Yet it remains the sea,replied the concierge, with a faint shrug.
Hannah had thought about that a lot.
Now he’d walked into her office, taken the chair that he normally did, and then come out with this…absurdity.
Hannah studied him, taking in the way his gray eyes glittered and the way he tilted that strong jaw of his, as if he was prepared to get belligerent if necessary.
There was no reason that should make hershiver,she chastised herself. Particular not in the absence of anything like fear.
He had taken to coming over every morning before work. Each time he did, it made more and more of Hannah’s heart hurt, because Dominic just loved him. Dominic couldn’t get enough of him. Add to that the inescapable fact that Dominic looked just like his father and itdid somethingto Hannah.
It made her feel connected to Antonluca in a way she knew, logically, she wasn’t. It made her daydream about becoming a family in a real sense when she knew that was something several degrees more than simply foolish. She was, in the end, really not much more than a simple girl who was good at hospitality.He, on the other hand, was…Antonluca Aniello.
Then again, she thought now, maybe foolishness was going around.
“I believe that you heard me,” Antonluca said. His voice was measured, but nothing about his expression or that glint in his gaze offered anything that suggested calm rationality.
She opted not to examine too closely the way that expression made everything inside of her…seem togleam.
Just as she did not permit herself to remember that look that Antonluca had worn on his face after he’d seen Dominic for the first time. Or the way they’d crashed together after that, in such a bright, blistering fury—
“I did hear you,” she conceded, because that was better than letting that memory sweep her away. “But I assumed I must have misunderstood. What on earth would make you think thatmarriagewas a good idea?”
Antonluca gazed back at her without comprehension. “We have a child.”
“Yes,” she said, and Hannah had to shove aside the wellspring of emotion that wanted to flood her then, with all thiswe.Wehave a child, he’d said.
As if they were that family she’d always wished she had—
But she had to stop doing this to herself.She had to. It was self-preservation at this point.
She cleared her throat. “We have a child, but we didn’t have to be married to make him and we don’t have to be married now, either.”
“I would like my child to have my name,” he told her, and even though those gray eyes of his glittered even more than before, if anything, his voice got smoother. Calmer.
Or maybe what it was, she thought as it seemed to expand inside of her, wasimplacable.
“If I had known you were having my child in the first place,”he said in that same voice, so it seemed that even his gaze was a bit darker, then, “I would have insisted upon it before he was born.”
“You would haveinsisted,” she echoed.
“My child should have every possible protection that my name offers,” Antonluca continued in that same calm, smooth manner. Yet with every syllable, it was as if more steel was infused into the words.
She stared back at him and realized that she hadn’t moved since he’d started speaking. It was as if shecouldn’t.It was very much as if she’d frozen solid, but that was only her body. Inside, her emotions were running wild.
He wanted tomarryher.
Except…it wasn’t really her he wanted to marry, was it. Marrying her was a means to an end. This was all about Dominic. This had nothing to do with her at all.
And Hannah was torn, because part of her was fiercely glad. This was how she had felt about Dominic from the moment she’d finally come to understand what was happening to her body. She had vowed that she would protect her baby as fully and as selflessly as she knew how, and if she didn’t know how, she’d learn.
But the other part of her, the part that could still feel Antonluca’s hot, hard mouth on hers, and the way he had surged deep inside of her as if he had always belonged there, was…less glad.
An alarm sounded on her phone then, and it was like being released from a spell. She looked away from him, saw the message on her lock screen, and blew out a breath.
“I will take your…proposalunder advisement,” she said, trying her best not to sound too emotional. Or too anything, really. “But it’s time for me to go make sure the tree lighting ceremony is going on without a hitch.”
She stood up in a rush, gathered her things as best she could, and when he stood, too, she almost expected him to reach out and put his hand on her—
