Page 17 of Hidden Heir, Italian Wife

“So you’ve hadweeksto reach out.” The cynic in him was adding up these details into something nefarious. A plot that meant she was targeting him. Deliberately trying to damage him in some way. Maybe she was just taking advantage of timing. Maybe her daughter wasn’t his after all.

“From the moment I realized I was pregnant, I believed I would raise Sofia alone,” Bree said defensively. “When I finally knew who you were, I needed time to consider what it meant to involve you.”

He wanted to leap on her dilemma as evidence her daughter wasn’t his, but his attention was snared by a greater detail.

“Sofia? That’s her name?” The musicality of it was a heart punch, bending his white-hot anger into prisms of emotional colors: curiosity and protectiveness, worry for her well-being, and yearning for the time he’d missed. “I want to see her.”

Bree clicked her phone and held it out.

Jax had meant he wanted to see her in real life, to judge for himself, but the image on the lock screen was another hammer-blow against any doubt. The round face with black ringlets and dark eyes and tiny white teeth looked too much like Eve as a toddler for him to dismiss her as anything other than a Visconti.

Still he fought it. He didn’t trust easily. Not anymore. He had learned the hard way that humans were complicated, self-serving creatures. He moved among them with an alertness to the fact they could turn on you without notice.

Bree might not have acted maliciously in keeping Sofia from him, but she hadn’t been as forthcoming as she could have been. He shouldn’t take her word for it. The sensible thing was to wait for a paternity test, but his gut had told him Sofia was his.

Even if she wasn’t, he wanted her to be.

Thatthought staggered him. What did he know of being a father? Parents were supposed to protect their young, weren’t they? He was a scandal magnet. He would only let down his daughter the way he’d let down everyone else.

He absolutely should not want Bree’s child to be his.

But he did.

For no reason other than he wanted Bree.

The elevator opened. They walked across the lobby, out the rotating door into the bluster of harsh wind and spitting rain.

“Where are we going?” Bree asked in a small voice.

He looked at her blankly, still trying to put his thoughts in order. They needed somewhere private to talk.

“The Visconti Signature is three blocks that way,” he decided.

***

They didn’t bother with a taxi. Bree hurried alongside Jax, not complaining about the pace his long legs set, even though she wore low pumps. The biting wind was trying to shear her clothes from her body. She wanted off the street as quickly as possible.

She wasn’t given time to admire the inlaid marble and chandelier and grand staircase of the Signature’s lobby. The front desk manager recognized Jax and hurried to give him whatever he wanted—which was the Presidential suite, apparently.

One private elevator trip later, they entered a palatial apartment. She’d seen photos of comparable rooms in WBE hotels, but had never had a reason to go into one. It was more residence than hotel room with two bedrooms, a full kitchen, a fireplace, a dining nook, and a terrace overlooking Central Park.

Jax walked straight to the bar, poured a drink and knocked it back. He hissed as he refilled his glass. “Do you want one?”

“Yes.” She was in her own state of shock. “Look, I’m sorry you had to find out like this. I knew you were coming to town and I’ve been trying to figure out when and how and whether to tell you. It never occurred to me you’d guess.”

As she accepted the drink, her fingers brushed his. Her insides were still trembling, especially when his expression was so ominous, but that tiny contact sent a spark into the kindling of awareness she was trying to ignore.

They locked eyes and she saw his pupils swell, as though what had happened within her was reciprocated in him.

She nervously backed off and set aside her purse, then shifted to sit on the sofa, putting the coffee table between them. She sipped and the scotch replaced the heat of desire with an acidic burn that felt just as dangerous. She sipped again, then said the one thing she had rehearsed for this moment.

“I don’t expect anything from you. It was my decision to have Sofia. Unless you want to be in her life in a meaningful way, there’s nothing you need to do.”

“Of course I want a relationship with my daughter,” he said starkly. “What kind of man do you think I am?”

“I don’t know, Jax. We spent one afternoon together. We’re strangers.”

He muttered a frustrated curse and moved to the windows that overlooked the rain-washed city. His free hand gripped the back of his neck, then he dropped it to speak over his shoulder.

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