He deliberately wiped all inflection from his voice. “Could be.” Though he doubted it. There were usually a slew of college students only too eager to earn a few bucks over the holidays, especially if it meant they could ski during their off-hours. “You still haven’t explained what you’re doing here.”
“Time enough to deal with that later,” she retorted briskly. “I think the first order of business is to figure out where Nick and I are going to stay for the night.”
“There isn’t any choice. You’ll have to stay here.”
“Look, Alessandro, before you make offers you might not want to keep, there’s something I need to—” She broke off, her expression switching from determined to appalled.
He stiffened. Alessandro. She’d called him Alessandro. “How the hell do you know my name?” he questioned with biting softness. Now that he thought about it, this was the second time she’d used it. She’d called to him when she’d first awoken, before panicking about Nick. If he hadn’t been jerked out of a sound sleep, he’d have caught her error sooner. “We never introduced ourselves.”
“I can explain—”
“Have we met?” He approached, crowding her against the sofa. The quilts tumbled from her arms to the floor again, cascading to her feet in a stream of vibrant color. “Or is this some sort of setup? Who the hell are you?”
She stared at him, unicorns and Santa Claus and impossible dreams returning to her eyes. He halted abruptly, unwilling to invade further into such alien territory. “Don’t you remember me?” she pleaded.
“Should I?”
“I was hopin’ you might. We met a while back.”
He swept her with a swift, penetrating glance, struggling to find something even remotely familiar about her. From what he could see of her beneath the ill-fitting clothing, there was lean strength in the fine-boned frame and an appealing delicacy to her features. She met his gaze unflinchingly, her expression open and straightforward, if a shade wary. Not even the unusual blue shade of her eyes struck a chord, though the stoic resolve reflected there gave him pause. No. He’d have remembered if they’d ever met.
“It must have been a while back,” he said, giving her the benefit of the doubt. “Are you related to my ex-wife? Did we meet at the wedding?”
Her jaw clenched. “No. We met two years ago this coming March.”
March? She’d chosen an interesting time period, one with a big, black hole right in the middle of it. His mouth tightened. Or did she already know that? After all, the events of that month weren’t a secret. He analyzed her expression, searching for some clue to what she had planned. Something wasn’t right about this—about her. He’d suspected it from the start. If he hadn’t been so distracted by his reaction to her, he’d have pursued that sense of wrongness sooner. Whatever the case, he’d had enough.
He moved away, giving them both some much-needed breathing space. They might never have met before—at least, that he could remember—but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t have been interested in getting to know her more intimately, if circumstances had been different. He was forced to acknowledge the underlying attraction, an irrational, if undeniable firing of the senses. Still… Common sense urged caution—and he’d learned through years of rocky experience to listen to his common sense.
“Okay, fine. Let’s say I believe your claim that we’ve met before. You just happened to be driving by when your car broke down?” he questioned skeptically. “Your arrival here is sheer coincidence?”
She lifted her chin, inherent pride implicit in every line of her body. “No, it’s not coincidence. I knew you’d be here and came to find you.”
Alessandro folded his arms across his chest. “How did you guess where I’d be? The cabin belongs to my entire family.”
“Your brother, Luc, gave me directions. I visited your family business—Salvatores—before coming.”
This tale was getting worse by the minute. “You knew enough about me to track me down in San Francisco? At work, no less?”
“Yes.”
“And Luc, after only one meeting, told you where to find me?” He fired the question at her. “Or have you met him before, too.”
“Yes! No.” She thrust her hands into her hair and shoved the flyaway bangs out of her face. Taking a deep breath, she fought for control. “No, I’d never met Luc or any of your family before showin’ up on their doorstep. And yes, Luc gave me directions after just one meeting.”
“And why would he do that?”
“So I could give you—” Her voice broke, but she made a swift recovery. “So I could give you something.”
“What?”
Her hands closed into fists and her mouth worked for an instant before she managed to get the words out. “I came to give you Nick. He’s…” A sheen of tears glistened in her eyes. “He’s your son.”
Fury poured through him in waves. “Who the hell are you and what sort of sick joke is this?” He kept his voice low, but it still bit. She flinched, though she didn’t back down.
“It’s not a joke.”
“Are you trying to tell me that you and I were lovers?” His laugh held a harsh edge. “Pull the other one, sweetheart. There isn’t a chance that once I’d had you in my bed I’d forget such a memorable occasion.”
Her gaze fastened on him for an endless moment and he felt as if she were searching for something deep within him, fighting to elicit a response. Whatever she wanted, he didn’t possess. Rhonda had exorcised most of the gentler human qualities from him long ago. The silence stretched between them, drawn taut with unmistakable tension. It wasn’t quite a battle of wills, but it definitely resonated with the sort of emotional turbulence that had existed between men and women since the beginning of time.
At long last, her lashes flickered downward, cutting off her thoughts. No doubt she was considering her options. Not that she had any. He had no intention of having her responsibilities dumped on him. If she hadn’t already figured that out, he’d make it crystal clear in the next couple of minutes.
“Are you ready to tell me the truth?” he demanded. “Are you doing this in the hopes of getting money from me? Or are you just tired of taking care of your kid and looking for a convenient place to abandon him?”
She didn’t react with the indignant anger his words should have roused. To his amazement, compassion crept into her gaze, a compassion he neither wanted nor needed. “You sound so cynical.”
“I’m feeling rather cynical right now.”
“Nick’s your son, Alessandro. A simple blood test will prove it.”
“When and where was he conceived?” His mouth twisted. “And perhaps I should ask…with whom?”
She stiffened, his words clearly firing her resolve. Her mouth firmed and her posture straightened to painful erectness. Determination ignited the vividness of her eyes, eclipsing the earlier compassion, and she faced him with a ferocity at direct odds with her fey appearance. “It was two years ago next March. In fact, Nick was conceived on the first day of spring in a pretty little cabin on the outskirts of Asheville, North Carolina. A real cabin, rustic and simple and hewn from