Sicilian's Christmas Bride Read online

  A man with Dante’s resources would prove she was lying in the blink of an eye.

  “It’s a simple question, Taylor. Is the child yours?”

  In the end, there was only one possible response. She gave it on a forced exhalation of breath.

  “Yes. She’s mine.”

  She steadied herself for what would come next. Anger that she hadn’t told him he’d made her pregnant? A demand to claim that which was his? Or perhaps, by some miracle, a thawing of his ice-clad heart at the realization he had a daughter.

  Later, she’d weep bitter tears at the memory of those possibilities and how reasonable they’d seemed.

  “So, that’s the reason you left me. Because you were pregnant.”

  She nodded and searched his face for some hint of what he was thinking.

  “Answer the question! Was your pregnancy the reason you ran away?”

  “I didn’t run away.”

  His mouth thinned. “No. Of course you didn’t.”

  “I’m sure you think I should have told you, but—”

  “You were quite right, keeping the information to yourself,” he said coldly. “However you imagined I’d react, the reality would have been worse.”

  Tears blurred her eyes. “Yes,” she said. “I know that now.”

  Dante caught her by the shoulders, his hands as hard as his eyes.

  “I made myself clear from the start.”

  She couldn’t help it. The tears she’d tried to control trembled on her lashes, then fell. She pulled free of his hands, went to the sink and made a pretense of straightening things that didn’t need straightening.

  “I know. That’s why I didn’t—”

  “You were my mistress.”

  That dried her tears in a hurry. “I was never that.”

  “Don’t mince words, damn it!” He came up behind her and swung her toward him. “You belonged to me.”

  “This jacket belongs to you,” she said, shrugging it from her shoulders so it dropped to the floor. “And that vehicle in the driveway.” Tally thumped her fist against her chest. “I am not property. I never belonged to you.”

  “No.” His smile was as thin as a rapier. “As it turns out, you didn’t.” His grasp on her tightened. “I knew things had changed between us. I just didn’t know the reason.”

  “I left you. Final answer.”

  “I thought it was that our relationship was growing old.”

  Amazing, that such cruel words could wound after all this time, but she’d sooner have died than let him know it.

  “You’re right. It was. It had. That’s why—”

  “Now I find out it wasn’t that at all.” He caught her face, lifted it to him so that their eyes met. “It was this,” he said, jerking his chin toward the next room, where the baby lay sleeping. “You had a secret and you were so intent on keeping it from me that you kept yourself from me, too.”

  “Maybe you’re not as thick-headed as you seem,” Tally countered, trying for sarcasm and failing, if the twist of his lips was any indication.

  “I could kill you,” he said softly.

  As if to prove it, one cool hand circled her throat. His touch was light, but she felt its warning pressure.

  “Let go of me, Dante.”

  “There’s not a court in the land that would convict me.”

  “This is America. Not Sicily.” Tally put her hand over his. “Damn you, do you think I planned to get pregnant?”

  He stared at her for a long minute. Then he dropped his hand to his side.

  “No,” he said. “I suppose not.”

  He strode away from her, his back rigid, and paced her kitchen like a caged lion.

  Her heart thudded.

  What was going on in his head? Would he turn his back and walk away? Or would his pride, whatever it was that drove him, demand that he stake his claim to her daughter? She’d do anything to avoid that, anything to keep this heartless man from being involved in raising Samantha.

  “Dante.” Tally hesitated. “I know you’re angry but—but you must believe me. I did what I thought was—”

  “You told me you were using a diaphragm.”

  “Yes. I know. But—”

  He swung toward her. “But not with him.”

  Tally blinked. “What?”

  “I want to know who he is.”

  “You want—you want to know—”

  “The name of your child’s father. The man you took as a lover while you still belonged to me.”

  She stared at him in disbelief. He wasn’t angry because she’d left him without telling him she was carrying his baby. He was angry because he thought she’d cheated on him.

  Was that how little he thought of her? That she’d betrayed him while they were lovers? God oh God, she wanted to launch herself at him. Claw his heart out, except he had no heart.

  But then, she’d always known that. It was what had made her weep at night toward the end.

  She’d never so much as looked at anyone else while they’d been together. She’d never looked at anyone in the years since, either, because she was a fool, a fool, a fool…

  “I am assuming,” he said, “that you are not going to tell me I sired this child.”

  Sired Sam? He made it sound like a procedure performed in a veterinarian’s office…but that was fine. Every word he said assured her she’d been right to leave him when she did.

  “Damn you,” he snarled, catching her by the shoulders, “answer me!”

  She could do that. She could do whatever it took, to get this man out of her life.

  “You can relax, Dante. I promise you, I’m not going to tell you that you are Samantha’s father. If you want that in writing, I’ll be happy to oblige.”

  A muscle bunched in his jaw. “You still haven’t said who he was, this man who took you to his bed while you were still sleeping in mine.”

  Tally wrenched free. “You have it wrong. It was you who slept in my bed, remember?”

  “Answer me, damn it. Who is he?”

  “That’s none of your business.”

  “I told you, you belonged to me. That makes it my business.”

  “And I told you, I am not property!” She looked up at him, hating him for what he was, for what he thought, for what she’d once felt in his arms. “What’s the matter? Have I wounded your pride? Will I wound it even more if I tell you I was only with him once? That’s all it took for him to give me his child.”

  He grabbed her, his face so white, eyes so hot, that she thought she’d finally pushed him too far, but that didn’t matter. She’d wanted to hurt him enough to draw blood and she had…

  With the truth.

  She knew exactly when their child—when her child—had been conceived. On the night of his birthday. She’d learned the date by accident, when he left his wallet open on the nightstand with his driver’s license in view. She’d made dinner, baked a cake, bought him a present because she’d—because she’d wanted to.

  After, Dante had made such tender love to her that she’d looked into her own heart and come as close as she’d dared to admitting what she felt for him.

  “Stay with me tonight,” she’d whispered, as they lay in each other’s arms.

  He hadn’t.

  After he was gone, she’d felt more alone than she’d ever thought possible. Not just alone but abandoned. Used, not by his heart but by his body.

  She’d cried softly as night faded to morning. Hours later, when she got up to shower, she’d discovered that her diaphragm had a pinpoint hole in it. She’d told herself it was nothing. It was her so-called safe time of the month and besides, what were the odds on becoming pregnant after just one night of unprotected sex?

  Six weeks later, a home pregnancy kit proved that the odds were excellent.

  Tally had considered the life she’d planned. A career, not for her ego but for security. Money in the bank that would guarantee she’d never have to depend on a man the way her mother had.

/>   She’d visited her doctor. Asked tough questions, made tough decisions. And reversed herself on the subway ride home when she saw a young woman with a baby in her arms, the mother cooing, the baby laughing with unrestricted joy.

  Her future had changed in that single instant.

  Now, it was changing again. If she’d had any last, lingering doubts about her feelings for the man she’d once come close to thinking she loved, they were gone.

  She looked pointedly at Dante’s hand, encircling her wrist, then at his face.

  “I want you out of here,” she said softly. “Right now.”

  He looked at her for a long moment. Then, slowly and deliberately, he took his hand from her.

  “I thought I knew you,” he said in a low voice.

  She almost laughed at the absurdity of those words. “You never knew me,” she said.

  “No. I didn’t. I see that now.” He plucked his leather jacket from where she’d dropped it and slipped it on. “Get yourself an attorney. A good one, because I’m going to start foreclosure proceedings as soon as I return to New York.”

  Panic took an oily slide in her belly. “I can make the payments on the loan. I have made them! All you have to do is check the bank records.”

  “The amount you’ve been paying each month is a joke. It has nothing to do with the loan agreement.”

  “But Walter Dennison said—”

  “You’re not dealing with Dennison. You’re dealing with me.”

  She watched, transfixed, as he strolled to the door. At the last second, she went after him.

  “Wait! Please, you can’t…My daughter, Dante. My little girl. Surely you wouldn’t punish an innocent child for my mistakes. That’s not possible!”

  “Anything is possible,” he said coldly. “You proved that when you took a lover.”

  “Dante. Don’t make me beg. Don’t—”

  “Why not?” He turned and clasped her elbows, lifting her to him until his empty eyes were all she could see. “I’d love to hear you beg, cara. It would fill my heart with joy.”

  The bitter tears she’d fought to suppress streamed down her cheeks.

  “I hate you, Dante Russo. Hate you. Hate you. Hate—”

  He took her mouth in a hard, deep kiss, one that demanded acquiescence. Tally fought it. Fought him as he cupped her face, held her prisoner to his plundering mouth until she knew she would kill him when he turned her free, kill him…

  And then, slowly, his kiss changed. His lips softened on hers. His tongue teased. His hands slid into her hair and she felt it again, after all these years, all this anguish and pain. The slow, dangerous heat low in her belly. The thickening of her blood. The need for him, only him…

  Dante pushed her away.

  “You belonged to me,” he said roughly. “Only to me. I could have you again if I wished.” His mouth twisted. “But why would I want another man’s leavings?”

  Then he put up his collar, opened the door and strode into the teeth of the storm.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  HOW MANY TIMES could a man be subjected to the saccharine nonsense of Christmas before he lost what remained of his sanity?

  The holiday was still three weeks away and Dante was already tired of the music pouring out of shops and car radios. He’d seen enough artificial evergreens to last a lifetime, and he was damned close to telling the next sidewalk Santa exactly what he could do with his cheery ho-ho-ho.

  New York, his city, belonged to tourists from Thanksgiving through the New Year. They descended on the Big Apple like fruit flies, choking the streets with their numbers, unaware or uncaring of one of the basic rules of Manhattan survival.

  Pedestrians were not supposed to dawdle. And they were expected to ignore Walk and Don’t Walk signs.

  New Yorkers moved briskly from point A to point B and when they reached a street corner, they took one quick look and kept going. It was up to the trucks and taxis that hurtled down the streets to avoid them.

  Tourists from Nebraska or Indiana and only-God-knew-where stopped and stared at the displays in department store windows in such numbers that they blocked the sidewalk. They formed a snaking queue around Radio City Music Hall, standing in the cold with the patience of dim-witted cattle. They clustered around the railing in Rockefeller Center, sighing over the too big, too gaudy, too everything Christmas tree that was the center’s focal point.

  As far as Dante was concerned, Scrooge had it right.

  Bah, humbug, indeed, he thought as his chauffeur edged the big Mercedes through traffic.

  The strange thing was, he’d never really noticed the inconvenience of the holiday until now. Basically, he’d never really noticed the holiday at all.

  It was just another day.

  As a child, Christmas had meant—if he were lucky—another third-hand winter jacket from the Jesuits that, you hoped, was warmer than the last. By the time he’d talked, connived and generally wheedled his way into a management job at a construction company where he’d spent a couple of years wielding a jackhammer, he was too busy to pay attention to the nonsense of canned carols and phony good cheer. And after he arrived in New York, earning the small fortune he’d needed to start building his own empire had taken all his concentration.

  The last dozen years, of course, he’d had to notice Christmas. Not for himself but for others. Those with whom he did business and the ones who worked for him—the doormen, the elevator operators, the porters at the building in which he lived, all expected certain things of the holiday.

  So Dante put in the requisite appearance at the annual office party his P.A. organized. He authorized bonuses for his employees. He wrote checks for the doormen, the elevator operators and the porters. He thanked his P.A. for the bottle of Courvoisier she inevitably gave him and gave her, in return, a gift certificate to Saks.

  Somehow, he’d never observed the larger picture.

  Had tourists always descended on the city, inconveniencing everything and everyone? They must have.

  Then, how could he not have noticed?

  He was noticing now, all right. Dio, it was infuriating.

  The Mercedes crept forward, then stopped. Crept forward, then stopped. Dante checked his watch, muttered a well-chosen bit of gutter Sicilian and decided he was better off walking.

  “Carlo? I’m getting out. I’ll call when I need you.”

  He opened the door to a dissonant blast of horns, as if a man leaving an already-stopped automobile might somehow impede the nonexistent flow of traffic. He slipped between a double-parked truck and a van, stepped onto the sidewalk and headed briskly toward the Fifth Avenue hotel where he was lunching with the owner of a private bank Russo International had just absorbed.

  He’d be late. He hated that. Lateness was a sign of weakness.

  Everything he did lately was a sign of weakness.

  He was short-tempered. Impatient. Hell, there were times he was downright rude. And he was never that. Demanding, yes, but he asked as much of himself as he did of those who reported to him, but the past couple of weeks…

  No. He’d be damned if he was going to think about that trip to Vermont again.

  He thought about it too much already.

  And the dreams that awakened him at night…What were they, if not an indication that he was losing his self-control?

  Why would he dream about a woman he despised? For the same reason he’d kissed her, damn it. Because the ugly truth was that he still wanted her, despite her lies and her infidelity. Despite the fact that she’d borne another man’s child. Nothing kept the dreams at bay. Each night, he imagined her coming to him, imagined stripping her naked, making love to her until she cried out in his arms and said, Yes, Dante, yes, you make me feel things he never did.

  And awakened hard as stone, angry at himself for an adolescent’s longings, for the frustration that he couldn’t lose in another woman’s bed though, God knew, he’d tried.

  What an embarrassment that had been! I’m sorry, he’d
said, that’s never happened to me before.

  It hadn’t, though he doubted if the lady believed him. He could hardly believe it!

  He was not himself since Vermont, and he didn’t like it. One day in a snow-bound village and he’d discovered he was still an old-world Siciliano at heart, reacting to things with emotion instead of intellect.

  How could a woman he didn’t want ruin his sex life from a distance of four hundred miles?

  Taylor had—what was the old saying? She’d put horns on his head, sleeping with another man while she was still his. She deserved whatever happened next.

  She had been his, no matter what she claimed. So what if she hadn’t let him pay her bills? If she hadn’t lived with him?

  She had belonged to him. He’d marked her with his hands. His mouth. His body.

  And she’d let another man plant a seed in her womb. She’d given him a child. A child who should rightly have been—should rightly have been—

  Dante frowned, gave himself a mental shake and prepared to vent his anger on the half a dozen idiots who’d come to a dead stop in the middle of the sidewalk.

  “Excuse me,” he said in a voice so frigid it made a mockery of the words.

  Then he saw it wasn’t only the people ahead of him. Nobody was moving. Well, yes. The crowd was shifting. Sideways, like a brontosaurus spying a fresh stand of leafy trees, heading for a huge, world-famous toy store.

  Dante dug in his heels. “Excuse me,” he said again. “Pardon me. Coming through.”

  Useless. Like a paper boat caught in a stream, the crowd herded him toward the doors.

  “Wait a minute,” he said to a massive woman with her elbow dug into his side. “Madam. I am not—”

  But he was. Like it or not, Dante was swept inside.

  A giant clock tower boomed out a welcome; a huge stuffed giraffe gave him the once-over. He was pushed past a tiger so big he half expected it to roar.

  Somehow, weaving and bobbing, he worked to the edge of the crowd and found refuge behind a family of stuffed bears. He gave his watch one last glance, sighed and took out his cell phone.