But whether or not she found this personally alarming, what made her furious was thinking that someone thought they could come and make that much noise when there was a baby sleeping.
Not on Hannah’s watch.
She hurtled herself toward the door and flung it open, prepared to give whoever was standing there a piece of her mind—
But it was Antonluca.
And he looked… More intense than she’d ever seen him before. Almostvibratingwith that intensity and, if she wasn’t mistaken, somewhat…ragged around the edges, besides. Or maybe it was simply that he was in casual clothes, when she’d never seen him in anything but a suit. Suggesting he’d come rushing here from his home.
“What…?” she began, her mind already wondering what calamity could have befallen the hotel in the few short hours since she’d left for the night. Already thinking that she could go back inside and grab a coat to throw over the sweater and lounging pants she was wearing, both quite a few notches above regular sweats, if not exactly up to her typical standards for the office—
“Is it true?” Antonluca gritted out.
It was cold out there tonight. She could hear the wind causing a ruckus. It smelled like snow. The dark seemed to press in on her. “I have no idea what you’re—”
“Is it true, Hannah?” he asked again, his voice darker. Rougher. “Do you have a child?”
And Hannah felt herself go terribly, frighteningly still. As if the world stopped turning, with a sudden, scary jolt.
She was a bit surprised that she wasn’t tossed straight off.
Or maybe she wished she was, because she couldn’t speak. She had never seen his gray eyes so dark, so haunted. She had never seen that mobile face of his, always so beautifully masculine, look so twisted. So anguished.
She had to say something. Sheneededto say anything.
But Hannah couldn’t seem to make her throat move or her mouth form words. Still seized up and frozen solid, she managed to nod her head.
Just the faintest little bit.
Yet it was enough.
Antonluca was filling up her doorway and then he leaned in, and it seemed to her that he put his face dangerously close to hers as the world began spinning again, too fast.
“Did you…?Do youhave my child?” he asked, though it was more the suggestion of words. She wasn’t sure his voice made any real sound at all.
Hannah felt her eyes prick with emotion. She felt her chest go tight and full.
But she could have done this already and she hadn’t. This was on her. She cleared her throat. She nodded again, more jerkily this time, to make sure he saw it. To make sure she was really doing it. “I found out I was pregnant after I moved home to Nebraska. I had no way to contact you. I didn’t even know your name.”
“But you know it now,” he pointed out in that low, dangerous voice. “You have known it for some while, have you not.”
It wasn’t a question.
He moved then and she stepped back immediately.
And only realized after he swept into her cottage and she closed the door behind him by rote, to keep the cold out, that she really should have thought this through.
Because all of that seething fury on her doorstep was one thing, but it was something elseinsidethe cottage itself. Moments ago she’d been thinking how cozy it was here, how bright and happy even in the darkest part of the year.
Now it was as if the darkness had taken over.
He was a shock against all that brightness, the brutal masculine beauty of him so tall and lean and furious right here in the middle of all this feminine space.
Antonluca made no attempt to look around, or make any small talk. He stood there in the middle of the room and stared at Hannah.
Throughher, more like.
She swallowed hard, and didn’t bother trying to offer any kind of explanation. Instead, she moved across the room and beckoned him to follow her, though she lifted a finger to her lips as she eased open Dominic’s door.
