Hot-Blooded Italians. Sharon Kendrick
anyone, caramia. Come, I will accompany you.’
Emma felt trapped—but presumably that was what he had intended—and yet why on earth should she feel trapped? This was her territory now, not his. He was only here because he wanted to convince himself that the baby was not his. Well, you are in for the shock of a lifetime, Signor Cardini, she thought fiercely.
‘Hello!’ she called, pushing open the door, and saw a light coming from the sitting room.
Joanna was lying on the sofa, wrapped up in a blanket and watching TV—a banana skin and an empty coffee cup on the floor beside her. ‘It’s bloody freezing,’ she complained as Emma walked in and then her face froze into a look of utter disbelief when she registered the rugged olive face of the man who was following her.
Pushing the blanket off, she sat up immediately. ‘Ooh! Good grief! You must be—’
‘This is Vincenzo Cardini,’ said Emma without any further explanation, giving Joanna an I’ll-tell-youeverything-later look. ‘How’s he been?’
Joanna appeared to judge the look correctly, though Emma saw her shooting curious glances at the tall, dark man who stood dominating the small space with a moody look. ‘Oh, no trouble really,’ she said. ‘Though he didn’t really want to settle—missing his mum, I guess. But he ate an enormous tea and afterwards I gave him a bath—though you really ought to see about getting Andrew to install a heater in the bathroom, Emma.’
‘Andrew?’ questioned Vincenzo dangerously. ‘And just who is Andrew?’
‘Andrew is my landlord,’ said Emma quickly.
Black eyes bored into her. ‘Oh, is he?’
She wanted to say that Andrew’s identity was none of his business, but she had made it his business, in a way—first by allowing herself to be intimate with him, and then by announcing that he was the father of her child. Given Vincenzo’s track record with jealousy and possession, was it any wonder that he looked like a volcano just about to erupt?
Joanna jumped up. ‘Look, I’d better get off home.’
Emma nodded and flashed her friend a grateful smile. ‘Thanks, Jo—I really appreciate it and I’ll see you tomorrow.’
There was an uncomfortable kind of silence while Joanna picked up her coat and bag and went to reach for the discarded banana skin.
‘Oh, don’t worry about that,’ said Emma quickly.
‘I’ll let myself out, then,’ said Joanna.
But Emma barely heard her go. She felt rooted to the spot—not knowing what the hell she should do next—but it seemed that Vincenzo had no such problems with indecision.
‘Where is he?’ he demanded.
‘In…in there.’ She pointed at the bedroom door, which was slightly ajar, noticing almost dispassionately that her finger was shaking. ‘Please don’t wake him.’
Vincenzo’s mouth twisted into a mocking parody of a smile. ‘I have no desire to wake him. Believe me when I tell you that this is simply to put my mind at rest. One look and I’m out of here. Just show me the child.’
It was the most bizarre of all situations, creeping into Gino’s bedroom, her heart frozen with fear and love, trying to see him as Vincenzo would be seeing him—as if for the first time in the soft glow of the night-light. And, no matter what lay ahead, Emma felt the sharp rush of maternal pride as she gazed down on her son.
He was lying on his back, little fisted arms bunched up alongside his head—as if he were spoiling for a fight. As usual, he had managed to kick off his covers and automatically Emma moved forward to pull it back over him.
‘No.’ Vincenzo’s word stopped her. ‘Leave it.’
‘But—’
‘I said, leave it.’
Her breath caught in her throat, Emma watched as Vincenzo walked slowly to the side of the cot, ducking his dark head and only narrowly avoiding missing the animal mobile which was swirling madly around above it.
For a moment Vincenzo just stood there, staring down—as motionless and as formidable as a statue constructed from some cold, dark ebony.
Emma felt her fingernails digging into her palms, wanting to break the spell of this terrible and uneasy situation, but somehow not daring to. This was his right, she realised—to take as long as he liked.
With a fast-beating heart, Vincenzo committed the scene to memory. The riot of dark curls and the rather petulant curl of the sleeping mouth, which was so like the one which stared back at him from the mirror each morning when he was shaving. Though the light was dim, nothing could disguise the unmistakably goldenolive glow of the child’s perfect skin—nor the hint of height and strength lying dormant in his baby frame.
Vincenzo expelled a long breath of air—the harsh sound penetrating the stillness in the room like an over-pumped tyre which had just been punctured. And then, without any kind of warning, he turned and walked from the room.
Emma fussed around, straightening the covers and feathering her fingertips through the silken mop of Gino’s hair—almost as if she were willing him to wake up. But he was deeply asleep—worn out, no doubt—and she could not continue to hide here like some kind of fugitive, just to escape Vincenzo’s wrath.
And you haven’t done anything wrong, she told herself.
She walked back into the sitting room, where Vincenzo was standing waiting for her with the grim body language of an executioner, his black eyes filled with a cold look of rage.
His mouth twisted as the word was wrenched from him like bitter and deadly poison. ‘Puttanesca!’
As an insult it happened to be grossly inaccurate—but Emma knew that it was the macho insult of choice whenever a woman was considered to have wronged.
‘I am not a whore,’ she answered quietly. ‘You know that. That’s a cheap slur to make.’
His voice was equally quiet. ‘Maybe I knew it was the only one you would understand.’
Their eyes met in the most honest moment of communication they’d had all day and Emma could have wept at the way he was trying to hurt her. This whole scenario had been intended as a solution—and yet it seemed to have spawned a rash of unsightly problems of its own along the way, and she couldn’t for the life of her work out how they were going to come to some sort of compromise.
Vincenzo had dragged his gaze from her white face and was looking around him now, as if barely able to believe the surroundings in which he found himself. The faded sofa with a faint white frill where some of the stuffing was spilling out. The tired paintwork and the pale rectangles on the wall where pictures must once have hung and then been removed. The overriding sense that this was simply somewhere temporary—a place for life’s losers.
‘You…dare to bring my son up in a place like this?’ he questioned unsteadily. ‘To condemn him to a life of poverty.’
So he had not disputed the paternity claim! Relief washed over her but was quickly replaced with fear. And curiosity.
‘So you accept that he’s yours?’
Vincenzo chose his words carefully. He had expected to walk into the nursery and to see a baby—and to feel nothing more than he would feel for any baby. And perhaps there would have been a flare of jealousy, too—at being forced to confront the physical evidence that the woman he had married had been intimate with another man.
But it had not been like that. In fact, it had been like nothing he could ever have imagined. Because he had known immediately. On some subliminal level it had been instant—as if he had been programmed to recognise this little boy. He had seen photos of himself as a baby—and the similarity between himself and this infant was undeniable. But it was more than