Читать книгу Modern Romance July 2016 Books 5-8 - Кейт Хьюит - Страница 21

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

LUCA FROZE AT the same moment that Hannah frantically pushed her T-shirt down and scrambled up from the sofa. He turned, his whole being numb with shock, as she went to the sleepy little boy standing in the doorway. Her son.

‘Hello, sweetheart.’ Hannah scooped up the boy in her arm, nuzzling her cheek against his hair even as she shot Luca a nervous look. ‘You’re meant to be asleep.’

‘I had a bad dream.’

‘Let me tuck you back up in bed, Jamie.’

Jamie. So this was the man in her life. He realised he’d stopped wondering who Jamie was, mainly because he’d been so consumed by his desire for Hannah. Now the realisation slammed into him with the force of a sledgehammer, leaving him winded and reeling.

Jamie’s eyes rounded as he looked directly at Luca. ‘Who’s that, Mummy?’

‘The man I work for, Jamie. He...he was just here for a meeting.’ She shot Luca another look, almost as if she were angry with him. And shouldn’t he be the one to be angry? He was the one who had been duped, deceived...

A son. Why had Hannah never told him she had a child?

With Jamie cuddled in her arms, Hannah turned towards Luca. ‘You can see yourself out...?’

Luca gazed at her for a tense moment. ‘I’ll wait here,’ he answered coolly.

He was questioning that decision when Hannah disappeared upstairs to settle her son, and he was left alone with the ferment of his own thoughts. Hannah had a child. In light of this new information his suggestion of an affair seemed sordid and distasteful.

A mother wasn’t going to drop everything to parade about in sexy lingerie in the penthouse suite of the next up-and-coming five-star hotel. He might not have outlined his proposal in such vivid detail, but Hannah knew him well enough to understand what he’d had in mind. Sex, uncomplicated and available, without questions, demands, or prevarications. That was how he’d conducted all his affairs. It was what he’d been aiming for with Hannah.

No wonder she’d rejected him.

With a groan of frustration Luca sank onto the sofa. His mind was spinning with this new information. He had no idea what to do with it, but he knew he was angry that Hannah had kept it from him.

He heard the creak of the stairs and then the door opened. He looked up and saw Hannah looking calm and determined, her face pale.

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ he demanded in a low voice.

‘You have no right to know anything about my personal life.’

He jerked back, stung by this biting assessment. ‘Didn’t this last weekend give me some right?’

Her chin lifted a fraction and she remained by the door, her arms folded, her look haughty. ‘Honestly? No.’

Luca suppressed the angry retort he wanted to make. If he calmed down for a second, he could acknowledge that she had a point. He’d dismissed their encounter out of hand last weekend. The fact that she wasn’t falling in with his plans now was a source of frustration and disappointment, but it didn’t mean she’d been duplicitous or unreasonable. Betrayal couldn’t be involved when there had been no relationship to begin with.

He just felt betrayed.

‘Tell me about him,’ he said.

Hannah’s eyebrows rose. ‘Why, Luca? There’s nothing between us. I think it’s better if we try to—’

‘Humour me.’ He cut her off, his teeth gritted.

She stared at him for a long moment, and then finally, thankfully, she unbent. She dropped her haughty stance and came to sit across from him. ‘What do you want to know?’

‘How old is he?’

‘Five.’

‘His father?’

‘The man I told you about.’

‘Your boyfriend? You weren’t married?’ He heard the prudish censure in his voice and inwardly winced.

‘No, we weren’t married,’ Hannah answered evenly, ‘although I think we would have got married if he hadn’t died.’

‘How did he die?’

‘A motorcycle accident.’ She pressed her lips together. ‘Why do you want to know all this now?’

‘I don’t know,’ he admitted. ‘This blindsided me, Hannah. Everything about you has blindsided me, since we first landed on Santa Nicola.’

‘Are you regretting ever introducing me as your fiancée?’ Hannah asked with a weary laugh. She looked sad, and that made him feel sad. His earlier determination to make her his mistress—and, yes, he would use that word—felt as if it had happened to a different man. Been intended for a different woman.

In truth, though, he didn’t regret anything about the weekend on Santa Nicola. He didn’t regret getting to know Hannah, or experiencing the wonder of her body. He just wanted more.

But not that much more.

‘So why didn’t you ever mention you had a child?’ he asked after a moment. ‘It’s kind of a big thing. Most employers know such details about their employees.’

‘You’re not most employers, Luca. You never asked.’

‘I assumed you were single.’

‘I am single.’

‘And childless,’ he clarified. ‘If you’d had a child, I would have expected you to mention it.’

She folded her arms, her stance turning defensive again. ‘Well, I didn’t. I like to keep my personal life private. And frankly, I suspected you wouldn’t be thrilled to know I had such a demand on my time. Executive assistants are expected to drop everything for work.’

‘And you did drop everything, on many occasions,’ Luca observed. ‘Who had Jamie?’ It felt strange to say the boy’s name.

Hannah’s mouth tightened. ‘My mother.’

‘So she lives nearby?’

‘Yes.’

Which was why she’d been here the night he’d dropped her off after their shopping and dinner. He sat back, still absorbing all the implications of what he’d discovered.

‘Are you asking all these questions as my employer,’ Hannah asked slowly, ‘or something else?’

Surprised, Luca jerked his gaze to Hannah’s. And realised he didn’t know the answer to that question. ‘I’m just surprised,’ he said gruffly, knowing that was no answer at all.

‘Well, now you know the truth. And I can assure you, it won’t affect my work. It never has.’

Luca thought of the all-nighters and weekends they’d worked together, suppressing a stab of angry guilt at the realisation. She should have told him she had a child at home who needed her care. He would have made provisions.

Maybe. Or maybe he would have informed her that she really wasn’t suited to the demands of the role.

‘I should go,’ he said, rising from his chair. Hannah watched him, a look of sadness on her face that he didn’t understand. She was the one who had rejected him. Not that he’d have made that offer if he’d known...

‘I’ll see you tomorrow,’ he said and with a brusque nod of farewell he stalked out of the room.

* * *

Hannah spent a sleepless night wondering if she should have done things differently. Maybe if she’d been upfront about Jamie from the beginning, or at least from last weekend, Luca wouldn’t have made his offer of an arrangement. Maybe he would have tried for something more.

Or maybe he would have run a million miles in the opposite direction. She’d known all along that Luca wasn’t dad material. She’d known full well he wasn’t interested in a relationship. Her stupid, stubborn heart had insisted on feeling differently, but it didn’t change facts.

Rejecting Luca’s proposal of an affair made her realise just how much more she wanted—if she dared. Not just with anyone, but with him. With Luca, a man whose heart was clearly off limits.

At least, Hannah reflected, the knowledge of her son would probably put Luca right off her. And, God willing, her attraction to him would fade when it wasn’t reciprocated. That was a relief, even if it didn’t feel like one.

Her heart couldn’t be that broken, considering how quickly things had progressed between them. A little dented maybe, but she’d survived much worse before, and she would again. It really was better this way.

She was still giving herself this pep talk when she dropped Jamie off at school, mentally kicking herself when she saw that his class was having a bake sale and she was the only mother who hadn’t brought in a homemade tray bake.

‘Didn’t you read the letter we sent home?’ the teacher asked, her concerned tone still managing to hold a note of reproach.

‘I must have forgotten,’ Hannah said. She turned to Jamie, who was watching the parade of parents with their offerings of baked goods with a stoic expression that strangely reminded her of Luca. ‘Sorry, sweetheart.’

Her little man squared his shoulders. ‘It’s okay.’

But it wasn’t. She tried not to drop the ball like this, but occasionally it happened. Hannah supposed she could excuse herself considering all the distractions she’d had, but she still felt guilty for not putting Jamie first even in such a small matter.

She rang her mother on the way to work, hating to call in yet another favour but also wanting to please her son, asking if Diane could run something in that morning.

‘Oh, Hannah, I’m sorry,’ her mother said. ‘I’m volunteering at the day centre today. I would otherwise...’

‘Of course.’ Her mother volunteered several times a week with a centre for elderly people and Hannah knew she enjoyed the work. It wasn’t fair of her to call her mother away from her own life. ‘Don’t worry, it’s not a big deal,’ she said as brightly as she could. And then spent half an hour on the Tube battling a crushing sense of guilt.

She supposed she could blame Luca for this, for questioning her choices, but Hannah was honest enough to admit, at least to herself, that she’d always struggled with working mother’s remorse. It might not have been fair or reasonable, but she felt it all the same.

Luca was shut away in his office when Hannah arrived, and so she got right down to work, trying to push away all the distracting thoughts and worries that circled her mind.

Luca came to discuss some travel arrangements about an hour later, and she instinctively tensed as he approached her desk. She felt both weary and wired, but at least it kept her from shaming herself with an obvious physical response to his presence.

‘What’s wrong?’ he asked after she’d taken down some dates for a trip he was planning to Asia next month.

‘What do you mean?’ she asked, startled. ‘Nothing’s wrong.’

‘You look worried.’ His whisky-brown gaze swept over her as he cocked his head. ‘Is it Jamie?’

Hannah stared at him, dumbfounded. ‘You’ve never asked me that before.’

‘I never knew you had a child before.’

‘Yes, but...’ She shook her head, more confused than ever. ‘If you had known, you would have been annoyed that I seemed worried and distracted while at work. Not...’

‘Not what?’ Luca prompted, his gaze locked on hers.

‘Not concerned.’

‘Perhaps you don’t know me as well as you thought you did.’

‘Perhaps I don’t.’ She had thought she knew what kind of man he was. But that had been a week ago, and everything had changed since then.

‘So is it your son?’ Luca asked. ‘That’s worrying you?’

Still surprised by his perception as well as his interest, Hannah relented. ‘Yes, but it’s only a small thing.’

‘What?’

‘I forgot his class had a bake sale today. Everyone brought in biscuits and cakes, lovely home-made ones, except for me.’ She shook her head, almost wanting to laugh at the bemused look on Luca’s face. This was so outside his zones of both familiarity and comfort. ‘I told you it was a small thing.’

Luca didn’t answer for a moment. Hannah sighed and turned back to the notes she’d been making. Clearly she hadn’t advanced the cause of working mothers through this exchange.

‘So,’ Luca said slowly, ‘Jamie is the only child in the class without cakes or biscuits?’

‘Yes, but it doesn’t really matter—’

‘It does matter,’ Luca stated definitively. ‘Let me make a few calls.’

Hannah stared at him in stunned disbelief as he went back into his office. Not knowing what else to do, she got on with making his travel arrangements. Fifteen minutes later, Luca reappeared.

‘Come on,’ he said. ‘My limo is waiting downstairs.’

‘Your limo—where are we going?’

‘To your son’s school.’

‘What—?’

‘He can’t be the only one without cakes,’ Luca stated, and stabbed the button for the lift.

Hannah had no choice but to grab her handbag and coat and follow him into the lift. ‘Luca, what are you doing? He can manage—’

‘But why should he, when I can do something about it?’

‘I could have done something,’ Hannah muttered. ‘Couriered a cake to the school—’ Now she felt even more guilt.

‘We’ll do better than that,’ Luca announced. ‘We’ll deliver them in person.’

The cakes turned out to be forty-eight of the most glorious creations from a nearby exclusive patisserie. Hannah peeked into the white cake box and her jaw dropped at the berries glistening like jewels in folds of perfectly whipped cream.

‘These are amazing,’ she told Luca. ‘And they must have cost—’

‘It was no trouble.’

Hannah closed the cake box. ‘I’ll pay.’

‘You will not,’ Luca returned swiftly. ‘This is my gift. Do not presume to take it from me, Hannah.’

She shook her head slowly, overwhelmed but also befuddled by his generosity. ‘I really don’t understand you. Last night you seemed angry...’

‘I was surprised,’ he corrected. ‘And I don’t deal well with surprises.’

‘And now?’

‘Now I want to help.’

‘But you don’t even like children,’ Hannah burst out.

Luca glanced at her, affronted. ‘Why would you think that?’

‘Maybe because you had to make me masquerade as your fiancée to impress a self-proclaimed family man?’ Hannah returned dryly. ‘Just a thought.’

‘Just because I don’t want children myself it doesn’t mean I don’t like them.’

‘But why don’t you want them, if you like them? Most people do.’

Luca was silent for a long moment, his gaze hooded, his jaw bunched tight. Hannah held her breath as she waited; she realised she really wanted to know the answer.

‘I told you it wasn’t worth it,’ he finally said.

‘But what does that even mean—?’

‘Since you partially agreed with me, what do you think it meant?’ he shot back, his eyes glittering.

Hannah considered the question for a moment. ‘It means that you’re scared of getting hurt,’ she said quietly. ‘Afraid of someone leaving you, or stopping to love you. Of loving someone causing you pain rather than joy.’

She held Luca’s gaze, willing him to answer, to admit the truth. ‘Well, then,’ he said, breaking their locked gazes as he looked out of the window. ‘Then you know why.’

Hannah was silent, struggling with her own emotions as well as Luca’s. ‘It sounds very lonely,’ she said finally.

Luca shrugged, his gaze still averted. ‘I’m used to being alone.’

She remembered what he’d said on the beach, how he’d felt alone all the time. ‘You don’t even want to try?’ she asked, her voice squeezed from her throat. She didn’t know when the conversation had gone from the abstract to the personal, but she knew she was asking him more—and revealing more herself—than just what he thought about relationships in general. She was asking him what he thought about her.

‘I don’t know if I can,’ Luca said in a voice so low Hannah had to strain to hear it.

‘You’ll never find out if you don’t,’ Hannah answered and he turned to look at her, his eyes like burning black holes in his tense face.

‘That’s a very pat answer, and the reality is more complex when there are people involved,’ he said. ‘Children involved.’

Hannah’s breath hitched. She wasn’t the only one who had made this conversation intensely personal. ‘Luca...’

‘If you want to know why I want to help Jamie, it’s because I know how he feels,’ Luca continued, and her world, which had tilted on its axis for one glorious moment, righted itself with a thud. ‘As a child. My mother wasn’t often capable of being there for me. Not,’ he cut across any protest she’d been going to make, ‘that I’m equating you to her. I’m not. I’m quite sure you’re a very good mother to your son.’

‘Thank you,’ Hannah said uncertainly.

‘But it doesn’t feel good, being the only kid in your class who doesn’t have the right kit for PE, or who can’t pay for the school dinner. Not that those things happened to Jamie—’

‘They happened to you,’ Hannah said softly.

‘Yes.’ Luca’s gaze shuttered. ‘After my mother died, I had a scholarship to an exclusive boarding school, but it didn’t cover everything. I might as well have had “charity orphan” tattooed on my forehead.’ He sighed, rolling his shoulders to excise the tension. ‘I can relate to feeling left out.’

And the fact that he was doing something about it, trying to make it better for her son, made Hannah’s heart feel as if it could burst. Luca was making it very difficult to stop caring about him. One more little act of kindness and she’d be halfway to falling in love with him. More than halfway; she was almost there.

She gave the driver directions to Jamie’s school, and the limo pulled up outside the gates while the children were at playtime. They all ran up to the fence, eyes rounded at the sight of the stretch limo. When she and Luca got out, Hannah could hear the whispers running through the huddle of children.

‘Isn’t that Jamie’s mummy—?’

‘What is she doing in that fancy car—?’

‘That man is so big.’

‘He’s got cakes!’

The whispers turned into excited jabbers as Luca proffered the huge white cake box. ‘These are for Jamie Stewart,’ he announced in a voice that managed to be both commanding and friendly. ‘I heard he needed some cakes for the school bake sale.’

And as the children clambered excitedly around him, Hannah realised that Luca had needed to do this for his sake as much as Jamie’s. The knowledge was enough to bring tears to her eyes. After a childhood that had been far too sad and neglected, and an adolescence that hadn’t been much better, Luca was finally able to be the boy who had the cakes. Who could make things better.

Jamie beamed at both of them as Luca handed the box into Reception. ‘Thank you, Mummy,’ he whispered, and threw his arms around her waist, squeezing tight.

Hannah ruffled his baby-soft hair. ‘Thank Mr Moretti,’ she answered with a smile. ‘He was the one who insisted we bring the cakes.’

Jamie turned the full wattage of his smile onto Luca. ‘Thank you, Mr Moretti!’

Luca looked startled, and then moved. He nodded once. ‘It was my pleasure,’ he said gruffly.

They didn’t speak as they got back into the limo. Luca looked lost in thought, and Hannah felt as if she might burst into tears. Finally she managed, ‘You’re a good man, Luca Moretti.’

He turned his startled gaze on her, his expression ironing out to a familiar and heart-sinking blandness. ‘You might not think that in a moment.’

‘Why not?’ Hannah asked, her heart now nearing her toes.

‘Because Andrew Tyson emailed me this morning. He wants to have dinner with us tomorrow night.’