New Arrivals: One Secret Child: Mistress, Mother...Wife? / Wealthy Australian, Secret Son / Her Prince's Secret Son

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‘So you want to be my rescuer again? Just as you tried to rescue me from my morose mood all those years ago?’

Fielding the comment, Anna lifted her chin. ‘Is it so wrong of me to want to reach out to you? To show you that I care about how you’re feeling?’

Remaining silent, Dante looked away again.

With frustrated tears making her eyes smart, Anna swung round on her heel and marched out of the room.

After watching the coloured house lights reflect off the dark lake for a long time, Dante stepped back into the drawing room at around one in the morning. The Campari on the rocks he’d made himself was barely touched. Leaving the crystal tumbler on a rosewood table, he stretched his arms high above his head, grimacing at the locked tension in his protesting muscles.

With everything he had in him he wanted to join Anna in the stately canopied double bed. But how could he when he knew she must secretly despise him for the way he had conducted himself in the past? It had even prevented her from getting in touch with him to tell him about Tia. No, it was Anna who was good and deserving of help…not him. Fear of failure and loss had been the dark, soul-destroying forces he’d been guided by. And because his associations with Italy had been tainted with hurt from his childhood he had fled to England to make his fortune, consciously choosing to lose his accent and forget his roots to reinvent himself as the untouchable businessman, the ice man.

All in all, it didn’t make a pretty picture. Bringing Anna and Tia here had raised painful spectres from his past when he’d started to believe he had let them go. What he wanted most of all was a new start for himself and his family—not to focus on his past mistakes and feel unworthy again. But could he blame Anna if ultimately she couldn’t forgive him for his deplorable history?

Intensely disliking the feeling of not having his emotions under control the way he wanted, Dante scrubbed an agitated hand round his shadowed jaw. He’d be better in the morning, he told himself. A few hours’ solid sleep and he’d be more like himself again. Reaching for the button on a discreet wall panel that controlled the lighting, he pressed it, lingering for a solitary moment as the room was plunged into darkness.

Tonight he wouldn’t seek comfort in Anna’s tender arms, as he ached with every fibre of his being to do. Somehow, after practically dismissing her on her first night in Como, he didn’t believe he deserved it. Instead, he would retreat to one of the other palatial bedrooms and spend the night alone.

She’d left the curtains open, and in the morning, sun streamed into the room, straight at her. Anna had to shield her eyes. Her spirits plunged in dismay when she realised that Dante hadn’t joined her as he’d promised he would. He’d been absolutely right about her being tired, but she was shocked at the speed with which she’d fallen asleep. She had remained in that condition up until now too. She was in a strange country, and a strange house, as well as beginning a month’s trial period of living with him. You’d think any one of those things would have kept her awake…but, no.

A deep sigh of regret escaped her. She should have stayed with him last night—should have found a way to reach him, to let him know how much she cared. If she’d stayed then he would have seen that she didn’t agree with his unspoken belief that he didn’t deserve love and care. He would have seen that Anna was fiercely loyal to the people she cared about. Yet she was still wary of disclosing her feelings when there was the ever-present fear that he might want to take away her autonomy.

But right now she needed to see her little girl and see how she was faring. She too had slept in a strange room, in a strange bed. Glancing at the clock by the bedside, she gasped when she saw the time. What kind of a mother was she that she could blithely oversleep and leave her child to fend for herself?

Guiltily grabbing her pastel blue cotton robe from the end of the bed, she yawned—and then couldn’t resist peering out at the wrought-iron balcony and the sublime view of the sun-dappled lake. A canopied boat full of early-morning tourists floated leisurely by. She caught her breath. There was a real holiday atmosphere in the air that to Anna was just like a dream. Even more so when she thought about spending her time here with the two people she cared most about in the world.