‘That’s more than enough to start with. And a commission from D’Antonio would set you up—if that’s what you want.’
‘I’ll think about it.’
The reservation in her voice made him want to hold her and tell her he’d help her. Why did he want to do that? Why did he feel the need to tangle himself up emotionally with this woman more than he already was?
He shrugged, letting her hand go, and sat back, studying her pensive expression. There was more—much more to her reservation. He could feel it.
‘I have other things to do first.’
She looked up at him and he held her gaze, challenging her to speak her mind, say what was bothering her—because something was.
‘What is so important, Piper?’
She looked uncertainly at him and apprehension settled over him, suffocating the relaxed peace he’d found.
‘I’d like us both to go to London.’ After holding his gaze for the briefest of moments she looked down, her long lashes shutting him out.
‘Is there something in particular you wish to do there? Somewhere you want to be seen to validate our engagement?’ He kept his voice light, but inside the fingers of dread were closing in, threatening to choke him. This woman, who’d claimed to want nothing from him, now seemed to want much more than he could ever give.
‘Yes.’ She nodded. ‘I’d like us to see my mother.’
The thump to his chest as the reality of his fears hit him was hard. ‘No. This engagement is to secure a business deal and to legitimise our child. There is no need to bring family members into it.’
Unease shrouded him. What would his mother think when she read in the papers or the glossy magazines that he was to be married? Worse still, that he was to be a father?
‘Surely your mother will want to know? Even if you can’t tell her the sordid truth.’
The spike of hurt in her voice should have made him feel guilty, but already he could feel his emotions closing off, feel himself withdrawing. They’d shared a night of passion and it should have changed nothing, but somehow it had changed everything.
‘My mother will know only what she has to, and I suggest you do the same with your mother. This is not a real engagement and there isn’t any need to complicate it further.’ Anger surged through him as he fought back the fear of what his mother would think of his latest deal, of the false hope he might give her that he’d finally left the past behind.
‘Haven’t we already done that with last night?’
She hurled the accusation at him, her green eyes wide and full of hurt. Already he was upsetting her, causing her pain. As soon as he became close to anyone he did something to hurt them or turn them away, until ultimately they left his life.
‘You complicated things in London, leading me to believe protection wasn’t required.’ Immediately he took his usual stance of self-defence, angry that she’d made him feel and, worse, that he cared how she felt.
‘No wonder your brother left home as soon as he could!’
Dante saw a mist of red descend at the mention of Alessio. As if he didn’t already have enough to worry about, she’d opened that wound too. ‘Never bring my brother into this. He and my mother are the reason I fought to make a living, the reason I had to make something of myself. Everything I did, I did for them. I wanted to give them a better life, but it was too late for my brother.’
She looked up at him, her earlier prickly demeanour evaporating. ‘Too late? Why?’
The questions filled the void which had opened up between them, connecting them once more in a way he wasn’t sure he could handle.
‘My brother kept the wrong company, and after he became a teenager he was always in trouble.’ Dante felt the pull of the connection between him and Piper just as surely as he felt her sympathetic gaze on him. He sensed the danger in opening himself up, exposing emotions he’d buried many years ago.
‘What happened?’
She looked as beautiful as he’d ever seen her. But something inside him had changed. She’d opened a door he’d closed and forgotten about. A door that couldn’t be closed again now.
Mentally he shook himself. It wouldn’t do either of them any good to be weighed down with emotions. ‘He resented my authority over him and rebelled against anything I said.’
‘But isn’t that what all teenagers do?’
Her smile was warm as she leaned closer. He inhaled her perfume, the same scent which had tormented him in the elevator at his office the morning after his meeting with Xander, Zayn and Benjamin. His life was unrecognisable now.
‘Not all teenagers run away, leaving behind a distraught mother.’ He gritted his teeth together as the sound of his mother’s sobs filled his mind. Piper had opened up the memory and now he couldn’t stop it coming back.
‘Did you find him? I mean...he did come back, didn’t he?’ She stumbled over her words, probably due to the anger that must be clearly etched on his face. Damn it, he had no wish to talk about this with anyone—least of all this woman.
The pain of those first days after Alessio had gone still haunted him. Every time he’d looked at his mother he’d known she blamed him, known it was his fault. He’d driven Alessio away. He’d tried to be a father figure before he had really become a man himself, taking on the role of disciplining his wild brother when he had been only seventeen. For three years a battle of wills had raged between him and Alessio—until his sixteenth birthday. The day he’d walked out of the small house where his mother had struggled to bring them up. It had been the last time they’d seen him alive.
‘We had no idea where he was for four years.’
‘So you did find him?’
Dante recalled the horror of the day he’d found out the truth of Alessio’s disappearance. The fact that his brother had died alone years before was something he could never forgive himself for.
‘I found out that he’d died alone at the age of eighteen.’
The gasp of shock which came from Piper told him what he already knew. It was shocking, and it was his fault. He stared into the flames of the fire which had cooled to a gentle orange glow, wrapping around the logs. He couldn’t look at Piper. He didn’t want to see the shock or the blame on her face. It would only confirm what he’d believed ever since that day.
‘That is so sad,’ she said in a whisper, but still he couldn’t look at her.
‘He died at the hands of a rival street gang. It was my fault. I should have made him come home when he first left. It was my job to keep him safe.’
She touched his arm and he looked at her. The compassion in her eyes was too much. ‘It’s not your fault, Dante.’
‘I failed him, Piper. I failed him and my mother. I didn’t do what I was supposed to do. I didn’t protect and care for them.’
When Piper had told him she was carrying his child he’d appeared to give more importance to the deal and salvaging his reputation, but it was the need to look after her and his baby which had driven him to such drastic action. He’d never thought it would be possible for him to care, to want to put himself in a vulnerable position again, but as soon as he’d known why she’d come to Rome it had been the only thing he wanted to do.
* * *
Piper looked at Dante. The pain in his eyes was too much to bear and she wanted to hold him, tell him it wasn’t his fault and try and ease his pain—just as he had done for her when she’d finally confessed to the blindness which had affected her left eye since birth. That hadn’t mattered to him and