Her family home.
He ground his jaw together as he lifted her properly, cradling her against his chest and moving further down the hallway. He stepped into the first bedroom he found, laying her down on the bed.
But she stirred as soon as he’d released her, enormous blue eyes awash with guilt as she met his gaze, and then quickly looked away again.
Grace was at a distinct disadvantage, lying on the bed. She scrambled into a seating position and then stood, gingerly, supporting herself on the edge of the bed when a rush of dizziness threatened to engulf her.
“What are you doing here?”
Marco arched a dark brow, his expression almost feral. “I came to apologise,” he said with disbelief. He swore again, a rich, loud noise that punctuated the stillness of the room.
Grace flinched as though he’d slapped her. She was shaking from head to toe and, at any other time, Marco would have pitied her. He would have done what he could to end her misery. But then he saw the little boy in his mind, the boy he hadn’t known existed until a moment ago, and anger flooded through him.
A patriarchal gene he hadn’t felt before began to strum in his soul.
And the fact she’d denied him a place in the little boy’s life was all he could focus on. How could she have done that? Fifteen months! His gut was squeezed with outrage and disgust; anger and despair.
“How dare you?” He demanded curtly, his expression leaving her in little doubt as to his feelings. “How dare you keep him from me?”
Tears moistened Grace’s eyes. “I tried to tell you…”
His laugh was completely devoid of humour. “When, Grace?”
“When I called you,” she said weakly.
His eyes flashed. That was worse than if she’d never tried at all. “Once! One time.” He lifted a finger into the air, emphasizing his point. “That is manifestly unsufficient.”
“You’d moved on,” she groaned. “And you were hardly father material. We were … we were a stupid fling, nothing more. I wasn’t going to upend my life just because I happened to fall pregnant.”
“That is my child!” He roared, so loudly the house seemed to shake and Grace made a sound of surprise. She lifted her hands to her lips and shook her head, but what for? What was she denying? Hadn’t she always felt it was wrong to keep the truth from him?
“That is my child,” he said again, quieter but with the same devastating intensity.
“I know that.” It was a sob. A sound of desolate acceptance. “I’m sorry.”
“You’re sorry?” His eyes narrowed as he assimilated this new reality. “Do you think this makes it better? Do you think this makes up for the fifteen months I have missed?”
She squeezed her eyes shut, anguished and broken. “You live in Italy.”
“So geography is your excuse? You don’t think I would have come here for my child? Or that I wouldn’t have made it easy for you to join me? I would have moved heaven and earth to be that child’s father!” He shouted once more, the words slamming into her.
“And then what?” She asked bleakly. “I would have had the baby there, alone, miserable, and you would have continued your … lifestyle?”
“What lifestyle?” Marco demanded with disbelief.
“Oh, come on! You’re the ultimate bachelor. Was I supposed to move to Rome for you so you could spend a few hours a week with our son?” Grace tilted her chin and an answering degree of anger coursed through her now. “Biologically, you might be Ben’s dad but that doesn’t make you a parent. I know that better than anyone,” she snapped.
“Why? Why should you know this?”
“Because!” She thought of her childhood, marred by so many foster homes she’d lost count. “I know that being a parent is about being there. About wanting that child, regardless of who the mother or father is.”
“I would have been there,” he denied angrily. “And you can be damned sure I’m going to be there now.”
She jerked her head towards his, her mind spinning. “What?”
“That is my son!” He said angrily. “My son.”
Ice was flooding through her. “He’s not a toy. Not a possession. He’s a little boy and I’m his mom.”
“You don’t deserve to be,” Marco spat. “You were pregnant when he came to see me.”
“When who came to see you?” She asked, nothing in that moment making any sense.
“Your husband,” he snapped. “He told me you were getting married. That you and he were going to have a baby. But he meant my baby. My baby. That bastard.”
Grace’s eyes were huge, like plates in her face. She hadn’t known about that. Steven had gone to see Marco? They hadn’t discussed Marco once Grace had agreed to marry Steve. He’d simply told her that what had happened ‘in Rome’ didn’t change the fact he wanted to help her. As though ‘in Rome’ was a byline to her life that could be neatly side-stepped.
Their marriage had been his answer. She would raise her child with him, and live with him, enjoy his security and partnership, his support. But even as she’d accepted his proposal, she’d been honest with him. She didn’t want a relationship. Not a romantic one.
The idea of another man touching her was anathema, as was lying to Steve. She cared for him too deeply to lead him on.
No. She’d been Marco’s ever since their first kiss. Two years of longing for him, needing him…
Was it any wonder she’d practically exploded at his touch?
“Did you really think I would let you get away with this? That I would never find out?”
Something like warning flooded her spine. “It wasn’t like that. I did you a favour, Marco. You like sex. That’s not the same thing as wanting to be a parent.”
“But I am a parent.”
“No, you’re not!” She shouted. “One night in bed doesn’t qualify you to raise a child…”
“Oh, but it does you?” He retaliated with disbelief. “And your husband?” He thought of the much older man, knowing it was wrong to feel such barbaric hatred for the deceased.
“Steven was a wonderful dad,” she interjected, the words drenched by regret.
Marco balled his hand into a fist and punched the wall to his right, breaking a hole through it. Grace stared at the damage and destruction, at his knuckles that were now red-raw and tears streamed down her cheeks.
“I would have been a wonderful dad,” he said, with such grave anger that her heart tripped. “You didn’t give me a chance.”
“I tried,” she said urgently. “I called you but you were angry. You hardly remembered me.”
“So what? This was my punishment? You believed I had forgotten about you and I therefore somehow forfeited any claim on my own son?”
“I thought,” she corrected emphatically, “You’d be happier without him and me in your life. I thought I was doing it for the right reasons, for everyone.”
“No, you thought only of yourself. You have denied me not only a right to be in his life. You have denied him a chance to know me, for the past fifteen months. You have denied my mother, my sister. You have kept my child out of all of our lives for your own selfish reasons. But no more.”
“I did no such thing! My God, Marco! I got back from Rome and discovered I was pregnant. I agonized over telling you; really I did. It’s not like I have no moral compass. But come on! In the time I was in Rome I saw you with dozens of women.”
“So?”
“So! That’s what you do! And that’s fine. Look at what happened between us today. Sex is nothing to you. It’s just as common as shaking hands is to most people. That’s fine. But I’m not going to raise my son around that.” Nor was she going to subject herself to it. The idea of Marco going on with his ways filled her with an emotion she knew to be jealousy.
“And being a compulsive liar is better?” He demanded. “You are wrong. You have no moral compass whatsoever.”
She sucked in a deep, angry breath. “How dare you?”
“How dar
e I?” He responded. “I dare because of him. Because of what you’ve done. Cristo, Grace. Can you see how wrong this is?”
He was appalled. It was obvious. Every single ounce of him was disgusted by what she’d chosen. And in that instant, she wasn’t sure she could blame him.
“It wasn’t an easy decision,” she said softly.
“But you had a choice. What was my choice?”
“You could have called me!” She pointed out angrily. “I suppose a follow-up service isn’t one you offer though, right? You’re more of a wham, bam, get out of my house kind of man, aren’t you, Marco?”
His laugh was the definition of a scoff. “So I hurt your feelings and you punished me by keeping our child a secret? How juvenile. How pathetic.”
She recoiled from his scathing declaration, all the more cutting for the fact she could see his point. Hadn’t she thought the same thing time and again? But she’d promised Steven, the day she agreed to marry him, that the baby would be his. That he would raise the child. That he would love it like his own.
“I made a decision based on what I thought would be best for our child,” she said with ice dripping from the words. “I have given Ben a stable home, parents who love him, a safe, nice environment to grow up in.”
“Madre di Dio, Grace! There is no simple equation to guarantee a child’s happiness.”
“Spoken like a man who grew up with parents who adored him and in the lap of luxury. I know better! I know that biology doesn’t equate to affection and reliability.”
His eyes narrowed at her second allusion to this insider-information she apparently possessed. A small part of him was curious, wishing to better understand her meaning. But for the most part, he was too furious to care. “As you are perfect proof.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You made the wrong decision. Not only did you choose to keep me from my son, but you have made an enemy of me, and believe me, that is not something you want.”
A frisson of anxiety spilled across her spine. “Is that a threat?”
His laugh was hoarse with disbelief. “It’s a promise, Grace. If you do not do everything I ask of you now, then I will make you wish you’d never met me.”
Her eyes widened, her mouth dropped. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“He is my child, and on one point you and I are in agreement. Where possible, a child should have two parents who love them in their life. It makes sense for us to marry; that will make my claim to Ben easier to manage.”
“Your… claim …” She shook her head, shivering from head to toe. “He isn’t a piece of property!”
“No. He’s my son, and I want the world to know it. Make no mistake, Grace, he’s going to live with me, and be a part of my life. I’m giving you a chance to be involved, because I think that’s best for him, but it will be very easy for me to remove you if necessary.”
Hatred was swiftly followed by anger and nausea. What the hell was he saying? He couldn’t take her child away!
“He’s my son,” he said the words slowly; they were thickened by emotions.
“He’s my son,” she contradicted fiercely, with the kind of growl that only a threatened mommy bear could muster in the defense of her cub. “I carried him for nine God-awful months and endured a very painful forty-eight hour labour. You don’t get to come in now and try to take him from me…”
“Don’t.” He said the word quietly but there was a soft anger in the one syllable. “Don’t you dare act as though any of this was my choice. I would have been here from the beginning if I’d known.”
She spun away from him, her eyes sweeping closed as she staved off the fear that she’d really, really messed up.
“Don’t you get it?” He stalked to her, and stood right in front of her, so she had no chance but to meet the horrified outrage in his face. “You deprived me of any chance to know him. He is more than one year old and I have seen him for a sum total of thirty seconds. How dare you?”
“I’m sorry,” she said again, the shaking uncontrollable. It was a reaction to shock, she supposed. Adrenalin or something. “I thought… I’ve always done what I believed to be the right thing.”
“The right thing? Tell me, in what world do you live that keeping a child from his father is right?”
“He had a father.”
It was the wrong thing to say. He blanched visibly and then stalked to the other side of the room, his hands on his hips, his eyes focused out of the enormous bay window. The sky was dark and the street beyond showed the warm glow in the distance of the other houses that lined this picturesque street.
“That man was not his father. Whatever he was to you doesn’t concern me. He was nothing to Ben.”
Grace bit down on her lip to stop herself from contradicting that statement. Steven had been wonderful with Ben; he’d adored him. And it had been mutual. But it would simply inflame an already out of control situation if she pushed that point.
“If I were like you, I would tell you that I’m going to take him to Italy tomorrow. That I’m going to move him into my villa.” He turned to face her, his expression pure, dispassionate businessman now. “I would tell you that I’m going to sue for full custody, to hell with you.”
She gaped, her mouth wide, her eyes showing her distress. “You can’t. I’d fight you,” she said, as soon as she’d regained a semblance of her wits. “I’d fight you.”
“You would lose,” he said with a nonchalant shrug.
“How can you say that? I’m his mother…”
“And I’m his father. And when I fight, I fight to win. You may survey any number of my adversaries, if you wish. They will tell you what I am. Don’t go up against me. You’ll lose.”
She couldn’t contain the sob that pressed against her lips. It was a muted sound of devastation, heavy in the room.
He didn’t react.
“The child is going to bed now?”
Grace nodded. “Ben.”
Marco’s expression tightened. “I know his name.”
Grace nodded, her face pinched, her hands stiff by her side.
“I won’t disturb him. That would be confusing. But tomorrow I will make arrangements for him to be moved to me. You may decide overnight if you would like to come too.”
“You don’t think that will confuse him?” She didn’t wait for an answer. She shook her head, lifting trembling fingers to her lips. “That’s not fair.”
His head whipped back in an approximation of a laugh. “It is best we don’t speak about fairness in this moment.”
She bit down on her lip, no choice before her but to walk to him. She put a hand on his arm and he shrugged out of it, his eyes like coal as they met hers. “Don’t touch me.”
Tears spilled down her cheeks but she nodded, coiling her hands in front of her. “He lives here. We live here. It’s a good home. He likes it. We have guest rooms…”
“No.” Marco instantly revolted against the idea of moving into the house she’d shared with Steven.
“Please, Marco.” She moved to the bed and sat on the edge of it, clasping her hands in her lap. The shaking was uncontrollable. “I understand you’re upset. I wish … I wish … I don’t know. I wish everything was different.” She spoke quickly, the words tripping out of her as she tried to express her feelings. “I can’t change the past but there’s a better way forward. Don’t … don’t do this to hurt me.”
“To hurt you?” He shook his head firmly. “This has nothing to do with you.”
“How can you say that?”
“Did you think of me when you chose to raise our child without me? Without me knowing?”
“I did think of you!” She said quickly. “I truly believed you would prefer this. I didn’t think…”
“Damned right, you didn’t think. I am his father. What would you have told him when he was five? Six? Ten? And asking about me? Would you have continued to pretend that he was the dad?”
Grace ma
de a sound of despair. “I don’t know. Steven wasn’t supposed to die…”
A shred, a tiny shred, of common decency prevented Marco from saying any number of things in response to that. Her husband had died and only six months earlier. That was something she was probably still in mourning for. He spun away, focusing on the houses that lined the street. And it was a beautiful street, he grudgingly conceded. Elegant, homely, picturesque. But he wouldn’t live here.
And he wanted to be with his son.
“Long term, I would like to bring Ben to Italy,” he said, the words devoid of emotion despite the way his heart was aching in his chest. “Ben?” He spun around, looking at her distractedly. “Is it short for something?”
Grace nodded, not meeting his eyes. “Benedict.”
“Benedict Dettori,” he said with a nod. “It is a good name.”
Grace didn’t dare point out that her child had Steven’s name. It would devastate him further and for the first time in two years, face to face with the man she’d loved, she could fully appreciate how foolish she’d been.
It softened her to his plan; how could it not?
“The company…” she said softly.
“Sell it to me,” he commanded with a confident nod. “Sell it to me and I will appoint someone to manage it until we can make a more permanent decision.”
“You make it sound so easy,” she said on a sigh.
“On the contrary, I expect it will be difficult. But what choice do we have? He is our son. Yours and mine.” He breathed out, his nostrils flaring and his eyes pinned her down as though he was suggesting they scrape wire across their naked chests. “We will raise him together.”
CHAPTER FOUR
GRACE HAD BARELY SLEPT and, for once, it had nothing to do with Ben. No, her exhaustion that morning was attributable to one man, and one man only.
Marco.
All night she’d tossed and turned, and her brain had thrown their past before her. Her body had craved him, even when her mind had agonized over her decisions and his reactions. Even when she’d wished she’d done everything differently, she’d felt awash with sadness for Steve, who had adored Ben, and for herself, who had truly believed she was making the right choices for all involved.
The Tycoon's Secret Baby: Forbidden lust. One stolen night. A secret baby! Page 4