The Count's Christmas Baby

She wasn’t the only one. “When we were trapped together, I would have sold my soul to know what you looked like,” he confessed emotionally. “Feeling you told me that you were a lovely woman, but I must admit that no dreams I’ve had of you could measure up to your living reality.”

Like someone shell-shocked, she lifted one of her hands to his face in wonder. She traced his features, bringing back memories he would never forget. “Ric—” Her fingers traveled over his lips. “Maybe I’m hallucinating again.”

He kissed the palm of her hand. “It was never an hallucination. We were mortal then and now.”

Tears trickled out of the corners of her eyes, eyes that were alive like the green of a tropical rain forest. “When I thought you were dead, I wanted to die. While you were still breathing, I could hold on. But after that beam hit you and I couldn’t get a response, it was the end of my world.”

Ric heard the same pain in her voice he’d carried around for months afterward. He studied her facial features, overlaying his memories of her through eyes that could see the throb at the base of her slender throat. Tears trembled on the ends of long dark lashes so unusual on a blonde.

She kept looking at him with incredulity. “I feel just like I did after the avalanche struck. Maybe I’m hallucinating and none of this is real, but it has to be real because I’m touching you and it’s your voice. You’re actual flesh and blood instead of the stuff of my dreams.”

“You were the flesh and blood I clung to while we were entombed,” he confessed. “You saved my sanity, too, Sami. Like you, I felt I was in this amazing dream. When we made love, I remember thinking that if it was a dream, I never wanted to wake up from that part of it. Everything about our experience had a surreal quality.”

Sami wiped the tears off her face. “I know. Until I found out I was pregnant, there were times when I thought I’d made it all up.” She stared at him. “What happened to you after you were rescued?”

He grasped her hand. “I was told that another few minutes and the medics wouldn’t have been able to revive me. I knew nothing until I woke up in a hospital in Genoa. I was in a coma for two days. When I came out of it, I was surrounded by my family. My first request of the doctor was to find out if you were one of the victims.

“He came back with the message that you must still be alive because there was no name of Sami or anything close to it on the list of fatalities. After hearing that news, I determined to go after you once I got better. After our family held funeral services for my father, then I started looking for you.”

“I can’t believe it.”

“Why are you so surprised? What we’d shared together was something so unique, I’ll never forget. But when your name didn’t show up on any established tour-group lists in the area, I had to look further afield. I remembered you’d told me you were from Oakland, California. That’s all I had to go on. I put my people on it while we searched for you for several months.”

“Oh, Ric—” she cried softly before sliding off the other side of the bed to come around.

He got to his feet. “You were my first priority, but you weren’t listed in the Oakland phone directory. No flights leaving Austria for the States with your name. No planes arriving in Oakland or San Francisco had a name that could be traced to you. It was as if you’d disappeared off the face of the earth.”

“That’s because you didn’t know my real name,” she cried out in dismay. “I was nicknamed Sami because my father’s name was Samuel. After my parents died, my grandparents took over raising me and my sister, and my grandfather said I reminded him so much of his son he started calling me Sami, and it stuck.”

“I thought it had to be short for Samantha, but your passport says otherwise.”

“That’s what everyone assumes who doesn’t know me. To think you searched all that time for the wrong name. I can’t bear it.”

He couldn’t either, considering the promise he’d made to his father when they’d gone to Austria for an important family wedding. Ric had done everything humanly possible to find her. When he’d exhausted every avenue to no avail, he’d got on with his life and eventually fulfilled that promise.

“It’s true I was born and raised in Oakland,” she went on to explain, “but after I went back to college, I started to feel ill and went to a doctor. When he told me I was pregnant, I couldn’t believe it. My sister, Pat, insisted I move to Reno, Nevada, to be with her and her husband. Their travel agency is growing all the time. They’re the ones who gave me a working vacation during my break from college.”

Nevada … The avalanche had changed both their lives in ways Ric was only beginning to understand. “Were you ill the whole pregnancy?”

“No. After the morning sickness passed, I didn’t have other problems. Since Pat’s my only family and I wanted to be close to her and their children, I moved to Reno and started classes there. Without my legal name, no wonder you couldn’t trace me.”

He rubbed his chest absently while he was digesting everything.

Her anxious gaze fastened on him. ‘Do you have any ill effects from your head wound?”

“Only the occasional headache,” he answered, touched by her concern.

“I’m so glad it isn’t worse. That was the most terrifying moment.” Her voice shook.

“Thankfully, I don’t remember.”

“I don’t like to think about it. Throughout my pregnancy I decided that after Ric was born and I’d had my six-weeks checkup, I’d take him to Genoa and look up his grandfather. My own parents had already died, and I thought it would be wonderful if Ric grew up knowing he had at least one grandparent who was still alive.” She hugged her arms to her waist. “How tragic you lost your father.”

“Yes,” he whispered, but right now everything else seemed very far removed.

“I thought about him all the time,” she said. “Naturally I feared how he would take the news. It might have been the worst thing he could hear, but I hoped it might comfort him a little to know you weren’t alone when you died.”

Ric’s breath caught. “Ringrazio il cielo you looked for him! Otherwise I would know nothing! Be assured my father would have wanted to be a grandfather to our son.” Once he’d gotten over the shock of learning the circumstances of his grandson’s conception. Ric was still having trouble taking it all in.

She bit her lip. “I didn’t know the right thing to do. That’s the reason why I was so secretive with the police chief.” Ric warmed to her for her desire to be discreet. “I didn’t want to embarrass your father or cause him pain in front of anyone else. I really thought if I could find him, he’d refuse to believe me and that would be the end of it. But for the baby’s sake, I felt I had to try.

“When the police chief suggested maybe I had the wrong city, I didn’t know what to believe. I thought you’d told me you were from Genoa. The thought of flying to Geneva and starting another search sounded overwhelming, but I was prepared to do it for your son’s sake. Oh, Ric—”

The woman he’d been trapped with had to be one in a billion.

His eyes strayed to the crib. The baby sleeping so peacefully was his son. It was unbelievable! Throwing off his own shock, he walked over to the crib and looked down at the baby—his baby—lying on his back with his arms outstretched, his hands formed into fists.

“In spite of all that death and destruction coming for us, we managed to produce a son!”

“Yes.” She’d joined him. “Incredibly, he’s perfect.”

Ric had thought the same thing the second he’d laid eyes on him. In that moment he’d suffered pain thinking his parent had fathered such a beautiful child with her. Ric had been so convinced of it that he was still having trouble getting a handle on his emotions.

But it wasn’t his father’s— It was his own!

His elation was so overpowering, he reached for the baby and held him against his shoulder, uncaring that he’d wake him up again. Ric wanted him to wake up so he could get a good look at him. Warmth from the little bundle seeped into his body’s core, bonding them as father and son.

The baby must have sensed someone different was holding him. He started wiggling and moved his dark silky head from side to side. He smelled sweet like his mother. He was such a strong little thing that Ric was forced to support his head and neck with more strength. He lowered him in the crook of his arm so he could pick out the unique features that proclaimed him a Degenoli and an Argyle. Both sets of genes were unmistakable.

“Ciao, bambino mio. Welcome to my world.” He kissed his cheeks and forehead. His olive-skinned baby grew more animated. Ric laughed when those arms and legs moved and kicked with excitement. The first Degenoli in this generation to live.

His sister, Claudia, had barely learned she was pregnant before she’d suffered a miscarriage. It had happened soon after she’d heard their father had been killed in the avalanche. His sorrow for her and her husband, Marco’s, loss would always hurt, but as he looked down at his son, there wasn’t room in his soul for anything but joy.

When Ric looked up, he caught Sami’s tear-filled eyes fastened on the two of them. After wondering what she’d looked like, he couldn’t get his fill of staring at her.

“I can’t fathom it that you’re alive, that you’re holding him,” she cried. “When I left the police station, I was heartbroken. If I didn’t find Alberto in Geneva, it meant going home knowing my baby would never know the Italian side of his family. What if you hadn’t followed me here?” she cried.

“Nothing could have stopped me. I had to find out who you really were because I couldn’t believe there was another woman alive who sounded like you.”

“I know what you mean. The second you spoke to me, I should have stopped trying to be cautious and just called you Ric to see what you’d do. It would have saved us both so much trouble.”

Ric would have responded, but his cell phone rang. It jerked him back to reality. He had a strong idea who it was.

“I’ll take the baby while you answer it.” Sami plucked the baby out of his arms and walked the floor with him.

He watched his little boy burrow his head in her neck. The action brought a lump to his throat before he wheeled away from her and checked the caller ID. Though he’d finally come to the end of his search for the woman named Sami, time had passed during that search and other dynamics had been set in motion.

Ric groaned when he thought of how this news was going to affect negotiations with Eliana’s father, let alone with Eliana herself. Theirs was no love match, but news of an unknown baby would be difficult for any bride-to-be to handle. He’d need to deal with her carefully. As for his own family, they would be in shock.