More pressingly, she could not risk being late. She smiled at her not-quite-friend and set off, marching through the grand lobby and making certain that everything was perfect as she passed. Every room was spacious, elegant, and set with windows that let Tuscany inside. At this time of year, the hotel was also sparkling and bright. Elegance gleamed from every direction. It was warm, inviting, suggesting Christmas without tipping over into the kind of raucous, American holiday displays that would be everywhere back home.
Suggestion was always more seductive than excess. Hannah had learned that in school and had seen it play out in each of her positions so far, though never so much as here.
Off the lobby, she made her way down the hallway that led to one of the hotel’s restaurants, a few of its shops, and beyond it, what was known as the library.
She stepped inside at precisely eight o’clock. Extremely early by Italian standards, but she’d imagined that was part of the test.
Because no matter what La Paloma might have said about her position being secure, Hannah knew that this was a test.
She stepped inside, closing the door behind her, and was already letting her lips curve in polite greeting as she walked toward the figure of a man that she could see standing there by the window.
But he turned.
And she stopped dead.
She was fairly certain that her smile tumbled straight off of her lips and crashed down at her feet—but it could also have been her heart.
Because it was him.
Him.
Her mystery man from New York City.
Her balm during the hardest weekend of her life.
This beautiful, brutally attractive man, who had fully taken her hand. And had then taken her innocence, too, and had left her full of dreams of him for years after.
This man who had not given her his name, but had given her a far greater gift.
Her son.
And as his dark gray gaze locked on to hers, then widened in dark, arrogant astonishment, something else occurred to her.
This man wasthe father of her son. And he didn’t know it. He couldn’t.
And unless she was wildly mistaken, or in the wrong meeting room, he was also the new owner of this hotel.
Which meant that the life Hannah had built so carefully, and loved so much, was about to come tumbling down.
Again.
CHAPTER TWO
AntonlucaAniellocouldnot believe his eyes.
Hannah Hansen—theHannah Hansen—stood before him, somehow even more beautiful than he remembered her.
As if she gleamed in a new way, here in Italy where beauty was a passion, a lifelong journey, a way of life.
There were a lot of women named Hannah Hansen in the world. Antonluca knew this too well. So while he had noted the name when given her details during the sale, he hadn’t thought anything of it. Or rather, he knew better by now, because he’d looked for her to no avail.
For years.
Because he had been haunted by that night in New York.
More haunted than he should have been, or could even accept for some months afterward, since the entire reason he’d met her in the first place was because he’d beenincensedby that idiotic thing she’d said.
And worse, had shared with the whole world in a dirty tabloid rag.
