The Price of Scandal
Page 14
Neve ignored the question and eyed him with suspicion and dislike. ‘What private business?’
‘I have been told some things that I need confirmed or denied and I am not leaving until you have done so.’
Neve reminded herself that there was no way, short of bugging her bathroom, that he could know.
‘Do you have to make everything sound like a threat? Not everyone responds well to bully-boy tactics, you know.’
A look of utter astonishment crossed his lean face. ‘You are calling me a bully?’
She pursed her lips and refused to retract the statement even though she knew it was a slight exaggeration. ‘Look, say what you came to say and go.’
‘Is there somewhere private?’
‘You made this private,’ she reminded him bitterly, waving at the locked door.
‘Are you pregnant?’ He had walked in knowing what reply he wanted to hear; between then and now his attitude had shifted into a grey area—pale grey. He was veering towards the yes camp.
Not as irrational as it sounded. He would one day need an heir—why not this child?
Neve was totally unprepared for the blunt question.
He looked equally unprepared for her reply.
‘Yes.’
‘And it is mine?’
She nodded. In none of the many versions of this scene she had played in her head did he respond to the news with such a total lack of emotion.
‘Perhaps we should go into the back.’ Where there was a chair to sit down on before her shaking knees gave way.
Severo followed her into the back room, a small room made smaller by his large presence. To say it was furnished simply was being generous. There was a saggy armchair, a kettle, two mugs and a radio on the small coffee table. Right now it also held the boxes of new stock she had been taking from the back of her car when she had rushed out to serve a customer.
A customer that had turned out to be Severo. It was academic now, but she couldn’t help but wonder how on earth he had known—nobody knew except…She stopped dead, a sudden suspicion gripping her.
Before she could demand confirmation of her suspicions Severo spoke.
‘You are sure of this?’
Angry colour rushed to Neve’s cheeks, though really she couldn’t actually blame him for looking for a get-out. What man wouldn’t? ‘Luckily I was having a slow month so, yes, I know you’re the father.’
He gave an impatient scowl. ‘I simply meant were you sure about the pregnancy. I accept that I am the father if you say so.’
He had assumed that she had planted the idea of contacting him in Hannah’s head, but nobody could feign the sort of shock she had shown when he’d asked if she was pregnant. The expression in her eyes had not said clever scam gone wrong, it had shrieked dismay and confusion.
Neve, aware she’d jumped the gun again—but at least this time she hadn’t waded in with the left hook—gave a shamed grimace and said without thinking, ‘You took precautions.’
Left to her the pregnancy would not have been accidental, it would have been inevitable! She had not only abandoned her moral principles that night, she had abandoned common sense too.
‘Look,’ she added with a sigh. ‘I know that this is my fault, and you needn’t worry, I’m not going to ask for anything from you,’ she promised him earnestly. ‘There’s no need for anyone else to know.’ Was he worried that his marriage would be in danger if his wife found out?
Severo looked at her as though she had gone mad. ‘I needn’t worry?’ He shook his head and began to pace up and down.
The oddness in his voice made her frown. ‘Well, biologically you’re the father, but I chose to keep this baby.’
The colour seeped out under his tan as he dragged a hand through his dark hair and slowly turned to face her. ‘Is that why you didn’t tell me?’
Her eyes fell from his. ‘I was going to tell you at some point.’ She just hadn’t decided what point.
‘You thought that I would pressure you to end the pregnancy?’
‘No, yes…’ She shrugged; it had crossed her mind. “Well, it was possible and I didn’t want to argue. I’ve not been feeling great and—’
He snarled something in his native tongue—you didn’t have to be bilingual to know it was probably unrepeatable. He looked angrier than she had ever seen him.
‘Life is precious!’ he bellowed.
‘Don’t yell at me!’ she said, almost matching him for decibels. ‘You’re preaching to the converted. I just thought, well, it’s not as if you’ll be able to have much contact with the baby—not unless your wife is very understanding.’
Severo frowned. ‘Wife? What wife?’
Neve’s lips tightened in disgust. ‘Please, Severo,’ she begged with an attitude of weary distaste. ‘Nobody likes to be caught out in a lie. But what’s the point denying it? I saw you with her.’
‘I have no wife.’
She was bewildered by his attitude; he acted as if saying something didn’t exist made it vanish.
‘I have never been married, or engaged or even in a long-term relationship. I don’t know who or what you thought you saw, but it was not my wife.’
Neve felt a flicker of uncertainty. ‘I saw you at the station—you were in a car with a beautiful blonde, tall, long legs…’ She stopped as she saw recognition flash across his face, swiftly followed by revulsion.
‘Livia?’ He spat the word out like a bad taste. There was no way such repugnance could be feigned. ‘You thought Livia was my wife!’
‘The porter, he called her Mrs Constanza,’ she protested.
‘She is. Livia was my father’s wife, my stepmother.’
Not his wife…not his wife.
‘I cannot believe that you thought I was married to Livia!’
It was hard not to wonder about his obvious dislike for the woman his father had married. Actually dislike seemed too mild a word for his feelings. ‘She’s very beautiful and young—’
Chapter Fourteen
‘BEAUTIFUL!’ Severo gave a scornful laugh. ‘She has had so much surgery I doubt if even she knows which parts of her body are originals. She is vain, utterly self-obsessed and she wouldn’t know a moral if she fell over it.’
He stared at Neve and thought, And how did I ever think you were like her?
‘I take it you’re not close.’
‘The woman killed my father long before he died. She had a series of affairs, and she was not discreet, and each time she came crawling back my father forgave her. I used to despise him for believing her promises. Now I see that he did not, he just pretended to because she was like a drug for him.’
The woman he described sounded more like a disease to Neve.
‘It must have been awful for you watching…?’ Neve got an emotional lump in her throat the size of a boulder just thinking about how awful it must have been for Severo witnessing this destructive relationship.
No wonder he had never married—what he had seen was enough to put anyone off the institution.
‘I’m sorry, but when I saw you with her I thought…’
Severo summed up her thoughts in one sentence. ‘You thought I lied to get you in bed.’ He would have he still might.
She nodded.
‘That perhaps explains the slap.’ He lifted his hand to his face and the flush on her own cheek deepened. ‘You thought I lied, but you did lie when I arrived, didn’t you, Neve?’ he said quietly. ‘A lie by omission, but a lie nonetheless.’
‘I didn’t tell you but you knew.’ She gave a baffled shake of her head. ‘How?’
‘I had a phone call from your stepdaughter this morning. She was very anxious that I accept my responsibilities.’
Neve’s eyes flew wide. ‘Hannah! But why would she do that?’
‘She was clearly concerned about leaving you alone.’ And he could see why.
Neve looked about as far removed as was possible to imagine from the manipulative man-eating monster he had come
to confront. It was an image, he realized, that he had built up in his head, an image that bore little resemblance to reality and one that had crumbled away the moment he’d laid eyes on her.
He recalled her angry accusation—what had she said? He wanted to believe the stories because he was running scared, looking for an excuse.
At the time he had dismissed it out of hand, but wasn’t there, he wondered uneasily, an element of truth in the accusation?
He prided himself on being objective so why had he not even entertained the possibility that she might be innocent of the crimes?
Why had he refused to believe the much more plausible possibility that she might be an innocent victim of a media witch-hunt?
‘I told Hannah I was fine and I am.’
Severo gave a laugh. ‘Have you looked in the mirror?’ The sooner he had her under his roof and was able to take care of her, the better, he thought, applying his considerable intellect to the easiest way of bringing this about.
Neve gave a tight smile. It was always an ego-enhancing experience to be told you looked a wreck by a gorgeous man.
‘So you two are no longer fighting?’
‘No. It’s good—we’ve bonded. It’s a sisterhood thing—we both hate men.’
Her flippancy drew a tight smile that did not reach his fabulous eyes. ‘With no exceptions?’
‘We have strict criteria for the good guy pile but so few make it.’
Severo did not bother asking what pile he had been placed on, but he suspected he came somewhere below serial killers.
‘I will put things in motion this afternoon if you let me know what dates suit you.’
‘Dates for what?’
‘The wedding. I don’t know if you have any religious affiliations?’
Neve shook her head. ‘Hold on, back up there—marriage? What are you talking about?’
‘You are having my baby. What is there to talk about? I am not a man who avoids my responsibilities,’ he told her sombrely.
Neve chewed her lip. Had it not occurred to him that she didn’t want to be a responsibility?
‘I appreciate the sentiment but I’ve done the convenient marriage thing once and, while I don’t regret it, this time I’m not prepared to settle—I want the real deal.’
‘Settle?’ he echoed. ‘You think marriage to me would be settling?’
‘I’m sorry if that offends you.’ And it clearly did.
‘I do not think you are sorry. I think you go out of your way,’ he contended furiously, ‘to do just that!’
‘Don’t be ridiculous.’
‘There are women who would not think being married to a man who can afford to indulge their every whim settling.’
‘Maybe I’m holding out for someone richer? Or maybe…maybe,’ she yelled, glaring up at him, ‘maybe I’m not a gold-digging tart you can buy. Maybe I’m not a problem you can just throw money at and walk away.’
He regarded her with baffled frustration. ‘I am not trying to buy you. I am trying to take care of you.’
‘I can take care of me and Hannah and this baby. When I marry it will be to a man who understands what love is.’
Severo, who had gone white, flinched as she flung the last word at him like a missile.
‘You will marry me.’ Neve took an involuntary step backwards; he was literally vibrating with anger.
‘Because,’ he continued in the same low, impassioned voice, ‘I believe you know that a child needs two parents. And you know that a part of being a parent is putting your child’s needs ahead of your own.’
‘So if I don’t marry you I’m being selfish—nice guilt trip, thanks. This is the twenty-first century. There is no stigma attached to being a single mother. A woman does not marry someone because she is pregnant, especially if he’s the first man she ever slept with.’
Maybe he wouldn’t notice her slip?
‘First man you ever slept with?’
Neve expelled a gusty sigh; so he had noticed.
‘I,’ he said, breathing hard, ‘was the first man you slept with?’ His lustrous dark stare glittered as his eyes moved across her face. ‘You were a virgin?’
She nodded and heard the breath leave his lungs on one shaky gasp.
‘How,’ he asked, looking stunned, ‘is that possible?’ In his mind a virgin was shy and required coaxing. Neve had been wild and totally uninhibited. Then he recalled the tightness and her little gasp and he closed his eyes, his face like that of a carved bronzed statue. He was submerged by a wave of guilt as he recalled the unrestrained way he had made love.
‘I know. I always felt a bit freaky,’ she confessed, growing concerned by his silence and odd manner.
‘“Freaky?”’ he echoed in a choked voice.
‘I didn’t plan it that way. It just sort of never happened,’ she said, thinking, You never happened. ‘I was never very…highly sexed and, well, my marriage to James was never anything but a paper thing. He wanted someone he could trust to look after Hannah when he was gone and how could I say no? He could have sent Charlie to prison when he stole that money.’
‘Stop!’ he pleaded, holding up his hand to stem the flood of detail.
It took Severo several minutes of patient questioning and prompting before he got the full picture. It was one of a child who from an early age had been expected to care for, not just herself, but others.
And I thought I had a tough time! Now, just as she had her first sniff of freedom, he was perpetuating that cycle—he had got her pregnant.
He felt like a total bastard. No wonder she had looked ready to bolt when he had proposed!
A virgin…? Dio, that was the part that he struggled with most, how any one so warm and giving and…The how aside, he could not regret it, Severo decided, even if that did make him the bastard she obviously considered him to be.
Obviously he was genuinely appalled by the possibility he might have hurt her, but at the same time aroused more than he would have imagined possible by the knowledge that he had been her only lover, and now she was carrying his child.
The knowledge spurred him into action.
‘Pack your bags. You are coming with me.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
His scorching eyes swept her face. ‘I am not leaving you here alone. Who else is going to look after you? This brother who gambles and leaves you to feed and take care of yourself?’
‘Charlie has had his problems but he’s turned things around and Lucy has really been a good influence. He’s got a steady job and—’
‘Fine…fine…I’m sure your brother is a model citizen and you might well be able to take care of yourself, but Hannah does not think that.’
‘Hannah? What has this got to do with Hannah?’
‘You had the burden of responsibility heaped on your shoulders when you should have been enjoying yourself. Do you want the same thing for Hannah?’
The suggestion appalled Neve. ‘Of course not!’
‘Then come with me. My home is large—you need never see me if you don’t wish to, but the gesture will cost you nothing. Hannah can come and stay at weekends.’
At least he had stopped talking weddings. ‘I suppose…’ she began slowly. ‘For a while if Hannah—’
‘Excellent! I will help you pack.’
‘I can pack by myself.’
If Neve had any doubts about the choice she made, Hannah’s reaction to the news made her realise that she had made the right decision.
‘Whew, that is fantastic. You have no idea how worried I was, and that means I can go on that trip to Bruges next weekend. You’re all right with that, aren’t you?’
She reached the hall of the flat, where he waited, with her case in her hand.
‘You have told Hannah our news?’ he said, taking the case from her hand.
‘All right, I admit it—you were right.’ And Neve was annoyed with herself for not realising what had been obvious to him. ‘Hannah won’t be coming home this weekend. She
’s going on a school trip.’
To his credit Severo did not rub salt in the wound, and, once she had been established in his luxurious London home, true to his word she had all the privacy and peace she could have wanted. A fact that did not delight her nearly as much as it should have.
In fact she had still been unpacking when he had boarded the private jet that was carrying him to some vitally important meeting or other. Clearly it was business as usual as far as he was concerned, but to what extent? Was he willing to make any compromises to his lifestyle? This was a subject Neve knew she had to raise when he returned…It was not a conversation she was looking forward to.
I’d prefer you didn’t bring your girlfriends home while I’m living here.
Neve used his absence to acclimatise herself to new surroundings. The household was run like clockwork by the army of staff, who treated her with polite deference. She couldn’t wait to escape her luxurious cage to go to the shop, where she only casually mentioned her change of address.
On the second evening she discovered the leisure suite in the basement of the Georgian town house. The following evening her gentle laps of the pool coincided with Severo’s explosive return.
Neve was in the middle of the pool when the peace was shattered by the sound of the door hitting the wall and, as she later learnt, several glass panels cracking.
Treading water, she watched as the figure in the impeccably tailored business suit strode to the edge of the pool and threw a large bunch of flowers at her.
She looked from the petals floating on the water to the man who stood there vibrating rage and heard herself say calmly, ‘Are they for me?’
‘You know they are for you,’ he gritted, taking the card from his pocket and reading out loud.
‘“To Neve, my one and only true love, all the best, and congrats, Chaz.’”
Neve swam slowly to the side. Once there she raised a hand. There was a pause before he reached down, grabbed her wrist and hauled her up onto the side.
The display of strength made her stomach muscles flip in response.
His eyes slid down her body and control slipped several more notches. The sight of the water streaming off her lush body was just about the most erotic thing he had ever seen; he wanted her here and now.