Dante: Claiming His Secret Love-Child by Sandra Marton

Author:Sandra Marton [Sandra Marton]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2009-10-05T03:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHT

DANTE stood on the wraparound terrace of his two-story Central Park West penthouse, a cup of rapidly cooling coffee in his hand.

Was it possible he’d been away from New York for only two days?

It felt more like weeks.

Either autumn had suddenly overtaken the park or he simply hadn’t noticed it, now that the leaves of the maples, oaks and sycamores far below were turning rich shades of crimson, brown and gold. Up here the mums and asters and who-knew-what-else his sister Isabella had planted in big redwood tubs had burst into vivid bloom.

Izzy would be thrilled.

She’d planted them last spring. Even when she was a kid, she’d loved to dig around in the dirt. Cesare would spend hours in the fenced-in yard behind the house in the Village, planting, then feeding and watering his annual crop of tomatoes. Izzy would accompany him, down on all fours tending the scraggly daisies that seemed the only flowers hardy enough to survive the Manhattan air. Now, all grown up, she’d taken one look at Dante’s terrace after he’d bought the penthouse, gotten a dreamy look and said she could just imagine how perfect some plantings would be here, and here, and here….

So he’d let her poke and plant, he’d teased her like crazy and the result had been a summer of roses and daffs and other stuff, and now here came autumn.

His first reaction, seeing the blaze of color this morning, was to grab the phone, call her and say, “Hey, Iz, so maybe playing in the dirt isn’t such a bad thing.”

“It’s called gardening, you idiot,” Iz would say, and laugh.

Except, he couldn’t tell her.

She’d want to come by, and how could he let that happen because if she did stop over, if any of his family did, how in hell would he explain the woman and baby living in the guest suite? Would he say, “Hi, good to see you and by the way, this is Gabriella—no, I don’t think I ever introduced you to her before, Mama, and oh, by the way, this is her baby who might, emphasis on the ‘might,’ also be mine and yeah, that ‘might’ is important because somehow or other, I blew straight past the whole DNA/blood-test/paternity-test thing…”

Right. That would work out just fine. His mother would pass out, his sisters would shriek, his brothers would tell him he was an idiot, and his father would laugh and say that obviously, the trip to Brazil had not taught him anything about negotiating.

Dante took a long breath.

Maybe the problem was he’d come up against someone who was a hell of a lot better at negotiating than he’d ever been.

He raised the coffee cup and drank. Maybe caffeine would help. God knew, something had to. What in hell had he been thinking yesterday? Better still, had he really convinced Gabriella to come north…or had she played her role so well that she’d convinced him to ask her to do it?

At this point he honestly didn’t know.

The only certainty was that yesterday’s brilliant plan was clearly today’s potential disaster.

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