There was a very real possibility that she was losing her mind.

Despite closing her eyes and wishing time after time to wake up in her own bed in Texas to another boring, safe, but utterly predictable morning, every time she opened her eyes again she was still staring at the broad, tall and proud figure of Antonio Capirelli, looking at her like she was the answer to everything. That wasn’t how this morning was supposed to go at all.

With her words stuck in her throat, Julie stood there like a fish out of water as Antonio rushed to her and grabbed her in his warm embrace. Despite everything she’d told herself, and her efforts to nurture her growing assuredness that she would never see the father of her child again, she was in his arms now, and it felt more like home than anything ever had.

“Julie,” he whispered, and his scent and voice were so overwhelming she could have been knocked over by a feather.

Of course Antonio wouldn’t allow that. Because he was holding onto her, practically cradling her, pulling her to his chest and breathing into her hair like it was the most normal thing.

“La mia bellezza, could it be that you’re here?” he murmured, sending a hot jolt of desire running through her.

He’d called her that the one night they’d spent together. My beauty. Every time he looked at her, she felt like the most important, the most beautiful woman in the world. It had been nigh impossible going back to a world where there was no one to look at her like that. Only in her son’s gaze had she seen something akin to his father’s.

“Why am I here?” Julie muttered, disentangling her tongue when Antonio loosened his hold on her and Tony slightly, if only to get a better look at his son.

Antonio seemed to barely hear what she said, so entranced was he by staring at his dragonkin. Father and son were spitting images of one another, that much was evident immediately. In her mind, she’d always been certain of it, but now up close, it was striking just how much Tony’s features were carved from the same tree as his father’s.

Though the boy was still tiny and carried all that happy, healthy baby chubbiness, he had the same high cheekbones, and the same proud nose of his father. They both had an air of seriousness about them that always amused Julie, a one-year-old who seemed to carry the weight of the world with him at times was not a common sight. But then again, there was never anything common about his father either.

“So it is true,” Antonio said, wonderment in his voice. “You had my child. I’ve been a father, I’ve had an heir… for more than a year.”

That warm, exciting buzz that had been heating her from the inside seemed to twist and change immediately when he uttered that. There was no blame in his tone, but in her head, Julie clearly heard it. Her subconscious gladly filled in ‘And you did not bring him to me!’, accusing her of everything that truthfully, she was to blame for.

“What?!” a shrill voice cut in, destroying the awkward, but so far less dramatic than Julie had expected, conversation on the spot.

Her head snapped to look in the direction of where the voice had come from, immediately meeting the absolutely gorgeous frame of a golden-eyed woman. She was standing in the doorway, with motion behind her from another woman approaching, and she seemed to be practically fuming. Or perhaps she was – Julie might have been wrong, but she was certain that there might have been steam rising from her narrow nostrils.

She took an immediate step backward, releasing herself from the immediate hold that Antonio had on her, and held Tony tighter.

“Rossella, this does not concern you,” Antonio said, his features becoming visibly tighter.

“Does not concern me!?” the woman gasped, her eyes growing so wide they looked to be at the risk of popping out of her head. “This mongrel of a woman seems to be holding some runt that is posing as your child, and you are saying this does not concern me? I don’t think there’s anything on this earth more immediately concerning to me than my future husband’s illegitimate children.”

Julie burst out laughing.

She wasn’t sure why. If it was the backdrop of the opulent splendor of an Italian manor that she seemed to remember perfectly, or the classical beauty flailing her arms, practically foaming at the mouth and steaming from the nose as she screeched about illegitimate heirs, or the fact that it was her, in her rattiest jeans and her plainest top in the middle of all of this drama, but it all seemed… well, ridiculous. Like she’d been kidnapped in Texas and flown halfway across the world just to take part in a live-action telenovela, with all the trappings of ridiculousness that came with it.

“Why is she laughing, Antonio? Why is she laughing at me?!” Rossella, as Antonio had called her, demanded, narrowing her eyes as her chin was pushed out.

Julie was laughing so hard that Tony joined her, giggling his happy, toddler laugh at the pure amusement of his mother. Julie had to straighten herself, tears brimming in her eyes and the chuckles barely dying down, as she looked from Antonio, to Giovanni, and then to Rossella. There was another woman standing behind her, but covered by the shadows of the house.

Both the Capirelli brothers seemed at least slightly bemused, if not as hysterical as Julie was. She wiped the tears away with her palm, managing to conjure what passed as a semi-neutral expression on her face.

“I’m sorry, Rossella. Did my kidnapping come at an inopportune time for you? Giovanni, you should have really picked your timing better. Seems we’ve really interrupted something here. Maybe you should have waited until after their wedding to come crashing into the villa with me and my child.”

Julie cocked a brow at Giovanni and the same half-eyeroll she’d seen on the dragon as he stood at the back door of her modest home made another appearance.

“I’ll try to do better next time, Julie,” he promised, riddled with sarcasm.

“This is not funny,” Rossella fumed, while Antonio’s arm slipped comfortingly around Julie’s waist once more.

Looking up at him, it seemed pretty clear that it was, at least a little. Julie was more than certain that the breadth of the situation would dawn on her sooner or later, but for now, a petty little part of her was sort of happy her compromising situation had managed to at least piss off the regal beauty who was apparently set to marry her man.

I have no claim over him, she reminded herself.

She’d never imagined for a moment that she did, other than perhaps when she’d shared his bed with him. Yet now? Well, for a second, she felt the bitter twinge of jealousy rocketing through her.

“Calm yourself, Rossella. This is not of your concern,” Antonio said, practically repeating his earlier comment.

Before Rossella could shoot back, Julie caught the withering, warning look Antonio gave her. The woman’s mouth clipped shut as Antonio nudged Julie to move forward.

“Does it not concern me either, son?” the other woman asked, coming into view as Rossella was motioned to move out of the way and provide a path to the house.

While Rossella’s hysterical anger and pouting had seemed no more than amusing, the look that the other woman gave Julie actually gave her pause. She carried herself in the same regal way that the other dragons did, and she was most certainly a dragon – the gold swirling in her irises gave that away easily. But the way she considered Julie, and most of all Tony, made Julie tighten her hold a little on the baby boy.

While Rossella looked to be all steam and no fire, this matron seemed to be the exact opposite.

“I will explain it all, mother, but I need a moment alone with Julie. Giovanni tracked her down as a favor for me,” Antonio announced, moving past his mother with Julie in tow.

“Is that what we call kidnapping these days?” Julie couldn’t help but quip.

“If you’ve hidden his son from him, human, then he’s been more than lenient with you so far,” Antonio’s mother said, making the hairs on the back of Julie’s neck stand on edge. “She will be staying then, I assume?”

“No,” Julie answered immediately.

She had no intention of staying there. As far as she was concerned, after a brief conversation with Antonio about Tony, she should have been in a cab, heading toward Milan to catch the first flight out of there.

“Yes,” Antonio said, overriding her without so much as a glance down at her. “She will stay.”

It was then that the jokes about kidnapping seemed a whole lot less funny to Julie all of a sudden.