Although the villa had been technically his for all these years, as far as he’d been concerned it had remained his father’s to do with as he pleased...apart from sell it.
With his father dead, he still didn’t know what to do with it. Unspoken had been his grandfather’s wish that one day Dante would settle down, marry, start a family and raise them in this home.
Dante liked city life. He liked being single. What good was marriage for? All he had ever seen of it was bitterness, greed and spite. His grandparents had been married for forty-eight years until his grandmother’s death. If they were a template for the longevity of marriage, they could forget it. His grandfather had spent the three years from her death until his own celebrating being rid of her. Dante had been quite sure his grandfather’s shaking shoulders at her funeral had been through laughter rather than tears.
At the far end of the villa was his father’s study. In the days after his death, Dante had holed himself in there, finding comfort in the room that had been quintessentially his father.
He pushed the door open and inhaled the familiar, if now fading, scent of bourbon and cigars.
This was the room Dante had sneaked into as a small boy, the desk he would hide under until his father appeared and he would jump out at him, and his father would pretend to shout in fright every single time.
He sat on the chair his father had called his own, the chair on which his father had sat Dante on his lap, held him tightly and told him his mother had left and that it would be just the two of them from now on.
This was the room his father had given Dante his first drink of bourbon in, the room in which he’d relayed the deaths of family members, the room where he’d confessed his dire financial situation and begged his only son for a loan to pay off his gambling debts. The latter had taken place so many times Dante had lost count.
A lifetime of memories, good and bad, flooded him and it took a few minutes for him to gather himself together and for the fresh wave of grief to pass.
He opened his father’s laptop. When he’d opened it the first time after his father’s death he’d guessed the password correctly—Dante’s name and date of birth. That had been a bittersweet moment.
Keying the password in this time, all he tasted was bitterness.
Had his father really kept a sister secret from him for all these years?
Aislin claimed his father had paid maintenance for Orla. If there was evidence of it, it would be on here somewhere.
He had a sister. His gut told him that and he did not doubt the DNA test would prove a match.
But had his father known or had Sinead O’Reilly kept Orla’s existence a secret from him and lied to her daughters about maintenance being paid?
Dante sent a silent prayer that Sinead was a liar and logged onto his father’s saved bank statements.
Damn it, they only went back eight years.
He drummed his fingers on the desk. Where would the paper statements be from the years before that? His father had been a terrible hoarder so they would be here somewhere...
The filing cabinet, of course.
An hour later and he was sat on the carpeted floor, paperwork strewn around him. In his hand was the evidence he’d been seeking but praying he wouldn’t find.
Until nine years ago, coincidentally the year Orla had turned eighteen, his father had paid the sum of two thousand euros every month to a bank account in Ireland.
* * *
Aislin hovered by the front window of the cottage, peering out intermittently while she waited for Dante.
Nerves in the form of butterflies rampaged in her belly.
Her bags were packed and waiting by the front door. She’d spent most of the night fighting the urge to flee to the airport.
A hundred thousand euros was a substantial amount of money but a million was life-changing. Orla could buy a home, modify it to cater to all Finn’s needs and have change to spare at the end of it. She could take him on holiday. She could buy him a high-tech wheelchair. She could buy a car.
So Aislin had stayed in the cold cottage, hardly sleeping, her mind whirling like a dervish, trying to understand why her instinct was to run.
A million euros to attend a wedding! All her family’s problems solved in one weekend!
Restless, she paced the living area.
She’d been prepared to break into the cottage and stage a sit-in in defiance of a powerful billionaire; had been prepared to stay there for as long as it took for him to develop a conscience.
She had not expected it to develop so quickly or easily.
His agreement to give Orla half the value of the cottage and its land had proven his conscience. That he was insisting on a DNA test was not surprising and not something she could blame him for. Dante was no fool. No one who reached the heights in business he had got there by taking people at face value.
She had expected an arrogant monster and found, instead, an arrogant man who could be compelled to listen to reason.
So why was she so resistant to spending a few days with him when the reward for doing so was so great?
A loud rap on the front door made her jump and, when Dante strode through the front door, her heart jumped too, right into her throat.
She’d opened the shutters earlier and spring sunlight poured into the cottage. Dante seemed to glow with it.
Dressed in a navy shirt, snug black jeans and an obviously expensive straight leather jacket, his handsome features were more pronounced than they’d been the evening before, the texture of his dark hair thicker and smoother, the green eyes that found hers brighter.
But there was something unkempt about his appearance too. He looked like a man who had spent the night at the bottom of a bottle of rum rather than in a bed. The effect only made him sexier. A pulse set off deep inside her, warmth gathering low in the most intimate of places...
Her reason for resistance suddenly became obvious.
This wasn’t mere appreciation of a handsome, sexy man. She was attracted to him.
Aislin was attracted to Dante Moncada. Properly, heart-beatingly, swoon-makingly attracted.
‘You are still here,’ he stated as he closed the door.
‘Well spotted, Einstein.’
Okay, so she was attracted to him. That was nothing to panic about. It didn’t mean her brain cells had to become goo around him. She had overcome much worse than an unwelcome attraction to a gorgeous man before. If there was one thing Aislin had it was an abundance of self-control. How else could she have sat through all those awful meetings with the patronising social workers and other officials who’d all seemed determined to deny her the right to be Finn’s legal guardian, while Orla had recovered from her horrific injuries, and not have punched any of them?
The slightest spark emerged in the green of his bloodshot eyes. ‘Einstein would have killed for my IQ.’
Her lips twitched to break into a smile. ‘And your modesty, I’m sure.’
He grinned. ‘Am I to assume you’re going to accept my offer?’
‘A million euros to act as your arm candy for a few days? Yep, I can do that.’ She could deal with attraction. Deal with it by ignoring it and keeping her wits sharp. ‘But, before I accept your deal, I should point out that no one is going to believe we’re engaged. You’ve only just dumped your last girlfriend.’
He