The Surprise Conti Child. Tara Pammi

he hoped his rioting emotions would catch on that he was composed, that he would survive through this new development in his life like he always did.

      Giving in to the shame that he had behaved in a way he detested was only self-indulgent. Giving in to the guilt that clawed at him that he had abandoned his child...would only render him useless.

      His head jerked up, the realization that he believed Alexis stunning him anew.

      He believed that she was telling the truth, that her daughter was his?

      Antonio would call him a fool, their lawyers would tell him to demand a DNA test. The rational, sensible part of him, which had been born out of necessity at a young age, warned that he was being reckless. That Alexis’s poise, her self-sufficiency, her declaration that she wanted nothing from him, that they all could be lies.

      She could have waited all these years just so she could make a bigger splash, demand a bigger payoff.

      He wasn’t unaware of his draw for women. If they fell like flies for Luca’s charm, they went rabid because of how sacrosanct his privacy was to him, because the media, frequently and fervently, painted him as the perfect man, still mourning his wife.

      Yet that same instinct that had drawn him to her drowned out everything else. “Show me the pictures.”

      Knuckles turning white, her fingers tightened over the straps of her bag. Her reluctance now would have been comical, if not for the fierce churning in his gut. “I didn’t come to force you to be a father.”

      He moved closer, uncaring of the tremble in her lips, the slight widening of her eyes. Crowded her lithe body against the door, his self-discipline in tatters now. “You are afraid now? After you came all this way?”

      Something in his tone must have finally registered because she pulled out the envelope.

      He moved back toward the bed and spread them out on the dark cover.

      There were ten, different sizes and in different poses.

      His heart thundering, he picked up one eight-by-ten, a close-up. With jet-black hair that framed her face and serious gray eyes, and the cast of her features, drawn in chubbiness instead of sharp planes, the little girl was his mirror image.

      The girl, no, Isabella...was his daughter. His own flesh and blood.

      “There is nothing of me in her,” came Alexis’s reply behind him. Tentative and reverberating with a quiet joy. “Every morning, I look at her and I’m amazed that she’s mine.”

      Inhaling roughly, he turned.

      Raw emotion glittered in her eyes. Walking closer, unaware of her own actions, he was sure, she studied him avidly. He knew she was seeing her daughter, no, their daughter in his face.

      Still, her gaze was like a physical caress. Possessive and hungry and intent. And deeply disconcerting for the instant ache it evoked in him.

      He looked at the picture and then at Alex. “That determined chin, that’s you.”

      A smile curved her mouth, transforming her into a stunning beauty. “Really?”

      “Where is she now?” he asked, more to distract himself from the scent of her fluttering toward him. Subtle yet lingering. Like the woman herself.

      “With my parents. Isabella and I live with them. A friend of mine has a boy of Izzie’s age and she takes her during the day. You can keep the pictures.” She looked through her bag and extracted visiting cards and extended them to him. Like a salesgirl pushing a product. “These have all my numbers and email address. Just call me in advance, because after the accident and this trip, I can’t take off more—”

      “In advance for what?” he repeated.

      She shrugged but hurt shadowed her eyes. “Y’know...if you decide to see her.”

      He emerged from the emotional knockout, her intention in all the things she had told him tonight shaping into coherence. His gut tightened.

      When he made no move to take the cards, she put them on the small study table. “I’ll be in Milan for two more days if you have any questions.” She worried her bottom lip between her teeth. “If you can arrange a car for me, I’ll be off.”

      A growl he couldn’t control emerged low in Leandro’s throat.

      She thought she would show him pictures of his daughter and then bid him goodbye? That he would call her and make an appointment like some distant relative?

      Did she think he had no honor, no sense of duty?

      Have you treated her like you have any?

      “Stay tonight,” he finally said, somehow managing to keep his tone smooth. A herculean feat seeing that his head was in a whirl, his world precariously tilted on its axis. And this woman, whom he’d tried to forget at all costs, suddenly was at the center of it. “You look like you’ll faint any minute.”

      “I don’t want to cause trouble—”

      “Little late for that, yes?” He slid the pictures back into the cover. “Someone from the staff will show you to a bedroom. Buenonotte, Alexis.”

      * * *

      Leandro paced inside his bedroom, the scent of a woman lingering inside the walls after so many years as disconcerting as the one who had left it behind. A million thoughts crowded him.