The Sicilian's Mistress Read Online Free PDF Page B

screamed inside her pounding head.
    Another moan was dredged from her. She covered her distraught face with trembling hands in growing desperation. Connor, whom she loved beyond life itself. Connor’s father was here to stake a claim in his son’s life. What else could he be here for? Why else had he searched for them?
    â€˜Let me tell you something…’ Gianni breathed in a charged undertone that reeked of menace but somehow didn’t frighten her. ‘Three years without me has turned you into a basket case! I’m taking you back to my hotel and getting a doctor to look you over!’
    By sheer force of will he got her down the path and out onto the pavement. She wasn’t capable of matching the speed of his reactions, but she dimly registered that what he thought he acted on simultaneously, with terrifying decisiveness. She gawped at the sight of the long silver limousine waiting, not to mention the chauffeur surging round the bonnet as if he was running a race to get the passenger door open in time.
    â€˜Your hotel…?’ she repeated belatedly, her brain functioning only in tiny, cripplingly slow bursts of activity. ‘I can’t go to your hotel !’
    Gianni ducked her head down as carefully as an officer of the law tucking a suspect into a police car and settled her onto the rich leather-backed seat. He swung in beside her, forcing her to move deeper into the opulent car, and a split second later the door slammed on them both.
    â€˜I’m not going anywhere with you!’ Faith protested frantically. ‘I’ve got to get back to the shop—’
    â€˜I’m sure your partner will manage without you for a couple of hours.’
    â€˜I have to pick up Connor from the nursery…no, I don’t…I forgot ,’ she lied jerkily. ‘The kids are out on a trip today and they won’t be back until—’
    Gianni subjected her to a derisive appraisal. ‘Wise up,’ hebreathed in cool interruption. ‘You can’t hide Connor or keep him from me. When I want to meet my son, I will, but I’m unlikely to stage that meeting when you’re on the edge of hysteria.’
    He had seen right through her, and that terrified her. ‘I’m not on the edge of hysteria…my car…the house…it wasn’t locked up—’
    Gianni held up the keys. ‘I pulled the door shut behind us. If you give me your car keys, your car will be picked up and driven over to the hotel. You’re in no condition to drive.’
    Faith surveyed him with huge haunted eyes. She passed over her car keys. He was like a tank, rolling over her to crush her deeper and deeper into the dust. And so cold, so very, very cold, she sensed with a shiver. He had tried to calm her, gripped her hands, made an effort to show that he understood why she was so distressed. But none of that had worked. Why? There was no human warmth in him. His brilliant, beautiful dark eyes now chilled her to ice.
    Connor’s eyes were lighter in shade, but his skin always had that same golden tint even in winter, she reflected numbly. Maybe he was lying about Connor being his child! Even as her head pounded unmercifully into what felt like the onset of a migraine attack she discarded that faint hope. Gianni D’Angelo wouldn’t be wasting his time tracking down a child he didn’t know to be his.
    Stray, unconnected thoughts kept on hitting her from all directions. She had shared his bed. She shifted on the seat, totally unable to look at him any more. She had bathed in his bath. It had to have been his bath. Nothing would convince her that she had ever been in the bracket of owning so luxurious a bath. But he had avoided the usual word ‘relationship’ to describe their former intimacy. ‘A certain bond’. That was the phrase he had used. Such an odd choice to describe their…their what?
    Not an affair, not a relationship? Oh, dear