The Surprise Conti Child by Tara Pammi Read Free Book Online Page A

is there? You set your course and you blaze through it, come what may.”
    Alex blanched. Softly delivered but his innuendo pierced just the same.
    He thought this was easy for her? To see him after all these years, to realize that he still viewed her with that loathing? To know that she’d never been anything more than a quick indulgence?
    But she swallowed her own feelings and focused on what she needed to do. “I’m prepared to do anything to prove that she’s yours, yes.”
    â€œAnd, in return?”
    â€œAre you so afraid of what I would demand, Leandro?” The challenge escaped her before she could catch it, her femininity rearing its head.
    An almost imperceptible widening of those stormy eyes. Something she wouldn’t have even noticed if she wasn’t so greedy about every nuance on his face.
    â€œDo you have many to make then, Alexis? These demands?”
    Why was she taunting him? Why this reckless, dangerous urge to provoke him? She pulled out the envelope she’d stuffed into her handbag. “Here’s some pictures. Maybe you could visit us and meet Izzie a couple of times over the next couple of years so that you aren’t a complete stranger? I could bring her here for holiday, to meet Luca and Valentina, if they’re interested.
    â€œAll I want is a promise that if anything were to happen to me, you’d...”
    Her words trailed away as Leandro became still. The muscles in his face pulled taut over his features, a white pallor to his olive skin.
    Her outstretched hand lay between them. And his gaze on the envelope, frozen.
    â€œLeandro?”
    The swath of his eyelashes flickered. His rough breath rattled loud in the room.
    With gut-wrenching clarity, Alex realized that he’d rather she was lying.
    From the moment she’d spoken Isabella’s name, it wasn’t the veracity of her claim he’d doubted. What had kept him silent, even as his grandfather had shredded her, was that Leandro needed her to be lying.
    â€œYou wish Isabella didn’t exist.” Horror filled her, turning her voice into a whiplash. “Do you despise me that much?”
    He jerked around, pain streaking through his eyes. “What I feel about her has nothing to do with you.”
    That’s good, she told herself. She couldn’t bear it if he despised Isabella like he did her. She wouldn’t allow it.
    How much do you know of that man? Her mom’s question came back to her now.
    She didn’t know that much, really.
    Her intense attraction to him seven years ago, her fascination with him, the connection she’d felt with him, had been inexplicable. She stole another greedy glance at him, unable to stop herself. Lean and tall, he wore his power effortlessly and she wondered if that had been the draw for her.
    Hands shaking, she stuffed the envelope back into her handbag. She needed to leave. Before she made this about her. Before she asked any more of those stupid questions...
    Before she forgot that this man had crushed her tender heart in such a way that it hadn’t mended again.
    * * *
    â€œShow me the pictures,” Leandro finally forced himself to say.
    Alexis stilled with her back to him, her slender shoulders a tense line.
    His voice sounded as if he hadn’t used it in years, as if forming such simple words was beyond his capability. Told himself again and again that he was composed.
    If he acted like it, he hoped his rioting emotions would catch on that he was composed, that he would survive through this new development in his life like he always did.
    Giving in to the shame that he had behaved in a way he detested was only self-indulgent. Giving in to the guilt that clawed at him that he had abandoned his child...would only render him useless.
    His head jerked up, the realization that he believed Alexis stunning him anew.
    He believed that she was telling the truth, that her daughter was his?
    Antonio would call him a