Knowing she needed to calm her thoughts or Dante would eat her alive, she pulled a pair of jeans, a silver jumper and underwear out of the wardrobe and hurried into the bathroom, locking the door behind her. She dressed quickly, ran her fingers through her damp hair then took one last fortifying breath before leaving the room to find Dante.
This confrontation was one she had prepared for. In theory, she had prepared for all eventualities, even if those eventualities had been cobbled together in a rush when they had learned Dante had sold the hundred acres in Florence and pocketed the proceeds into his already bulging bank account.
All she had to do was hold her nerve against this physically imposing man. His looks and scent did not count for jack. This man, a billionaire in his own right, had ridden roughshod over her sister’s efforts to claim a share of their father’s estate.
The stairs led into the cosy open-plan living area, where she found him sat on one of the sagging sofas, flicking through one of her university books. Two steaming mugs of coffee were laid on the table before him. His Goliath-proportioned sidekicks were nowhere to be seen.
His eyes narrowed at her approach and he waited in silence until she had sat herself in the farthest spot from him she could find.
He jabbed a finger onto the opened page of the textbook, the place where she had marked her name, as she had done since her school days. ‘Tell me about yourself, Aislin O’Reilly.’
He pronounced her name ‘Ass-lin’, which under normal circumstances would have made her laugh.
She shook her head. For some reason her tongue struggled to work around this man.
He slammed the book on the table, making her jump. ‘You claim to be my sister, so tell me about yourself. Show me your proof.’
She crossed her legs and met the intense green stare head-on. ‘I’m not your sister. My sister, Orla, is your sister. I’m here as her representative.’
His brow furrowed. She could see him trying to work out what that made them in relation to each other.
‘Orla and I have the same mother,’ she supplied. ‘You and Orla have the same father.’
Dante’s lungs loosened at the confirmation that this intruder was not of his blood. The mere sway of her hips as she’d walked down the stairs had sent his senses springing to life. Dante was not particularly fussy when it came to women. He liked them in all shapes and sizes but to think he could find someone who was possibly his own sister desirable would have been enough to drive him straight to the nearest therapist.
‘Where is the proof of this, Aislin?’
The lighting in the cottage against the darkly painted walls left much to be desired but now she sat close enough for him to see that the colour of the eyes ringing their loathing at him was grey. The black outer rim of the eyeballs contrasted starkly, making the grey appear translucent. Along with the angled tilt of her eyes, it gave the most extraordinary effect.
‘It’s Aislin,’ she corrected, pronouncing it ‘Ashling’.
‘Ashling.’ He practised it aloud. ‘Aislin... An unusual name.’
The striking eyes held his without blinking. ‘Not in Ireland it isn’t.’
He shrugged. As unusual and interesting as her name was, there were far more important things to discuss. ‘You say you have proof that... Orla? Is that her name?’
She nodded.
‘That Orla is my sister. Let me see that proof.’
She got to her feet and walked to the small kitchen area, the curve of her bottom in her tight jeans a momentary distraction. From a small bag on the counter she took out an envelope and opened it on her walk back to him.
Pulling a sheet of paper out of the envelope, she handed it to him with a curt, ‘Orla’s birth certificate.’
Dante took the sheet from her with blood roaring in his ears. Slowly, he unfolded it.
He blinked a number of times to clear the filmy fog that had developed in his eyes.
The birth certificate was dated twenty-seven years ago. On the box labelled ‘father’ were the words Salvatore Moncada.
He rubbed his temples.
This didn’t prove anything. This could be a forgery. Or, more likely, Aislin and Orla’s mother—he scanned the certificate again and found Sinead O’Reilly named as the mother—had lied.
From the envelope still in her hand, Aislin plucked out a photograph and held it out to him.
He didn’t want to look at it.
He had to look at it.
The photo was a headshot of two people, a young woman and a toddler boy.
A violent swell clenched and retracted in his stomach.
Both subjects in the photo had thick, dark-brown hair, the exact shade of Dante’s.
The woman had green eyes the exact shade of Dante’s.
AISLIN TOOK IN the ashen hue Dante’s olive skin had turned and experienced a stab of sympathy to witness the penny drop in that arrogant head.
She placed the envelope on the table and grabbed the coffee he’d made for her, unable to understand why her hands shook. It felt as if her entire insides were shaking, tiny vibrations quivering through her bones and veins.
She told herself it was because of the situation, her body preparing itself for the biggest fight it had ever undertaken. It was nothing to do with Dante himself.
The value of this cottage and its land were peanuts for a man of Dante’s wealth but for her sister it meant the world. It would enable her to buy a home that Finn could live in with the freedom to be as normal a child as his condition allowed. That was all Orla wanted—a decent home in which to raise her son.
Aislin loved her nephew with her whole heart. Finn was her heart. For months she’d sat by his side as he’d lain in that awful incubator in the neonatal intensive care nursery, willing his tiny body to grow, for his lungs to work on their own; praying that one day he would be strong enough to go home...to survive.
The little fighter had survived, but not without complications. His entire life would be a fight and Aislin was prepared to do whatever necessary to make that fight more bearable.
Dante’s lawyer had blocked her sister’s every attempt for recognition. Aislin had flown to Sicily determined to confront Dante in person but, again, had been blocked. The security around him was too tight for her to get a foot through it. Breaking into this cottage had been the last desperate resort.
After a length of time had passed that seemed to be stretched by elastic, Dante finally looked up from the photo.
Her heart made the strangest clenching motion when his green eyes locked onto hers. There was a hardness in his stare.
‘I have never heard of this woman. My father had many lovers. Many men and women have come forward since his death claiming to be his secret love-child. You give me a photograph and claim it is my sister...’
His thick Sicilian accent soaked into her skin as if her pores were breathing it in.
‘I am claiming nothing—she is your sister. You can see the resemblance.’
He gave a tutting sound that was pure Sicilian. ‘A convenient resemblance.’
‘There is nothing convenient about it!’ she retorted hotly, and would have added more