Читать книгу Firefighter's Doorstep Baby / The Soldier's Untamed Heart онлайн | страница 22

Had he known Stephano would die in the bomb explosion last May, would he have done more in the days leading to that fateful time? Or would he have taken everything for granted as he had expecting them both to live forever?

It was a lesson well learned. No one could predict the future. Enjoy life while he could. As long as he could.

Handing it back, he said, “I don’t recognize her. When was she here?”

“I don’t know. Sometime within the last eighteen months is all I have. I thought at restaurants or shops someone would recognize her.” She slipped the photograph back into her pocket and shrugged. “So far no one has.”

“What are you going to do if you find him?”

“I’m still not sure. A baby should have his family around him. I’m hoping the father comes from a large family who would love Dante. I may never find him. But I want to tell Dante when he’s older that I tried.”

“Let your family be his.”

She shrugged. “I have no family. Ariana was the closest thing to a sister I had. Both our parents are dead. Neither of us had any other living relatives. Maybe it’s foolish to search for his father, but if it were me, I’d want to know. Easier maybe to find out about him now than when Dante is twenty-one.”

Cristiano didn’t know how he’d feel about finding out he had a child at some future date, after the child was grown. Had the man truly not wanted any connection, or had his initial reaction been panic that he now regretted?

In a way, his family’s recent events paralleled Mariella’s situation. He still didn’t know how to deal with the newly acquired knowledge that his father had other sons, older than he was. They’d grown up a world apart. Would there be some connection should they ever meet? Would blood call to blood? Or would they forever be strangers?

Cristiano could never knowingly give up a child if he had one. How had his father done it?

He kicked down the stand and got off the motorcycle. “Have you questioned everyone in town?”

“So far only the priest and the proprietor at the resort.”