Cattle Rancher, Secret Son

by Margaret Way

  “I’m sorry if you feel hurt, Cal,” she said, tonelessly. “At least it proves you’re human.”

  “Human? What the hell are you talking about? And you’re sorry? God!” He began to pace the carpet like a caged tiger. “Is that all you can say, sorry? I had a right to know. Robert is three years old. Just think what I’ve missed! Or haven’t you any heart at all? For three years I’ve had a son I didn’t even know existed. I wasn’t there when he was born, when he took his first steps, when he started to say his first words. I’ve missed his birthdays. I’ve missed loving him. I’ve missed the joy of having him love me. What’s wrong with you? How could you do that to me?” He fell down on the sofa, throwing back his head and covering his eyes with his hands. “What the hell were you thinking about? Dear God, Gina, are you devoid of all conscience?”

  She stared back at him, trying hard not to burst into tears. “Don’t, please don’t! I had to cope any way I could.”

  He flung up his handsome head, tension making his features more hawklike than ever. “And that meant absenting me from your life?” He stared about him at the large room, decorated with style and care, the furnishings, the art works, the fresh flowers. “You live here?”

  “Of course I live here.” She thrust the heavy fall of her hair over her shoulder.

  “Alone with Robert?” He shot her a challenging glace.

  “Yes.” She dared not add “As if it’s any of your business.” He was furious, shocked, a pallor beneath his dark tan. She was frightened of him; of what he might do. She just knew something was going to come of that newspaper article.

  “You work?” The question was terse. “Sit down, why don’t you?”

  Demolished she took a seat opposite him. Her heart was beating so fast she thought she might be sick. Low voiced, she named her firm of stockbrokers.

  “It must be a darn good job!” He let his eyes move insolently around the attractively furnished room.

  “It is,” she answered shortly, regaining her breath. “All you see here is mine.”

  “Bravo!” he crowed.

  “What do you want, Cal?” She cut across him, the room thick with tension.

  “Who looks after Robert until you get home?” His eyes lanced.

  She hated this interrogation, even as she knew she had to endure it. “My godmother, Rosa. She’s a wonderful woman. Roberto loves her.”

  “What’s the wonderful Rosa doing down here in Brisbane, or is everything you told me a pack of lies?”

  “No!” she protested, shaking her head. “When Rosa’s husband died she sold the farm to be near me. She takes her responsibilities as godmother very seriously.”

  “Her prayers couldn’t prevent you becoming an inveterate liar,” he countered bitterly.

  “I never lied to you.”

  He laughed harshly. “God, you’re lying now. You were the one who told me you loved me. You told me you never dreamed there could be such happiness. You told me you wanted to be with me always. If they weren’t lies, may I ask what in hell were they?”

  Fearful only a moment before, Gina’s magnificent dark eyes flashed. “Why weren’t you truthful with me?” she demanded, the pain of the past as raw as yesterday. “You had a girl back home you were expected to marry. I even know her name, Kym Harrison. Don’t look so shocked. Men are notoriously unfaithful. I saw a photograph of you together in a magazine. You were at the Melbourne Cup. Calvin McKendrick and his lovely fiancée, Kym Harrison. I still have the clipping somewhere to remind me of your treachery. Why didn’t you tell me about your Kym?”

  He couldn’t answer for a minute so taken aback was he by her use of the word treachery. “Why are you drawing Kym into this?” he retaliated, heavily frowning. “As soon as I met you there was no other woman. No Kym. You were everything I wanted. My woman. Getting engaged to Kym came after. It shames me to say it, it certainly wasn’t my finest moment, but I became engaged to Kym to forget you!”

  She stared at him, this man who had haunted her, the father of her child. “It didn’t work?” Her tone was deeply hostile. She was out to wound as he was wounding her.

  “No more than your relationship with your Italian boyfriend,” he countered, sending her a glittering glance that would have crushed her, only she was too startled by his mention of a boyfriend.

  “I beg your pardon?” she said, disdainfully, lifting her chin.

  He laughed at the hauteur. “Oh, come off it! How easily you assume the regal demeanour. Sure there’s not a Contessa or two in the background?”

  “I wish!” There was a curl of her moulded lips. Those lips he had kissed so often. “I had no Italian boyfriend if that’s your idea of an excuse. My father frowned on boyfriends. I was a virgin when I met you. You know that.”

  Colour mounted to his prominent cheekbones. “Yes,” he admitted, “but we did use protection.”

  “One time we didn’t.”

  He buried his head in his hands. “Then my responsibility was far greater than yours. You were just a girl. I was mad about you. Absolutely crazy with love and longing. The last thing I wanted to do was hurt you.”

  “Am I supposed to believe that?” Her tongue lashed him. “You did hurt me. More than you will ever know. I’ve suffered, but I have my beautiful Roberto.”

  “And Robert is a McKendrick family name. I recall telling you that.”

  “Maybe you did—” she shrugged “—but I named him after my brother, Alessandro. Roberto is his middle name.” She didn’t tell him both factors had influenced her.

  Cal studied her with a frown, suddenly remembering how she had told him an older brother had defected from home. “You’re talking about the Sandro who went missing when he was sixteen?”

  “Aah! You actually remember something!” Her voice throbbed with scorn.

  “I remember everything!” he corrected her harshly. “He’s never contacted you?”

  She shook her head, sadness replacing the scorn. There was a long, long list of Missing Persons. “He could be dead for all we know.”

  Even through his shock and anger, her obvious sorrow reached him.

  Gina swallowed on a dry throat. Before her she saw a man who had matured a good deal since she had last seen him. He looked every inch a man of power and authority. The sweetness, however, that had been so much part of his expression had disappeared.

  The fear returned. “Please, Cal. Can you reassure me you wouldn’t be so cruel as to try to take Robbie from me. I adore him. He’s my son.”

  “He’s my son, too, Gina,” he said curtly, rising to his feet and looming over her. “Tonight I claim him. Fortune has at long last decided to turn my way. I have every intention of taking him back to Coronation Hill. He’s a McKendrick. Coronation is his home. It’s his heritage. He’s my heir.”

  Anger and fear boiled together in her great dark eyes. “He’s my heir, too, I remind you! Romano blood runs in my son’s veins. Just when do you think you could take him? Go on, tell me that. And what about me? Do you really think I’m going to stand back and let you take Roberto from me? You’d have to kill me first.”

  His expression, unlike hers, was astoundingly cool. He took hold of her wrist, letting her feel just a touch of his vastly superior strength. “No need to kill you, Gina,” he drawled. “Marrying you suits me better.”

  For a moment she thought she would faint. “Because I have your child?” she cried passionately. “I wasn’t good enough for you before.” She pulled away violently, rubbing her wrist. “Marriage between us would never work.”

  He went down on his haunches before her. “Listen and listen carefully.” He spoke softly but his demeanour conveyed forceful determination. “I want my son to have a proper upbringing. No broken home. I want him to have a mother and father. That’s the two of us. Are you going to tell me there’s someone else on the horizon? Someone prepared to take on another man’s child? Not that he would have to. I’m intent on getting custody of Robert. I don’t think the court would loo
k too favourably on you and your deceit. Your brother, Sandro, isn’t the only one in your family who likes to disappear. Tell me this? How can a woman who put her own life on the line to save a child, lack the guts to come forward? To stand up and be counted. Or were you overcome with guilt?”

  She kept her head lowered, not daring to look into his mesmeric eyes. She was overwhelmingly conscious their faces were mere inches away. “Even when you were making love to me, making our baby, you were lying,” she said wretchedly.

  He made a sound of the greatest impatience. He caught her chin sharply, holding a hard thumb to it to keep it up. “You could get any acting job. You’re great!” he scoffed. “It’s the Italian thing. You know how to exploit emotion. I told you I loved you. I never meant anything more in my life. That part of it is over. I can never trust you again. These past four years I’ve learned to hate!”

  “And I have hated, as well. A nice basis for a marriage!” Gina looked him right in the eye, her tone inflammatory. Damn him, damn him! Being so close to him was tearing her in all directions. “And what about your so lofty family?” she demanded. “They wouldn’t have accepted me then, why now? Although I don’t include your sister, Meredith, in this!”

  He stood up, rigid with disgust. “Lord, what a fake you are, Gina. Don’t try to drag my family into this. Why don’t you just admit it? I was your last big fling before you settled down and became a good little Italian wife. You were going home to marry your boyfriend, the one Papa and Mamma had picked out for you.” Unforgivably he parodied an Italian accent.

  “You were the one going home to marry your Kym.” Her great eyes flashed. “So you see, liars on both sides.” Suddenly she saw clearly her version of events would clash with his own. She had had her knowledge from his aunt, but at this point she didn’t want to draw his aunt into the whole tragic mess because it would only serve to further anger and alienate him.

  “Well, we got our just reward,” he said with deep irony. “My engagement didn’t work. Your marriage prospects were doomed to failure. It’s the old story, isn’t it? Damaged goods. Hate that expression myself. I have to say motherhood has done wonders for you.” He made it sound like she’d once been an ugly duckling. “The dewy girl has turned into a woman. You didn’t answer me about your current love life? Not that it matters a damn whatever you’re going to say.”

  She stared across at him, feeling a tightness in her chest. She had loved him as much as she was capable of loving anyone outside her son. Their son. “You’re serious, then? You’re going to force a marriage on me?”

  “You bet!”

  The hard light in his eyes swallowed all her breath.

  “I seem to recall your telling me your parents’ marriage was arranged?”

  “And it was desperately unhappy as any marriage between us would be.” Remembrance of her unhappy family life shadowed her face.

  “You omitted to tell me that. I suppose another lie?”

  “So, I’m an accomplished actress and an inveterate liar?” She gave him a scathing glance.

  “Maybe the two sometimes go together! And how are the Romanos?” He used his suavest tone.

  She was racked by a little convulsive shiver. “My father is dead. My mother has remarried. She and her husband live in New Guinea now. I rarely see her.”

  He lifted supercilious black brows. “She didn’t waste much time?”

  “She’s trying to make up for the lost years,” Gina said crisply. “My father had a very difficult temperament.”

  “I’m sorry to hear it. I suppose that’s why Sandro took off?”

  “My father was very hard on him. Not at all kind.”

  “Yet you gave me the strong impression he adored you?”

  Adored her? When she exactly matched his vision of her. She sometimes thought her father couldn’t have coped with a pregnant daughter, in or out of wedlock.

  “What no answer?” He stared across at her, so wanting to pull her into his arms he had to grip the sides of his chair.

  “I’m not going to allow you to question me further,” she said angrily. “You McKendricks are cruel people.”

  That stung him. “Don’t you think you should wait to meet them before you decide that?’

  “I’ve met you.” Her great dark eyes dominated her face. “Let me say again. A marriage between us couldn’t work.”

  He steepled his lean hands, as though considering. “Given you’re the mother of my son,” he said finally, “I suggest you try to make it work. Or sit it out.”

  “Sit it out?” she gasped. “I would never, never choose to sit my life out. I want what every woman wants—a man to love her, children, a happy home. We have nothing in common.”

  “Apart from our son. Never forget that. And unless I’m very much mistaken we’re still physically attracted to one another. We could still have the sex. That might keep us pinned together. The sex hasn’t gone away, has it?”

  She could never deny it. But she did. “Oh, stop that!” she said sharply. “Sex is out of the question.”

  “But I’ve never forgotten it. You were terrific, Gina. I wanted you to the point of madness. Pathetic how you made me feel! You made me so weak with longing I couldn’t see straight. I used to go around all the time my body aching with pain and desire. I was nuts about you.” He could barely contain his hostility.

  “But that was it, wasn’t it?” she retorted. “You just loved having sex with me.”

  “Why not? Sex with you was Heaven. And so disastrous!”

  “Some relationship!” she muttered bitterly. “Well, I paid for it.”

  “Not just you!” His expression hardened into granite. “If you can spare a thought for me, who was never told he was a father. How long will it take you to get yourself organised?” he asked crisply. “I assume you’ll have to give notice to your firm. You’d better make it as short as you can. There’ll be no difficulty taking Robert out of play school or whatever it is.”

  She put a hand to her pounding temples. “I can’t do this,” she near wailed. “You’re quite mad.”

  “My dear Gina, I’ve never been saner.” He leaned back in the armchair, the picture of nonchalance. “If you fight me I promise you, you’ll lose. Your best course—indeed, your only course—is to try to make a go of this. I’m prepared to.”

  His arrogance made her livid. “You’re prepared to!” She totally forgot herself and shouted.

  “Keep it down,” he warned, turning his head towards the bedroom area.

  “Don’t tell me what I should do in my own home,” she hissed, saturated in hot feeling. “I can see you’ve grown ruthless.”

  “If I have it’s because of you,” he retorted on the instant. “If it makes you more comfortable I give you my solemn promise I won’t touch you until you’re ready.”

  “And what makes you think I’ll ever be ready?” She stared at him coldly.

  “Let’s have a little test run, shall we?”

  He confounded her by rising from his chair.

  An unbelievable thrill shot through her. “No test runs!”

  He hauled her to her feet, holding her so she had no chance of getting away. “Not so easy to run now, is it, Gianina?”

  Passion came boiling to the surface. Will subservient to the flesh. Past merged into present. “Don’t accuse me of running one more time,” she gritted. She hadn’t run. She’d been persuaded it was the only thing she could do. The honourable thing.

  “Or you’ll do what?” His eyes rested compulsively on her full mouth. “Don’t try playing the innocent victim with me, Gina. It won’t wash. You’re a born seductress. You don’t have to do anything but look at a man. Kiss me.”

  “Too many kisses,” she said, yet her whole being was thrown into a sensual upheaval. No one touched her like he did. She tried to call on her pride and her sense of self-esteem. It would have been easier to call up thunder and lightning. “Damn you to hell!” she cried weakly as his grip tightened.

&nbs
p; “I’ve been there.” He spoke with great bitterness, sweeping her fully into his arms. There he held her as though that was where she belonged and nowhere else. She wondered how, after so much pain, her body could respond so brilliantly to his touch; but shamefully it did. It was no mock-up test kiss. It was incredibly turbulent, profoundly vengeful. Deeply suppressed emotions erupted as if at the touch of a detonator.

  When they finally broke apart, both were breathing heavily. Cal waited only a speechless moment before he pulled her against him again. “So it’s not all over then?” His emerald eyes glittered as though he had won an important battle.

  How could she find the words to deny it anyway? He had ruined her utterly for other men. “You said it yourself. All we’ve got is sex.”

  “And it’s good,” he ground out harshly, before covering her mouth again.

  Hungrily his hand sought her breast, shaped it, his fingers taking hold of the erect nipple, tightening exquisitely. She couldn’t help her quick gasps that he muffled with his lips. There was a hot gush of feelings inside of her as powerful chemicals were released into her bloodstream.

  Surely it was a type of cruelty this power he had over her? she thought fiercely. Would she never be safe from him, safe from herself?

  It wasn’t just Cal’s strong arms that were holding her hostage.

  Gina could deny it all she liked, but it was her own heart.

  Hours after he had gone back to his hotel, Gina lay in bed sobbing as she hadn’t sobbed for years. All the suffering came back to haunt her. Her parents’ unhappy marriage; her mother’s inability to stand up for herself or for her children, in particular Sandro; her father’s periodic rages and she the only one they were rarely directed at; Sandro’s disappearance after that last dreadful fight. Later the miracle of the island that had touched her with such radiance, then left her an outcast. The terrifying discovery she was pregnant; her own banishment from the family home, the all pervading sense of loss. Just seeing Cal again brought it all rushing back like the incoming tide to the shore.