Always a fatal mistake, thought the shorter man, studying the hard lines of his friend’s classically featured lean face. It occurred to him, and not for the first time, that it was infinitely preferable to be this man’s friend than his enemy.
Antonio, who was sitting staring broodingly into the distance, shrugged and brushed away an invisible fleck from his impeccable jacket. ‘They did not do their homework,’ he observed dismissively.
‘But you did…?’
The network of fine lines fanning Antonio’s electric-blue eyes deepened as his long dark lashes lifted from the slashing angle of his high cheekbones. ‘I always do my homework, Huw.’
Just as he had more recently done his homework on Charles Finch.
But then when a man walked into your office and calmly announced you were the biological father of his thirteen-year-old daughter you had a lot of questions that needed answering.
He now had the answers to some of those questions, including the results of a DNA test.
According to the information that had landed on his desk, the only thing Charles Finch and his late wife had had in common was a mutual loathing and the fact they had spent more time in other people’s beds than their own.
Miranda’s reason for staying in the sham marriage had been obvious. As Antonio was only too well aware, she had had expensive tastes and social aspirations to match.
Charles Finch’s reasons had been less immediately obvious. But then why, he mused, did people stay in bad marriages? Marriages that looked perfect on the surface, but underneath had more in common with open warfare than mutual support or love?
Presumably the other man had got something he’d needed from the twisted relationship, though what it was Antonio could not even begin to imagine.
Huw moved from the window and observed, ‘And this time your homework just made you a conservative twenty million. Of course, being as ruthless as hell with no scruples to speak of helps.’
Amusement flickered in Antonio’s blue eyes, eyes made more arresting by the contrasting Mediterranean colouring of his skin. ‘You think I represent the ugly face of capitalism?’
‘Not ugly,’ the other man objected wryly.
Though if Huw’s own wife was to be believed, it wasn’t just his perfect features and lean, athletic body that made women unable to take their eyes—and hands—off Antonio. It was the aura of earthy sensuality that he apparently exuded from every pore.
Not, his wife had hastily assured him, that she was affected by it.
‘But you really should carry a government health warning. I mean, when was the last time someone got the better of you financially speaking? Oh, I know you’re not interested in money for the sake of it,’ he admitted. ‘But you can’t deny that you enjoy winning.’
Antonio’s brows lifted. ‘Doesn’t everyone?’
‘Well, you don’t look like you do,’ his friend observed frankly.
‘Let’s just say I have other things on my mind…’ Abruptly Antonio stopped sorting files and sought the other man’s eyes, then shook his head and said, ‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘Clearly it does,’ Huw said, his curiosity whetted by this uncharacteristic behaviour. ‘You’ve been odd all week.’
Antonio leaned back in his seat and stretched his long, long legs in front of him. He rested his chin on his steepled fingers. ‘You know Finch…?’
‘The law firm Finch? Finch, Abbott and Ingham…Finch?’
Antonio nodded.
‘Cold guy. Got a really classy-looking wife, as I recall.’
‘The classy-looking wife is dead,’ Antonio said. Cancer, her husband had said.
Miranda was dead. Antonio still struggled with the impossible concept.
In his head she was so alive, her image frozen in his memory as she had been the summer he had met and fallen in love with her. He could see her laughing, her head thrown back to reveal her lovely throat. She had laughed a lot, especially when he had announced he loved her and wanted to take care of her.
‘What a sweet boy you are,’ she had said when she had finally realised he was deadly serious. ‘Look, what we had was fun, that’s all. Don’t spoil it by being silly about this.’
When he persisted she was more brutal.
‘Be serious—what would a woman like me want with a penniless waiter? When I get married it won’t be because he’s good in bed, and, darling, you really are. I can get sex anywhere. When I get married it will be to a man who can give me the life I deserve.’
Unable to interpret the edge in his friend’s voice, Huw frowned. ‘Bad luck. I only met him around, as you do. What’s he got to do with anything?’
‘He came to see me last month. It appears that his daughter isn’t…’
‘Isn’t what?’ asked Huw, looking confused.
‘His. She’s mine.’
Chapter Two
ANTONIO almost smiled as Huw’s face fell, increasing his resemblance to a startled spaniel. A resemblance that belied the criminal lawyer’s sharp intellect and had lulled many an adversary into a false sense of security.
‘Yours…?’
Antonio ran a long brown finger down the spine of a book on his desk. ‘It would seem so. I have a daughter who is thirteen and she thinks I’m a monster. She tells anyone who will listen that I’m kidnapping her.’
‘Kidnapping…?’
‘Finch told her he’s fighting a strenuous legal battle to get her back.’
‘Get her back!’ Huw exclaimed. ‘What legal battle? You mean the girl is staying with you? Is that a good idea?’
A nerve in Antonio’s jaw clenched as he observed grimly, ‘There wasn’t much time to consider the options.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘After he broke the news to me Finch explained he had Tamara waiting in the car complete with overnight bag. The rest of her things were delivered the next day. He made it pretty clear to me in private that he wants nothing more to do with her.’
‘Nothing…?’ Huw struggled with the concept.
A nerve clenched along Antonio’s firm jaw. His lashes swept downwards concealing the glow of rage that lit his blue eyes. ‘He never wants to see her again.’
‘What a total bastard!’
Antonio could not disagree with this shocked assessment.
‘A bastard who can act.’ Antonio got to his feet and pushed aside his chair.
His friend watched him walk across to the window and wondered, with a touch of envy, what it would be like to effortlessly dominate any room you were in with mere physical presence.
‘It was quite a performance,’ Antonio admitted, looking out at the cityscape. ‘Finch made a very convincing heartbroken father. The law is apparently on my side—’
‘That’s debatable.’
‘And it seems I woke up one morning and decided to snatch the child, who apparently I rejected as a baby, away from her loving home.’
And Antonio had been forced to stand there and listen, unable to deny the barrage of lies without revealing the man his daughter had called Father for the