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straight.
    Alexis whose eyes gleamed with pride and love as she claimed that he was a father. Of her little girl.
    His child...something Rosa had wanted so desperately for years.
    Now, this woman, whom he’d tried to forget, claimed her daughter was his... that his one moment of weakness had led to such a consequence?
    Everything inside him clenched tight, as if the merest breath could shatter him. Robbing him of speech even.
    â€œWhatever your scheme, Ms. Sharpe, you have already made a misstep in your bait.” Antonio finally spoke, his accented English falling like hard gravel over the marble floor. “If there were Conti bastards lying around for you to sully our name with, your claim would be believable if you said Luca fathered them.
    â€œNot Leandro.
    â€œNow before I call the polizia— ”

CHAPTER TWO
    â€œE NOUGH !” A LEX BIT OUT , her throat raw. Leandro’s silence distressed her more than his grandfather’s words. “I won’t stand quietly while you call my little girl names.”
    She felt Luca’s hand on her shoulder and drew strength from it.
    Faking defiance she didn’t feel, Alex held Leandro’s gaze.
    Disbelief? Disgust? Something finally flickered in his expression and she felt as if she was bucking, bending against the force of it.
    Aquiline nose, thinly sculpted mouth and the sleek, sharp planes of his face...he was just as arrogantly beautiful as she remembered.
    Seven years hadn’t changed his feelings about that night then. She hadn’t hoped differently, neither would she let him shame her.
    She had done nothing to be shameful of. Not then, not now.
    â€œYou stay silent even as you know there’s a chance that it’s true? I was wrong to come here, wrong to think Izzie...” She took a bracing breath. “You and your family, you don’t deserve to know her.”
    Alexis turned her back on them with her head held high.
    Out into the corridor she went, her pumps clicking hard on the gleaming marble floor, ignoring the hollow ache in her gut.
    It was the uncertainty caused by the accident, the uncertainty about Isabella’s future, she told herself. Nothing to do with the man who stood there, unmoving like a rock while his family castigated her.
    Having arrived at the end of the corridor, Alex stilled.
    Approaching dusk hadn’t dimmed the beauty of the villa one bit.
    The corridor opened into a semicircular balcony, offering a view to the ground floor, the acreage surrounding the house lit up by solar lights and the dark waters of the lake beyond.
    A tinkle of laughter from the guests below her brought her attention back. Pressing a hand to her throbbing temples, she faced her current problem.
    She couldn’t ask Valentina for a ride back. Would Luca help?
    She turned and slammed headlong into a solidly male body. Threaded her fingers in that hard chest for purchase. “Luca, can you please...”
    Crisply masculine and with a hint of aqua, the scent that filled her nostrils arrested the words on her lips. Her head jerked up so fast that she felt dizzy.
    Penetrating gray eyes studied her.
    â€œWhy assume Luca?”
    â€œBecause he seems like the only decent person in your family.”
    She tugged at her arm but Leandro didn’t relent. Her legs tangled with his, the hard, muscular length of his thighs against hers knocking the breath out of her.
    Hard and hot, he made her head spin. “I have nothing more to say to you,” she breathed into his shoulder.
    â€œYou think to announce what you did and walk away calmly? Probably into the media’s mouthpiece? Make a mockery of the Contis?”
    His grip viselike, he dragged her through a turn in the corridor that led to another sit-out area and then past a dark oak door. The hard thud of the door cut off the noise from the party, locking them away.
    Breath rattling, Alex kept her back to him.
    Her skin prickled at his nearness, her senses