A Hidden Heir to Redeem Him Read online

  It was so poetic, it bordered on sappy, but to keep the knowledge of his daughter from him for three years? He would never forgive any of them for this.

  “We’ll wait for a DNA test before we continue this discussion.” Evelina took care to tuck her cashier’s check into her clutch. “Niko can’t overlook his son in favor of a child we’ve never seen. We’ll fight this.”

  “You’ll be wasting your money,” Davin said. “There’s already a DNA test that proves Aurelia is Niko’s descendant. Her sample was correlated with the DNA test that proved Mr. Casale’s paternity. Niko was of sound mind. Further tests won’t change anything.”

  Val didn’t need a test. He wasn’t so gullible as to take Kiara’s word, but his father had always been diligent about such fine points.

  He didn’t care anyway, he assured himself. Not beyond how galling it was that Niko had gotten the last laugh, but so what? Val had never wanted offspring—one of the reasons his marriage had tanked—and he hadn’t wanted his father’s money, either. He had no desire to take responsibility for the child in possession of that fortune—Oh, wait. The girl was only entrusted with half. That meant any involvement he had with her would mean dealing with Javiero on some level, as well.

  And all the while, his mother would continue to claw at him for her piece of the pie.

  Definitely time to exit stage right. He certainly could. Kiara was financially equipped to meet the needs of his child. Nothing in his life had to change. In fact, his mother would become Kiara’s problem. The solution was elegantly simple and utterly freeing.

  Yet, he remained where he was, coldly enraged. His insides were gripped by a wrath that swelled his chest with the pressure of a primal yell he couldn’t release.

  He could hardly pick apart why this provoked such a volcanic rise of fury in him. It had something to do with the grotesque replay of history. While he’d been married to Tina, Kiara had been having his child, sentencing an innocent to the label he’d worn like a dead albatross until he was old enough to make damn sure he deserved the slur.

  No. He might not have crafted himself into the most upstanding of men, but he was decent enough to pluck a child out of a toxic spill before she was lethally poisoned and scarred forever.

  “Refuse that money,” he told Kiara. “My daughter will inherit my fortune, not his.”

  “A minute ago you didn’t even want to know her name.”

  “She can have mine,” he shot back. “You’re going to marry me. Today.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  “VAL. DON’T BE RASH.” The whites of Evelina’s eyes showed. “We’ll fight this—”

  “Take your money and go home, Mother. I’ll call when I’m ready to speak to you again.”

  Evelina wasn’t rattled, but Val’s tone had Kiara shaking in her designer heels. She was doing her best to channel Scarlett, who never ruffled, but Kiara regularly lost battles against her two-year-old. She had folded like a cheap tent when Niko had dragged her into this arrangement, hadn’t she? She was no match for Val.

  And marriage? Of all the reactions she had tried to anticipate... No, she wouldn’t let herself process that. She was still absorbing the fact he hadn’t known she had been pregnant. That seriously undermined her ability to resent him and take the high ground.

  “Kiara can’t refuse the money,” Davin said. “It’s Aurelia’s. When she takes full control at twenty-five, Aurelia can do what she likes. Until then, the money remains in trust for her. A reasonable allowance is allocated to Miss O’Neill so she can provide Aurelia a stable home and upbringing. There’s also a provision for a financial manger’s salary. Miss Walker was intending to act in that capacity—”

  “The Miss Walker currently birthing my half brother’s heir? Hell, no,” Val stated.

  “Scarlett is in labor.” Kiara’s brain had been splintering with worry for her best friend this whole time. “And I’m her birth coach. I need to go to the hospital.”

  She would take her friend’s place in the stirrups if it would grant her an escape from the malevolence coming off Val in waves.

  “Hell, no again,” he said, tone implacable. “The last time you disappeared, you had my child and conspired with my parents to hide her from me for three years.”

  Kiara had one decent coping strategy for confrontation—sarcasm.

  “Did we have sex today? I didn’t notice.” She blinked. “You do move fast, I recall, but I think we’re safe this time.”

  Val set his hands on the table, pushing a force field over and around her, trapping her with his dangerous mood inside an airless bubble.

  “Shall I recite everything I remember from our night together?”

  A fluttering swirl of erotic memory accosted the pit of her belly. Heat flowed into secretive spaces and her nipples pinched. Why had she thought silk was a good choice? He could probably see the effect his words had on her. He was a practiced seducer, after all.

  One who was, perhaps, entitled to his outrage. She had been hurt by his cavalier treatment, but keeping Aurelia’s birth a secret from him had never felt right. From the moment she had known she was pregnant she had wanted to tell him about their daughter. So far, his reaction wasn’t very encouraging. It wasn’t very personal, but she had always cherished a small dream that he would ultimately fall in love with their daughter.

  Why? Because of her own fatherless upbringing? Ugh. Daddy issues were so clichéd.

  “Replays won’t be necessary,” she mumbled as she gathered her clutch and looked for the bag she usually carried, the one bulked with art supplies and baby wipes, snacks and clean clothes. She was traveling light today, having planned for a brief meeting and a quick bolt back to the island.

  “I have to make some calls,” she said, realizing she would have her first night away from her daughter while Scarlett brought her own infant into the world. “I’ll leave you to wrap up?”

  Davin nodded and Evelina turned with umbrage toward him, but Val met Kiara at the door.

  “Thank you,” she murmured as he held it for her.

  He followed her through it and sparks condensed in the air between them as he paced her down the hall to the elevator.

  “Um...” She started to ask him what he was doing, but it was obvious he was leaving.

  He took out his phone to make a call as they waited for the elevator.

  She took out her own phone and saw Scarlett’s texts. She read them as they stepped into the elevator.

  My water broke. Help!

  That one must have been sent from the ladies’ room. Kiara could have kicked herself for silencing her phone when she had entered the boardroom.

  Javiero’s mother just came in. What do I do?

  Then:

  Javiero is taking me to hosp. Call me when you can.

  Kiara bit back a groan of contrition and dialed.

  Beside her, Val told someone, “I want to get married. No, not here. Italy.”

  As her jaw dropped, and the elevator hit the bottom floor, rocking her on her heels, Scarlett answered in her ear.

  “Are you okay?” Kiara asked her dumbly, watching Val tuck his phone into his pocket.

  His gaze held hers as he leaned on the door to brace it open, trapping her where she stood.

  “I’m in labor, what do you think?” Scarlett groaned. “Oh, my Gawd, how did you do this?”

  “I’m on my way,” Kiara promised, forced to brush against Val’s intimidating frame as she stepped from the elevator. Another shower of tingles washed over her. “Leaving the office now.”

  “Wait.” Scarlett made a helpless noise. “Javiero wants to stay with me.”

  “Okay.” Kiara halted in the middle of the lobby. “What do you want?”

  “I don’t know! I had to tell him everything and now he thinks you shouldn’t be here.” A small hesitation, then, “Because of V
al.”

  Val paused to loom beside her, probably able to hear every word.

  Until today, she had understood there was animosity between the men, but after Evelina’s resentful reaction, and the grate in his words as he’d pronounced “my half brother’s spawn,” she had a clearer picture of how much genuine dislike existed between them.

  “Listen.” Kiara gentled her tone as she spoke to Scarlett, reminding herself that her friend’s delivery wasn’t about her. “If you want Javiero there, that’s fine. I completely understand. If my coming to the hospital will cause you more stress than comfort, I’ll go to a hotel and stand by. If you decide you want me, call. It doesn’t matter if it’s the middle of the night. I’ll come. Sound good?”

  “Thank you,” Scarlett said on a little sob. “I’m a wreck and—Oh, here comes another one.” She sucked in a breath. A male voice said something, and she replied with a petulant, “I am breathing. What do you know about it? Oh, my God, I hate you for doing this to me.”

  The call ended, presumably cut off by Javiero taking the phone from Scarlett.

  Kiara frowned with concern as she tucked away her phone.

  “It takes two weeks,” Val said.

  “Labor? Mine was fourteen hours.”

  “Marriage.” He narrowed his eyes at her remark, but continued, “We can do it faster elsewhere, like here in Greece, but I want to marry in Italy.”

  “Or not at all,” she suggested with a falsely bright smile, even though a weight of anger that had been sitting on her lungs for three years had shifted and angled deeper into her heart, leaving a painful ache.

  She avoided the flash in his eyes by striding across to the security desk.

  “I need my car and a reservation at a hotel near the hospital.”

  “My driver is here.” Val nodded at the black sedan that halted against the curb beyond the glass front of the building.

  Kiara opened her mouth to protest, but he said darkly, “We’re not finished, Kiara. We haven’t even started.”

  She swallowed a groan of resignation and went with him.

  * * *

  Beside him, Kiara was telling someone that Scarlett had gone into labor. “A little early, yes, but only a week or so. I’ll stay the night here in case she needs me. Is Aurelia napping? Call me when she’s up. I’ll text you when I have news. Thank you.”

  “Where is she?” Val asked, barely processing that he had a child, still blinded by the conspiracy of lies and secrecy that had kept her hidden from him.

  “The island. That was one of her nannies.”

  “One of,” he repeated. “Does she even know who ‘Mama’ is?” He skimmed his glance over tailored silk and pearl buttons, a vintage handbag and a contemporary Italian designer’s shoe that featured a gold wristwatch as an ankle band. “I know couture when I see it. And I know guilt when I see it, too,” he remarked as her expression tightened.

  “A mother is automatically issued a stone’s worth of guilt for every ounce of child.” Her chin notched up as she looked forward. “Especially if she works. You get double if working isn’t necessary for survival. And if the job you do is creative and doesn’t pay by the hour? I need a freight train to carry it all.”

  Val’s mother had never been burdened with such inconvenient emotions as guilt, but Evelina was in a constant battle against excess weight of any kind.

  Kiara didn’t diet herself skeletal. Her body was luscious and ripe.

  He had thought his reaction to her three years ago had been more about burning off the tension of the decision he’d made to marry a stranger, but sitting next to her, detecting her scent beneath the light fragrance of her cosmetics, was affecting him. He had to shift to make room behind his fly, which aggravated him. He didn’t lust after any woman. He enjoyed sex, but desire was one more feeling that could be used to manipulate. He preferred free will and he sure as hell wasn’t letting this woman have any advantages over him again.

  Even so, his gaze snagged on her knee and he recalled vividly the softness of her skin, the way it warmed under his caress and tasted rose petal-soft against his lips. The pull in his groin sharpened.

  Kiara flicked at the hem of her dress to cover her knee. Her gaze swept up to see if he had noticed and clashed into his.

  Yes, he was aware of the woman beneath the clothes, he conveyed. Sex was never a power game for him, but she had started this one. And if anyone knew how to weaponize sex and win that game, it was a man who’d sold everything from fragrance to tuxedos with a bared chest and a libidinous pout.

  He let his eyelids drop to a sultry half-mast and touched his tongue to his bottom lip. The muscles in his face were as well exercised and disciplined as those in his chest and abs and thighs. He softened his expression into admiration. Approval. Come hither, my beauty.

  “Feel guilty for letting my father dress you,” he said of the muted yellow dress that had Niko’s stamp of conservative authority all over it. “I’ll find you more flattering colors and styles.” He indulged himself with a thorough study of her unabashed curves.

  Her breasts rose in a shaken catch of breath, and the way her nipples stood up against the silk caused a responding stiffening in his pants.

  She didn’t notice his reaction. Her eyes had gone so wide as she looked into his face, he could practically count each of her thickened lashes. Color darkened her cheekbones. She looked away and swallowed loud enough that he heard it.

  That swift, exquisitely sensual response was exactly what had ensnared him the first time. The way she had caught her lip in a soft bite after the graze of their fingertips as they discussed her sketches. The longing in her eyes as she had traversed his nude form with her gaze, transferring what she saw to the page.

  Had that reaction been real or was it something in her playbook? She was averting her eyes so he couldn’t be sure.

  “Niko insisted I needed a proper wardrobe,” she stammered with an ingenue’s waver of uncertainty cracking her voice. “Since I’ve been going back and forth to Paris, we shopped there. We always take Aurelia, though.”

  “We?” His naturally possessive nature rose to a new level with that tiny word.

  “Scarlett and I,” she clarified with a wary flick of her glance.

  “She’s really having that SOB’s kid? She does go above and beyond, doesn’t she?”

  “Scarlett is having Javiero’s baby, yes.” Her spine straightened, thrusting her breasts out. “She’s also my friend so I would appreciate if you spoke more kindly about her.”

  He snorted. “How did it come about? Aside from the obvious. Did Dad pay her to get knocked up?”

  “No. Where do you get the idea women run around getting pregnant for money?”

  “Not all women perhaps, but in this family, it’s all too common. I am the embodiment of such a tactic, and Paloma married my father and had Javiero because her family was broke.”

  “Well I took precautions that failed and Scarlett can speak for herself on that topic if she so chooses. I won’t gossip about her, but try to have some empathy. These last weeks have been very difficult. Her pregnancy wasn’t the easiest, Niko was in his final days, and you know that Javiero just got out of the hospital?”

  “I saw the headlines.”

  Val wasn’t pleased that his half brother had nearly been killed by a jaguar. Javiero had lost an eye if reports were accurate. Sounded damned hellish, but caring in any way about what happened on that side of his father’s gene pool was a recipe for madness so Val hadn’t let himself dwell on it.

  They arrived at his hotel and, moments later, he watched her get her bearings much as she had three years ago, when he had brought her into his suite in Venice. She moved through the grand space with every indication she was absorbing minute details. She touched the tassel on the corner of a cushion, lifted her gaze to ornate plaster at the top of the walls, tipped
her head into a floral arrangement and moved the curtain, watching where the light fell.

  She removed her kimono jacket and went to stand at the window, tilting her head as she studied the Acropolis. He hung back and let his gaze wander her soft shoulders and the tuck of her waist and that glorious bottom pressing against silk that was weightless as a cobweb against her curves.

  His palms twitched and so did hers.

  She glanced around, gave a muted sigh.

  “Is that why you did it?” he asked, instinctively knowing she was looking for her sketch pad. Her compulsion to capture an image was as strong as her ability to do so. He’d learned that much about her in their short acquaintance. “My father supported your art? I saw the painting in the lobby.”

  Her lips parted and culpability flexed across her expression.

  “I gave you a stepladder,” he reminded through gritted teeth.

  “And I may have resorted to selling those sketches if your father hadn’t offered to support me, but he did.” She rolled her bottom lip inward and chewed it without mercy.

  “When? Were you working for him when we met?”

  “No,” she insisted, but he would reserve judgment on how much truth her words held. “And I didn’t mean to get pregnant. I honestly thought I was protected. By the time I found out, you were on your honeymoon.”

  “So you called my mother and told her you planned to terminate.”

  “Are you judging me for that?”

  “I’m judging you for telling everyone but me that you were pregnant with my child.”

  “Your mother was the only person I told,” she muttered, looking at her short, unpainted fingernails. “And I only called her because I felt quite desperate, financially and emotionally.” She frowned. “I didn’t have any family or even a network of friends. I had no idea what sort of mother I might turn into since it had never been my plan to become one. I had put Venice on my credit card and had other debts. I’m not proud of that, but I’m not ashamed, either. Until I turned up pregnant, art was all that mattered to me. I took whatever job bought me a meat pie and colored pencils, not necessarily in that order. I didn’t have a flat, just a room with a shared kitchen and bath. That standard of living was fine for me, but I knew I couldn’t bring a child into it. I didn’t have the education to get a better job, though. I can barely type and even graphic designers need computer skills. Putting ‘currently pregnant’ on your CV doesn’t get you a lot of job offers. I would have had to rely on benefits from the state for years to get on my feet. I’d already spent most of my childhood on government assistance. I had to explore all my options, no matter how hard that sounds, so I called your mother. I thought that, since she’d been in a similar situation, she might have some empathy, perhaps offer other solutions.”