by Jennie Lucas
His baby was being raised in the house of Alain Bouchard, a man who unfairly blamed him for his sister’s death. Bouchard didn’t know the truth, and knowing how the man had loved his sister, Cesare had kept it that way.
But now, he pictured Bouchard’s angry face, the way he’d stepped protectively in front of Emma.
Was it possible that over the past year, while Cesare had been celibate as a monk hungering for her, Emma had become Bouchard’s lover?
No, his heart said. Impossible. But his brain disagreed. After all, the two of them were living in the same house. Perhaps she’d been lonely and heartsick. Perhaps he’d found her crying in the kitchen, as Cesare once had, and she’d fallen into the other man’s bed, as she’d once fallen into his.
He hopelessly put his hands over his ears, as if that could keep his own imagination away. Anger built inside Cesare, rising like bile in his soul.
As the car turned west, heading toward the private airport outside the city, he looked out the window. He could see the top of the Eiffel Tower above the charming buildings, over two young lovers kissing at a sidewalk café.
He ground his teeth. He’d be glad to leave this damn city. He hated Paris and everything it stood for. The romance. The love.
Whether Emma was Bouchard’s mistress or not, she had no love for Cesare anymore. She’d made her low opinion of him, as a potential father or even as a human being, very clear. She didn’t want a thing from him. Not even his money. The thought made him feel low.
It would be simple to take the easy out she offered. Leave Paris. Go back to London. Forget the child they’d unintentionally created.
His child.
He could still see the baby’s face. His soft black hair. Those dark eyes, exactly like his own.
He had a son.
A child.
He closed his eyes. Over the memory of the baby’s sweet babble, he heard Emma’s voice: We don’t need you. We don’t want you.
Cesare’s fist hit the window with a bang.
“Sir?” His driver quivered, looking at him in the rearview mirror.
Cesare’s eyes slowly opened. Perhaps he wasn’t ready to be a father. But that no longer mattered.
Because he was one.
“Go back.”
“Back?”
“To my hotel.” Cesare rubbed at the base of his skull. “I’m not leaving Paris. Take me back now.”
Pulling his phone from his pocket, he dialed a number in New York City. Mortimer Ainsley had been his uncle’s attorney, twenty years ago, and presided over his will when he’d died and Cesare gained possession of his aging, heavily mortgaged hotel. Later, Mortimer Ainsley had looked over the prenuptial agreement given to Cesare by Angélique Bouchard, the wealthy older French heiress who had proposed after just six weeks.
Morty, who’d appeared old to Cesare’s eyes even then, had harrumphed over the terms of Angélique’s prenup. “If you leave this Bouchard woman, you get nothing,” he’d said. “If she dies, you get everything. Not much of a deal for you. She’s only ten years older so it may be some time before she dies!”
Cesare had been horrified. “I don’t want her to die. I love her.”
“Love, huh?” Morty had snorted. “Good luck with that.”
Remembering how young and naive he’d been, Cesare waited for Morty to answer the phone. He knew the old man would answer, no matter what time it was in New York right now. Morty would know the right attorney in Paris to handle a custody case.
Better no father at all than a father like you.
Cesare’s jaw tightened. Emma would realize the penalty for what she’d done. She’d see that Cesare Falconeri would not be ignored, or denied access—or even knowledge!—of his own child.
“Ainsley.” Morty’s greeting was gruff, as if he’d just woken from sleep.
“Morty. I have a problem....” Without preamble, Cesare grimly outlined the facts.
“So you have a son,” Morty said. “Congratulations.”
“I told you. I don’t have a son,” Cesare said tightly. “She has him.”
“Of course you can go to war over this. You might even win.” Morty cleared his throat. “But you know the expression, Pyrrhic victory? Unless the woman’s an unfit mother...”
Cesare remembered Emma’s loving care of the baby as she pushed him in the stroller through the park. “No,” he said grudgingly.
“Then you have to decide who you’re willing to hurt, and how badly. ’Cause in a custody war, it’s never just the other parent who takes it in the neck. Nine times out of ten, it’s the kid who suffers most.” Morty paused. “I can give you the number of a barracuda lawyer who will cause the sky to rain fire on this woman. But is that what you really want?”
As his Rolls-Royce crossed the Seine and traveled up the Avenue George V, Cesare’s grip on his phone slowly loosened. By the time he ended the call a few minutes later, as the car pulled in front of the expensive five-star hotel where he’d stayed through the business negotiations, Cesare’s expression had changed entirely.
The valet opened his door. “Welcome back, monsieur.”
Looking up, Cesare didn’t see the imposing architecture of the hotel as he got out. Instead he saw Emma’s troubled expression when they’d parted in the Champ de Mars.
She was expecting him to start a war over this. Christo santo, she knew him well. Now that he knew about Sam, she expected him to fight for custody, to destroy their peace and rip their comfortable life into shreds. And then after that, after he’d made a mess of their lives for the sake of his pride, she expected Cesare to grow bored and quickly abandon them both.
That was why she hadn’t told him about the baby. That was why she thought Sam was better off with no father at all. She truly believed Cesare was that selfish. That he’d put his own ego over the well-being of his child.
His lips pressed into a thin line. He might have done it, too, if Morty hadn’t made him think twice.
You have to decide who you’re willing to hurt, and how badly. ’Cause in a custody war, it’s never just the other parent who takes it in the neck. Nine times out of ten, it’s the kid who suffers most.
Before his own parents died, Cesare’d had a happy, almost bohemian childhood in a threadbare villa on Lake Como, filled with art and light and surrounded by beautiful gardens. His parents, both artists, had loved each other, and they’d adored their only child. The three of them had been inseparable. Until, when he was twelve, his mother had gotten sick, and her illness had poisoned their lives, drop by drop.
His father’s death had been quicker. After his wife’s funeral, he’d gone boating on the lake in the middle of the night, after he’d drunk three bottles of wine. Calling his death by drowning an accident, Cesare thought, had been generous of the coroner.
Now his hands tightened. If he didn’t go to war for custody, how else could he fulfill his obligation to his son? He couldn’t leave Sam to be raised by another man—especially not Alain Bouchard. Sam would grow up believing Cesare was a monster who’d callously abandoned him.
Cesare exhaled.
How could he bend Emma to his will? What was the fulcrum he could use to gain possession of his child? What was her weakness?
Then—he knew.
And if some part of him shivered at the thought, he stomped on it as an irrational fear. This was no time to be afraid. This time, he wouldn’t be selling his soul. There would be no delusional love involved. He would do this strictly for his child’s sake. In name only.
He had a sudden image of Emma in his bed, luscious and warm, naked in his arms....
No! He would keep her in his home, but at a distance. In name only, he repeated to himself. He would never open his heart to her again. Not even a tiny corner of it.
From this moment forward, his heart was only for his son.
Grabbing the car door as it started to pull away, he wrenched it open and flung himself back into the Rolls-Royce.
“Monsieur?”
“I changed my mind.”
“Of course, sir,” replied the driver, who was well accustomed in dealing with the inexplicable whims of the rich. “Where may I take you?”
Emma expected a battle. He would give her one. But not in the way she expected. He would take her completely off guard—and sweep her completely into his power, in a revenge far sweeter, and more explosive, than any mere rain of fire.
“Around the corner,” Cesare replied coldly. “To a little jewelry shop on the Avenue Montaigne.”
CHAPTER SIX
EMMA JUMPED WHEN her phone rang.
All afternoon, since she’d left Cesare in the park, she’d been pacing the halls of Alain’s seventeenth-century hôtel particulier in the seventh arrondissement. She’d been on edge, looking out the windows, past the courtyard gate onto the Avenue Rapp. Waiting for Cesare to strike. Waiting for a lawyer to call. Or the police. Or... She didn’t know what, but she’d been torturing herself trying to imagine.
When her cell phone finally rang, she saw his private number and braced herself.
“I won’t let you bully me,” she whispered aloud to the empty air. Then she answered the phone with, “What do you want?”
“I want to see you.” It shocked her how calm Cesare’s voice was. How pleasant. “I’d like to discuss our baby.”
“I’m busy.” Standing in the mansion’s lavish salon with its fifteen-foot-high ceilings, she looked from the broom she hadn’t touched in twenty minutes to Sam, lying nearby on a cushioned blanket on the floor, happily batting at soft toys dangling above him in a baby play gym. She set her jaw. “I’m working.”
“As mother of my heir, you don’t need to work, you know.” He sounded almost amused. “You won’t worry about money ever again.”
He was trying to lull her into letting down her guard, she thought.
“I don’t worry about money now,” she retorted. As a single mother, she’d been even more careful, tucking nearly all her paycheck into the bank against a rainy day. “I have a good salary, we live rent-free in Alain’s house and I have a nice nest egg thanks to you. I sold your watch to a collector, by the way. I couldn’t believe how much I got for it. What kind of idiot would spend so much on a— Oh. Sorry. But seriously. How could you spend so much on a watch?”
But Cesare didn’t sound insulted. “How much did you get for it?”
“A hundred thousand euros,” she said, still a little horrified. But also pleased.
He snorted. “The collector got a good deal.”
“That’s what Alain said. He was irritated I didn’t offer the watch to him first. He said he would have paid me three times that....” She stopped uneasily.
“Bouchard takes good care of you.”
Cesare’s good humor had fled. She gritted her teeth. What was the deal between those two? She wished they’d leave her out of it. “Of course Alain takes care of me. He’s an excellent employer.”
“You can’t raise Sam in his house, Emma. I won’t allow it.”
“You won’t allow it?” She exhaled with a flare of nostril. “Look, I told you that Sam’s your child because it was the right thing to do...”
“You mean because I gave you no choice.”
“...but you can’t give orders anymore. In case you haven’t noticed, you’re no longer my boss.”
His voice took on an edge. “I’m Sam’s father.”
“Oh, you’re suddenly sure about that now, are you?”
“Emma—”
“I can’t believe you asked me for a paternity test! When you know perfectly well you’re the only man I’ve ever slept with in my whole life!”
“Even now?”
His voice was a little tense. Cesare was worried she’d slept with other men over the past year? She was astonished. “You think I was madly dating while I was pregnant as a whale? Or maybe—” she gave a low laugh “—right after Sam was born, I rushed to invite men to my bed, hoping they’d ignore the dark hollows under my eyes and baby spit-up on my shoulder.” She snorted. “I’m touched, really, that you think I’m so irresistible. But if I have a spare evening I collapse into bed. For sleeping, not orgies, in case that was your next question.”
For a moment, there was silence. When next he spoke, his tone was definitely warmer. “Leave Sam at home with a babysitter. Come out with me tonight.”
“Why?” She scowled. “What do you have planned—the guillotine? Pistols at dawn? Or let me guess. Some lawyer is going to serve me a subpoena?”
“I just want to talk.”
“Talk,” she said doubtfully.
“Perhaps I was a little rough with you in the park....”
“You think?”
He gave a low laugh. “I don’t blame you for believing the worst of me. But I’m sure you’ll forgive my bad manners, when you think of what a shock it was for me to learn I have a son, and that you’d hidden that fact from me for quite some time.”
He sounded reasonable. Damn him.
“What’s your angle?” she asked suspiciously.
“I just want us to share dinner,” he said, “and discuss our child’s future. Surely there is nothing so strange in that.”
Uh-oh. When Cesare sounded innocent, she knew he was up to something. “I’m not giving up custody. So if that’s what you want to discuss, we should let our lawyers handle it.” She tried to sound confident, like she even had a lawyer.
“Oh, lawyers.” He gave a mournful sigh. “They make things so messy. Let’s just meet, you and me. Like civilized people.”
She gripped the phone tighter, pacing across the gleaming hardwood floors. “If you’re thinking of luring me out of the house so your bodyguards can try to kidnap Sam, Alain’s house is like a fortress....”
“If you’re going to jump to the worst possible conclusion of everything I say, this conversation is going to take a long time. And I wouldn’t mind a glass of wine,” he said pointedly.
She watched her baby gurgle with triumph when he caught the end of his sock. Falconeri men were such determined creatures. “You’re not going to try to pull anything?”
“Like what?” When she didn’t answer, he gave an exaggerated sigh. “I’ll even take you someplace crowded, with plenty of strangers to chaperone us. How about the restaurant at the top of the Eiffel Tower?”
She pictured the long circling queues of tourists. Surely even Cesare couldn’t be up to much, amid such a crowd. “Well...”
“You left London without a word. You kept your pregnancy secret and went to work for Bouchard behind my back. I don’t think a single dinner to work out Sam’s custody is too much to ask.”
Emma was about to agree when her whole body went on alert at the word custody. “What do you mean, custody?”
“I’m willing to accept your pregnancy was an accident. You didn’t intentionally lie. You’re not a gold digger.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“But now I know I have a son, I can’t just walk away. We’re going to have to come to an arrangement.”
“What arrangement?”
“If you want to know, you’ll have to join me tonight.”
“Or else—what?”
“Or else,” Cesare said quietly. “Let’s just leave it at that.”
“You don’t want to be a father,” she said desperately. “You couldn’t be a decent one, even if you tried—not that you would try for long!”
For a moment, the phone fell silent.
“You think you know me,” he said in a low voice.
“Am I wrong?”
“I’ll pick you up at nine.” There was a dangerous sensuality in his voice that caused a shiver down Emma’s body. She suddenly remembered that Cesare had ways of making her agree to almost anything.
“Make it seven,” she said nervously. “I don’t want to be out too late.”
“Have a curfew, do you?” he drawled. “He keeps tight hold on you.”
“Alain doesn’t have anything to do with—”
“And Emma? Wear something nice.”
The line went dead.
* * *
The sun was setting over Paris, washing soft pink and orange light over the white classical facades of the buildings as Emma stood alone on the sidewalk of the Avenue Rapp. It was three minutes before seven. She’d dressed carefully, as requested, in a pink knit dress and a black coat.
She’d considered showing up in a T-shirt and jeans, just to spite him. Instead she spent more time this afternoon primping than she’d spent in a year. For reasons she didn’t like to think about. For feelings she was trying to convince herself she didn’t feel.
Emma had stopped wearing the severe chignon when she’d come to Paris. Now her black hair had been brushed until it shone, and fell tumbling down her shoulders. Her lipstick was the same raspberry shade as her dress. She was even wearing mascara to make her green eyes pop. She hoped.
No. She ground her teeth. She didn’t hope. She absolutely didn’t care what Cesare thought she looked like. She didn’t.
It was only for Sam’s sake she was meeting Cesare tonight. Where her own romantic dreams were concerned, she’d given up on him that cold, heartbreaking morning in London when he’d informed her he would never ever: 1. love her, 2. marry her or 3. have a child with her. He’d said it outright. What could you do with a man like that?
What indeed...
Emma shivered in her thin black wool coat, tucking her pink scarf more firmly around her neck. Pulling her phone out of her pocket, she glanced at the time: six fifty-eight.
She sighed, wondering why she’d bothered to be on time. Cesare would likely be half an hour late, as usual, and in the meantime she was standing out here looking like a fool as taxi drivers gawked at her standing on the sidewalk. She would have gone back to wait inside, except the bad blood between Alain and Cesare made her reluctant to allow the two men to meet.
She’d already tucked her baby son into bed, leaving him with Irene Taylor, the extremely capable young woman who until recently had been an au pair for the Bulgarian ambassador. Irene was bright, idealistic and very young. Emma had never been that young.
Her eye was caught by a flash of light. Looking up over the buildings, she could see the tip of the Eiffel Tower suddenly illuminated with brilliant sparkling lights. That meant it was seven o’clock. Her lips turned down. And just as she’d thought, Cesare was late. He’d never change....