Chapter 22

Finding an unoccupied meeting room just down the hall from the ballroom Clay led Shane in and held out a chair for her. Once she was seated he sank into a chair as well, glad to be off his feet. "So I guess introductions are in order. As you heard, I'm not Antonio Campanili. My real name is Clayton Webb."

"I'm Laurel Shane Harvester," she told him.

"It seems that our mothers have been trying to get us together for years."

"I don't care about that To…Clayton. I just want to know why you lied about your name and then disappeared."

"I go by Clay, only my mother calls me Clayton. In Italy I was undercover. I work for the CIA and we had reports of a leak in the Company, an agent selling secrets to the enemy through the bakery where we were working."

"Well that explains about your name, but not why you vanished."

"It was certainly not my intention, Laurel! That night after we had dinner, there was a meeting between the agent and his buyer. There was a gun fight and I was shot. I was in a coma for nearly two weeks and then when I could demand that they contact you, everyone refused because of my cover. By the time I was up to doing it myself I learned that you had moved in with the Count." Through his explanation he couldn't keep his eyes from straying to the evidence of her pregnancy.

"I guess I was under cover in a way myself. I just had to get away from the pressures of my dad trying to get me into the family business. I wanted a life that was my own choice. All I have ever wanted from the first time Cook taught me to bake was to someday have my own restaurant. So I used my middle name, changed my last name a bit, and headed to Europe."

"I guess I can understand that, what I don't get is why you gave up on us so quickly…and then moved in with him! I thought we had something special!"

"We did! I was devastated when you dropped off the face of the earth! I went to work every day praying that you would suddenly walk through the doors. Then the smells of the baking started making me sick. When I couldn't keep working there, I wasn't able to keep paying my rent and I didn't want to come home to tell my parents what a fool I had been. Giraldo offered to let me stay at his place."

Taking in the implications of her words, he gasped, "You're saying that the baby is mine?!"

"Yes, of course!" she said placing her hand over his on the table.

"But you told me you were on the pill."

"I was on the mildest form possible because the regular strength one actually was giving me morning sickness. Because of that the percentage chance that it wouldn't be completely effective was higher. So I didn't deceive you about that, the baby was an accident. But I wasn't really sorry. I had something to remind me of you. I was even planning on naming it after you."

"It's a boy?"

"Anthony or Antonia would work for either."

"I see, and now?"

"So are you going to tell me what is going on?" Mac demanded.

"Laurel changed her name and left the US to get away from her parents. When the guy she was in love with left her high and dry with a baby on the way, she moved into my villa because without a job she couldn't afford her rent. It took me several months to convince her to come home and face her parents."

"So the baby is Clay's."

"She told me the father's name was Tony," Giraldo told her.

"He was using a fake name just as she was, and he didn't disappear from her life because he wanted to. He was shot, and in a coma for a long while. It's take him months to recover and he still isn't back at work."

"If that is truly the case I hope that they can work it out. She really loves him."

"And he her," Mac admitted.

To be continued…