Innocent of His Claim by Janette Kenny Read Free Book Online Page A

sentinels.
    The sun popping through their dense tops created a dappled effect, as if they were waving Marco home. Only instead of a smile he wore a pensive expression as if he dreaded coming here.
    “You don’t care for your ancestral home, do you?” she asked at last.
    “I am only here temporarily—this isn’t my home. It’s the estate bequeathed to me and Bella by the man who sired us, and it’s where we’ve lived since discovering our paternity.”
    She blinked, stunned by his vehement tone. “That’s a rather impersonal way to refer to your father and your sister.”
    He cut her a look that made her shiver. “Antonio Cabriotini wasn’t my father. His seed gave me life. I never spoke with the man. Never met him though I saw him once from a distance long before I was told I had any connection to him.”
    An uneasy silence rippled between then. “He must have known who you were.”
    He shrugged. “I doubt it. Cabriotini didn’t attempt to look for his bastards until he was dying. That’s when he decided to find an heir.”
    She offered a thin smile. “He wanted you then.”
    Marco laughed, the bitter sound mirroring his dislike of his paternity. “Don’t paint this into something homey. He detested the thought of leaving his wealth to a distant cousin in Majorca. So he hired investigators to discover if he’d sired any bastards in Italy.” He gave a gruff snort. “Cabriotini’s attorney hit the jackpot, finding my young sister and then me some months after the investigation was launched.”
    She winced, her burning cheeks surely as pink as the roses clustered against an ivory wall. “He must have been a very miserable man.”
    “Cabriotini lived hard and played hard and enjoyed a procession of mistresses. According to them, he made it clear to every women he bedded that he would deny any ‘mistakes’ that might evolve from a liaison.” His mouth pulled into that pained smile again and she shifted away from the car door without realizing she’d done so.
    Not that Marco noticed. His gaze was riveted out the window again, his broad shoulders so stiff she imagined them lashed to a steel girder.
    She worried her lower lip, wanting to avoid a scene. God knew she’d endured enough of them in her life.
    “You haven’t been a family for very long then,” she ventured, thinking by diverting the conversation to his sister again it could qualify a bit as her doing her job.
    “We’ve never been a family,” he said flatly.
    “When did you become so cold, so unfeeling?”
    “Ten years ago,” he said, not even deigning to look at her.
    She bit her lower lip and stared at her clasped hands, surprised they were trembling. Of course he would blame everything on that awful night when he’d cornered her and her father in the posh Zwuavé Gardens in Mayfair, accusing David Tate of stealing his family business, accusing Delanie of betraying him.
    She’d never been able to forget that ugly scene. Each second of that confrontation was embedded in her memory, each hurtful word tattooed on her heart.
    “How could you believe I betrayed you?” she asked as the car cruised down the poplar-lined driveway, taking her deeper into his lair.
    Marco snorted, pressing a knuckled fist into the leather seat, accusing gaze drilling into her. “You were the only person I confided in about my grandmother’s mental state. You knew I intended to remove her from her role in her own business before she was taken advantage of. You told your father this and he swooped down on her.”
    As she’d done that night, with her heart threatening to pound out of her chest, she shook her head in denial. “I never told Father anything.”
    Marco leaned closer and loomed over her. “Then how did he know something that I told only you?”
    She shook her head, having no answer. Never in a million years would she have divulged what they’d spoken of in whispers, arms and legs entangled, bare bodies curled perfectly together in a