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“We both know, whatever you might say now, that you couldn’t truly commit to anyone, even a child.”
“How do you know?” he ground out.
“You, commit? For a lifetime?” She gave a choked laugh. “You couldn’t even commit for a night.” She tilted her head. “Were you that quickly bored, the night we were together? Or did you have another date afterward?”
His expression changed infinitesimally. “You think I sent you away because I was bored with you?”
Hallie thought of the glamorous supermodel she’d just seen on his arm. “What else?”
She couldn’t let him see how badly that hurt her. When he’d first taken her in his arms that romantic night, she’d been so naive. She’d thought it was fate, an irresistible force drawing them together. She’d thought it was magic.
Hallie had been startled when he’d walked into his penthouse early that afternoon. She’d been warned to be invisible and that her cleaning must be spotless. After spending so much time dusting pictures of his handsome face, seeing Cristiano in the flesh had shocked her.
Cristiano Moretti was a dream come to life. A famous playboy, the self-made Italian hotel billionaire who dated princesses and heiresses.
And inexplicably, he’d wanted her.
One moment she and Cristiano had been talking by the bed; the next she’d been in his arms. After so many bleak years of anguish after losing her family and her home, when her handsome billionaire boss had lowered his lips to hers, Hallie had imagined all the pain was behind her. She’d thought her life had just changed for the better.
And it had, in one way: her baby. Jack was all that mattered now.
“I’m leaving,” Hallie said defiantly. “Once I cash your check, I promise you, we’ll be gone for good.”
Cristiano lowered his head until it was inches from hers. “And I promise you. You’ll do nothing of the kind.”
Her mouth went dry. As their eyes locked, her heart pounded in her throat as she realized her stupid, idiotic mistake.
She never should have openly defied Cristiano. Because he’d taken her words not just as a challenge but as an insult to his masculinity. To his honor, even.
All this time she’d been thinking about her pride. She hadn’t considered his. And now he would make her pay for it.
“You don’t want me,” she whispered, her voice almost pleading. “You know you don’t.”
His dark eyes seemed like deep, fathomless pools as his gaze ripped into her soul. Then he straightened.
“You’re wrong about that. I’ve wanted you for a year. And now I will have you.”
“What are you talking about?”
His gaze fell to the stroller and his expression grew cold. “He’s my child, Hallie. I’m not going to let him go.” He focused on her. “Or you.”
“I won’t be your mistress, if that’s what you mean,” she said, struggling to keep her voice calm, not to show her rising fear.
“I know.” Cristiano’s black eyes suddenly glittered, and he smiled. “Because you’re going to be my wife.”
* * *
His wife.
Cristiano watched Hallie’s eyes widen in shock.
It was strange, he thought. He hadn’t known he was going to demand marriage until the words came out of his mouth. His whole life, he’d never once been tempted to marry. Of course he’d never imagined he’d be a father, either. And as he spoke the words, he suddenly realized he did want to marry her.
Call him an indecent excuse for a man?
Say he was incapable of committing for longer than a night?
Tell him he couldn’t even love his child if he tried?
No.
Cristiano wouldn’t abandon his newborn son to endure the same helpless childhood he’d known. Not when he himself had spent most of his adult life seeking vengeance on the father who’d abandoned him before he was born.
But he couldn’t wrench his son away from Hallie, either. Mother and child were obviously bonded. Still, he needed to take control of the situation.
Marriage was the brutally simple solution.
“Marry you?” Hallie choked out, searching his gaze as if waiting for the punchline. “Are you crazy? I told you—I hate you!”
“And I’m none too fond of you.” But as he put both hands on her shoulders and looked down at her, his nerve endings sizzled from the contact. He might be angry, but he’d told her the truth. He hadn’t stopped wanting her for a year.
Her gaze fell unwillingly on his lips before she glared up defiantly. “Why would I marry you?”
Looking down at the baby, who was now awake and trying to grab his own feet in the stroller, he said quietly, “For our child.”
“But...you can’t seriously want to be a real father.” There was a new nervousness in her voice. “If you want to see Jack, maybe we could talk about visitation—”
“No,” he said coldly. Her expression looked relieved until he continued grimly, “I will have full-time, permanent custody.”
Hallie’s beautiful face blanched. She whispered, “You’d try to take him from me?”
“No.” He gave her a cold smile. “I want him to have two parents. Even though you didn’t care about that.”
Patrons and staff in the lobby had been staring at them for a while, but now they were coming closer, obviously trying to listen.
“I’m not having this conversation here,” he said abruptly. “Come with me now.”
She glanced around wildly, and he wondered if she was actually considering trying to flee. To help her avoid the temptation, he gently lifted the baby from the stroller.
“What are you doing?” she gasped.
“Holding my son,” he said, and started walking. She immediately followed him to the elevator, as he’d known she would.
“Want me to come up with you, Mr. Moretti?” his bodyguard asked.
Cristiano shook his head. “Tell Natalia I won’t be able to attend the gala after all. Give her my apologies.”
“Sure, boss.”
Cristiano continued into the elevator, with Hallie’s stroller dogging his heels. Once inside, he pressed his fingerprint against the hidden button for the penthouse.
As they rode the elevator to the top floor, she watched him anxiously. He tried to act casual, as if he’d held a baby before, but he felt awkward. Even three-month-old Jack seemed to be looking up at him in disbelief, as if trying to decide whether to cry or not.
“You’re doing it wrong. Hold his head like this,” Hallie blurted out, positioning the baby differently in his arms. She shook her head impatiently. “Just give him to me.”
“Forget it,” he said crisply. Jack was his son and, in some respects, until he secured her loyalty as his wife, Hallie was his enemy. There was no way he’d admit he didn’t know what he was doing or give the baby back to her care in a sign of weakness and surrender.
The elevator door slid open onto a small hallway with a grand door and a smaller, inconspicuous one farther down. The top floor of the Campania Hotel was devoted exclusively to Cristiano’s penthouse and terraces, with a small separate apartment for his bodyguard. He had a similar penthouse in his flagship hotel in Rome and smaller private suites in his hotels in Tokyo, Sydney, Rio, London and Berlin. He could have rented out the space to paying guests when he was away for an exorbitant amount, but he kept them to himself. Life was about little indulgences, or what was the point of being rich? A man, particularly a wealthy playboy, needed privacy.
Hallie followed him anxiously into the penthouse, as if she feared he might drop the baby. It was insulting. Especially as Jack gave a soft whimper in Cristiano’s arms.
“Give him to me—now!” Hallie said.
Keeping his expression inscrutable and moving with deliberate slowness to show her that he was doing it as his own decision, not hers, he carefully handed her their son. Leaving the stroller in the foyer, she clung to the newborn as if they’d been separated for days.
“You bastard,” she choked out. “Dragging us up here. It’s practically kidnapping.”
“Kidnapping?” He looked down at her coldly. “How about trying to steal my son from me for the rest of my life?”
Some of the anger in her gaze faded. “If you cared so much, you should have taken my calls when I was pregnant!”
He hated that she was right. With a low, bitter laugh, he turned away. “You remember your way around, I presume?”
She followed him into the enormous room with its starkly modern furniture and floor-to-ceiling windows that offered a magnificent view of the city’s sparkling lights. To the left, an open-concept kitchen had all the latest appliances, none of which he’d ever used. There was a reason he chose to live in his own hotels.
He looked back at her. Hallie’s cheeks were pink. He wondered if she was remembering when she’d cleaned here, as the maid. Or if she was remembering, instead, the night she’d helped him mess everything up again, tangling the bedsheets in a night of passion so hot it had burned past all barriers to create a child. A night he could never forget.
“Have a seat,” he said coolly even as he fought the flash of heat at the memory. He indicated the white sofa that overlooked the spectacular view.
She tossed her head. “No, thanks. I don’t intend to be here long enough to—”
“Sit down,” he said more forcefully, and glaring at him, she obeyed, cradling the fussing baby in her arms.
Cristiano sat down in the white chair beside the sofa. He didn’t need to see the city view; he knew it so well by now it bored him. He looked only at her.
“If Jack is truly my son, he belongs with me.”
She set her jaw. “You’re only saying that because I insulted your pride. You don’t really care about him.”
He narrowed his eyes. “Oh, you know that, do you? Because I’m an indecent excuse for a man? Because I couldn’t love someone if I tried?”
She had the decency to blush. “I’m sorry if that was rude. But it’s true.”
He restrained himself from tossing a few insults back in her face, insults she richly deserved. “You don’t trust me? Fine. I don’t trust you, either.” He looked down at the baby in her arms. “So from now on, my son is staying here.”
“No.”
“I will not allow him to disappear from my life just on your word that you’ll take good care of him.”
“And I won’t let you turn our lives upside down, just because I injured your masculine pride!”
That was all she thought it was? Controlling his temper, he took a deep breath.
“I know from experience what it is like to grow up with no father and no name,” he said slowly. “To live in poverty, with a mother too distracted by her own concerns to worry about mine. She moved us to a new town every time she took a new lover. Men who inevitably despised me as a burden, who thought I deserved to be screamed at, punched, starved.”
The color drained from Hallie’s face.
“What?” she whispered. “She didn’t protect you?”
Cristiano shook his head. “She couldn’t even protect herself. When I was eighteen, her last lover beat her almost to death. When I tried to intervene, she kicked me out.” He gave a hard smile. “I learned my lesson. You can only look out for yourself.”
Her soft eyes looked horrified, as if she’d never imagined any family could go so wrong. “I’m so sorry.”
Cristiano hated the pity in her eyes. He regretted saying so much. He’d never spoken about his past to anyone. “I just wanted you to understand.” He leaned forward in his chair. “I can’t let you leave with him, then spend my life wondering if you’re taking good care of my son, if you’ve taken lovers into your house who might hate him for crying, who might pick him up out of the crib and shake him hard until the crying stops—”
“I would never let that happen!”
“I know,” he said grimly. “Because he’s staying with me.”
“But—”
“Did you give him my last name?” he interrupted.
“His last name is Hatfield, like mine.”
“Something else that our marriage will rectify,” he said.
Hallie looked down at her baby softly whimpering in her arms. Her voice was small as she said with visible reluctance, “I might be willing to talk about...about shared custody.”
Why was she continuing to argue? Repressing his rising anger, he shook his head. “Marriage.”
“But why?”
“I’ve given you the reasons.” Suddenly he was finished trying to reason with her, trying to explain. He’d been far more patient and open with her than she deserved. For all the good it had done. He narrowed his eyes. “The discussion is over. We will wed. The decision is made.”
“Made by you. But you’re not my boss. Not anymore.”
Cristiano tilted his head. He said in a deceptively casual voice, “You can refuse my proposal, of course.”
“Then I refuse.”
“Then our son stays with me.”
Wide-eyed, she breathed, “Just because you’re his biological father you think you have the right to take him from me? I’m his mother!”
“And I have an entire team of lawyers at my disposal. What do you have? Nothing. You’ve already indicated you’re a liar and a flight risk. I’d request an immediate injunction from a judge to prevent you from ever leaving New York.”
“Liar? When did I ever lie?”
