Modern Romance February 2020 Books 5-8. Natalie Anderson

at the packed congregation as if they were royalty. She hardly dared look away from them in case she found the dark brown stare that had haunted her dreams.

      Could it really be him?

      It had been almost four years. All they’d shared was one night. Or was it two? Or three? Or more? She wished she could remember but her memory had as many holes in it as a lump of Swiss cheese. Many of the holes had closed with time and the lost memories had returned but everything to do with Tonino and her time in Sicily remained blurry snapshots. She knew they’d met at the hotel she’d checked into during her fruitless attempt to meet her father, but that had been her only concrete remembrance…apart from his face. She remembered that handsome face vividly. Every time she’d pictured it, she’d had to suck in a breath of air to counteract the lance of pain that had accompanied it and blink away tears she’d had no clue from whence they had come.

      ‘Mummy!’

      Her son’s voice broke through the fog of fear in her head.

      Stretching her cheeks into a smile, she finally had a clear view past her sister to the spot at the left of the altar where she’d been promised she and Finn would sit.

      The smile froze, half formed.

      A tall, dark, utterly gorgeous man sat beside Finn. His black stare was fixed directly on her.

      Her stomach plummeted. Thick heat pulsed and swirled through her head, dizzying her.

      She had no recollection of Aislin’s father handing the bride to the groom, no recollection of the two small bridesmaids leaving her side, no recollection of her feet taking her to her son. All she remembered from taking those steps was the blazing heat that suffused her entire body and the feeling that she could fall into a dead faint from the shock.

      The man watching over her son until she could take her place beside him was Tonino. Finn’s father.

       CHAPTER TWO

      THE WEDDING CEREMONY passed Tonino by. He rose and sat when directed, joined in with the hymns, recited the prayers at the appropriate times but it was all noise. He could not switch his attention away from Orla. Or her child.

      The child who looked the image of his own childhood photographs.

      His eyes flew from mother to child, child to mother, his gaze unable to settle any more than his ragged heartbeats could.

      The pounding in his head was too strong for coherent thoughts. He couldn’t breathe properly. He’d only been capable of snatching drags of air into his lungs since he’d seen Orla’s face.

      He’d risen from the seat he’d been saving for her and they’d stepped around each other, eyes locked, like two moons orbiting an invisible sun. For the first time in his thirty-four years he’d been struck speechless.

      Her green eyes had been wide. Frightened. Her face had been white.

      That was the last time their gazes connected.

      Not once throughout the ceremony did Orla look at him. While his stare remained resolutely upon her and her child, her attention, when not taken by her son, stayed on the bride and groom.

      Gradually, anger and incredulity rose inside him and pushed out the shock. Coherent thinking returned. His wits sharpened.

      He began to see more clearly too. And what he saw proved that, despite having had a child, Orla hadn’t changed at all.

      She was still beautiful. Slender and elegant. The long, thick dark hair he’d last seen spread over his pillow when he’d kissed her goodbye was coiled into a chic knot on the nape of her neck. The elfin features he’d once thought belonged on the pages of a fairy-tale book had been expertly made-up, smoky eye shadow emphasising the stunning large green eyes he’d once gazed into while buried deep inside her. The long-sleeved dress she wore was far less revealing than usual bridesmaid dresses, the dusky pink silk wrapping around her body to kiss her gentle curves but displaying minimal flesh.

      Her beauty had captivated him from the first look.

      That first look had been pure chance. A member of his public relations team had found a litany of complaints about one of his Palermo hotels online. Tonino had rearranged his itinerary and headed straight there. The Palermo hotel in question had been part of his uncle’s struggling chain until Tonino had stepped in to save it and save his uncle’s reputation from the shame of bankruptcy. Where Tonino specialised in converting old castles, monasteries, chateaux and the like into luxury spa and golf resorts for the wealthy, his uncle’s hotel chain had been aimed firmly at holidaymakers on a budget.

      Tonino had been raised in a wealthy family but his core group of childhood friends had come from diverse economic backgrounds. Gio, the friend Dante had chosen as his best man, came from an exceptionally poor background. In their school days, holidays for Gio’s family had been the result of months of overtime, scrimping and saving. The cost of their holiday had been pocket change compared to the sums spent by visitors to Tonino’s own hotels but in comparison had cost them far more and had meant a hell of a lot more as a result. He always thought of Gio when inspecting his lower-ranked hotels. Why should guests be forced to accept shoddy service, cold food and an unclean swimming pool just because they were poor? It was this exact same argument he’d had with his hotel manager right before he’d fired him. He’d left the meeting room, furious at the fired manager and furious with himself for allowing the situation to get this far. A solitary woman had been waiting at the unattended reception desk.

      That woman had been Orla.

      His reaction to her had been like a knockout punch to his guts. He’d never had such an immediate reaction to a woman before and it had been the final clarion call needed to know he couldn’t marry Sophia. That reaction had been the unwitting trigger for the rift that still existed between Tonino and his parents. That knockout initial reaction had changed the course of his life.

      Orla was thankful for the bossy photographer. He clearly saw himself as an artiste and spent ages framing each shot in the cathedral’s picturesque grounds. This allowed her to hide in plain sight with her family, safe amid their huge numbers. That she had barely spoken to any of them in the last three years was neither here nor there. She felt no animosity towards them. They simply picked up where they’d left off, catching up on their lives in snatches of conversation.

      Snatches of conversation were all she could manage. Everything inside her had become so tight it was a struggle to get any words out.

      One of the small bridesmaids had taken a shine to Finn and stuck to his side, gabbling away to him in her own language. Finn didn’t have much in the way of a vocabulary but the rapture on his face only proved that language was inconsequential.

      Too scared to look at Tonino, Orla kept her gaze far from him but still felt the heat of his stare upon her. It had been hard enough feeling it every second of the wedding ceremony but outside, his solid form a good head taller than most of the other guests, she felt his attention like a malevolent spectre haunting her. She sensed his loathing, which only added to the cold needles digging into her skin.

      What had she done to provoke such animosity?

      Deep in her bones she knew the moment opportunity presented itself, he would pounce. She had to be ready for it. She had to remember.

      Frustration at her Swiss cheese memory made her want to scream.

      She’d been waiting for her baby to be born before telling the father. That was something she knew only because Aislin had told her so. Aislin had been unable to tell her the father’s name or Orla’s reasons for waiting until after the birth to tell him because Orla had never disclosed it to her.

      Why was that? Orla never kept secrets from her sister so why would she have kept something of such importance