The Price of Scandal

by Kim Lawrence

  ‘Coincidences and family fights.’ Her voice was earnest—she wanted him to understand that Hannah was not bad, just hurting—as she added, ‘You have to understand about Hannah—’

  ‘I do understand about Hannah.’

  How could he not? He had been Hannah, the child nobody had listened to trying to protect the father who had walked willingly to his doom.

  And he had taken the first step on that path himself—taken it eagerly. His lips curved in a grimace of self-contempt. She had played the role of innocent stepmother in trouble to perfection and he had swallowed it all.

  The worst thing about this situation was that even now, with everything he knew, a part of him wanted this to turn out to be a big mistake! The shameful knowledge filled him with anger, and that anger was directed at the woman who was responsible.

  ‘James was wealthy.’

  Shock flashed across her face as she thought, My God, he believes it! Why had she thought he wouldn’t? Why had she thought he was different? Why had she slept with him?

  And she had been worried that he’d be angry on her behalf. Now that was funny, only Neve did not feel like laughing.

  ‘And, what, thirty years older than you?’

  ‘James,’ she said quietly, ‘was a lovely man.’ Neve was starting to realise how rare a breed that was.

  ‘Did you marry him,’ he drawled, ‘because he was a “lovely man?” Or because he wrote you blank cheques?’

  ‘It wasn’t like that.’

  ‘So he didn’t leave you money.’ Had she run through it already? Meeting him must have seemed like an opportunity too good to miss. ‘Is it true?’ he pushed, wanting to see her drop the act if only for a moment and admit her guilt.

  She lifted her eyes to his and said in a level tone, ‘Is what true?’

  It turned out they were right, the people who said that a relationship without trust was doomed. Lucky then, she reflected, that they had not had a relationship—in less than twenty-four hours you couldn’t forge a relationship based on anything but attraction.

  ‘Did you know James was dying when you married him?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Did he give you money?’

  Neve saw the cold condemnation in his eyes and felt her anger stir. My God, she wasn’t about to defend herself to this man who had appointed himself her judge.

  He was meant to believe in her.

  How dared he?

  She lifted her chin to a belligerent angle and stared at him directly. ‘My relationship with James is none of your business.’

  His eyes drifted to the tear running down her smooth cheek; a muscle clenched in his jaw. ‘I’d say your relationship with James was very much a business.’

  Had she seen him as an easy mark too?

  ‘I assume that you were his mistress for some time?’

  ‘You can assume any damn thing you like,’ she snarled, thinking he would anyway. ‘But you know what I think? I think you want me to be the person in those stupid stories.’

  His lips curled contemptuously. ‘Those “stupid” stories were in every—’

  ‘Oh, sure, and you always believe in the journalistic integrity of tabloid journalists—always as in when it suits you, and it suits you now,’ she contended, ‘because it gives you a way to back away without looking like a total commitment-phobic loser, which, for the record, you are!’

  The blood left his face, leaving a greyish tinge to his golden skin and an angry white line around his lips. ‘You will not speak to me this way.’

  ‘I will speak to you any damned way I like!’ she countered with a determined smile. ‘You obviously think every woman you meet is out to drag you to the altar. Well, just so that you know, not this one!’ she bellowed hitting her chest with the heel of her hand to illustrate the point. ‘You needn’t have worried because marriage is the last thing I want. I’m free and I intend to stay that way!’

  Without warning, the righteous anger that had made her feel strong and in control left her. Aware that she was moments away from crying, Neve turned, the image of his white, furious face in her head as she began to walk away.

  Half expecting him to follow, when she felt a hand on her shoulder she assumed he had.

  She spun around, her intention to tell him just where he could put his apology, and found one of the uniformed officers standing there.

  Quite quickly into the subsequent conversation the man apologetically introduced the subject of a minor driving without a licence.

  Fully anticipating him saying that they were going to prosecute, she almost kissed him when at the end of the conversation he said that they were happy to let Hannah off with a caution.

  Neve didn’t really know what a caution entailed, but it had to be better than a criminal record and hopefully he was right—it would serve as a wake-up call for Hannah. Not that she was holding her breath.

  She could, he offered, travel back in the squad car or the Land Rover. She could see Severo in the Land Rover.

  When faced with the choice between spending the journey sitting next to a sulky teenager who hated her and a self-righteous Italian who despised her, Neve chose the teenager—there really was no contest!

  When they arrived at the police station—conveniently close, it seemed, to the railway station—she delayed her exit in the hope that Severo would have left.

  She thought her wish had been granted until they were crossing the street to the station, Hannah lagging a sulky ten paces behind, when she saw the car, a long low sports car, drive past. Sliding into the passenger seat was the female equivalent of the car—tall, leggy, blonde and incredibly slim, wearing a tiny red dress and long boots.

  Holding the door open for her was Severo.

  Her heart stopped when she saw him and so did she, in the middle of the road. She was still standing there a moment later when a porter carrying a bag came pelting down the pavement.

  ‘Mrs Constanza…Mrs Constanza.’

  She saw Severo turn at the sound of his name, but not his name, her name.

  Together…same name…She took the slow route but she got there eventually.

  Oh, my God, he’s married. I slept with a married man and I liked it, actually more than liked it.

  Neve wasn’t sure who she despised more: herself or him.

  She turned, grabbed Hannah’s arm and, ignoring her protests, ran in the opposite direction.

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘I’ll know when we get there.’

  It turned out to be a small coffee shop where she sat until she had stopped shaking, on the outside at least.

  Chapter Twelve

  ‘NO ONE at the formal will have anything like this,’ Hannah announced as she danced her way around the kitchen in the fifties full-skirted prom dress that Neve had brought home for her to try on.

  ‘It fits?’

  ‘It’s perfect,’ the excited teen enthused. ‘And I look beautiful.’

  ‘You do,’ Neve agreed, thinking who would have thought a few short weeks ago that Hannah would be talking to her, let alone asking for fashion advice?

  A lot of things had happened that a few months ago would have seemed impossible. And you could trace almost all of those things back to one night, a night and a person that together had turned her life upside down!

  Even her improved relationship with Hannah, who had taken his lecture very much to heart, could be traced back to Severo, though the trail was not quite as unequivocal as the one that linked him to the really major change in her life.

  Neve was pregnant.

  Pregnant!

  Even with her hand pressed to the suggestion of a bump on her belly, it still seemed totally unreal to her.

  But then she hadn’t had long to grow used to the idea. She’d had all the textbook symptoms but pregnancy had never crossed her mind, not even for a moment.

  Neve wondered if, unable to deal with it at some subconscious level, she had simply blanked the possibility from her mind. />
  Well, for whatever reason, she definitely hadn’t made the connection between the intense tiredness she had been experiencing and a baby. She had put it down to the long hours she had been working since she had returned.

  She might still be living in ignorance if it hadn’t been for the visit to the doctor. She had gone to ask for something to help her insomnia, and after an examination he had explained that he could not prescribe sleeping pills for a pregnant woman.

  She had walked home in a daze. It was later that night that Hannah, arriving home from school for the weekend, had walked in and found Neve sitting on the floor in the bathroom sobbing, after doing a second test in the hope the doctor was wrong.

  She had caught on immediately; possibly the blue stick Neve had been clutching in her hand had been the clue.

  ‘God, you’re pregnant.’

  Neve nodded.

  Hannah sat down on the floor beside her. For a long time she didn’t say anything at all.

  ‘The father…? The hunky Italian—what’s his name?’

  Neve nodded. ‘Severo Constanza.’ Saying his name out loud produced another bout of uncontrollable weeping.

  ‘Does he know?’

  ‘No. I only just know myself.’

  ‘Are you going to tell him?’

  It was a question that Neve had been sitting there asking herself. ‘Yes…no…I don’t know.’ Her reply pretty much summed up her level of decisiveness on the subject. ‘I wouldn’t know where to find him.’

  And his wife. Neve had no intention of explaining this minor impediment to happy ever after to her stepdaughter. Unprotected sex and unplanned pregnancy did not exactly qualify her for the ‘perfect role model for a teenager’ medal, but put married man into that equation and you added a whole new grubby dimension.

  ‘Men are pigs,’ Hannah said matter-of-factly.

  Neve had a lot of sympathy for this view, but she made an effort to stay balanced. One rotten—very rotten—apple was no reason to chuck out the entire barrel. ‘Not all of them. Your dad wasn’t.’

  Neve held her breath. She knew it was a gamble mentioning James, but she couldn’t avoid the subject for ever.

  ‘True, but Paul Wilkes is. I’ve liked him for ages, then last week he asked me to the formal, and then he un-asks me because Clare, who said she wouldn’t go with him, says she will now.’

  ‘Oh, definitely a pig.’ Neve was amazed to find herself sharing a bonding moment with her stepdaughter.

  Hannah looked at Neve and grinned; the grin faded as her glance slid to Neve’s still-flat stomach. ‘A baby…wow!’

  The next weekend Hannah came home with a wad of A4 pages covered in print.

  She handed them solemnly to Neve. ‘What are…?’ She stopped as a name on the page leapt out at her. The blood drained from her face.

  ‘I thought you might want to contact him so I put his name in a search engine and it went kind of crazy. It turns out your Italian hunk is this money-making machine. He’s famous.’

  ‘All this is about Severo?’

  Her stepdaughter laughed. ‘God, no, those are just a sample. I’d need a wheelbarrow to carry all the stuff there is on him. People really like to write stuff about him. I think someone has a doctorate in him or some financial system he invented. And he’s on a load of committees, charities and stuff like that.’

  That had been two weeks ago and so far Neve had not used the information. She supposed she would have to at some point, but the thought of how he might react held her back.

  He’d probably accuse her of deliberately getting pregnant. Maybe he already had legitimate offspring—planned offspring.

  Severo had been at his desk since six a.m. when his secretary buzzed to say his ten a.m. was still not here. It was fifteen minutes after the hour. He made a conscious effort to control his irritation, aware that recently his temper had been short and his tolerance levels low.

  To the point where, if she was to be believed, he stood in danger of losing the best secretary he had ever had—her words, and she was probably right.

  Her outburst had been triggered by a simple request to work late.

  ‘No, I won’t work late again. You may be married to your job, but I’m not. I’m married to my husband—a very understanding husband who has forgotten what I look like.’

  Then the woman he had never even seen look ruffled had burst into tears, which had completely thrown Severo.

  After her outburst, clearly over the top, he had admitted to himself that there might be at least a grain of truth in her accusations.

  And he needed to do something about it; he needed to vent the unresolved anger that was gnawing away at him.

  The problem was he had let Neve walk away acting as though she held the moral high ground. Why hadn’t he said or done something?

  To Severo the connection with that silence and the volcanic rage he felt building inside was obvious. He could barely function when half his resources were spent holding it in check.

  He considered the situation with angry distaste. For a man who prided himself on his control, it was an intolerable situation—almost as intolerable as waking up every morning wanting her.

  He needed to work the redheaded witch out of his system for good.

  And if that required him to take her to bed for twenty-four hours it was a sacrifice he was willing to make.

  The phone buzzed.

  Severo picked it up. ‘My ten a.m. has arrived?’

  ‘No, you have a call from a Miss Macleod.’

  Severo sucked in a deep breath and expelled it slowly. A slow smile of predatory anticipation spread across his face.

  She had come to him.

  ‘Do you want to take the call?’

  ‘Oh, yes, I want to take the call.’

  Severo swivelled his chair so that he faced the window; his pitch-black eyes glittered as he held the receiver to his ear. ‘Hello, cara, I was just thinking about you.’

  There was a silence before a voice, but not the one he had been anticipating, echoed down the line. ‘I’m not Cara, I’m Hannah, the one you yelled at. You remember me?’

  The anticlimax was intense.

  ‘Hannah, yes, I remember you. How are you?’

  ‘I’m OK, but Neve isn’t.’

  ‘She asked you to call me?’

  The girl on the other end laughed. ‘God, no, she’ll kill me when she finds out,’ she predicted gloomily. ‘But I didn’t know what else to do. I had to go back to school this morning and leave her.’

  Severo’s voice sharpened. ‘She is ill?’

  ‘Not ill exactly.’

  Severo struggled to contain his impatience. ‘What does “not ill exactly” mean?’

  ‘Well, pregnant isn’t the same as ill, is it? Though after the way she was puking when I left this morning it seemed like ill to me.’

  Somewhere inside his skull a man was banging a large hammer. Severo raised his voice above the volume. ‘Your stepmother is having a baby?’ A mixture of distaste and anger slid through him as he contemplated the man responsible.

  Was it possible that she had been pregnant that night they had spent together?

  ‘She’s having your baby.’

  ‘She told you this?’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘I see.’ He saw that there were no depths that Neve would not sink to.

  ‘And as you’re the dad I thought you should be looking after her. I’m really worried, you know,’ she confided. ‘She shouldn’t be all alone.’

  ‘Relax, Hannah,’ he advised. ‘I will take care of things.’

  Her sigh of relief was audible. ‘Thanks for that…thanks a lot. Do you need the address?’

  ‘Yes.’ He scribbled down the address she gave on a scrap of paper, repeating it dutifully when requested to do so.

  ‘How pregnant is your stepmother?’

  Severo tried to imagine her slender body swollen and couldn’t—not when he remembered clearly being able to span her narrow
waist with his hands.

  He could remember other things but he tried hard not to.

  ‘Three months, of course,’ Hannah said, sounding amazed he could not do the maths. ‘You know, I was afraid that you’d think I’m making this up.’

  ‘No, I don’t think you’re making this up,’ he soothed. It was not, however, something that he would put past Neve. It was equally possible she was pregnant.

  What was not possible was his being the father.

  His brain might have deserted him that night, but not to the extent where he had neglected to take obvious basic precautions—though it had been a close thing.

  Why the lie when she knew that a simple DNA test would reveal the falsehood?

  And why pick him when presumably there were other candidates? The pounding in his temple became a roar as he wondered about the man who had come after him, or even, given the timing, before him.

  ‘Look, I’ve got a class. Be sure to give Neve my love.’

  ‘I will not forget,’ Severo promised grimly.

  Five minutes later he walked into his secretary’s office. ‘Cancel the rest of my appointments for this morning,’ he said abruptly. ‘Including my ten a.m. if he ever deigns to show up.’

  ‘Will do, boss.’

  He turned. ‘Make that the day.’

  For the next hour Severo paced his office trying to work out what had just happened.

  Why had she come up with this preposterous story? Why hadn’t she taken the trouble to invent a narrative that was even halfway plausible? Why?

  Severo raked a hand through his sable hair, and thought, Too many whys and not enough answers—actually zero answers.

  But there was always an answer; he knew this. Not perhaps the answer a person wanted to hear, but there was always an answer.

  The furrow between his brows deepened as he stared out of the window seeing nothing of the City panorama stretched out below.

  He saw a heart-shaped face, big, impossibly blue eyes and a kissable mouth—was she thinking about him?

  He shook his head, filled with self-contempt for allowing himself to wonder, a sign of mental indiscipline that equated with weakness in his mind.

  Severo had watched his father take back the wife who had humiliated him on innumerable occasions, and each time he did so it seemed to Severo that his father was diminished, that he was a lesser man than before.