Dante: Claiming His Secret Love-Child

He watched her face, saw the play of emotions across it. She was shivering. From the cool of the night or from anger? He didn’t give a damn. And if it was all he could do to keep from hauling her into his arms again and kissing her until she sighed his name and trembled not with cold or rage but with need, what did that prove—except that she was a woman, an incredibly beautiful woman, he’d never stopped wanting? And, damnit, what did that have to do with anything?

“For the last time,” he said sharply. “Is Daniel mine?”

Perhaps it was exhaustion. Perhaps it was acceptance of the inevitable. Or perhaps, Gabriella thought, perhaps it was hearing her son’s name on the lips of the man who had planted his seed deep in her womb thirteen long months ago.

Whatever the reason, she knew it was time to stop fighting.

“Yes,” she said wearily. “He is. So what?”

Of all the night’s questions, that was the only one that mattered. And Dante knew, in that instant, his world would never be the same again.

Chapter One

DANTE Orsini was in the prime of his life.

He was rich, powerful and as ruggedly good-looking as a man could hope to be. He worked hard, played hard, and on those rare nights he went to bed alone, he slept soundly until morning.

But not tonight.

Tonight he was dreaming.

In his dream he walked slowly along a narrow road. It led to a house. He could hardly see it because of the heavy mist that hung over everything, but it was there.

His footsteps slowed.

It was the last place on earth he wanted to be. A house in the suburbs. A station wagon in the driveway. A dog. A cat. Two-point-five kids.

And a wife. One woman, the same woman, forever…

Dante sprang up in bed, gasping for air. A shudder racked his big, leanly muscled body. He slept naked, kept the windows open even now, in early autumn. Still, his skin was slick with sweat.

A dream. That’s all it was. A nightmare.

The oysters last night, maybe. Or that brandy right before bedtime. Or…he shuddered again. Or just another resurfacing of that long-ago memory of what had happened when he was just eighteen, stupid and in love.

In what he’d thought was love.

He’d gone steady with Teresa D’Angelo for three months before he’d so much as touched her. When he finally did, one touch led to another and another and another….

Christmas Eve, he’d given her a gold locket.

She’d given him news that almost brought him to his knees.

“I’m pregnant, Dante,” she’d whispered tearfully.

He’d been stunned. He was a kid, yeah, but he’d still known enough to use condoms. But he loved her. And she’d wept in his arms and said he’d ruined her life, that he had to marry her.

He would have.

He would have Done The Right Thing.

But fate, luck, whatever you wanted to call it, intervened. His brothers noticed how withdrawn he’d become. They sat him down, saw to it that he had enough beer to loosen him up a little and then Nicolo asked him, point-blank, what was going on.

Dante told them about his girl.

And the three of them, Nicolo and Raffaele and Falco, looked at each other, looked at him and said, was he out of his freaking mind? If he’d used protection, how could she have gotten knocked up?

She had to be lying.

He went after Falco because he’d said it first. When Rafe and Nick repeated it, he went after them, too. Falco grabbed him in an arm lock.

“I love her, dammit,” Dante said. “You hear me? I love her and she loves me.”

“She loves your money, dude,” Nicolo had said, and for the first time in days Dante had laughed.

“What money?”

Falco let go of him. And Rafe pointed out that the girl didn’t know he wasn’t loaded. That even way back then, all four Orsini brothers had thumbed their noses at their old man’s money and power and everything that went with it.

“Ask around,” Falco, the oldest of them, said bluntly. “Find out how many other guys she’s been with.”

Dante lunged for him again. Nick and Rafe held him back.

“Use your head,” Nick snapped, “not that divining rod in your pants.”

Rafe nodded in agreement. “And tell her you want a paternity test.”

“She wouldn’t lie to me,” Dante protested. “She loves me.”

“Tell her you want the damned test,” Rafe growled. “Or we’ll tell her for you.”

He knew Rafe meant it. So, with a dozen apologies, he’d suggested the test.

Teresa’s tears had given way to fury. She’d called him every name in the book and he’d never heard from her again. Yeah, she’d broken his heart but she’d also taught him a lesson that still came back to haunt him when he least expected it.

Like that ridiculous dream.

Dante took a couple of deep breaths, sank back against the pillows and folded his arms behind his head.

Marriage? A wife? Kids? No way. After years of trying to decide what to do with his life, of coming close to losing it a couple of times in places no sane man should have been, he’d finally sorted things out. Now he had everything a man could possibly want: this penthouse, with the morning sun pouring through the skylight above his bed. A cherry-red Ferrari. A private jet.

And women.

A wicked grin lit his hard, handsome face.

More women, sometimes, than a guy could handle and all of them beautiful, sexy and not foolish enough to think they could con him into anything more permanent than a relationship—and, God, he hated that word—a relationship of a few months duration.

He was between women right now.

Taking a breather, Falco had said wryly. True. And enjoying every minute of it. Like the blonde at that charity thing last week. He’d gone to what should have been a dull cocktail party. Save the City, Save the World, Save the Squirrels, who knew what? Orsini Brothers Investments had bought four tickets, but only one of the brothers had to show his face.

As Rafe had so elegantly put it, it was Dante’s turn in the barrel.

So he’d showered and changed in his private bathroom at the office, taxied to the Waldorf figuring on a few polite handshakes and a glass of not-very-good wine—the wine was never very good at these things even if it cost five thousand bucks to buy a ticket.

And felt someone watching him.

It was the blonde, and she was spectacular. Long legs. Lots of shiny hair. A slow, sexy smile and enough cleavage to get lost in.

He’d made his way through the crowd, introduced himself. A few minutes of conversation and the lady got to the point.

“It’s so noisy here,” she’d purred and he’d said, yeah, it was and why didn’t he take her somewhere quiet, where they could talk?

But what happened in the taxi the doorman hailed had nothing to do with talk. Carin or Carla or whatever her name was had been all over him. By the time they got to her apartment, they were both so hot they’d barely made it through the door…

Dante threw back the blankets, rose from the bed and made his way to the bathroom. He had her cell number but he wouldn’t use it tonight. Tonight he had a date with a cute redhead he’d met last week. As for that dream…

Ridiculous.

All that had happened almost fifteen years ago. He knew now he’d never loved the girl who’d claimed he’d made her pregnant, though he did owe her a thank-you for teaching him an important life lesson.

When you took a woman to bed, it was your trousers you left on the floor, not your brain.

Dante tilted his head back, closed his pale-blue eyes, let the water sluice the shampoo from his dark-as-midnight hair.

No woman, no matter how beautiful, was worth any deeper involvement than the kind that took place between the sheets.

Without warning a memory shot into his head. A woman. Eyes the color of rich coffee. Hair so many shades of gold the sun seemed trapped there. A soft, rosy mouth that tasted of honey…

Scowling, he shot out his hand, turned off the water and reached for a towel. What the hell was the matter with him this morning? First the insane dream. Now this.

Gabriella Reyes—amazing how he could remember her name and not the name of a woman he’d been with last night, especially since it was a year since he’d seen Gabriella.

One year and two months. And, yeah, okay, twenty-four days…

Dante snorted.

That was what came of having a thing for numbers, he thought as he dumped the towel on the marble vanity. It made him good at what he did at Orsini’s but it also made the damnedest nonsense stick in his head.

He dressed quickly in a beat-up New York University T-shirt, the sleeves long since torn out, and a pair of equally disreputable NYU gym shorts, and went down the circular staircase to the lower level of his penthouse, hurrying past the big, high-ceilinged rooms until he reached his gym. It wasn’t an elaborate setup. He had only a Nautilus, some free weights, an old treadmill. He only used the stuff when the weather was bad enough to keep him from running in Central Park, but this morning, despite the sunshine, he knew he needed more than a five-mile run if he was going to sweat a couple of old ghosts out of his system. It was a Saturday; he could afford the extra time.

When he was done, he spent a couple of hours online looking at auction sites that dealt in vintage Ferraris, checking to see if there was anything out there that came close to the 1958 Ferrari 250GT Berlinetta “Tour de France” he’d been searching for. There’d been word one had been coming on the market about a year ago in Gstaad; he’d thought about flying over to check it out, but something—he couldn’t recall what—had come up just then…

His hands stilled on the keyboard.

Gabriella Reyes. That was what had come up. He’d met her and everything else had flown straight out of his head.

“Dammit,” Dante said tightly. That was twice today he’d thought about the woman, and it made no sense. She was history.

Okay. Enough sitting around. He closed his computer, changed into another pair of shorts and a T-shirt and went out for a run.

Getting all those endorphins pumping did it. He came home feeling good and felt even better when Rafe phoned to say he’d just put away the French bank deal they’d been after. He’d already called Falco and Nick. How about meeting for a couple of drinks to celebrate at their favorite hangout, The Bar down in Chelsea?

By the time the brothers parted, it was hard to remember the day had started badly, but his good mood evaporated when his mother called. Dante loved her with all his heart and even her usual questions—was he keeping good hours? Was he eating properly? Had he found a nice Italian girl to bring to dinner?—even those things couldn’t dim his pleasure at hearing her voice.

The message she delivered from his father did.

“Dante, mio figlio, Papa wishes you and Raffaele to come for breakfast tomorrow.”

He knew what that meant. His father was in a strange mood lately, talking of age and death as if the grim reaper was knocking at the door. This would be another endless litany about attorneys and accountants and bank vaults…as if his sons would touch a dollar of his after he was gone.

His mother knew how he felt. How all her sons felt. Only she and their sisters, Anna and Isabella, persisted in believing the fiction that the old man was a legitimate businessman instead of the don he was.

“Dante?” Sofia’s tone lightened. “I will make you that pesto frittata you adore. Si?”

Dante rolled his eyes. He despised the sight, the smell, the taste of pesto but how could a man ever say such a thing to his mother without hurting her feelings? Which, he thought grimly, was exactly why Cesare sent these invitations through his wife.

So he sighed and said yes, sure, he’d be there.

“With Raffaele. Eight o’clock. You will call him, si?”

That, at least, made him grin. “Absolutely, Mama. I know Rafe will be delighted.”

All of which was why Sunday morning, when the rest of Manhattan was undoubtedly still asleep, Dante sauntered into the Orsini town house in what had once been Little Italy but was now an increasingly fashionable part of Greenwich Village.

Rafe had arrived before him.

Sofia had already seated him at the big kitchen table where they’d had so many meals a famiglia. The table groaned under the weight of endless platters of food, and Rafe, looking not too bad for a man who’d spent last night partying with Dante, the redhead and a blonde Red had come up with after Dante had called and told her his brother needed something to cheer him up—considering all that, Rafe looked pretty good.

Rafe looked up, met Dante’s eyes and grunted something Dante figured was “good morning.”

Dante grunted back.

He’d danced the night away with Red, first at a club in the meatpacking district, then in her bed. It had been a long night, a great night, lots of laughter, lots of sex…lots and lots of sex during which his body had done its thing but his head had been elsewhere. He’d awakened in his own bed—he made it a point never to spend the night in a woman’s bed—with a headache, a bad attitude and no desire whatsoever for conversation or his old man.

Or for the frittata his mother placed in front of him.

“Mangia,” she said.

It was an order, not a suggestion. He shuddered slightly—food was not supposed to be green—and picked up his fork.

The brothers were on their second cups of espresso when Cesare’s capo, Felipe, stepped into the room.

“Your father will see you now.”

Dante and Rafe rose to their feet. Felipe shook his head.

“No, not together. One at a time. Raffaele, you are first.”

Rafe smiled tightly and muttered something about the privileges of popes and kings. Dante grinned and told him to have fun.

When he looked back at his plate, there was another frittata on it.

He ate it, got it down with another cup of coffee, then fended off his mother’s offerings. Some cheese? Some biscotti? She had that round wheel of bread he liked, from Celini’s.

Dante assured her he was not hungry, surreptitiously checked his watch and grew more and more annoyed. After forty minutes he shoved back his chair and got to his feet.

“Mama, I’m afraid I have things to do. Please tell my father that—”

The capo appeared in the doorway. “Your father will see you now.”

“So well trained,” Dante said pleasantly. “Just like a nice little lap dog.”

His father’s second in command said nothing, but the look in his eyes was easy to read. Dante showed his teeth in a grin.

“Same to you, too, pal,” he said as he pushed past him to the old man’s study.

The room was just the way it had always been. Big. Dark. Furnished in impeccably poor taste with paintings of saints and madonnas and God-only-knew-who on the walls. Heavy drapes were pulled across the French doors and windows that led to the garden.

Cesare, seated in a thronelike chair behind his mahogany desk, gestured for Felipe to leave them.

“And close the door,” he said, his voice hoarsened by decades’ worth of cigars.

Dante sat in a chair across from his father, long legs extended and crossed at the ankles, arms folded. He had dressed in a long-sleeved navy sweater and faded jeans; on his feet were scuffed, well-worn sneakers. His father had never approved of such clothes—one reason, of course, that Dante did.

“Dante.”

“Father.”

“Thank you for coming.”

“You summoned me. What do you want?”

Cesare sighed, shook his head and folded his perfectly manicured hands on the desk.

“‘How are you feeling, Father? What is new in your life, Father? Have you done anything interesting lately?’” His bushy eyebrows rose. “Are you incapable of making polite conversation?”

“I know how you’re feeling. Hale and hearty, despite your conviction you’re approaching death’s door, just as I know whatever might be new in your life is best left unmentioned.” Dante smiled coldly. “And if you’ve done anything interesting lately, perhaps you should entertain the Feds by telling it to them, not to me.”

Cesare chuckled. “You have a good sense of humor, my son.”

“But not much tolerance for BS so let’s get to it. What do you want? Is this another session of ‘I am dying and you must know certain things’? Because if it is—”

“It isn’t.”

“Straight and to the point.” Dante nodded. “I’m impressed. As impressed as I can ever be, by the likes of you.”

Cesare flushed. “Insults from two sons, all in one morning. It is I who am impressed.”

Dante grinned. “I gather your conversation with Rafe was so pleasant he decided to leave through the garden rather than spend an extra minute under your roof.”

“Dante. Do you think you might grant me time to speak?”

Well, well. A new approach. No barking. No commands. Instead, a tone that bordered on civility. Not that it changed anything, but Dante was, he had to admit, curious.

“Sure,” he said politely, checked his watch then met the old man’s eyes. “How’s five minutes sound?”

A muscle knotted in Cesare’s jaw but he kept silent, opened a desk drawer, took out a manila folder and slid it toward his son.

“You are a successful investor, are you not, mio figlio? Take a look and tell me what you think.”

Damn, another surprise. That was as close as his father had ever come to giving him a compliment. Clever, too. The old man surely knew he couldn’t resist opening the folder after that.

The sheaf of papers inside was thick. The top sheet, labeled Overview surprised him.

“This is about a ranch,” he said, glancing up.

“Not just a ranch, Dante. It is about Viera y Filho. Viera and Son. The name of an enormous fazenda in Brazil.”

Dante’s eyes narrowed. “Brazil?”

“Si.” His father’s mouth twitched. “You have heard of the place, I assume?”

“Very amusing.”

“The ranch covers tens of thousands of acres.”

“And?”

“And,” Cesare said with a casual shrug, “I wish to purchase it.”

Dante stared at his father. Cesare owned a sanitation company. A construction company. Real estate. But a ranch?

“What the hell for?”

“It is, according to those documents, a good investment.”

“So is the Empire State Building.”

“I know the owner,” Cesare said, ignoring the remark. “Juan Viera. Well, I did, years ago. We, ah, we had some business dealings together.”

Dante laughed. “I’ll bet.”

“He came to me for a loan. I turned him down.”

“So?”

“So, he is ill. And I feel guilty. I should have—” Cesare’s eyes went flat. “You find this amusing?”

“You? Feeling guilt? Come on, Father. This is me, not Isabella or Anna. You don’t know the meaning of the word.”

“Viera is dying. His only son, Arturo, will inherit the property. The boy is unfit. The ranch has been in the Viera family for two centuries, but Arturo will lose it, one way or another, before Viera is cold in the ground.”

“Let me get this straight. You expect me to believe your motives are purely altruistic? That you want to buy this ranch to save it?”

“I know you do not think highly of me—”

Dante laughed.

“Perhaps I have done some things I regret. Don’t look so shocked, mio figlio. A man nearing the end of his life is entitled to begin thinking about the disposition of his immortal soul.”

Dante put the folder on the desk. This was turning into one hell of a strange day.

“I ask only that you fly to Brazil, look things over and, if you deem it appropriate, make an offer on the ranch.”

“The market’s going to hell in a hand basket and you expect me to set aside my work, fly to South America and make an enemy of yours an offer he cannot refuse?”

“Very amusing. And very incorrect. Viera is not my enemy.”

“Whatever. The point is, I am busy. I have no time to stomp around in cow manure just so you can assuage a guilty conscience.”

“This is a far simpler thing than I asked of your brother.”

“Yeah, well, whatever you asked him, I’ll bet he told you what I’m going to tell you.” Dante shot to his feet. “You can take your so-called conscience and—”

“Have you ever been to Brazil, Dante? Do you know anything about it?”

Dante’s jaw tightened. The only thing he knew about Brazil was that it was Gabriella Reyes’s birthplace, and what the hell did she have to do with anything?

“I’ve been to Sao Paulo,” he said coldly. “On business.”

“Business. For that company of yours.”

“It’s called Orsini Investments,” Dante said, even more coldly.

“It is said you are excellent at negotiating.”

“So?”

His father shrugged. “Why ask a stranger for help when one’s own son is considered the best?”

A compliment? Pure bull, sure, but, dammit, it hit its mark. Why not admit that?

“Well,” Cesare said, on a dramatic sigh, “if you will not do this thing…”

Dante looked at his father. “I can only spare a couple of days.”

His father smiled. “That will surely be enough. And, who knows? You might even learn something new.”

“About?”

Cesare smiled again. “About negotiating, mio figlio. About negotiating.”

A world away, more than five thousand miles southwest of New York, Gabriella Reyes sat on the veranda of the big house in which she’d grown up.

Back then the house, the veranda, the fazenda itself had been magnificent.

Not anymore. Everything was different now.

So was she.

As a child on this ranch, she’d been scrawny, all legs and pigtails. Shy to the point of being tongue-tied. Her father had hated that about her; the truth was, she couldn’t think of anything about herself that he hadn’t hated.

This place, the verandah, had been her sanctuary. Hers and her brother’s. Arturo had been even less favored by their father than she had been.

Arturo had left the ranch the day he turned eighteen. She had missed him terribly but she’d understood, he’d had to leave this place to survive.

At eighteen, Gabriella had suddenly blossomed. The ugly ducking had become a swan. She hadn’t seen it but others did, including a North American who had seen her on a street in Bonito, doubled back and handed her his business card. A week later she’d flown to New York and landed her first modeling assignment. She’d loved her work…

And she’d met a man.

She’d been happy, at least for a little while.

Now, she was back at Viera y Filho. Her father was dead. So was her brother. The man was gone from her life. She was alone in this sad, silent house, but then, one way or another, she had always been alone.

Even when she had been Dante Orsini’s lover.

Perhaps never as much as when she had been Dante’s lover, if she had ever really been that. She had warmed his bed but not his heart, and why was she wasting time thinking of him? There was no point in it, no reason, no logic—

“Senhorita?”

Gabriella looked up into the worried face of the ama who had all but raised her. “Sim, Yara?”