Kate Walker - Secret Love-Child

‘You want to know how much it will cost you to have me leave?’

‘That was the question.’

At least she had stopped the soft-voiced attempt at seductive persuasion. The it doesn’t have to be like this …that she’d tried earlier.

She’d damn nearly had him with that. With the breathy note on the words that had made it sound as if she was totally overwhelmed at being here with him like this. Never before had he been so aware of the slender, curving shape of her in the clinging, worn jeans, the faded T-shirt. The scent of her body had seemed to surround him as he had looked down into the wide, wide eyes that had seemed almost hazy with need. And the soft touch of her hand on his skin…

Dio santo , but he had found it hard to resist that. That gentle touch had raised so many memories in his mind. Erotic memories that had had his body hardening in spite of his furious attempts to divert his thoughts onto other, less dangerous pathways. She had touched him like that on their first night together. Tentative, almost hesitant. As if she was shy and nervous.

Well, that shyness had pretty soon disappeared. It had evaporated like the mist over the lake at the first touch of the summer sun. In his arms she’d turned into a wild and seductive temptress. In his bed she had been the fulfilment of every sensual dream he could ever have imagined.

But they couldn’t live out their lives in bed.

‘So you’re offering me a pay-off?’

‘A settlement,’ Ricardo amended. ‘A generous settlement in return for a quick and quiet divorce—I’ll even take the blame, provide you with grounds if you want it that way. And then you get out of my life for good. You go and you stay away. I never want to see you again.’

How could he ever want to see a woman who was capable of walking out on her own child, leaving behind just a frivolous, careless note that told him the marriage was over and the baby—Marco—was his responsibility now?

She was considering the proposition. Considering it seriously. That much was obvious from the way that her expression had changed, the softness vanishing from her eyes just before she let her pale eyelids drop down to cover them, concealing her thoughts from him.

‘You really must want to be rid of me.’ Her tone was flat, no emotion showing in it at all.

‘Oh, I do,’ he confirmed, his tone deep with harsh sincerity. ‘Believe me, I do.’

‘And you’d pay anything I asked?’

Her jaw had tightened so much that it drew in her cheeks, narrowing the whole look of her face and making the words come out as stiffly and as jerkily as if they had come from the carved wooden mouth of a painted marionette. Blue eyes lifted briefly to look into his face in a swift glance that was coolly assessing. ‘In English law I’d be entitled to half your fortune. You should have thought about getting me to sign a pre-nup.’

If he’d had any sense then he would have done just that. But at the time the only thing that he’d been thinking of was the child they had created between them. The child that had to be born in wedlock and with his name as the father on the birth certificate. No child of his was ever going to grow up illegitimate, with all the snubs and the social exclusion that he had endured. The barriers to belonging that had blighted his mother’s life as well as his own.

He had known that it was only his money that had convinced her to marry him in the end. But, if he was honest, then at that point he really hadn’t cared. All that had mattered was getting the ring on Lucy’s finger and ensuring that her name—and her child’s—were the same as his.

He had thought that he would have longer to see if the relationship between the two of them would grow into something so much stronger than the wild, fiery passion that had brought them together in the first place and had resulted in the creation of the tiny life that Lucy had carried within her.

‘And would you have signed one?’

At the time she would have done anything, Lucy acknowledged. Ricardo had only to ask and she would have said yes. She had been in so deep, so totally besotted so that she had been unable to think straight. She hadn’t even hesitated over his proposal, though common sense should have told her that he didn’t want her. All he had wanted was the child in her womb.

‘I don’t want marriage, Lucia,’ he’d said. ‘Never have. No woman has ever even made me think of it. But your news changes everything. We have a baby to consider and my child is not going to grow up illegitimate. That’s all that matters to me right now.’

‘It would have made sense—on your part, at least,’ Lucy answered now, covering the lacerations on her heart with an armour of control. ‘After all, neither of us was going into that marriage with any romantic stars in our eyes. We both knew it was just a business and legal arrangement.’

‘And now?’

‘Now? I wouldn’t sign anything you asked me to without having it thoroughly checked out first.’

‘Not even if it gave you everything you’d ever wanted—more than you ever dreamed of?’

‘I don’t think that’s possible.’

If she could have Marco in her life, then she would feel as if she had been given the world and would want nothing more. But, without her son, there was no amount of money or possessions that could compensate for the emptiness his loss would leave in her life. And she knew, deep in her soul, that Ricardo would never let her have Marco.

‘Try me.’

For the life of her, Lucy couldn’t bring her numbed, bruised brain to recognise whether there was pure challenge or invitation in the two words that Ricardo tossed at her. And she didn’t really dare to hope for the latter. Any invitation from Ricardo Emiliani came hung about with so many chains of doubt and risk, so many conditions, that it was like putting your head into a noose just to consider it. And a challenge was something she dreaded.

‘Tell me what you really want—and you can have it. Anything, so long as you get out of my life and never come back.’

‘You’ll never give me what I want so there’s no need to even ask.’

‘Why not? I—’ Ricardo broke off abruptly as a buzzing sound from his pocket drew his attention to his mobile phone. ‘Momento …’

Pulling it out, he checked the screen, frowning as he did so. ‘I have to take this.’

With the phone clamped to his ear, he swung away again, listening hard and then firing sharp, incisive questions into the receiver in rapid-fire Italian that was too fast for Lucy’s schoolgirl grasp of the language to allow her to keep up.

But she caught one word, clearly and distinctly, and that fastened onto her nerves, twisting and tugging with every second that passed.

‘Marco…’ he’d said. And, again, ‘Marco…’

Whoever was at the other end of the phone had rung him because of something that was happening with Marco and just to think of that pressed Lucy’s personal panic button, sending her thoughts into overdrive. Her heart was pounding, her breathing harsh and shallow. Something had happened to her little boy and she didn’t know what.

She couldn’t stand still, finding that only by pacing restlessly around the room could she keep herself from grabbing that phone from Ricardo and demanding to know what was happening. But the dimensions of the small space were restricted so that she found she had barely started before she was forced to turn and head back in the opposite direction. And still the conversation went on until she was ready to scream, only keeping a grip on herself by clenching her fists tight, digging her nails into the palms of her hands.

But then, at last, Ricardo thumbed off the phone and turned to her again.