Читать книгу Claiming His Secret Love-Child - Кэтти Уильямс, Cathy Williams - Страница 15

ROXANNE WAS out on a call at a client’s house when Alessandro arrived at the studio the next morning. Scarlett heard his car first, and a ticklish feeling ran up her spine as she swivelled on her office chair to look out the window.

She watched as he unfolded himself from the vehicle. His hair looked like black satin in the morning sunshine, his lean face cleanly shaven, his dark pin-striped trousers emphasising the length of his legs and trimness of his waist, and his light-blue business shirt highlighting the olive tone of his skin.

Her stomach flipped and then flopped as he stepped onto the pavement, his eyes meeting hers through the window. She pushed herself away from the desk and stood up as he came in the door, her hands going to her thighs to smooth down her skirt.

He moved across the small space of the studio and, cupping her cheeks with both hands, kissed her thoroughly. Scarlett breathed in the heady fragrance of musky male, sharp citrus and tortuous temptation. All her carefully rehearsed reasons for not agreeing to a resumption of their relationship were suddenly deleted from her brain as his tongue flicked erotically against hers.

Still cupping her face in his hands, he lifted his mouth off hers and smiled down at her. ‘I knew you would be here waiting for me,’ he said.

She screwed up her mouth at him. ‘It is my studio after all,’ she pointed out. ‘Where else would I be?’

He tucked a strand of silver-blonde hair behind her ear, the brush of his fingers against her face making her tremble deep inside. ‘You are still fighting it, yes?’

She lowered her gaze. ‘I don’t want to get hurt…’

He brought her chin up. ‘I am only involved with you, Scarlett. You have my word.’

Scarlett wondered if she was being fobbed off. How could she tell? He was a notorious playboy; women flocked to him wherever he went. He had said it himself: he wasn’t the settling-down type.

‘If you do not believe me, read this morning’s paper,’ he added.

Scarlett’s gaze went to the folded newspaper lying on Roxanne’s desk. They usually had a quick flick through it during their coffee and lunch breaks, but with Roxanne still out at a client’s house, and with the number of calls Scarlett had had to make in her partner’s absence, there hadn’t been time to even put on the kettle.

‘There is a short article about us on page three,’ he informed her.

‘About us?’ she asked, her eyes going wide. ‘What do you mean “about us”?’

He walked over to Roxanne’s desk, picked up the paper and opened it to the page where a small paragraph was headed: Billionaire Hotelier involved with Local Interior Designer.

Scarlett read the accompanying paragraph with her heart kicking like a wild brumby in her chest. It was only a few words about her and the studio, and thankfully no photograph accompanied it. It simply stated she was the new love interest of Alessandro Marciano.

She closed the paper and handed it back to him. ‘Well, that just goes to show you can’t believe everything you read in the press,’ she said with an embittered look. ‘I am not your love interest, am I, Alessandro? I am just someone to sleep with, someone to slake your lust with. You just want a fill-in affair while you are here—let’s not go calling it anything else.’

His hazel eyes caught and held hers. ‘Love is a favourite word of yours, is it not?’

‘It’s not just a word,’ she said. ‘It’s a feeling, and in some ways almost a way of life. You’ve always shunned it, but you don’t know what living is all about until you allow yourself to love someone more than life itself.’

She swallowed as he stepped towards her again, his hand tilting her face so she couldn’t avoid his penetrating gaze.

‘Love is a very cruel mistress,’ he said with a rueful twist to his mouth. ‘She takes hold of you, and then dumps you when you least expect it.’ He released her chin to brush the curve of her cheek with the pad of his thumb, the touch so light she wondered if she had imagined it. ‘I learned not to love a number of years ago, long before I met you,’ he continued. ‘I decided it was not worth the suffering once that person is no longer with you.’

‘That seems a very selfish way of viewing things. What if the person you loved didn’t leave?’

He dropped his hand from her face and moved back from her. ‘Sometimes there is no way to control such things, Scarlett.’

‘Alessandro…’ She took a step towards him, but his eyes had already shifted from hers and before she could stop him he moved past her to look at the screen-saver that had come up on her computer. She watched with baited breath as he looked at the montage of images of Matthew she had constructed, his body becoming as still as a lifeless statue as his eyes roved each and every photo.

Every milestone was there—the first ultrasound picture, the first few minutes after birth, Matthew’s first tooth, his first birthday, his first wobbly steps, even his recent third birthday with the racing-car cake she had made for him.

The silence stretched to the point of pain.

Alessandro was not aware of his hands gripping the edge of the desk until he finally registered his fingers were numb. His heart was beating, but too fast and too hard. His stomach contents were liquefying, his vision was blurring. He couldn’t swallow, he couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t even think.

‘His name is Matthew.’ Scarlett’s soft voice carved through his swirling thoughts. ‘He turned three a couple of months ago.’

Alessandro counted back the months and gripped the desk even tighter. It couldn’t be true. It was a lie. He had seen the test results. He was infertile, as planned.

But the child looked like him.

God, he even looks like Marco, Alessandro thought with a gut-wrenching pang of grief that he’d deluded himself into thinking he had locked down long ago.

Somehow he found the wherewithal to turn away from the computer screen and face Scarlett. His heart was still doing leap-frogs in his chest but, seeing her there, standing so still and silently before him, was like a stake being driven right through his body.

‘He’s yours, Alessandro, even if you don’t want to ever acknowledge it,’ she said, holding his gaze determinedly.

He scraped a hand through his hair and drew in a breath that scalded his throat. ‘I need proof. I am sorry if it offends you, but I need to have proof. It is…’ He swallowed deeply. ‘It is important.’

She gave him one of her scathing looks as she folded her arms across her body. ‘I believe you can buy a DNA kit off the internet. I am quite willing to allow you to use it.’

She wasn’t supposed to say that, Alessandro thought with another wave of dread. Not if she had lied to him. The way she had suggested a test the other day and then instantly backed down had made him think she was still lying. But there was no way she would give him the go-ahead for a test that would prove without a doubt who was the child’s father. Besides, she’d had three years to try and force a paternity test on him and yet she hadn’t done so. The legal system was full of such cases these days—men who had been paying out large sums of money for children had begun to fight back, insisting on proof the children they were supporting were actually biologically theirs.

‘I don’t know what to say…’ He hated admitting it, but it was true. He was lost for words. He had never been in a situation like this before. He had always prided himself on being in control, which was why he had insisted on having a vasectomy in the first place. He didn’t want a repeat of what had happened to Marco. He couldn’t bear to put a child of his through it, not knowing what he knew about himself and his family.

‘“Sorry for not believing you” would be a very good start,’ she said with crispness in her tone.

He swallowed again to clear his throat. ‘I will have to save that for when I know for sure.’

She rolled her eyes in disdain. ‘You can’t do it, can you? You can’t even for a moment harbour the possibility that you got it wrong.’

His jaw felt so tight he thought his teeth were going to crack. ‘Do you have any idea of what this is like for me? Do you?’ he asked.

She glared at him with chips of grey-blue fire in her gaze. ‘You’re not going to get the sympathy vote from me, Alessandro. I was the one who carried your child for nine miserable months, and delivered him after an eighteen-hour labour without his father there to support me.

‘Don’t talk to me about how this is for you. You don’t even know half of what it’s been like for me. I have struggled to provide for my child. I’ve had to put him in crèche when I would much rather be at home with him, but what other choice did I have? I can’t even afford to send him to the school of my choice when the time comes, because his arrogant, always-right untrusting bastard of a father wouldn’t accept that he might have somehow got it wrong.’

Alessandro felt as if an avalanche had hit him. The first glimmer of tears in her eyes was like the blunt end of a telegraph pole hitting him in the mid-section. He moved towards her, but she swung away and snapped up a tissue from a pretty little box with primroses on it. Funny, the little inconsequential things you noticed when everything else was spinning out of control, he thought as he watched her wipe at her eyes and discreetly blow her nose.

‘I’ll arrange to see a doctor tomorrow,’ he said. ‘It might take a day or two to get the sperm-test results back from Pathology.’

Scarlett turned and looked at him with a puzzled frown. ‘Sperm tests?’

His eyes were full of pain as they met hers. ‘I had a vasectomy performed when I was twenty-eight years old. I was declared infertile three months later.’

Scarlett stared at him in a stunned silence. No wonder he had denied fathering a child so vehemently. What man wouldn’t have reacted in exactly the same way? He had believed himself to be incapable of fathering a child; he had taken the necessary steps to ensure it would never happen. Looking at it from his angle, he had every right to be suspicious—although a part of her still felt he should have trusted her regardless.

‘Scarlett…’ he said, dragging a hand through his hair, his expression still tortured with anguish. ‘I never thought something like this could happen. It never once occurred to me that it could. The chances of it must be a million to one at least.’

Her slim shoulders began to shake, and he moved across the room. His hands came down on her shoulders and turned her to face him. Emotion clogged his throat at the grey-blue of her tear-washed eyes. He realised then that, if he had ever had a choice in the matter, she would have been the mother of his children. She would make the perfect mother. She was gentle and nurturing, and yet strong and determined—so like his own mother used to be until life dealt her such a cruel hand. His mother was not the same mother he had adored, even though Marco had been buried long ago.

He hardly realised he was doing it as he lifted Scarlett’s chin with the point of his finger. ‘If you do not want to continue with the project I will cancel the contract. You will not incur any expense as a result.’

She bit her lip so hard he was sure bright-red blood was going to spring from it. He brushed his thumb against her teeth and her lips trembled in response.

‘It’s all right,’ she said on an expelled breath. ‘I will do it. But I want you to know I’m not doing it for you or for me, but for Roxanne.’

He lifted one brow quizzically.

‘She’s worked so hard for what we’ve built up,’ Scarlett explained. ‘We both have, but I’ve been a bit hamstrung with my commitments to Matthew. She’s been so good, and I don’t want to let her down.’

Alessandro placed his hands on the top of her shoulders and gently squeezed. ‘We will sort it out, Scarlett, do not worry.’

She lowered her gaze. ‘He’s so like you…’ she whispered.

He closed his eyes against the sudden and unexpected sting of tears; his chest felt like a clamp had been placed on his heart and lungs.

‘I wanted to send you photos,’ she went on, her voice still barely audible. ‘So many times I wanted to prove to you how like you he is. He even does that little thing you do when you sleep.’

‘What thing?’ His voice sounded like a croak, but at least he had been able to get it to work.

‘He sprawls all over the bed,’ she said. ‘With his arms and legs everywhere. It’s so cute.’

Alessandro stood in silence as he breathed in the scent of her silver-blonde hair; it had always reminded him of the fragrance of sun-warmed jasmine.

Something inside his chest began to loosen, like a too-tight knot that had resisted all attempts to be untied for years.

What if the thing he suspected had indeed happened? Would she agree to resume their relationship on a more permanent basis for the child’s sake, or would she always resent him for not believing her in the first place?

He had shut off his feelings for her four years ago, but he knew it wouldn’t take much to switch them back on again. Hadn’t last night proved how close to the wind he was sailing? He could feel the tug of desire even now as she stood silently in his embrace. His body was stirring against her; she surely could feel it, although so far she hadn’t made a move to step backwards from him.

His mind started to run with the possibilities—but then he was brought back to earth with a jarring thud as he remembered there was the other issue of the child’s health. He was only three now, but Marco had shown signs not much earlier than that…

She eased herself out of his hold and, without looking at him, tucked a strand of hair behind her left ear. ‘I’m sorry…this must be so hard for you,’ she said. ‘I mean, learning about the existence of a child you never wanted.’

It was on the tip of his tongue to say how much he would have loved children of his own, perfectly healthy, robust children—a boy, a girl, what did it matter? He had never understood parents who claimed to have a preference for one or the other sex. As long as it was healthy was all that mattered, but that was one thing he could not guarantee.

It had been taken out of his hands on the day he’d been born.

‘Yes,’ he said, feeling his chest go down in a sigh. ‘It is hard, but we will know for sure in a day or so.’

It was totally the wrong thing to say; he knew it as soon as he said it. She stiffened like someone who had been sprayed with quick-setting glue, her mouth went tight, her eyes turned to blue chips of ice, and her bitterness cut through the air like a sharpened blade.

‘How typical,’ she said, ‘how absolutely typical.’

‘What I meant to say was—’

She stalked across to the door and held it open, the tiny bell tinkling in startled protest. ‘What you meant to say was you still don’t believe me,’ she bit out. ‘There’s still a small part of you that won’t accept Matthew as your son. Now please leave, before I change my mind about the DNA test or the contract.’

It was not in Alessandro’s nature to back down. He had fought long and hard for many things in his life, and certainly being dismissed by a tiny silver-blonde virago was not something he was used to accepting. But the set to her mouth told him it was probably a good time to leave.

He brought two of his fingers up to his mouth and pressed his lips against them in a mimic of a kiss, before placing them on the stiff but somehow still-soft bow of her mouth. ‘I will be back in a couple of days with the results,’ he said.

‘I can tell you the results right now,’ she replied, swiping at her mouth as if he had tainted her with his touch.

He held her embittered gaze with determination. ‘I have to be sure, Scarlett. I know it’s hard for you, but you have to understand my position on this. You have no doubt at all he is your child. You physically gave birth to him, you needed no other evidence—but I am afraid that I do.’

She spun away with a frustrated sound that was somewhere between a scornful snort and a sigh. ‘Please leave,’ she said. ‘There’s no point in continuing this conversation until you have what you want.’

But I can never have what I want, Alessandro thought as he drove away a short time later, his eyes fixed on the road ahead in case he was tempted to look back.

I can never have what I want.