The Sicilian's Baby Bargain. Penny Jordan

raped her, saying that in reality she had consented to having sex with him. Her reputation would be ruined. She had no proof that she had been raped. It had been her word against his and she couldn’t even remember what had happened. She knew beyond any shadow of a doubt, though, that she would not have consented.

      Her stepbrother had been furious when he had received that telephone call from Antonio’s solicitors. He had been so sure that Antonio would pay up. She shivered, even though it wasn’t cold, and then pinned a forced smile to her face as she climbed the short flight of stone steps that led to the door of the nursery.

      The sunny yellow-painted hall walls were decorated with the children’s brightly coloured artwork, and Mrs Nkobu, one of the more senior staff, greeted her with a warm smile.

      ‘There’s a man waiting to see you. Mrs Ward wasn’t for letting him—she told him it was against the rules—but it’s plain to see that he’s the kind that doesn’t pay attention to anyone’s own,’ she told Annie she told Annie conspiratorially.

      Fear iced down Annie’s spine.

      Colin had found them.

      Strictly speaking the nursery wasn’t supposed to allow anyone not authorised by a parent to have access to any of the children, but Annie knew how persuasive Colin could be. Nausea curdled her stomach. He would try to take over her life again. He would say it was in her best interests. He would remind her that their parents had left their assets to him because they trusted him to look after her—even though her mother had told her that the house would come to her, because it had belonged to her father.

      She mustn’t think about any of that now, she told herself. She would need all her energy and strength to survive the present; she mustn’t waste it on the past.

      ‘He’s in the carers’ room,’ Mrs Nkobu informed her, referring to the small fusty room with a glass wall through which parents and guardians could watch the children whilst waiting to collect them.

      Annie nodded her head, but instead of going to the carers’ room she went to the nursery, busy with other mothers collecting their children. Ollie was sitting on the floor, playing with some toys, and as always when she saw him Annie’s heart flooded with love. The minute he saw her he held out his arms to her to be picked up. Only once she was cradling him tightly in her arms did she feel brave enough to look through the glass panels into the room beyond them.

      There was only one person there. He was standing with his back to the glass and he was not Colin. But any relief she might have felt was obliterated by the shock of recognition that arced through her, sending through her exactly the same tingling sensation of deadened sensory nerve-endings awakened into painful life as she had felt earlier in the hotel lobby, when he had held her.

      A long-ago memory of herself as a young teenager came back to her. Inside her head she could see herself, giggling with a schoolfriend over a handsome young teenage pop idol they had both had a crush on. She had felt so alive then—so happy, and so unquestioningly secure in her unfolding sexuality. She held Ollie even tighter, causing him to wriggle in her arms at the same moment as the man from the hotel lobby turned round.

      He wasn’t wearing his sunglasses now, and she could see his eyes.

      The breath left her lungs with so much force that it might as well have been driven out by a physical blow. She knew who or rather what he was immediately. How could she not when the eyes set in the scimitar-harsh maleness of his face were her son’s eyes? That he and Ollie shared the same blood was undeniable—and yet he looked nothing like Ollie’s father, the man who had raped her. Antonio Leopardi had had a soft, full-fleshed face, and pebble-hard brown eyes set too close together. He had been only of medium height, and thickset. This man was tall with broad shoulders, and his body—as she already knew—was hard with muscles, not soft with over-indulgence. He smelled of clean skin, and some cologne so subtle she couldn’t put a name to it, not of alcohol and heavy after-shave.

      He was clean-shaven, his thick dark hair groomed, whereas Antonio had favoured stubble and his hair thickly gelled.

      Everything about this man said that he set the highest of standards for himself even more than for others. This man’s word, once given, would be given for all time.

      Everything about Antonio had said that he was not to be trusted, but despite their differences this man had to be related to her abuser. Ollie was the proof of that.

      She wanted to turn and run, fear tumbling through her as she felt her defences as weak as a house of cards; but her fear was not fear of the man because he was a man, Annie had time to recognize. It was a different fear from the one that lay inside her like a heavy stone. Instinctively she knew that this man was no threat to her, and that she was in no danger from him. His focus wasn’t on her. It was on her son—on Ollie.

      Her mouth had gone dry and her heart was pounding recklessly, using up her strength. There was no escape for her. She knew that. Still she tried to delay the inevitable, her hands trembling as she strapped Ollie into his buggy and then reluctantly pushed it to the door.

      He was waiting for her in the corridor, one strong, lean brown hand reaching for the buggy, forcing her to move her own hand or risk having him close his hand over her own.

      Falcon frowned as he registered her reaction to him. Was her recoil part of the legacy Antonio had left her? He had been struck when he had seen her earlier by her vulnerability, and by his unfamiliar desire to reassure her. Now that feeling had returned.

      Falcon wasn’t used to experiencing such strong feelings for anyone outside his immediate family. He had never denied to himself his protective love for his two younger brothers, nor his belief that, as their elder, in the absence of their father’s love and their mother’s presence in their lives, it was his responsibility to protect and nurture them.

      He had grown up shouldering that responsibility, but he had never before felt that fierce tug of emotional protectiveness towards anyone else.

      It was because of the child, of course. There could be no other reason for his illogical reaction.

      It had taken him several hours of impatient telephone calls and pressure to track her down via the agency that had employed her—thanks to that wretched receptionist preventing him from following her at the hotel.

      This morning he had felt sorry for her. Now he was motivated solely by his duty to his family name to make amends for what Antonio had done, he assured himself. And of course to ensure that Antonio’s son grew up knowing his Leopardi heritage. It had taken him longer than he had wished and a great deal of money to track him down, but now that he had there could be no doubting that the child was a Leopardi. He had known that the minute he had seen him at the nursery. The boy’s blood was stamped into his features, and Falcon had seen from the woman’s expression when she had looked at him that she knew that too.

      They were outside now, with no one to overhear them.

      ‘Who are you?’ Annie demanded unsteadily. ‘And what do you want?’

      ‘I am Falcon Leopardi, the eldest of Antonio’s half-brothers from our father’s first marriage.’

      Colin had mentioned Antonio’s family to her—or rather he had tried to. But she had refused to listen. Antonio had, after all, refused to acknowledge his son.

      ‘You are Antonio’s brother?’

      The tone of her voice betrayed disbelief, and Falcon detected a deeper core of something that sounded like revulsion. He could hardly blame her for that. In fact, he shared her revulsion.

      ‘No,’ he corrected her grimly. ‘We were only half-brothers.’

      How well she understood that need to differentiate and distance oneself from a supposed sibling. But how ridiculous of her to allow herself to imagine that she and this man could have anything in common, could share that deep-rooted antipathy and guilt that had been so much a part of her growing up.

      Even now she could still her mother saying plaintively,