The Italian's Baby of Passion

CHAPTER NINE

SCARLET studied Roman with suspicious eyes, bristling at the implied criticism. ‘Abby had lots of boyfriends, but she didn’t sleep around,’ she told him fiercely.

What she didn’t tell him, what she had never told anyone, was how Abby, heavily drugged in the final painful stages of her illness, had confessed when pressed for the identity of the father that it hadn’t been an accident, that in fact she had planned to get pregnant. That she had wanted a baby and had chosen a father, she just hadn’t included him in the plan.

‘What if he finds out?’ Scarlet asked.

‘The only way he’ll find out is if someone told him and you don’t know who he is.’

‘But when he hears you’ve had a baby, won’t it be bound to cross his mind?’

‘I doubt if he’ll hear, but I thought of that. I told him nothing happened.’

‘He was there, Abby.’

‘He’d already had several drinks by the time we got back to my place,’ Abby recalled, displaying none of her younger sister’s awkwardness when it came to discussing the intimate details. ‘He actually got quite maudlin and sentimental; I don’t think he even noticed I’d added Scotch to his coffee,’ she ended on a self-congratulatory note.

Scarlet couldn’t believe what she was hearing. ‘You got him drunk!’

‘But not incapable. Please don’t look at me like that, Scarlet, it’s not like I raped the man. He enjoyed himself, and I got the impression he had something he wanted to forget. That was why he’d been drinking in the first place…something to do with it being the anniversary of something, I think.’

‘But he wasn’t a stranger.’

‘I didn’t want just anybody to be my baby’s father,’ Abby reproached indignantly. ‘I did my research beforehand.’

‘How long had you been planning to do this, Abby?’

‘Let’s just say this wasn’t an impulse. I finally accepted I was never going to meet Mr Right and settle down. My biological clock was ticking away. I thought about artificial insemination but you don’t really get to choose the father that way, and I got pregnant straight off, the first time, which is just as well, because I doubt if…so it must have been meant to be, don’t you think, Scarlet?’ she asked wistfully.

Scarlet felt unable under the circumstances to tell her sister what she actually thought and so moderated her views. ‘You don’t think it might be a good idea to tell the father?’

‘God, no, a baby would scare the pants off him and I had a hard enough time getting them off the first time. Sorry, Scarlet, I don’t mean to embarrass you with the gruesome details.’

‘But a baby needs a father.’

‘You’re thinking about inherited weaknesses…’

‘Not specifically,’ Scarlet said weakly.

‘No worries there, the guy is about as genetically perfect as is possible. When I drew up my list—’

‘You had a list?’

‘Well, it seemed logical, and he was streets ahead of the rest,’ Abby revealed, apparently oblivious that she was saying anything out of the ordinary. ‘His family on both sides all seem to be disgustingly healthy and live until a ripe old age.’

‘You seem to have thought of everything,’ Scarlet responded weakly.

‘You don’t approve, do you, Scarlet? I knew you wouldn’t but I was desperate. You have no idea how badly I wanted this baby.’

Scarlet tried to hide how desperately shocked she was when her weak and frail sister went on to describe how she had ruthlessly engineered the seduction to coincide with her fertile period and tampered with the condom! How could you condemn someone who was clinging to life? The guilt of being healthy and strong when someone she loved was dying by inches silenced any protest she might have made.

Abby’s spontaneous, warm nature was part of what made her the lovable person she was. But being spontaneous and warm was one thing—what Abby had done was something else! As far as Scarlet was concerned, having a baby was the ultimate expression of love. There had seemed precious little love in the event that Abby described.

‘What would you do if the father suddenly appeared?’

The sound of his voice brought Scarlet back to the present.

She blinked her eyes, focusing on Roman’s lean, watchful features. Logically danger ought to repel any right-thinking person, but, while there was something distinctly wolf-like in his lean, hungry aspect, it was that same danger that exerted a strange, almost hypnotic attraction.

‘I asked what you would do if Sam’s father reappeared.’

‘Sam’s father?’

As always when she thought about the mystery man her sister had callously tricked she was engulfed by a wave of crushing guilt.

There had been a time when she had actually considered trying to discover who he was, but, short of putting an ad in the personal columns, when it came down to it she didn’t have the faintest idea how to go about identifying him. And even if she did, would he thank her? According to Abby he was a man who, given the choice, would not have wanted to know—in fact a man who would have denied paternity.

In the circumstances it was academic. No, her energies were better concentrated on taking care of his son. The son he didn’t know he had.

‘That’s not going to happen,’ she told him quietly. There was nothing in his face to explain his motivation in pursuit of the subject.

‘But the idea alarms you?’

Her eyes skimmed his face; she was unwilling to allow herself to become entrapped by his dark, mesmeric eyes. ‘I didn’t say that,’ she countered quickly.

‘You didn’t need to—you have a very expressive face.’

Scarlet was immediately conscious of every facial muscle she possessed as she tried to produce a neutral expression. ‘Trust me…I don’t want to be rude, but none of this is actually any of your business.’

‘It’s Sam’s father’s business,’ he replied after a taut silence.

‘Sam’s father is not going to materialise,’ she promised him.

‘But if he did…’ Roman persisted. ‘What would you do if he wanted to be part of Sam’s life?’

It seemed much more likely that he would resent the child that he had been tricked into fathering, and who could blame him? Not Scarlet. Non-consensual fatherhood pretty much fitted what had been done to him.

‘That’s really not at all likely.’ His unblinking, glittering scrutiny was making her increasingly nervous.

‘Hypothetically,’ he inserted smoothly.

‘Hypothetically I’d work something out for Sam’s sake, but this isn’t something that’s going to happen.’

‘You sound very sure.’

‘I am.’

‘How can you be?’

‘Abby didn’t tell him,’ she revealed abruptly.

‘She knew who he was, then?’

Scarlet let out a furious gasp and bounced to her feet. The shocking sound of her hand connecting with his face resounded around the room.

She looked from her extended hand to the mark on his lean cheek. The thin white scar stood out lividly against the reddened skin. Her chest heaved with emotion as her eyes met his.

‘You pack quite a punch.’

She had started shaking in reaction. ‘I’m sorry.’ She was deeply ashamed of the loss of control that had made her resort to violence. ‘But you deserved it,’ she added with a glare that dared him to disagree with her.

Roman levered himself from the chair in a fluid elegant motion. He looked down at her from his superior vantage point.

‘Maybe I do.’

Scarlet looked up at him warily through the protective dark mesh of her lashes. This was not the reaction she had expected.

‘What do you mean?’

‘You recall when my mother collapsed at the opening ceremony?’

Scarlet nodded. ‘Of course I do.’ She had not the faintest idea where this was going and, call her a coward, but she didn’t actually want to know.

‘It was because she saw someone she recognised.’

She still didn’t have an inkling. Her smooth brow pleated in a perplexed, wary frown. ‘Who did she recognise?’

‘She saw Sam.’

An image of Sam, the posy of wilting flowers clutched in his hot, sticky hands, flashed into her head. ‘I don’t understand.’

He scanned her face for a moment, his own expression broodingly sombre. ‘I know you don’t. Sam looks exactly the way I did when I was his age. That’s what spooked my mother.’

Scarlet was confused but not suspicious, which later on struck her as ironic in the extreme. ‘Because Sam looks like you?’ Perhaps it was the colouring. Sam did have that Mediterranean glow and the long lashes and, now that she thought about it, at certain angles…

‘Because Sam is my son.’

Scarlet was dramatically unprepared for his revelation, which, when at a later date she went over the conversation that had led to it, made her blind, deaf and very stupid!

She was not conscious then or later of his tensing and moving closer in readiness to catch her as the colour seeped rapidly from her skin, leaving it marble-pale.

‘For God’s sake, sit down.’

Quivering with denial, she kept to her feet. ‘You and Abby?’ She shook her head, feeling sick. ‘You slept with Abby?’ she wailed.

Now why did that make her feel as though she were the tragic victim of some betrayal? The victim here was Roman. What he must have felt like discovering he had a son this way she couldn’t even imagine! Her well-developed sense of empathy sprang into life, as did her guilt.

‘Apparently.’

Considering his admission, he was surprised when she didn’t deliver the obvious comeback. To father a child accidentally was one thing, to forget about it took the crime to another level.

‘She said not, but facts say otherwise,’ he related grimly.

‘That’s ridiculous, you can’t be!’ she cried shrilly. ‘She said he…you—’ she corrected herself.

‘She said what about me?’

Scarlet gave her head a tiny shake; she was having second thoughts about her candour. This was one occasion when the truth was not going to help.

‘I don’t recall exactly.’

‘I’ll settle for inexact.’

Scarlet gave an exasperated sigh; he wasn’t going to leave well alone. She studied his profile. The light fell from behind, highlighting all the hard angles and intriguing hollows of his face.

‘She said the father would have run a million miles if he’d known about the baby.’

Roman flinched.

‘You’re not running.’

‘That’s because she was wrong,’ he breathed grimly. ‘Very wrong.’

Tears formed in Scarlet’s eyes. ‘Why are you saying this?’ she choked, turning her hands palm upwards towards him in an unconscious gesture of appeal. ‘What’s the point?’

‘Point?’ he repeated, looking at her as though she were mad. ‘I have a son.’

‘You don’t want Sam. You can’t. Abby isn’t here to punish so leave us alone.’ Fighting the rising level of panic that made it hard for her to think, she covered her face with her forearm and swallowed a sob.

‘Why would I want to punish the mother of my child? It was my fault.’

Scarlet, who could hear the self-recrimination in his voice, felt so guilty she could hardly look at him. Whatever else Roman was, he was clearly not the moral-free zone that Abby had taken him for.

‘I’m hardly unable to support a son. Presumably she thought I’d contest paternity and couldn’t stomach the idea of the mud-slinging.’ He raked a hand through his dark, sleek hair and fixed Scarlet with an interrogative stare.

She was too stunned by his reading of her late sister’s motives that all she could do was stare at him. He appeared to take her silence as confirmation of his explanation.

Why couldn’t he be the shallow, selfish playboy Abby had taken him for instead of the owner of a very well-developed set of moral principles? She didn’t want to empathise with him, not when he might try and snatch Sam away from her.

She was her nephew’s legal guardian but where would she stand legally if he chose to contest her guardianship?

Scarlet was terrified by the thought of a custody battle. Better to let him carry on thinking the pregnancy had been accidental than allow that to happen. Why tell him the truth when there was nothing to be gained except blackening her sister’s name?

‘Your sister may have been misguided in going it alone.’ This admission seemed to be as close as he was going to get to criticising Abby. ‘But you’ve got to admire her. Most women finding themselves in that situation would have wanted to make me pay.’

‘Abby didn’t want your money.’ Her head lifted and there was a flicker of hope in her eyes. ‘Couldn’t you just pretend you didn’t know?’ she suggested with a sniff as she wiped the moisture from her face. ‘I’m sure it would be a lot more comfortable for you and I wouldn’t say anything to anyone.’ She dabbed a stray tear from her cheek with the back of her hand.

‘You expect me to pretend I don’t have a son?’ he grated. ‘Dio!’ he ejaculated rawly. ‘What sort of man do you think I am?’ he demanded, every inch of his powerful frame vibrating at the affront.

Scarlet shook her head in a bemused fashion, unable even at this critical moment not to appreciate just how magnificent in a lean, mean way he looked when he was mad. When he lost his temper he was very much the Mediterranean male, all passion and fire.

‘This is still just speculation. You can’t prove it. Just because you slept with Abby doesn’t mean you’re Sam’s father.’ She clung stubbornly to the hope that this might still turn out to be a terrible misunderstanding.

‘But DNA sampling does. I wouldn’t have come to you unless I was sure. I took a hair sample, Scarlet, the day at the nursery, and had it analysed.’

She sank back into her chair, the fight draining out of her. ‘Oh, my God!’ she whispered, knowing what was coming.

CHAPTER TEN

‘THERE is no doubt about it. Sam is my son, there’s no question.’

Scarlet shook her head and, hand pressed to her mouth, ran towards the bathroom. ‘Excuse me!’ she gulped, polite to the end, and then she bolted.

She was in too much of a hurry to close the door behind her and Roman heard the sound of her painful retching. It was several minutes later when she returned, paler and graver, but her composure was obviously paper-thin.

‘If you think you can take him off me…I know you’ve got money.’

Roman could almost see the sinister plan he hadn’t made to snatch the child away from her forming in her mind.

‘Don’t be melodramatic.’

‘I’ll run away and you’ll never find us,’ she threatened wildly. Now that makes me sound like stable, responsible parent material.

‘I can see you’ve cast me in the role of evil villain to your wilting heroine.’

‘I’ve never wilted in my life.’

‘I’m glad to hear it. I can’t abide a clingy female.’ He reached out and took her shoulders. When there was no resistance he drew her gently towards him. ‘I’m not going to take Sam off you. I just want to be part of his life.’

And he had a right to be part of his life, but what sort of upheaval would that cause for Sam, not to mention herself. Scarlet didn’t feel capable of working out the implications of this; she no longer knew which way was up, let alone what was a lie or the truth!

Scarlet, totally focused on convincing him she wasn’t going to let him take Sam, didn’t even feel the pain as her neatly trimmed nails gouged into the soft flesh of her palms.

‘Sam’s life is with me,’ she asserted loudly.

Roman inhaled sharply and his hands fell from her shoulders. ‘He is my son. This will be much easier, Scarlet, if we work together. If we’re friends.’

‘Friends? Even if none of this had happened we could never be friends,’ she asserted hotly.

On this at least Scarlet could be totally confident. How could you be friends with someone whose way of life was a total anathema to you, someone with whom you didn’t have anything in common and someone who, furthermore, made your hormones act in an indiscriminate and mortifying manner?

Irritation showed in his deep-set shadowed eyes as he heard her out.

‘A little bit of give and take here—would it be too much to ask?’ he wondered, dragging his hand wearily through his already disordered hair.

Scarlet experienced an irrational urge to smooth down those disordered locks. ‘Me give Sam, and you take him! Sam is three—where were you when he had chicken pox? Were you there to hold his hand when they stitched up his head when he fell off his bike?’

‘I didn’t know I had a son.’

So far he’d only thought about the changes having a son was going to make to his life. For the first time he paused to consider the things he had already missed out on, things he would never see, like the child’s first steps. He was unprepared for the feeling of profound loss.

‘And now you do, so what? Are you going to change your entire lifestyle?’ I don’t think so. ‘It’s obvious you haven’t thought this through. What do you plan to do—fit Sam into your schedule between making your next million or wooing your next supermodel? You can’t walk in here and demand to be part of Sam’s life.’

‘I’m not demanding anything.’

‘That’s not the way it looks from where I’m standing.’

‘There are things I can give Sam.’

‘Money—?’ she suggested scornfully.

‘Financial security, certainly,’ he agreed levelly.

‘Well, that was predictable. I wondered when the pound sign would start flashing.’ She raised an eyebrow and produced a disdainful sniff. ‘Well, you can put your chequebook away; we don’t want your money,’ she completed contemptuously.

There was a short simmering silence. Looking down his patrician nose at her, he drew himself up to his full height. ‘Does it give you a nice sense of moral superiority to be able to throw my money back in my face?’

‘You can’t buy me,’ she gritted defiantly.

‘I’m not trying to, neither am I trying to score points. I’m trying to consider my son’s best interests.’

‘So am I!’ she rebutted uneasily, aware that her responses were becoming increasingly childish.

‘Are you? I’m a wealthy man—do you expect me to leave my son nothing?’

‘Well…I…I hadn’t thought…’

‘Sam will be the main beneficiary as soon as my solicitor has drafted my new will,’ he told her quietly.

She might want to reject his money, but Sam was his son. ‘You want to make him a beneficiary. I suppose that’s reasonable,’ she admitted.

‘I want to make him the beneficiary.’

‘Oh!’

‘There is no one else. Obviously I’ll reimburse you for any—’

‘I don’t want reimbursing. Don’t you understand? I don’t want anything from you! I think you’re—’

‘Shall we leave your feelings towards me to one side for a moment?’

Scarlet deeply resented him taking upon himself the role of impartial reason. ‘Feelings for you!’ she parroted. ‘I don’t have any feelings for you one way or the other.’

‘I’m perfectly aware I hardly come out of this looking good.’ You couldn’t defend the indefensible. ‘But it takes two and your sister denied me the right of knowing my son.’

‘You leave Abby alone!’ Scarlet yelled. ‘I’d say she knew what she was doing.’

‘So you think she made the right decision?’

‘Too right I do,’ Scarlet responded with hardly a qualm about lying through her teeth. ‘A spoilt, commitment-shy playboy is hardly most people’s idea of father material.’

A muscle in his lean cheek clenched more obviously with each successive insult she flung at him. Scarlet knew she was being wildly unfair, but hitting back at him was a knee-jerk reaction she had no control over.

His face went blank, his eyes flat and cold as they scanned her face.

‘This isn’t a situation of my making, but I’m going to do the right thing whether you like it or not. You’re going to have to work with me on this, Scarlet.’

He was obviously very comfortable with issuing ultimatums, but Scarlet was not at all comfortable about meekly acquiescing!

When he got bossy her automatic response was to do the opposite of what he said and, if at all possible, in a manner that would dent his air of ineffable superiority.

‘And if I don’t?’ People must have been doing what he said all his life to make him so damned sure of himself.

His shoulders lifted expressively as his eyes moved briefly across her faintly flushed face. ‘We both want what is best for Sam, so you will.’

Scarlet felt a shiver trace its icy path up her spine. The silky words held an unmistakable threat and, even though he never deliberately used his undoubted physical presence to intimidate, it was hard not to be daunted by his tenacity.

‘If you wanted what was best for Sam you’d go out that door and forget we exist,’ she charged in a furious hiss.

‘It’s not going to happen.’ His tone was not without sympathy, but there was no room for negotiation in his manner. The expression on his lean face was totally implacable. ‘I have a son, Sam has a father and a family who will all want to know him. Are you going to deprive him of that?’

She blinked, an expression of confusion spreading across her face. How often had she wished that she could offer Sam a large, loving family? ‘Do your family know about Sam?’

‘My mother doesn’t need the results of a DNA test; she was totally confident from that first moment she saw him that Sam is my son. She’s completely over the moon about having a grandchild. I would imagine the champagne is even now on ice.’

‘And will she have told your father?’ Despite herself, Scarlet found herself interested by his colourful background.

Roman shook his head.

She got the impression he didn’t want to discuss his father. It was only a feeling, his cloaked expression was un-revealing, but it was enough to make her speculate.

‘But he’s not going to be happy about having a grandchild?’

‘My father is an inflexible and obstinate man. You understand him better if you accept one thing: he is blind to shades of grey. For Dad things are either right or wrong. You can safely assume that having a child outside marriage will fall into the wrong category.’

‘He would reject Sam?’ The thought that anyone could wish to punish a child for what they, in their narrow-minded way, perceived as the sins of the parents brought a ferocious, protective scowl to her face.

‘No, of course not.’ Impatiently he brushed aside her anxiety.

His response seemed spontaneous enough, but Scarlet remained unconvinced. Sam’s grandfather sounded pretty scary and not at all nice.

She shook her head slowly from side to side. ‘You mean not on the surface, that he’ll be acting one way and feeling another…?’ She shook her head with even more vigour as she thought about it. ‘There is no way I’m having Sam exposed to that sort of atmosphere.’

‘Dad isn’t intolerant.’

‘Isn’t that slightly contradictory? You’re the one who called him “inflexible” and “obstinate”.’

‘He’d probably say the same thing about me.’

His candour took her aback. ‘Well, he doesn’t sound like an ideal role model for a little boy to me.’

Roman adopted a mock bewildered expression. ‘How can you say that when you can see how well I’ve turned out?’