The Italian's Secret Baby (9 page)

‘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.

‘T
HERE
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 cheque-book 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 unrevealing, 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?'

Scarlet frowned. She hated it when he made fun of himself that way; it made him almost likeable. She knew it was very important not to like him.

‘You don't get on with your father?'

Would it do Sam any favours to be accepted into the bosom of this dysfunctional family? Or am I just grasping at straws? Looking for a reason, any reason, not to co-operate when deep down I know full well I have no right to deny Sam a father and an extended family.

‘That hardly makes me unique, but, yes, we disagree on most things. My father holds some firm views on everything including modern morals—mine mostly.' He rotated his head as if to relieve the tension in his shoulders.

‘That's silly; surely he knows most of the stuff in the papers is exaggerated to sell newspapers.' Dear God, if you took every article about him seriously he could be in Paris and New York at the same time!

‘Scarlet Smith…are you defending me?' He studied her for several seconds before adding, without the mockery that had laced his previous comment, ‘I'm touched.'

Their eyes collided and Scarlet blushed to the roots of her hair. ‘Everyone knows that you should take the celebrity stories with a pinch of salt,' she retorted crossly.

Her face got even hotter and her scowl even fiercer as he continued to look at her, one dark brow raised.

‘My father believes there's no smoke without fire,' he commented after a painfully long pause—painful for Scarlet anyway.

‘People do and I suppose his generation—'

‘Sure, there is the generation gap, but it's more than that,' Roman interrupted. ‘Before he met my mother, Dad had planned to enter a seminary.'

Scarlet's eyes widened. ‘
Seminary?
Isn't that where you train to be a priest?'

‘It is,' Roman confirmed.

‘Gracious!' she exclaimed unthinkingly. ‘No wonder he doesn't approve of you!'

‘You and he will get on famously,' Roman predicted drily. ‘There's also…' Betraying an uncharacteristic indecisiveness, he stopped and raked a hand through his dark hair. ‘Well, you might as well hear the story from me as you'll undoubtedly hear a version of it from my father when you meet him.'

Scarlet was so curious she let the assumption that she would one day meet O'Hagan senior pass without comment.

‘I was engaged to a girl—Sally.'

Her eyes widened. ‘
You
were engaged?'

‘Yes, about five years ago. Why so surprised, Scarlet? Most men of my age have had at least one serious long-term relationship.'

‘But I thought you were…'

‘A shallow, womanising pig?' he suggested. He observed the surge of guilty colour in her cheeks with a cynical smile. ‘Relax, there's no need to totally retrench, the two are not necessarily mutually incompatible.'

‘Did your father not approve of her?'

‘Far from it, he adored her. He still does. I'd known Sally since we were children—her parents are tenant farmers on the estate. We were always in and out of each other's houses.'