The Italian's Secret Baby (3 page)

R
OMAN,
whose hard features had begun to relax into a rueful half-smile at his mother's initial comments, stiffened as she delivered her killer punchline.

‘Son!'
Pallor crept up under his even olive-toned Latin complexion. ‘If that's your idea of a joke?' he grated.

‘I'm hardly likely to joke about such a thing,' Natalia said. ‘Look, I can see this must have come as a shock to you.'

‘That's very understanding of you.' Roman's irony was wasted on his mother. ‘I don't have a son and I've never met a…' his forehead creased as he tried to recall the non-blonde's name ‘…Scarlet Smith?'

‘Yes, lovely girl.' She glanced across at her son and shook her head.

She watched with some sympathy as her son ground his teeth and stalked stiff-backed across the room, his whole manner screaming anger and frustration. She came up behind him and put her hand on his shoulder. Though she was five eleven in her heels, she had to tilt her head to look him in the face.

‘Be honest, is this so impossible to believe?'

‘Don't you think I'd know about it if I had a son?' he suggested, his tone deceptively mild.

Natalia gave a very Latin shrug. ‘Only if the mother chose to tell you, Roman.'

‘And always supposing I did actually make a habit—as you obviously believe—of going around impregnating women. Why the hell wouldn't she have told me? Why struggle to bring up a child as a single parent?' A flicker of suspicion crossed his face. ‘Or is she married?'

‘You sleep with married women?'

Roman's head went back as he looked heavenwards, sending the dark hair he wore a little longer than was conventional against the collar of his pale shirt. ‘No, I do not sleep with married women,' he replied between clenched white teeth.

‘Never?'

A hissing sound of seething frustration escaped through Roman's teeth as his mother continued to look at him with an expression of disappointment.

‘Not knowingly.'

‘Ignorance is no defence in law, or so I've always understood. I accept you didn't know you had a child. Now you do. What are you going to do about it?' she challenged.

‘For the last time, I do
not
have a child!'

Natalia gave an inflammatory sigh. ‘Denial isn't going to get us anywhere.'

‘I'm not in denial,' Roman thundered.

‘Yes, you are, and there's no need to raise your voice, Roman, I'm not deaf.'

The bitterness died from his face as he saw the unexpected sparkle of tears in his mother's eyes. ‘Sit down,' he insisted, his concern coming across as impatience.

‘It must have been some story this woman spun you.' Roman's facial muscles tightened. ‘You can normally spot a phoney a mile off. Didn't it strike you as odd that she told you, not me?'

‘She didn't tell me anything at all. I gave her every opportunity, but in fact Scarlet pretended not to know you.'

A flicker of incomprehension crossed Roman's face. ‘Then what the hell is this about?'

‘I've seen the child, Roman, and he
is
you at the same age.'

Roman looked at her for a moment, his dark brows raised, before releasing an incredulous laugh.

‘This isn't funny, Roman,' she reproached.

‘No, it's not funny to see you so upset,' he agreed sombrely as he hunkered down beside his mother's chair. ‘All right, this kid looks like I did,' he acceded lightly. ‘But I don't know any Scarlet Smith, the only time I've spoken to her was on the phone, I promise you, and I never forget a name.'

His mother nodded. ‘People change in four years. You have,' she added, a tinge of sadness in her eyes.

‘Scarlet must have changed her name so that you couldn't find her, that would explain you not recognising her name.'

‘That would seem a tad excessive, considering I wasn't looking for her.'

‘Don't be flippant,' Natalia snapped.

‘I know you'd like to be a grandmother, but I'm not going to pretend I've fathered a kid to oblige you.'

‘You wouldn't say that if you'd seen the boy, Roman.'

‘Do you think I wouldn't remember the name of a woman I slept with?' he demanded.

‘If it was four years ago I'd say you could have some problem. There were a lot of women. I know I shouldn't have brought it up…but…'

‘You're going to anyway.' Roman's expression was resigned.

‘It's not a subject I enjoy discussing.'

‘That makes two of us.'

Being deserted by your childhood sweetheart after the invitations for the wedding had been sent out was not an experience he particularly cared to relive on a regular basis, and that was what his mother was trying to remind him of now.

Making a total fool of himself was something a man was allowed to do
once
in his life. When he made marriage plans the next time his decision would not be based on a blind infatuation and starry-eyed fantasies of a happy-ever-after existence.

A marriage based on a mutual respect where neither partner would feel wounded or outraged if the other sought excitement outside the marriage bed was one that would stand a much better chance of survival in the long run.

Natalia determinedly ignored the dry rejoinder. ‘What I'm saying is it's not as if you've never had a one-night stand.'

‘Can we leave my sex life out of this? I can hardly be surprised strangers believe what they read about me in the tabloids when my own mother does. You're accusing me of indiscriminately fathering children! Do you
really
think I'm that stupid?' he demanded.

‘Just go and see the boy, then you'll understand, Roman. That's all I'm asking you to do. Are you trying to tell me that it wouldn't bother you never to know your own son?'

‘I don't have a son.'

‘One hundred per cent sure?'

Roman's broad shoulders lifted; playing along was clearly the only way he was going to put an end to this once and for all. He gave a sigh. ‘So where will I find the mother of my child?'

 

‘Can't
you
see him?'

‘Mr O'Hagan asked
expressly
to see you.'

‘I really didn't do much.'

‘Just what I said…' Dragging his attention from the text message he was reading David added smoothly, ‘I told him that we work as a team here, but it seems your name must have stuck in his mother's mind and of course you spoke to him on the phone.'

‘That must be it,' Scarlet agreed drily. Oh, God, it would be just her luck if the man had decided to follow up his complaint officially, but if he had there wasn't any reason he couldn't have mentioned it to David straight off.

‘It's a very nice gesture.'

‘Men like Roman O'Hagan don't make nice gestures unless there's something in it for them,' she responded cynically.

‘And you number how many multimillionaires amongst your circle?'

‘I don't, but Abby knew a few.' At least Abby's circle of friends had aspired to the millionaire lifestyle, though, as her sister had explained, not all had had the means to support it.

She saw the flicker of sympathy her bitter remark brought to David's face and added quickly, ‘The problem is we're so short-staffed with this flu epidemic. I could do without gestures, kind or otherwise.'

‘The longer you spend arguing with me…God, Scarlet, what are you wearing?'

David had been her honorary uncle since she was tiny. Scarlet was always scrupulous about not trading on the family friend thing, but unfortunately David didn't feel similarly inhibited when it came to passing the sort of personal comments he wouldn't get away with with other staff members.

‘Borrowed. A baby threw up all over me.'

‘Goes with the territory, I would imagine,' came the bracing observation. ‘And you were the one who insisted on leaving an indecently well-paid job in the City to work with children,' he reminded her.

‘Days like this make me wonder why.'

‘No, you don't, you love every minute of it. I don't know why, but you do.'

Scarlet conceded his point with a grin. ‘I suppose asking him to come back another day is out of the question?' David looked at her over his metal-rimmed half moon spectacles as though she'd lost her mind.

‘Come back another day?'

Scarlet shrugged. ‘I thought I'd ask.' She caught sight of her reflection in the full-length window. ‘God,' she cried, wincing, ‘I can't see him looking like a bag lady.'

‘I've seen you looking better, but he's not here to ask you for a date, Scarlet, so I really don't see the problem here.'

‘I'm representing the university,' she said weakly.

‘If you'd been a member of the academic staff I could see your point,' David responded, treating her suggestion seriously.

‘How lucky that I'm only a nursery nurse,' she said deadpan.

‘Exactly, and look on the bright side, he's not going to think you made any special efforts for him which should suit your egalitarian principles down to the ground.'

‘Very funny,' Scarlet muttered.

‘Now, the sooner you go get your shoulder patted, the sooner you get back to help the troops out.'

With a shrug she admitted defeat.

‘Mr O'Hagan is in my office.' David turned in the opposite direction.

‘Aren't you coming too?' Scarlet protested with a frown.

‘I have an important meeting. Has it occurred to you you might actually like the man?'

‘No.'

‘Then pretend.' It was not a request.

‘Mr O'Hagan, can I have your autograph,' she mocked, assuming an expression of brainless adoration. ‘See, you can do it when you try,' David approved, banging her on the shoulder. ‘Now off you go and remember he's a very important friend to this university, Scarlet.'

Scarlet nodded meekly. ‘I'll be very nice to him.'

It didn't seem a too extravagant promise to make, considering it shouldn't take Roman O'Hagan long to go through the motions of thanking her—at least she hoped not!

R
OMAN
glanced at his watch, his eyes slightly narrowed. If he could get the Scarlet Smith thing sorted before lunch he could fly back out to Dublin and join Alice, who was already there.

That was the best scenario, but if things did run over he didn't begrudge the time, not if the end result made his mother happy. Not as happy as being a grandmother would, but his sense of filial duty had limits.

It did not cross his mind for one second that his mother was correct. There was no possibility he had fathered a child. He had been many things in his life, but careless was not one of them.

Not a man given to moody introspection he turned his mind to the pivotal meeting in Dublin later that evening.

 

Scarlet tapped on the door half hoping that nobody would reply to her timid knock. Nobody did, but the door, already half ajar, swung open. The man revealed standing there, running a long brown finger down the spine of a leather-bound book, seemed oblivious to her presence.

She cleared her throat and his head turned. Dark lashes lifted to reveal eyes that were one shade short of pitch-black and flecked with tiny golden lights. Scarlet's eyes slid away from the most piercing regard she had ever encountered.

She gulped as her heart made a concerted effort to escape the confines of her chest.

In profile he was perfect; an overused term but more than justified on this occasion. Face on, only a purist would have claimed the fine scar that ran from one razor-sharp cheekbone to just below his eye marred the effect.

Scarlet wasn't that purist!

Roman's immediate thought as he stared at the diminutive brown-haired figure hovering uncertainly in the doorway was,
there must be some mistake.
Realistically, he hadn't actually been expecting some blonde goddess with endless legs, but
this
?

The indentation between his eyebrows deepened, the woman he had spoken to on the phone had come across as gutsy and unafraid to speak her mind, not to mention bloody-minded, but this woman looked scared of her own shadow! She couldn't even meet his eyes!

He experienced an unexpected pang of disappointment.

‘Mr O'Hagan…?' Scarlet repeated when he didn't respond.

Great, I've struck him dumb, but not with my ravishing beauty!

‘Mr O'Hagan, I understand you wanted to speak to me?'

The voice emerging from the slight frame was right, unexpectedly deep and husky with a sexy little rasp, but everything else was wrong, including the scared way she was not quite looking him in the eye and the tongue-tied routine.

Nice voice, shame about everything else.

‘Miss Smith?'

Scarlet nodded, and resisted the aggravating impulse to apologise for her appearance.

‘Why don't you come in and sit down?'

‘I'm fine here.'

He looked at her impatiently. ‘I don't bite.'

She flushed at the satirical note in his voice and realised she must look an idiot standing there as if she was ready to run. Straightening her shoulders, Scarlet overcame the strange reluctance she was experiencing to close the door.

She'd been in the room before and it wasn't exactly cramped—her own office would have fitted in it ten times over—but she was experiencing an almost claustrophobic sensation that involved a tightening in the pit of her stomach and an overwhelming desire to turn and run.

The man was here to say thank you, not interrogate her, or even sue her, unless his mother had suffered a relapse? He didn't give a damn what she looked like, so why the sudden panic attack? She didn't subscribe to the populist celebrity culture and was not overawed or impressed just because someone had fame and money. She was neither shy nor lacking in confidence so her irrational nervousness on this occasion annoyed her.

‘So, we meet at last.'

Head down, she nodded.

His mother had thought he had slept with this woman?

He repressed a fastidious wince as he checked out the fashion black spot she represented.

He knew women who could look good in the proverbial sack, but this woman wasn't one of that number. That tunic checked shirt thing almost reached her knees, but at least it covered most of the appalling, baggy track-suit joggers she had teamed it with. There was nothing intrinsically dreadful about the sensible flat leather shoes that completed the ensemble, but they didn't do anything to disguise the fact she was small and shapeless.

Who knew what lurked under the androgynous outfit? He, for one, felt no compelling urge to find out. Though he would have liked to bin the outrageously unattractive glasses she wore, which concealed most of her features, simply on the grounds that they were criminally ugly.

Scarlet stood there miserably while his veiled gaze moved over her. He was suitably enigmatic, but not enigmatic enough to prevent Scarlet getting the impression she hadn't lived up to the billing his mother had given her.

She gave a mental shrug…ah, well, she could live with that!

Standing next to him, even if she had been looking her best, she would have felt plain and unkempt. Six feet four inches, give or take an inch, of spectacular male perfection. He more than lived up to his billing. Unbelievably he was even better looking in the flesh than in print!

She responded on two levels to this discovery. On the one hand she was disappointed at being robbed of the opportunity to confide derisively to her friends, It's all air-brushing, you know, he's not nearly as attractive as he looks in the magazines!

On the other level she responded as any woman would being faced with the most sinfully sexy man she had ever seen—or even imagined seeing!

‘Miss
Scarlet
Smith?' Smith was a common name; maybe this was the wrong one? She had the awkward slightly bemused manner of someone who had walked into the wrong office. ‘You do know who I am?'

Didn't everyone? Her lowered gaze lifted. Maybe that was his problem; she hadn't asked for his autograph yet.

‘I'm Scarlet. The vice-chancellor said you wanted to see me, Mr O'Hagan.'

A small derisive smile formed on her wide and expressive mouth; after their conversation she wasn't surprised to discover he was the type who thrived on public recognition and got irritated when he didn't receive it.

Well, promise to David or not, Mr. O'Hagan was about to learn she was not one of that creepy boot-licking number!

Her lips parted to ask if he wouldn't mind keeping it brief when his dark eyes locked onto her own.

Scarlet breathed in sharply and promptly forgot what she was going to say. He really did have the most stunning eyes she'd ever seen, deep chocolate-brown, but not like the sweet milk chocolate she adored, but the dark variety that was too bitter for her palate. For a bemused moment she just stared into those dark, mesmerising topaz-flecked depths before pulling clear and closing her mouth with an audible click.

She gave a smile heavy on serene self-possession to correct any impression he might have got that she was a silly, drooling female. The last thing she wanted was to be heaped together with those adoring hordes.

Dating the rich and photogenic Roman O'Hagan had kick-started the career of many a would-be celebrity, and the women who weren't notorious before they shared the spotlight he lived in definitely were at the end of it!

However, considering her own involuntary fit of the fluttery females, Scarlet was now willing to consider that there might have been a few takers whose motives hadn't been purely mercenary.

Maybe it was the dark, smouldering thing, she mused, because, despite his mixed ancestry, Roman O'Hagan's features, colouring and innate elegance were very much that of the Latin male, as was the devastating raw masculinity he projected.

The clothes helped, of course, she decided scornfully as she put a mental price tag on the pale grey impeccably tailored grey suit he wore teamed with a black silky polo shirt open at the neck. Italian men were notoriously vain and she doubted this one could pass a reflective surface without checking himself out. The catty postscript made her feel better about being unable to find a flaw in his tall, broad-shouldered, narrow-hipped athletic frame.

Power, money and a good suit—maybe she wasn't so different from everyone else easily impressed by the trappings of privilege…?

The suit or the man inside it? It's not his position on the social register that's got you hot!

Turning a deaf ear to the debate going on in her head, Scarlet turned her thoughts to her more immediate problem. After a moment's further deliberation she decided against shaking hands; if he didn't accept her hand she was going to look pretty silly and nothing about him suggested he would welcome the gesture.

She decided it would be best all round if she hurried proceedings along.

‘How is Mrs O'Hagan?' Scarlet found it a relief to be able to sound genuinely sincere about something. ‘Is she feeling better? She's not had a relapse or anything?'

‘She is very much better, thank you, and I'm not contemplating any immediate legal action.'

‘That's just as well because I've got no assets for you to strip.' You only had to look at the man to see his business tactics were every bit as unscrupulous as his rivals suggested.

A flicker of renewed interest appeared in Roman's deep-set eyes. Now
that
, he decided, sounded much more like the girl he had spoken to on the phone.

‘You take an interest in business? I got my MBA from Harvard; where did you get yours?'

‘The London School of Economics,' she responded automatically.

Her reply might not have wiped the supercilious smirk off his face, but at least she had the pleasure of seeing him look mildly taken aback.

‘You're trying to tell me that you've got a Masters in Business Administration?'

He had one of those perfectly straight patrician noses that had been specifically designed to sneer down at lesser mortals. Scarlet would dearly have liked to punch it. Physical violence not being an option, she had to fall back on giving as good as she got in the sarcasm stakes.

‘Actually I have, but it's not the sort of thing I'd normally drop into the conversation, because it might sound a bit pretentious.' She widened her eyes and adopted an expression of kittenish innocence. ‘Don't you think?' she appealed to him. ‘And,' she added thoughtfully, ‘that sort of showing off might lead people to think I had a self-esteem issue.'

The stunned look in his eyes gave her a moment's intense, gleeful satisfaction.

‘I doubt anyone is going to think you have a self-esteem issue,' Roman mused after a moment of startled, static silence. Whatever the hunched-shoulder stuff had been about, it had not been a confidence issue; her present manner made that obvious.

She inclined her head and smiled. ‘Thank you,' she said, even though she was well aware his comment hadn't been meant as a compliment.

‘Perhaps I didn't get this right. I thought you worked in the nursery?'

‘I'm a nursery nurse,' she agreed with pride.

‘Aren't you a little overqualified for the job?'

He stopped short of calling her a liar, but she could hear the amused scepticism in his voice. It was only by exerting superhuman restraint that Scarlet stopped herself supplying the names of referees who could confirm her qualifications and tell him how good she had been at her job.

‘Actually I was under-qualified,' she explained calmly. ‘I retrained. I was looking for job satisfaction.'

‘Good for you!' he applauded with teeth-clenching insincerity. ‘I've always said there's no shame in admitting you can't hack it.'

Scarlet's cheek muscles ached from maintaining a fixed smile. ‘You have no idea how much I value your opinion.'

‘I'm beginning to get a pretty good idea,' he returned drily. ‘I believe you were very kind to my mother.'

‘She's easy to be nice to;
she's
nice…' Scarlet literally bit her tongue to stop the flow of insults.

One perfectly symmetrical brow dark against his even-toned golden skin lifted to a politely interrogative angle.

‘A very nice woman indeed,' Scarlet mumbled indistinctly.

She'd promised David—gosh, that seemed a lifetime ago now, not a few minutes—that she'd be on her best behaviour. Cutting the wretched man down to size was a self-indulgence she simply couldn't afford. It was also something she might not be capable of, she conceded.

Scarlet paused for a moment to consider her reckless behaviour objectively. The exercise gave rise to deep concern as she identified a worrying development, the adrenaline rush, the toe curling excitement she got from trading insults with him had a bizarrely addictive quality.

‘She was full of praise for you.'