‘You’re safe,’ he answered sardonically. ‘If I rip your head off I’ll never get any answers from you. Enough stalling. Tell me what’s wrong with my son and tell me why you have kept him a secret from me for all these years.’
She dipped her head forwards and put her face in her hands. Her fingers dragged through her thick mane of wavy dark hair, which she’d released from its knot. It was every bit as luscious as he remembered and he suddenly experienced the deepest urge to kneel before her and cradle her face in his hands, stroke the soft skin and run his fingers through the thick mane as he’d done so many times before.
When she looked back up to meet his stare, everything inside him clenched.
‘Are you sure you won’t sit down?’ she said softly. ‘This could take a while.’
Gritting his teeth tightly, he stared at her. Or glowered, as she called it. He would not allow her soft femininity to weaken him. His height was one of the natural advantages nature had given him, his strength accomplished by his own hard work. If him remaining standing made Orla feel disadvantaged, then great. He saw no reason to put her at ease. On the contrary.
She chewed her bottom lip then sighed. ‘I always wanted to tell you.’
He snorted.
‘Please, just listen. Finn’s condition and the reason I never told you about him are related. I had a car accident when I was six months pregnant that left my memory shot to pieces. I couldn’t tell you about Finn because I’d forgotten who you were.’
Her excuse was so outrageous he tightened his grip on the wine glass to stop himself throwing it against the wall. ‘Dio mio, you have got some nerve, lady. You’re claiming you had amnesia?’
‘Yes. But it’s not a claim. It’s the truth.’
‘And when did your memories return?’
‘The ones about you returned today… Well, some of them have…’
‘Very convenient,’ he mocked, topping up his glass with more wine. ‘You’ve had hours to come up with a convincing excuse and this is the best you can do? Amnesia?’
‘I understand it sounds far-fetched but it’s the truth. I’ve spent over three years trying to remember you. All I remembered with any clarity until today was your face. Everything else was hazy images. I knew we’d met here in Sicily but that was a deep-rooted knowledge, like knowing my own name—’
‘You expect me to believe this?’ he interrupted impatiently.
‘It’s the truth and it’s a provable truth.’
‘Really?’ he sneered. ‘The only thing provable is that you’re a liar.’
‘I am not.’
‘You booked into my hotel under a false name.’
Confusion creased her beautiful face. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘Four years ago you booked into my hotel under the name of Orla McCarthy. Here, you are booked in under the name of Orla O’Reilly.’
Around a month after she’d done her disappearing act, Tonino had drunk too much wine and decided to search her name on the Internet. The few articles he’d found with the name Orla McCarthy in them had not been about her.
Now he understood why Orla had bucked the trend and left no digital footprint. She’d given him a false name.
The woman he’d experienced the deepest connection of his life with, the woman who’d been the unwitting catalyst of the ongoing rift with his family, the woman who’d had no idea of who he was yet had still treated him like a prince…
That woman had lied about her name. She’d kept his child a secret from him.
He couldn’t understand why he wasn’t fighting an urge to throw her out of the suite window into the sea below but was instead fighting the powerful urge to drag her into his arms and kiss her until he’d drawn all the breath from her lungs.
He couldn’t understand how he could look at her deceitful face and feel all his internal organs swelling and compressing his lungs. These were reactions her cruel duplicity should have killed stone dead.
‘When I booked into your hotel four years ago I had to hand my passport over so I used my legal name, which is McCarthy,’ she explained wearily.
‘Then why are you here now as O’Reilly? Was it to throw me off the scent? Did you think I wouldn’t recognise you?’
She rubbed her eyes with the palms of her hands. ‘I genuinely do not know what you’re implying.’
‘There is nothing genuine about you,’ he said roughly. ‘You knew you would see me today. Your brother and I are old friends. You’re staying in my hotel. The wedding reception’s in my hotel.’ He squeezed the back of his neck. ‘You took a huge risk in coming here and an even bigger risk bringing Finn with you.’
‘I wasn’t going to come without him,’ she protested hotly. ‘Dante never mentioned your name. If he had I would have remembered you sooner, but he didn’t. Aislin organised the wedding—she made the booking and checked me in. Aislin has her father’s surname because our mother married him. Our mum registered me as Orla O’Reilly when I started school, so I had the same surname as them. Most people know me as Orla O’Reilly.’
‘Why didn’t you change it legally?’
‘That would have been up to my mother and she couldn’t be bothered.’
He grimaced and took another large drink of his wine, angry with himself for diverting from the only subject that should matter to him. His son. ‘What name have you given Finn?’
‘My legal name. McCarthy.’
‘Why doesn’t he have my name?’
‘Because I’d forgotten it,’ she answered through gritted teeth.
Anger swelled like a cobra poising to strike. ‘Then who the hell is named as his father?’
‘No one.’
‘Now I know you’re lying,’ he snarled. He’d interrupted his lawyer’s evening meal to demand he look into the legalities of Irish paternity for him. ‘It is illegal not to name the father on an Irish birth certificate.’
She rubbed her eyes again then fixed them on him with a sigh that sounded more exasperated than defeated. ‘It isn’t if there’s a compelling reason.’
‘And what compelling reason did you give?’ he demanded. ‘Your amnesia?’
‘Keep your voice down or you’ll wake Finn.’ For the first time since he’d entered her suite, a fierceness entered her tone.
He hadn’t realised he was shouting.
But, Dio, it was taking all his strength not to grab her by the shoulders and shake all the lies out of her until only the truth remained. What kind of a fool did she take him for? Did she seriously think she could play the amnesia line and that he would fall for it? What did she think? That they were players in one of those over-acted soap operas his grandmother watched?
Green eyes, wide and wary but unflinching, stayed on him. ‘Aislin registered Finn’s birth. I’d never told her who the father was so she couldn’t name you—’
‘You denied my existence?’ he roared.
‘Keep your voice down,’ she snapped. ‘I’m trying to be sympathetic but you’re not making it easy when you keep interrupting me with all your stupid assumptions. Everything I am telling you is provable—you do not have to take my word for it.’
‘Good