But he’d refused to give in. Why should he?
Finally, in furious desperation, she’d threatened blackmail. Alex was scornful. He knew she had nothing to blackmail him with—he’d never betrayed her, never broken any law.
But a child.
She knew he wanted children. He was the last of his direct line. His family, powerful for five hundred years, had dwindled to only Alex and a distant cousin, Cesare. If he had no children, the title of Conte di Rialto would die with him.
But having an heir had seemed more and more unlikely, as he and Chiara had stopped sharing a bed long ago. For the last two years, he’d grimly waited for her to come to her senses and return to their marriage. He’d thought they could still have a partnership. He didn’t need to love her. In fact, it was better if he did not.
But Chiara must have known that if she’d surprised him with a biological child, Alex would have been willing to surrender anything—his honor, his fortune—to protect his own flesh and blood.
Could she have actually done what this girl claimed?
“I’m so sorry about your wife,” the American girl said now, interrupting his thoughts. Reaching out, she put her hand gently on his wrist. “Even if you had...problems in your marriage—” she stumbled over the words, then took a deep breath “—I’m sure you loved her very much.”
She was sure of what? Shocked, Alex looked down at the small hand over his wrist.
It was a conventional gesture, meant to offer comfort. But comfort was the last thing he felt. The touch of her hand caused a sizzle to spread through his body, from his fingertips to his toes and everywhere in between.
Why would his body react that way to this girl—this stranger?
There was no special magic in it, Alex told himself harshly. It was an instinctive reaction, nothing more. It had been too long since he’d had sex. Years. His marriage had never been about passion, even from the beginning. Their union had been about merging old families, old vineyards. He’d barely known anything about Chiara, except that she was beautiful and from a distinguished family, and that she brought the nearby Vulpato Winery as a dowry. The few times they’d made love it had felt mechanical, perfunctory. And within months of their wedding day, even that had stopped entirely.
That was nearly three years ago.
Was there any wonder his body was reacting now to the slightest touch? The slightest care?
He yanked his hand away. She blushed in pretty confusion.
She was almost too pretty, with her expressive brown eyes and dark hair pulled up in a long ponytail. She wore a yellow sundress that hugged her lushly pregnant curves. Her legs were tanned and slender, all the way to her simple leather sandals. Her face was bare of makeup, and she wore no jewelry at all.
“But—I don’t understand any of this.” She looked at the large, worn-looking bag hanging on her shoulder. “The clinic wasn’t notified of your wife’s death, or at least I wasn’t. And she said you were happy together—” The girl took an unsteady breath. “I’m sorry. You don’t have to talk about it. I can only imagine your grief.”
“No. You can’t.” She couldn’t, because he wasn’t feeling any. His whole body felt tight. “And I don’t know anything about your clinic.”
“You said she died in—in an accident?”
“Yes.” If you could call it accidental to get drunk and stoned with one’s lover and drive on a curvy cliff road on a rainy night. “Four weeks ago. You didn’t hear? It was in the news.”
He watched the girl as he spoke, waiting for some hint of recognition. For weeks, Chiara’s death had been reported gleefully in the Italian and French media. It was the perfect bit of gossip for the start of summer, a juicy scandal to see the proud Conte di Rialto, the former playboy who before his marriage had been the despair of every actress and debutante in Europe, for the last two years brought low by his wife’s endless public betrayals. Chiara’s death had been the perfect end to the gossipy news story, dying with her lover in a spectacular fireball on the French Riviera.
But even before that, everyone on earth, it seemed—friends, acquaintances, total strangers—had asked Alex point-blank why he didn’t just divorce her. He’d tried once or twice to explain about honor and the seriousness of vows, but even his friends didn’t understand. Promises are all well and good, Alex, they’d said, shaking their heads, but your wife is making a fool of you. Honor doesn’t demand that you keep your wedding vows. Honor demands you divorce the cheating harlot!
But this young woman’s luminous dark eyes were full of anguished sympathy.
He hated her kindness.
It was an act. It had to be. There was no way she could be telling the truth about her baby’s parentage, because there was no way a California clinic could have gotten his DNA without his knowledge or consent. Perhaps Chiara had found some struggling actress in LA who was already pregnant, and convinced her to play the role of a lifetime.
“I hope she paid you in advance,” Alex said through gritted teeth. The girl blinked, her expression bewildered.
“What?”
“For whatever deal you made with my dear departed wife.” He bared his teeth in a smile. “She hired you, did she not? To come to Venice and pretend you were pregnant with my child?”
Gripping the strap of her bag, which was digging into her bare shoulder beside the thin strap of her sundress, she said in a wavering voice, “You don’t believe me?”
The tremble of her voice, the unshed tears shining in her eyes. Oh, the girl was good. He’d give her that. Such an accomplished little actress, he expected he’d probably see her on television someday, accepting a gold statuette. “That you’v