the only solution—because he was stubborn and determined and if he thought he could persuade her…she might still be too weak to resist.

She tipped up her chin in that defiant way that had become so endearing to him but Dante wasn't aware of the subliminal message. He was battling a cave man instinct to grab Alicia and pull her into the car. And yet something was keeping him from moving—she had said she wouldn't be able to
bear it.

Against his will, he had to ask, ‘What do you mean?'

Alicia took a deep breath. ‘What I mean, Dante…is that I've been stupid enough to fall in love with you.' Her heart stopped for a brief, hopelessly hopeful, second. But when she saw the way his face leached of colour, the vaguely horror struck expression, she hardened her heart. This pain eclipsed anything she jad experienced before, but somehow she stayed standing.

‘You can't have,' he breathed, his mind seizing in shock. ‘I never asked you to fall in love with me.'

Alicia would have smiled wryly if she'd had the wherewithal. ‘You can't make someone fall in love with you, you can't ask someone to fall in love with you…it's uncontrollable.' She didn't know how she stood in the car park on that cold day and said the following words with such calm.

‘The heart wants what the heart wants…and my heart wants you, Dante. But I want it all, not just a temporary arrangement. I want the works. I want to be married, to have children…to know the joy that Melanie and Paolo know…I want to grow old with you. I want the full package…and I know you don't want that; it's glaringly obvious.'

Something cynical lit Dante's eyes at that moment, as if he'd seized on something in her words, and Alicia reacted with unchecked fury. Her arms dropped, she pointed a trembling finger at him. ‘Oh, no, you don't, Dante D'Aquanni. Don't you dare reduce what I've said to a cynical justification. I couldn't care less if you were the king of Italy or that street kid grown up and waiting tables in Naples and you know it. So don't you dare try that.' She was shaking with emotion.

His mouth opened and shut. She had caught him—pricelessly. With deadly accuracy. He felt removed from the situation. She was standing there, saying these words and he couldn't
feel
anything. Like when he'd watched Lucia only moments before. As if a granite block was weighing him down inside. Yet again someone was asking him to believe, not to be cynical…and the pain of the last time when he
had
believed was still too memorable. Like a default mode, he went inwards. Self-protection.

He stepped backwards to the car and said with a clipped finality that tore what was left of Alicia's heart to shreds, ‘You seem to have it all figured out.'

Alicia nodded. An aching sob built inside her. Dante was remote and calm and controlled. He didn't have a heart. He'd lost it so long ago that now it was irredeemable.

‘Can I give you a lift somewhere?'

Just like that, he was already moving on. Alicia couldn't stop a half hysterical gurgle of laughter breaking from her lips, and then a wave of weariness came over her. She shook her head. ‘No. Just go, Dante. Go home.'

With barely a backward glance he got into the back of the car. Within seconds the door had shut and it was pulling away out of the car park, leaving her standing there, alone…and contemplating the advantages of very possibly fainting in such close proximity to a clinic.

 

The mornings were the worst, when she would wake up and reach for Dante, only to find an empty, cold space. And then she would remember. One morning she'd groaned with the pain it had been so acute, and curled up into a ball. And she couldn't help but go over every last bit of that fight they'd had in Milan; she could see now how fantastically coincidental her own admission that they had shared a similar past must have seemed, coming so close on the heels of his story.

She knew instinctively that he'd believed her though when she'd mentioned records and the orphanage because that would have appealed to the logical side of him that would want proof. And, with his apology to Paolo and Melanie, she knew he'd finally accepted the full truth. How could he have looked at that tiny baby—so like Paolo—and not?

But, despite all that, it was useless to obsess over words. He would never let someone into his heart because it was too late. He was full of demons and contradictions.

That week, Alicia had stayed in a hostel near the clinic and in the mornings would rise and wash and go to visit Mel and Paolo. Even though it was obvious that they wondered what had happened, they never asked about her pale face or where Dante was. And then she would go back to the hostel in the afternoons and cry. Non stop. For being so stupid as to fall for a man as damaged as Dante.

At the weekend she returned to the apartment in Oxford to pack up and move out. On Sunday morning she lay in bed and contemplated the cracks and peeling paint of the ceiling. Melanie had asked her to move into the London house with them. But that was Dante's house; there was no way she could do that. She'd look for somewhere nearby and she would have to start looking for work. The door buzzer sounded and Alicia dragged herself out of bed. She felt about a hundred years old and she knew it would be old Mrs Smith from next door, wondering if she could get her some milk from the corner shop because she always called at the same time every day when they were home. She pulled on faded jeans and a sweatshirt.

Alicia pulled the door back, pasting a fake smile on her face. ‘Good morning, Mrs Smith.'

The old woman smiled at Alicia. ‘I'm so sorry to bother you, pet; it's my hip, in this weather…'

Alicia let her carry on as she pulled on shoes and a coat. ‘It's no problem.'
Believe me, you're doing me a favour; I could stay in bed for the rest of my life and never leave…

As she came back into the little lane that led up to their doors, Alicia was looking at the paper she'd bought, unaware of the men standing at her doorway. She only noticed them when she looked up for a split second to see where she was going. She only saw one man, even though somewhere she had registered others too.

The milk fell from suddenly nerveless hands, breaking open and splashing all over the ground and her shoes. The paper followed. Shock and pain slammed into her and she finally moved for sanctuary, to her door, pushing past, willing herself not to be aware of his presence. ‘No…
no,
leave me alone, Dante. Just leave me be.'

She couldn't get the key in the lock because her hand was shaking too much. He plucked it from her hand and turned her to face him. He looked awful. He looked grey; deep lines marked his face, his eyes were bloodshot. She hadn't really taken his appearance in at first, too stunned. All antipathy flew out of the window. She reacted on pure instinct, almost reaching out a hand.

‘Dante…my God, what is it, you look—'

‘About as bad as you, I'd say.' His voice was hoarse.

She knew she did look bad, after a week of incessant crying over this man who didn't even deserve it. Pain flooded back. She rediscovered her backbone. ‘If you've come here just to insult me—'

‘I haven't.
Dio—
' he ran a hand through his hair, which seemed to have grown longer in just a week ‘—isn't it obvious?'

She was tight-lipped, barely holding on to some control. ‘Not to me it's not.'

He stood back a little and, perversely, Alicia wanted to grab him and hit him and kiss him all at the same time. He looked to the two men who were beside him and Alicia blanched slightly. And then she recognized them. It was the reporter and photographer from that first night at Dante's villa on Lake Como—the local paparazzi. They were looking dazed, out of place, as if they'd just been beamed from another planet.

Déjà vu made her dizzy. She looked from them to him with what she knew must be a stupid look on her face. ‘Why are they here?'

Dante looked grim. ‘I brought them with me to bear witness.' His mouth twisted. ‘Flew them here on my plane, which is an extravagance you'll just have to forgive me.'

Alicia's mouth opened and closed. And she watched, struck dumb, as Dante knelt down on two knees before her, in a puddle of milk.

‘Alicia, I was a fool. A stupid, blind idiot. I walked away from you and told myself I didn't need you, didn't want you,
didn't love you…
'

Alicia was feeling light-headed. Still they didn't touch. He was looking up at her and she couldn't move.