PENNY JORDAN - One Night - Red-Hot Secrets - A Secret Disgrace / Secrets of a Powerful Man / Wicked Secrets

Thinking of her son’s defensive and prideful nature, Louise gave a reluctant nod.

‘I see your point. But what will we tell him about our past?’

He had an answer for that too—as he seemed to for everything.

‘That you and I parted after a quarrel, during which you told me never to contact you again, before returning to London in the belief that I would not want to know about my child.’

Louise wanted to object to the half-truth, but the practical side of her recognised that for a boy of Ollie’s age such a simple explanation would be far easier for him to deal with and accept than something more emotionally complex.

‘Very well,’ she agreed grudgingly, ‘but before anything is said to Oliver he needs to have the opportunity to get to know you.’

‘I am his father,’ Caesar told her, ‘and because of that he knows me already via his genes and his blood. The sooner he is told the better.’

‘You can’t just expect me to tell Oliver that he is your son and for him to welcome that.’

‘Why not?’ Caesar demanded with a dismissive shrug. ‘If the way Oliver has already responded to me is anything to go by, he wants a father desperately. Can’t you accept that maybe there is something that goes beyond logic, and that he and I instinctively sense we have a blood tie?’

‘You are so arrogant,’ Louise protested. ‘Oliver is nine years old. He doesn’t know you. Yes, he wants a father, but you must be able to see that because of his situation he has created an idealised version of the father he wants.’

‘And whose fault is that? Who refused to allow him to understand and accept the real situation?’

‘What I did, I did for his sake. Children can be just as cruel as adults—even more so. Do you really think I wanted him going through what I had to endure myself, and with much less reason? I was to blame for my own situation. I broke the rules. I shamed my family. All Ollie has done is be born.’

She really loved the boy, Caesar recognised as he heard the protective maternal ferocity in Louise’s voice. With the pride he could hear ringing in her voice it must have been hard for her to bear the condemnation of society for so long. Whilst he had had no payment to make at all. Other than within himself, of course. There he had paid over and over again.

‘We shall be married as quickly as it can be arranged. I have a certain amount of influence that should help to speed up the necessary paperwork. It is my belief that the sooner we are married the more speedily Oliver will be able to settle down in his new life here on the island, with both his parents.’

Louise’s heart jerked as though someone had it on a string. Although Caesar had said they must marry, somehow she’d been so preoccupied with worrying about how Oliver would react to the news that Caesar was his father that she had put the issue of the actual marriage to one side. Now, though, Caesar’s words had put the full complexity of the situation in front of her like a roadblock.

‘We can’t get married just like that,’ she protested. ‘I have a job, commitments. My home is in London—Oliver goes to school there. We can tell Oliver that you are his father and that we plan to marry, then Oliver and I can return to London, and in a few months’ time—’

‘No. Whatever you choose to do, Oliver stays here with me. I can make that happen,’ he warned her when she started to shake her head.

Louise could feel her body starting to tremble inwardly. She knew that what he was saying was true, and she knew too how ruthless he could be when it came to protecting his own interests. Oh, yes, she knew that. She wasn’t going to give up without a fight, though. Not this time.

‘I have responsibilities. I can’t just abandon my life to marry you.’

‘Why not? People do it all the time. We’re two people who engaged in a passionate night together which resulted in the birth of a child,’ she heard Caesar continuing bluntly. ‘We parted, and now life has brought us together again. In such circumstances no couple would wait months in order to be together. Apart from anything else, I don’t think it would be good for Oliver. Knowing that we quarrelled and parted once could lead to him becoming anxious about the same thing happening again.’

‘People are bound to talk and gossip.’ Louise knew that it was a weak argument, but something deep within her, a vulnerability and a fear she didn’t dare allow herself to acknowledge for what it really was, had sent her into panic mode.

She was frightened of being married to Caesar. Why? The foolish, reckless girl who had had no thought of protecting herself from emotional self-harm had gone. She was a woman now. That brief foolish longing to find what she had believed she so desperately needed in Caesar’s arms and in Caesar’s bed had been analysed and laid to rest a long time ago. She had no vulnerability either to Caesar himself or to the intimacy the institution of marriage was supposed to represent.

‘Briefly, yes, but once we are married, and it can be seen that we are just as any other couple with a child to bring up, such talk will soon be forgotten. Once we are married my people will be far too delighted to know that I have an heir to dwell on past scandal.’

He looked at his watch.

‘It is time for us to collect Oliver.’

It was the reality of what lay ahead of her that pierced her heart so sharply, Louise assured herself as they left the castello , and not that small word us .

‘And he really is my father?’

It was gone eleven o’clock at night. Oliver was in bed in their hotel room and should have been asleep, but instead he was wide awake and still asking questions almost non-stop after Caesar had made his calm announcement to Oliver that he was his father.

‘Yes, he really is,’ Louise confirmed for the umpteenth time.

‘And now we’re going to live here and you are going to get married?’

‘Yes, but only if that’s what you want.’

Louise still felt it would be far better to give Oliver more time to adjust to the fact that Caesar was his father and to get to know him more before any future commitments were made, but Oliver, it seemed, shared his father’s views on the subject of them immediately forming a legal family bond—as he had made very plain to her.

‘You and Dad will get married soon and we’ll all live together here like a proper family, won’t we?’ he pressed her.

‘Yes,’ Louise agreed hollowly, before reminding him, ‘It will mean a big change for you, Ollie. You’ve got your schoolfriends in London, and …’

‘I’d rather be here with Dad and you. Besides, they were always asking me why I didn’t know who my father was and making jokes about me. I’m glad that I look like him. Billy’s dad said so when he saw us together. I look more like him than I do you. Why didn’t you tell me before?’

‘I was waiting until you were older, Ollie.’

‘Because you’d quarrelled and he didn’t know about me?’

‘Yes.’

Watching him stifle a yawn, Louise could see that the events of the day were catching up with him. Switching off the lamp, she walked out onto the small balcony, closing the door behind her to give Oliver time to fall asleep.

Watching Ollie with Caesar earlier, she’d had to admit against her will how alike they were—not just in looks but somehow in temperament and mannerisms as well. It was as though being with his father had brought to life that proud lordly Sicilian male inheritance that was so much a part of Caesar’s personality. No one seeing them together earlier could have doubted that they were father and son. But what had surprised her most of all, when it had been time for them to part, had been the unexpected but totally natural way in which Caesar had hugged his son, and Ollie, who was normally so wary of being touched even by her, had hugged him back.