Hana glared out the window toward the bright neon signs of the nearby commercial district. “How much clearer do I have to be? I don’t want you in my life. Stop calling me.”
“You called me,” he pointed out.
“I’m hanging up.”
“If you must.”
“There’s someone knocking at my door,” she said. “If it’s another ridiculous gift, I’m throwing it out the window.”
“I’m hanging up now,” he said smoothly.
“Good,” she choked out, and flung open the door.
Hana felt her heart lift to her throat as she saw Antonio in the doorway, broad-shouldered, tall and devastatingly handsome in his suit and black coat. His cell phone was still to his ear, against his mussed black hair, and his hard jaw was scruffy as he looked right through her with his searing dark eyes.
“Will you talk to me, querida?” he said huskily.
CHAPTER FIVE
ANTONIO STARED DOWN at her. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d pursued any woman like this. Never, not since he’d turned eighteen. But the stakes had never been so high.
Standing in her hotel room, Hana looked up at him, her brown eyes wary, one hand against the door, as if she yearned to slam it in his face. He couldn’t take that chance. Bracing his hand against the door, he ruthlessly pushed into her hotel suite, closing it softly behind them.
They faced each other in the fading afternoon light of the entryway.
“What do you want?” she whispered, backing away, past the open paper doors into the main room. He followed her.
“Stop,” she cried. “Kick off your shoes!”
“My shoes?”
“Japanese tradition!”
Tradition? With a snort, he started to refuse. Then the words stopped at his lips as he saw her face.
Hana expected him to refuse. She thought she knew him. She didn’t just think he was selfish. She thought he was broken and unredeemable. She thought he was heartless. Soulless.
He suddenly wanted to prove her wrong. To wipe away the scorn he imagined he saw in her eyes.
Antonio kicked off his handmade Italian shoes. Her eyes widened in surprise as he walked toward her on the rough reed mat. He stopped when he was just inches away from her, standing between the low-slung sofa and the wall of windows facing the city and darkening April sky.
His gaze traced her silhouette against the wide windows. She’d never looked so beautiful to him, so vulnerable—a strange thing to think, he thought wryly, when she had all the power in this moment. She had his baby inside her. The baby he’d never imagined he wanted.
But he’d discovered, to his shock, that he could not let them go—either of them. For the first time in his life, he was unable to walk away.
“You took off your shoes,” Hana breathed, tilting back her head to look into his face.
Antonio gave a slight smile. “You told me to.”
“I didn’t expect you to do it.”
“So you admit it.”
“What?”
“I can surprise you.” Of its own accord, his hand stretched out to trace her long dark hair, tumbling down her creamy silk robe with its elegant floral pattern. The robe’s tie had become slightly loose, revealing a matching silk nightgown. His gaze traced over her bare collarbone to the neckline, which hinted at the full shape of her pregnancy-swollen breasts beneath.
Abruptly backing away, she glared at him, tightening her silk robe around her waist. “What do you want, Antonio?”