Because he’d said as much, hadn’t he? He wasn’t the sort to stay in one place. He had houses all over the world, like every other wealthy person she’d ever heard of. And when it came down to it, Hannah didn’t need anything from him. She doubted very much that he would be at all interested in the child he’d made, and besides, if he said anything cruel about Dominic or made any move to harm her son, she would hate him forever.
It wasn’t worth the risk.
Her son had her, and he had Cinzia. Dominic didn’t need grandparents and other relatives who didn’t care about him.
Maybe he also didn’t need a father who didn’t know he existed and was unlikely to care all that much if he did.
More to the point, he wouldn’t even be around after Christmas. He’d said so himself. So what was the point of telling him now?
You are rationalizing, something in her hissed, but she shoved it aside.
“You do not look filled with the Christmas spirit at all,” Antonluca said. “You look something more like murderous.”
“I’m only in the Christmas spirit on Christmas itself,” she replied, though as she said it she could hear that she sounded much sharper than she should. She tried to modify her tone. “And in the meantime, I really will murder someone if they don’t set these tables up correctly.”
She told herself that she merely stepped away to look after the details of the Christmas Market—todo her job,she assured herself—but she couldn’t shake the notion that what she was really doing was running.
Like a coward.
But she told herself she was doing it for Dominic, and that made it okay.
She had to believe that made it okay.
CHAPTER FOUR
Antonlucahadalwayshated Christmas. Whether it was memories of his unfortunate childhood or too many stressful kitchen environments during the holidays, who could say? The result was the same. He wasn’t a fan.
Yet every day he spent at La Paloma, the more contagious its Christmas spirit seemed to be.
He couldn’t say he liked that, either.
Especially when there seemed to be such a distinct link between the festive Christmas atmosphere in the hotel and the person responsible for making it that way.
One night, he found himself humming one of the Christmas carols that had been playing all day in the lobby and the rest of the common areas. One moment he had been celebrating another long day of keeping his hands to himself with a Negroni before a late meal in his otherwise desertedcastello. The next he found himself entirely too close to singing about herald angels. He told himself he was revolted that he should have been infected by such an earworm—
But if there was any such contagion, it was Hannah.
Antonluca had stopped pretending some while ago that he was looking for reasons to fire her again. There hadn’t been a particular moment that had tipped him in that direction, or not one he recalled. He simply…hadn’t considered terminating her. In ages.
He told himself this was simply good business. The truth was, she was excellent at what she did, as he had now seen firsthand. He had examined every possible detail of the hotel. He had monitored her for weeks now. There were no complaints to be made about her performance, because it was flawless.
Shewas flawless.
In fact, the only complaint Antonluca could really think of when it came to Hannah was that he hadn’t seen her naked again.
He could have complained about that at great length. And rather thought it spoke to his virtue that he did not.
Despite any lingering earworms to disturb hisaperitivo.
“Are you listening?” she asked after one meeting, sitting there once again in the confines of her ruthlessly impersonal office, during which he had entertained himself with a particularly detailed memory of the night in New York.
“I am nothing if not the very picture of attentiveness,” he assured her.
Her green eyes lit with amusement. “Really. And yet, somehow, you have nothing to say about the kitchen’s notes on your suggestions.”
And Antonluca could not possibly admit, now, that he hadn’t been listening to what she’d been saying. Perish the thought. He shrugged instead. “I never have anything to say to notes,” he told her with only slightly exaggerated arrogance. “I dismiss them immediately, with prejudice, and carry on as before.”
“I see.” But she looked as if she was trying not to laugh.
