Chapter Six #2
“I have nothing but doubt,” he told her, perhaps more darkly than he should have—but he could still taste the food she’d prepared for him, when no one dared prepare food for him, and the betrayal of this all seemed to hit him more keenly.
“You tell me whether or not you would trust a person who kept your own child hidden from you.”
“In future, you should perhaps give your one-night stands your name,” Hannah replied crisply, though she smiled at the little boy when he looked at her. Then lost the smile when she looked back at Antonluca. “Just to get ahead of this trouble you find yourself in.”
“I see that I’m not the only one who stayed up all night, coming up with clever replies to wield at will.”
“I told you last night that I’m sorry that I didn’t tell you about Dominic the moment I saw you here,” Hannah said then. But her gaze stayed grave on his. “I meant that. But there’s nothing I could have changed about what happened before that.”
“This is what I do not understand,” he said, almost as if he was musing aloud to himself.
They were both speaking in quiet tones while the little boy sang songs to himself and played between them, though he doubted very much that either he or Hannah were fooled by the kind, polite tones.
Not when they could see each other. “On the one hand, you’re woman of great indiscretion, a liar and a betrayer.
And yet, on the other hand, your work at the hotel speaks for itself. You have an unparalleled gift.”
He expected her to throw something back at him, but all she did was glare.
“Can you explain this?” he asked.
Her gaze did not waver from his. “Can you explain the contradiction of having an aversion to both children and the preventative measures to avoid having them?”
“It is not a problem I have had with anyone but you,” he heard himself growl at her. When he was certain he had not meant to say a thing.
When he was even more certain that he kept revealing himself here.
Hannah only shrugged. “Same.”
And again, as usual, he felt that pull to her. It wasn’t new. He had felt it that night in the restaurant in New York. He had felt it in the library when he’d thought his dreams were coming true in front of him.
If he was honest, he had felt it every moment since.
What intrigued him in this moment was that he watched her wary eyes change, shifting shades of green to the spark of emerald fire he saw now.
As if she was remembering last night the way he did.
Less a blast of temper and more…a reckoning. A remembering.
A reconnection every bit as cataclysmic as that first night in New York.
Because what they both knew now is that there was no pretending any longer. All truths were told and there was still all that wildfire between them, all that glory and need—
And he didn’t know what might have happened then, but the front door of the cottage was thrown open without warning and an older woman Antonluca thought looked vaguely familiar—in the way all Italian women of a certain age did, though to be fair, all of the residents of the village here did, too—came bustling through.
“I am so sorry I am late,” the old woman began cheerfully, “but I had to sing a whole song to the plants in my greenhouse and—” She stopped dead at the sight of Antonluca, there on the woven rug in the center of the floor. “What are you—?”
Hannah flushed. “Cinzia. I—”
But the old woman looked from Antonluca to the boy, then back again, her gaze a canny sort of thing. “Oh,” she said, and she drew the syllable out and out and out. “I see. Capisco.”
Antonluca found himself standing then, as if he had to prove himself to this woman. Or, more alarming, as if he wanted to make a good impression, a notion that was so absurd he nearly laughed at it then and there. “I am—”
“I can see who you are,” the old woman replied, with far too much understanding in her voice. So much so that Hannah flushed yet again. “But in addition to more personal connections in this cottage, I think you are also the new owner of the hotel, are you not?”
What was there to say to that?
Antonluca inclined his head. “I am.”
The old woman turned her gaze on Hannah, who flushed even redder.
“Interesting,” was all she said. Then she bustled in farther to sweep up a squealing, giddy Dominic in her arms, and carried him off into the back room.
“That is my neighbor and landlady,” Hannah told him when they were alone again. “Cinzia Pisanelli. She’s a godsend. And a good friend. And as far as Dominic is concerned, she’s his grandmother.”
“What of his actual grandparents?”
Hannah smiled, though he thought it seemed a bit tight. Forced. “He’s never met them. They’re in Nebraska, after all.”
And before he could reply to that, she was on her feet, and then moving around the room, picking up toys, and neatening things. When there was nothing left to sort out, she turned back to him, her hands on her hips.
“Am I fired?” she demanded, with that directness that made so many people claim they disliked Americans. But Antonluca prized straightforwardness in most circumstances. Even if hers was…bracing. “Or are we going into work today?”
“You are thinking about work at a time like this?”
She tilted her head a bit to one side and looked at him as if the words he used made no sense. “I think about work all the time. That’s why I’m good at it. And I do not have an empire, like some. I have to work. It’s how I take care of Dominic.”
“That is not something you will need to worry about again,” he said then, surprised.
And maybe a bit too intently, because she frowned.
“If that is supposed to make me feel better, it doesn’t,” she told him.
“I don’t know how you are supposed to feel, Hannah. I don’t know how I am supposed to feel. Do you think there is a manual for this situation we are in? If so, I would love to see it. But do you really think that fussing over a Christmas market will make any of this better?”
“I can’t answer that for you.” She said that simply.
Quietly. It made him feel small, somehow, that she could stand there before him and simply exude dignity.
“I suppose you will do whatever it is you need to do. But I warn you, I will also do what I have always done, which is to take care of my child.”
“Our child,” he corrected her.
Softly, but with heat behind it.
He wasn’t sure if he expected her to argue or not, but all she did was incline her head, her gaze on his.
And Antonluca felt something in him loosen. A knot he hadn’t even known was there. Something tight and hard that he hadn’t understood was buried down beneath too many layers to count, deep in his chest.
Yet Hannah made it go away, that easily.
He would have considered it magic, if only it didn’t ache.
But what he knew too well was that there was precious little magic in this world. He had experienced it himself, when he was so young that he should have seen magic everywhere. He had lived too many lives already, that was the thing.
Antonluca had never intended to bring a child into this world. His own childhood had been too rough for him to imagine continuing on in that fashion. Or at all.
He never meant to do it, but he had. Just as he had taken no precautions last night, either, like a fool.
Or maybe…not such a fool, now that he considered it.
Because Antonluca had never planned or wanted to become a father. But now that it turned out he was one, he knew exactly what it was he had to do.
And would do.
Whether Hannah liked it or not.