Chapter Five #2
An ache formed in his chest, so intense that it had him gasping for air.
He missed her gentle yet fierce love for him, for the vineyards.
Everyone knew just how much she had loved them.
Just as everyone knew that their father’s condition in giving them to her was that upon her death they would go to Enzo, so the conte ’s estate would be whole once more, as it was meant to have been through centuries of tradition. Legacy.
Those grapes were precious—not just to the family but to his mother. Of course Emilio wanted them. He wanted to hold onto any part of his mother he could. And the fact that his mother had chosen him over Enzo to trust with something so precious…
A smile formed on his face. It was a balm over the shattered, scarred parts of his soul from his father’s rejection and his brother’s indifference.
His brother, who would be expecting to have the business with the vineyards settled soon.
Emilio ought to call him, let him know of this development.
But, even as his thumb hovered over his brother’s contact in his phone, he stopped himself.
He and Enzo did not call each other. They didn’t speak of anything private. They barely talked at all. Work was the only reason they kept in contact and even that was seldom. They avoided each other as much as they could help it. The only option he had was to go through the family lawyers.
And that wouldn’t be the smart play. The moment that Enzo knew, he would do everything in his power to stop Emilio from having what was, it now turned out, rightfully his.
Emilio wouldn’t tell anybody yet. He would go to Italy, visit Perlano and Vozzano and see for himself what the state of things was.
He’d get all the information he could gather.
Once he let the family lawyers know about the new will, there would be all-out war, of this he was certain.
But he wasn’t going to run from it. He was just going to be smart about it.
He loved his mother, more than Enzo ever had, and he was going to fight for the thing that had been closest to her heart.
He was so engrossed in poring over the rest of the document that he almost didn’t register the office door opening again. But he snapped his attention back to the present to find Rachel standing on the threshold, hand still on the door handle.
‘Apologies for interrupting, Emilio,’ she said, ‘But there’s a woman here who insists on seeing you urgently.’
‘Who is it?’ Emilio couldn’t think of a single person who would urgently need to see him right now. He could barely think about anything when his mother’s will was still clutched in his hand. The door opened further, unveiling the last person he expected to see.
‘Jasmine,’ the woman said, walking in with confident strides.
Emilio hadn’t been able to stop thinking about her, about their night when they’d met at Boulevard.
He still remembered his utter disappointment when he’d woken up and found that she had left.
Gone without so much as a, ‘That was fun.’ He didn’t usually feel that way about his casual hook-ups, and part of him had wanted to look for her.
New York was a big city, but it wouldn’t have been hard for Emilio De Luca to pull some strings…
Except, she had left. Snuck away while he slept. He’d taken it as a sign that she’d truly wanted the passion they’d shared to last for one night only. He could understand that. It was what he’d wanted too. But he’d been less sure ever since.
Something about Jasmine had messed with his sensibilities. Memories of her had haunted him. The feel of her skin. Her taste. It was all imprinted in his mind. He remembered every little thing about her. The softness of her curls. The touch of gold in her eyes.
The document in Emilio’s hand slipped to the desk as he stood and went round the desk. The woman in front of him now looked the same, and yet completely different from the one he’d known so intimately.
The night they’d met, Jasmine’s golden curls had hung low on her back; now they were pulled back, mercilessly pinned.
Not a strand out of place. Then she had worn a daring dress he couldn’t take his eyes off; now she was in a charcoal power suit, ruthlessly tailored to fit her body perfectly.
The strappy heels that had made her long legs even more tempting had been replaced with shiny pumps, the leg of her trousers falling at the perfect height for her shoe.
The Jasmine he had met had been fun. A free spirit. This woman was tightly controlled. She’d paid attention to every minute detail. If it weren’t for the blood rushing to his groin, or the way his heart sped at the very sight of her, Emilio would have sworn this must be a twin.
‘I have asked her to make an appointment.’
‘It’s alright, Rachel,’ Emilio replied, not looking at his PA at all.
Despite the maelstrom of hope, grief, longing and fierce determination brought on by the arrival of the will, Emilio was still glad to see Jasmine.
But that didn’t mean he wasn’t suspicious of her sudden appearance.
Even as the sight of her took his breath away, unease crept in his belly.
For two months he’d heard nothing from her, so why now?
‘Have a seat,’ he said, pointing to the chair in front of him.
‘Thank you,’ she replied, every bit as elegant as he remembered.
Emilio didn’t say anything in response. He simply watched her, his head cocked to the side, studying every movement of her body. The way she crossed her legs and set her clasped hands on her knee. There was a twitch in her arms that told him she would have preferred to cross them against her chest.
‘I don’t know how to say this,’ she said at last, ‘So I’m just going to come out with it. I’m pregnant and you’re the father.’
That unease in his stomach turned into a stone. He watched, nearly paralysed, as Jasmine placed a sonogram picture on his desk. He looked at it as if it were a venomous snake poised to attack. There was no way this was happening. Not today.
‘Mine?’ he heard himself say. ‘I hardly think so.’
‘It’s yours, Emilio.’
‘Am I just to take your word for it? A woman I knew for a few brief hours? You’ll have to do better than that.’ The shock was making him antagonistic, but he couldn’t help it. He couldn’t control it, which only further frustrated him.
‘I’m not the type to sleep around,’ Jasmine said. The huskiness in her voice turned into a near growl. Anger flared in her eyes.
‘And yet is that not exactly how we met?’
‘Look, I don’t care what you think of me, but I haven’t been with anyone other than you in nearly five months.’
Idiota.
Emilio had white-hot anger pouring through his veins—anger at himself, for yet again failing to control his impulsiveness.
This was exactly like him. He had been impulsive with Gia and he had been impulsive with Jasmine.
He hadn’t even gone out seeking company that night, but he’d seen her and lost all sense.
Enzo’s voice rang in Emilio’s head, the anger in it barely contained.
‘I fixed this mess, but know that, you and I? We’re done.
You never think, Emilio. Not about anyone, and I’m sure not even about yourself.
You can’t ever see further than the nose on your face.
And one day your impetuousness is going to cost you, and it’s going to cost this family. ’
Yes, he was guilty of messing things up, but not this time.
He wouldn’t let that happen again. He took one look at the will still sitting on his desk and realised he needed to compartmentalise.
This truly couldn’t have happened at a worse time.
The first thing he needed to do was protect the legacy.
What if Jasmine was attempting to run some sort of scam on him?
He didn’t know her. She could have faked the sonogram picture.
He picked it up regardless, remembering his PA putting up her sonogram picture next to her computer.
After years of trying, she’d been so excited and anxious about it that he had told her to take two days off.
She hadn’t realised he hadn’t counted them as leave until she’d seen her pay slip.
He remembered a lot from Rachel’s journey, and a quick mental calculation in his head gave him a rough idea of how far along Jasmine must be… if she wasn’t lying.
‘So you’re telling me that you’re about ten weeks’ pregnant with my child,’ Emilio said emotionlessly. He was going to come at this as he did with all his business dealings—with cold logic. ‘That means we should be able to do a paternity test immediately.’
Jasmine exploded. ‘I’m sorry, what?’
‘You didn’t think I would just take your word for it, did you? I don’t know you and, more importantly, I don’t trust you.’
‘You seemed to know me, to trust me, enough to take me to a hotel room.’ A vein had begun to throb in Jasmine’s temple. That was fine. She could be angry if she wanted to be. Emilio had too much to protect to worry about manners right now.
‘Yes, and as I recall we both took great pleasure from that.’
‘I didn’t say otherwise. I’m merely pointing out that you claim you can know and trust me perfectly fine to have sex with me, but not enough to believe me when I come to you bearing the consequences.’
‘Good. You understand.’
Jasmine’s face flamed red. Her eyes looked more green than usual in her anger. Emilio didn’t take pleasure in this, but he never went into a negotiation blind or emotional. That was why he always came out on top.
Yes, the possibility existed that the baby was his. If it was, he would take care of it then. Step one was to determine whether Jasmine was lying. He lifted the receiver of his office phone and hit the direct extension for his PA. ‘Rachel, I want Dr Silver in my office asap.’
‘Yes, Emilio.’
‘You would task your PA with something as sensitive as this?’ Jasmine questioned with a cocked brow.
‘My employees are fairly compensated to ensure their compliance and discretion, I assure you. You will wait here for Dr Silver to arrive. He will draw blood for the paternity test.’ It was an instruction, and Emilio wouldn’t budge.
‘Who the hell do you think you are to order me around? I don’t work for you, Emilio. You can’t instruct someone to perform invasive tests on me without first securing my consent.’
‘True. And if you fight this,’ he said calmly, ‘I will know you’re lying and this supposed child is either not mine or non-existent.’
‘How dare you?’ Jasmine demanded, enraged.
‘I dare because I don’t know you. I haven’t seen you or heard from you in two months and now here you are with this grand announcement, no doubt after finding out my name.’
‘I don’t want anything from you,’ Jasmine said through gritted teeth.
‘Then why are you here?’
Jasmine dropped her head, letting out a humourless huff.
‘Why am I here?’ she said softly, as if to herself.
Then she looked him in the eye. Her expression was defiant; she was utterly unfazed by who he was.
‘I don’t know. I guess because I thought it was the right thing to do.
I don’t need anyone, or trust anyone. Certainly not a man . I’m fine doing this on my own.’
Certainly not a man? What was that about?
‘I came here to inform you,’ Jasmine said, slinging her handbag over her shoulder. ‘And now I have.’
She rose from her seat. Just as she did, the office door opened and in walked a middle-aged man in khakis carrying a black medical bag.
‘Dr Silver from our in-house health care; Jasmine…?’
‘Hall,’ she finished for him.
Jasmine Hall. The siren finally had a name. Despite how much he had wanted to look her up, he hadn’t, and he couldn’t name the feeling that was settling over him as the knowledge sunk in.
‘Well?’ he said. ‘Are you staying or are you leaving? It’s entirely up to you how this goes. If you’re not lying, what have you got to lose—a vial of blood? But, if you leave, I’ll have no choice but to assume—’
‘I’m not lying, Emilio.’ She turned to face him. ‘You know what?’ She dropped her bag on the seat, shuffled out of her jacket and folded up the sleeve of her blouse. ‘Do it.’
Emilio watched the procedure. Jasmine wasn’t nearly as acrimonious with the good doctor as she was with him. Once the vial was filled, Dr Silver placed a sticker on the bottle and asked Emilio to take a seat, then he removed a long swab from a sterile tube.
‘Open.’
Emilio obeyed the doctor’s instruction and felt the textured tip rub along the inside of his cheek.
‘The results will be ready tomorrow,’ Dr Silver said, placing the buccal swab back in its tube.
Emilio pointedly cleared his throat.
‘Tonight,’ the doctor amended.
‘That’s better.’
The doctor quickly collected his things and left the office.
There was nothing left to do now but wait.
Yet, Emilio didn’t have the time to sit around waiting for results that could change his entire life.
He desperately wanted to get back to the will, but he didn’t want to let Jasmine out of his sight.
And it wasn’t just because he didn’t trust her. That tugging connection between them was still there, and Emilio had to be honest with himself. He didn’t want her to leave for the very same reason that he had wanted to seek her out that morning two months ago when he’d awoken alone.
***
‘You will wait here where I can keep an eye on you for the results,’ Emilio said.
The gall of this man! He was the most overbearing, high-handed ass Jasmine had ever met. Comparing him to the man from the club was like comparing Jekyll with Hyde.
‘I really don’t care what you want, Emilio.
I have already made one concession for you.
’ True, they hardly knew each other, so demanding a paternity test was sensible …
in theory . But the way he had gone about it had made her want to explode.
She couldn’t be with him another minute, or she would likely strangle him.
She pulled out a business card from her bag and slammed it down on his desk.
Infuriatingly, even that hardly seemed to move him.
‘I have a business to run, so I will not be catering to your whims.’
She’d already been through that with Richard. A man who had wanted to control her. Who’d been threatened by her. So much time had been wasted trying to appease him. She wasn’t out to make herself palatable to anyone any longer.
She shrugged her jacket back on and marched to the door, pausing just long enough with a hand on the door handle to fire over her shoulder, ‘You can find me there when you’re ready to stop being an ass.
I came here to tell you that we bear a consequence from that night, and I have accomplished that. Goodbye.’
She slammed the door behind her before he even had a chance to respond. She wasn’t interested in anything he had to say. Not until he received those results proving her right.