Modern Romance Collection: November 2017 Books 1 - 4. Julia James
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I am her baby’s father.’
The woman gasped, her eyes scanning him from head to toe, as if registering his cashmere coat and handmade shoes. Her eyes skated over his shoulder and she must have observed the shiny black car parked so incongruously among all the sedate family saloons. Was he imagining the look of calculation which had hardened her gimlet eyes? Probably not, he thought grimly.
‘You?’ she demanded.
‘That’s right,’ he agreed, still in that same even voice which betrayed nothing of his growing irritation.
‘I had no idea that...’ She swallowed. ‘I’ll have to check if she’ll see you.’
‘No,’ Matteo interrupted her, only just resisting the desire to step forward and jam his foot in the door, like a bailiff. ‘I will see Keira—and my baby—and it’s probably best if we do it with the minimum of fuss.’ He glanced behind him where he could see the twitching of net curtains on the opposite side of the road and when he returned his gaze to the woman, his smile was bland. ‘Don’t you agree? For everyone’s sake?’
The woman hesitated before nodding, as if she too had no desire for a scene on the doorstep. ‘Very well. You’d better come in.’ She cleared her throat. ‘I’ll let Keira know you’re here.’
He was shown into a small room crammed with porcelain figurines but Matteo barely paid any attention to his surroundings. His eyes were trained on the door as it clicked open and he held his breath in anticipation—expelling it in a long sigh of disbelief and frustration when Keira finally walked in. Frustration because she was alone. And disbelief because he scarcely recognised her as the same woman whose bed he had shared almost a year ago—though that lack of recognition certainly didn’t seem to be affecting the powerful jerk of his groin.
Gone was the short, spiky hair and in its place was a dark curtain of silk which hung glossily down to her shoulders. And her body. He swallowed. What the hell had happened to that? All the angular leanness of before had gone. Suddenly she had hips—as well as the hint of a belly and breasts. It made her look softer, he thought, until he reminded himself that a woman with any degree of softness wouldn’t have done what she had done.
‘Matteo,’ she said, her voice sounding strained—and it was then he noticed the pallor and the faint circles which darkened the skin beneath her eyes. In those fathomless pools of deepest blue he could read the vulnerability he had wanted to see, yet he felt a sudden twist of something like compassion, until he remembered what she had done.
‘The very same,’ he agreed grimly. ‘Pleased to see me?’
‘I wasn’t—’ She was trying to smile but failing spectacularly. ‘I wasn’t expecting you. I mean, not like this. Not without any warning.’
‘Really? What did you imagine was going to happen, Keira? That I would just accept the news you finally saw fit to tell me and wait for your next instruction?’ He walked across the room to stare out of the window and saw that a group of small boys had gathered around his limousine. He turned around and met her eyes. ‘Perhaps you were hoping you wouldn’t have to see me at all. Were you hoping I would remain a shadowy figure in the background and become your convenient benefactor?’
‘Of course I wasn’t!’
‘No?’ He flared his nostrils. ‘Then why bother telling me about my son? Why now after all these months of secrecy?’
Keira tried not to flinch beneath the accusing gaze which washed over her like a harsh ebony spotlight. It was difficult enough seeing him again and registering the infuriating fact that her body had automatically started to melt, without having to face his undiluted fury.
Remember the things he said to you, she reminded herself. But the memory of his wounding words seemed to have faded and all she could think was the fact that here stood Santino’s father and that, oh, the apple didn’t fall far from the tree.
For here was the adult version of the little baby she’d just rocked off to sleep before the doorbell had rung. Santino was the image of his father, with his golden olive skin and dark hair, and hadn’t the midwife already commented on the fact that her son was going to grow up to be a heartbreaker? Keira swallowed. Just like Matteo.
She felt an uncomfortable rush of awareness because it wasn’t easy to acknowledge the stir of her body, or the fact that her senses suddenly felt as if they’d been kicked into life. Matteo’s hair and his eyes seemed even blacker than she remembered and never had his sensual lips appeared more kissable. Yet surely that was the last thing she should be thinking of right now. Her mind-set should be fixed on practicalities, not foolish yearnings. She felt disappointed in herself and wondered if nature was clever enough to make a woman desire the father of her child, no matter how contemptuously he was looking at her.
She found herself wishing he’d given her some kind of warning so she could at least have washed her hair and made a bit of effort with her appearance. Since having a baby she’d developed curves and she was shamefully aware that her pre-pregnancy jeans were straining at the hips and her baggy top was deeply unflattering. But the way she looked had been the last thing on her mind. She knew she needed new clothes but she’d been forced to wait, and not just because of a chronic shortage of funds.
Because how could she possibly go shopping for clothes with a tiny infant in tow? Asking her aunt to babysit hadn’t been an option—not when she was constantly made aware of their generosity in providing a home for her and her illegitimate child, and how that same child had disrupted all their lives. The truth was she hadn’t wanted to spend her precious pennies on new clothes when she could be buying stuff for Santino. Which was why she was wearing an unflattering outfit, which was probably making Matteo Valenti wonder what he’d ever seen in her. Measured against his made-to-measure sophistication, Keira felt like a scruffy wrongdoer who had just been dragged before an elegant high court judge.
She forced a polite smile to her lips. ‘Would you like to sit down?’
‘No, I don’t want to sit down. I want an answer to my question. Why did you contact me to tell me that I was a father? Why now?’
She flushed right up to the roots of her hair. ‘Because by law I have to register his birth and that brought everything to a head. I’ve realised I can’t go on living like this. I thought I could but I was wrong. I’m very...grateful to my aunt for taking me in but it’s too cramped. They don’t really want me here and I can kind of see their point.’ She met his eyes. ‘And I don’t want Santino growing up in this kind of atmosphere.’
Santino.
As she said the child’s name Matteo felt a whisper of something he didn’t recognise. Something completely outside his experience. He could feel it in the icing of his skin and sudden clench of his heart. ‘Santino?’ he repeated, wondering if he’d misheard her. He stared at her, his brow creased in a frown. ‘You gave him an Italian name?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
‘Because when I looked at him—’ her voice faltered as she scraped her fingers back through her hair and turned those big sapphire eyes on him ‘—I knew I could call him nothing else but an Italian name.’
‘Even though you sought to deny him his heritage and kept his birth hidden from me?’
She swallowed. ‘You made it very clear that you never wanted to see me again, Matteo.’
‘I didn’t know you were pregnant at the time,’ he bit out.
‘And neither did I!’ she shot back.
‘But you knew afterwards.’
‘Yes.’ How could she explain the sense of alienation she’d felt—not just from him, but from everyone? When everything had seemed so unreal and the world had suddenly looked like a very different place. The head of Luxury Limos had said he didn’t think it was a good idea if she carried on driving—not when she looked as if she was about to throw up whenever the car went