by Annie West
Yet Alessandro seemed totally uninterested. Had she got it wrong? Hope rose shakily in her breast.
But if he wasn’t here for her little boy, what did he want from her?
Alessandro tamped down the fury he’d felt ever since receiving this morning’s report. Fury that Carys should live in such a neighbourhood. That she’d hooked up with a man who obviously refused to take care of her and her child.
That he, Alessandro, had let her get under his skin enough to be concerned for her!
He cursed himself for a fool. She’d walked out on him, moved on from whatever relationship they’d had. He should do the same. Dignity and pride demanded it.
He would, he vowed, once he knew all he needed to about those blank months.
Yet that sense of intimate connection still hammered at him. It was stronger even than the cool logic around which he built his life.
Despite her antipathy and her child by another man, Alessandro couldn’t banish the possessiveness that swamped him when he was with her. It consumed him.
Never had he experienced such feelings.
His fists tightened as his temples throbbed. Flickers of images taunted him. Whether remnants of last night’s erotic dreams or snippets of memory, he didn’t know.
He wanted to hate her for the unaccustomed weakness she wrought in him. Yet the bruised violet smudges under her eyes snagged his attention. It had taken more than one sleepless night to put them there.
His belly clenched as he took in her pallor and the way her worn coat dwarfed her. Last night he’d seen she was tired, but he’d been too overwhelmed by his own cataclysmic response to register what looked now like utter exhaustion.
He’d been impatient to solve the riddle that had haunted him so long. Too busy losing himself in her lush curves and feminine promise to admit the extent of her vulnerability.
That vulnerability clawed at his conscience. He should never have unleashed the beast of sexual hunger that roared into life when she was near.
‘Where’s this boyfriend of yours? Why doesn’t he help you?’ He snapped the words out, surprising himself. It wasn’t his way to blurt his thoughts.
Wary eyes met his. They darkened like storm clouds and instinctively he knew she concealed something.
Carys blinked and looked away. ‘I’m fine by myself. I don’t need anyone to—’
‘Of course you do. You shouldn’t be living in this area. Not with a baby.’ He spared the run-down neighbourhood the briefest of glances. It was seedy, an area of urban decline. ‘He should help you.’
Her mouth remained mutinously closed.
Alessandro knew a wholly uncharacteristic desire for hot-blooded argument. He, who never let anything ruffle his equanimity! Who was a master at sublimating useless emotions and pursuing his goals with single-minded purpose.
How this woman unsettled him. The last twenty-four hours had been a roller coaster of unfamiliar feelings that made a mockery of his habitual control.
He resented that more than anything.
‘Who is he, Carys? Why do you protect him?’
Because she loved him? Alessandro’s mouth flattened. This should be none of his business, yet he couldn’t let go.
‘I’m not protecting anyone!’ she muttered. ‘There’s no one. What I told you—’
‘You said you’d argued. That’s no excuse for him walking out on his child and its mother.’
Alessandro’s nostrils filled with pungent distaste. His reaction to the idea of any man getting Carys pregnant was bone-deep rage. His belly cramped as he strove to master his feelings.
Who was this woman that she made him react so?
She stared silently, an arrested expression on her face.
‘Is he someone you work with?’ The words shot out through gritted teeth.
She shook her head. ‘Don’t be absurd.’
There was nothing absurd about it. Working side by side led too easily to intimacy. He’d had to move his PA elsewhere after she’d mistaken their working relationship for something else. He’d lost count of the female employees and business associates who’d thought work the perfect way into his bed.
Silently he cursed himself for needing to know.
‘He’s married? Is that it?’
Carys stared into his glowering face and struggled against a sense of unreality. He looked genuinely perplexed. Deep grooves bracketed a mouth that morphed from sensual perfection into a wrathful line.
She shook her head as if to clear it. She mustn’t have heard right.
‘There is no man in my life.’ She hesitated, knowing a craven urge to avoid the truth. ‘I made that up so you’d leave me alone.’
Alessandro’s brow furrowed, his eyebrows disapproving black slashes that tilted down in the centre. And still he looked better than any man she knew.
‘Don’t deny it. Of course there’s a man.’
‘Are you calling me a liar?’ His refusal to accept her word reopened a wound that had never healed. He hadn’t believed her before. Why should things be different now? Her word wasn’t good enough.
Pain mixed with Carys’ fury. Her distress was all the more potent for having been suppressed so long.
‘Spare me the show of innocence,’ he sneered. ‘You didn’t get pregnant all by yourself. Or are you trying to tell me it was an immaculate conception?’
‘You bastard!’ Her arm shot out faster than thought. An instant later her hand snapped across his cheek as her fury finally boiled over.
Her palm tingled. Her whole arm trembled with the force of the slap. Her breath came in hard, shallow pants. She barely noticed the dangerous glint in his narrowing eyes or the way he loomed closer.
Then, out of the blue, the implication of his words sank in. Relief swamped her, making her shake as she sagged back in her seat.
He wasn’t here to take Leo away.
Hysterical laughter swelled inside at her stupidity. Alessandro didn’t want to take her boy. Of course he didn’t! He’d made his disinterest and disapproval clear from the start. He’d left her in no doubt both she and her baby weren’t good enough for him and his rarefied circle of moneyed friends.
Why had she thought he’d changed? Because part of her still foolishly ached to believe he was the fantasy man she’d fallen in love with?
Pain welled.
It felt as if Alessandro had taken her last precious fragment of hope and callously ground it underfoot, shattering a fragile part of her.
‘You really are some piece of work, Alessandro Mattani.’ Her voice was hoarse with distress, her throat raw with pain as if she’d swallowed broken glass. ‘I should have known you hadn’t changed.’
‘Me, change?’ Astonishment coloured his voice, at odds with his look of rigid control.
‘Yes, you. You coward.’ Carys pressed a palm to her stomach, trying to prevent the churn of nausea. ‘Even after all this time you refuse to acknowledge your own son.’
CHAPTER FIVE
THE woman was mad.
Or conniving.
Alessandro met her glittering eyes, dark now as a thunder storm, and saw lightning flash.
Did she even notice that he’d grabbed her wrist and yanked it from his face? That he still held it in an implacable grip?
She didn’t seem to notice anything except her own fury.
His cheek burned from her slap and pride demanded instant retribution. No one, man or woman, insulted Alessandro Mattani.
Yet he held himself in check. He would not resort to violence against a woman.
More importantly, he needed to know what she was up to, this mad woman with the wild accusations and glorious eyes.
‘Don’t be absurd. I don’t have a child.’ That was one thing he’d never forget, no matter how severe his injuries.
Besides, he’d always taken care not to lay himself open to paternity claims. He enjoyed short-term liaisons, but that didn’t mean he took risks with his health or his family honour.
‘Spare
me the act, Alessandro,’ she hissed. ‘Others might be impressed, but I’m not. I gave up being impressed the day I left you.’
He frowned as he felt tremors rack her body and her pulse catapult into overdrive.
‘You’re angry because our relationship ended?’
Women never liked knowing they held a temporary place in his life. Too often they set their sights on becoming the Contessa Mattani. But he had no illusions about matrimony. For him it would be a duty, to carry on the family name. A duty he was happy to postpone.
Her mouth opened in a short, humourless laugh. ‘I wouldn’t have stayed if you’d paid me,’ she spat out. ‘Not once I knew what you were really like.’
Such vehemence, such hatred, was new to Alessandro. The shock of it ran through him like a jolt of electricity. It felt as if he held a jumping live wire in his hand, liable to twist unpredictably at any moment and burn him to cinders.
She was unlike anything or anyone in his well-ordered life.
She fascinated him.
‘What’s this about a child?’ That sort of claim was one he would never take lightly.
Her mouth twisted in a grimace. ‘Forget it,’ she muttered, turning her head away. Her dismissive tone would anger a less controlled man.
Carys tried to tug her hand free, but he held her easily. He had no intention of letting her take another swipe at him. Swiftly he captured her other hand, holding both effortlessly till she gave up trying to escape and subsided, chest heaving, against the back of the seat.
‘I can hardly forget it.’ He pulled her hands, making her turn. Studiously he ignored the way her rapid breathing emphasised the swell of her breasts. ‘Tell me.’
Thick dark lashes rose to reveal silvery-blue eyes that flashed with repressed emotion. Her pulse pounded beneath his fingers and she swiped the tip of her tongue over her lips as if to moisten them.
Instantly desire flared in his belly.
Just like that.
The immediacy of his response would have stunned him if he hadn’t experienced it last night. Whatever the secret of her feminine allure, he responded to it with every particle of testosterone in his body.
He watched her hesitate and kept his expression unreadable. All the while he was aware of the way her moist pink lips unconsciously invited him to plunder her mouth. His fingers tightened on her hands, as if ready to tug her close.
‘There’s nothing to tell.’ Her look was pure belligerence. ‘You have a child. But you already know that.’ She paused; for the first time the heat in her expression disappeared and her eyes turned glacial, stabbing him with invisible icy shards. ‘Why make me repeat what you know?’
‘I want the truth. Is that too much to ask?’ Finally anger exploded behind Alessandro’s façade of calm. A roaring flame of wrath at this woman who turned his life inside out. He strove to resist shaking the truth out of her.
He couldn’t remember ever being so irate.
But then no woman had ever dared make such accusations. Plus the frustration of not knowing his own past would drive any man wild. Alessandro abhorred that sneaking sense of powerlessness, not remembering.
Her chin lifted. ‘Is it too much to ask that you stop crushing my hands?’
Instantly he released her, flexing fingers rigid with tension. He hadn’t intended to hurt her. Another disturbing sign that his control was close to shattering.
‘Thank you.’ She paused, her gaze skating sideways. ‘I promise not to slap you again. That was…unintentional.’ She turned. ‘We’re here.’ She spoke quickly, relief evident in every syllable.
Already Bruno was opening the door to the pavement. The driver stood at Alessandro’s door, waiting for him to alight.
‘We’ll finish this discussion inside.’
‘I’m not sure I want you in my home,’ she countered.
‘You think I want to be there?’ Being with Carys opened a Pandora’s Box of conflicting feelings he could do without.
But he needed to fill the gaps and banish once and for all the nagging sense of something missing in his life. Besides, he had to end this nonsense about fathering a child. He would not countenance such allegations.
Alessandro unfolded his legs from the car and stood up. He felt stiff, as if his muscles had cramped during the drive. He pushed his shoulders back and looked around the street. Graffiti marred the building opposite and a couple of ground-floor windows were boarded up further down the block.
Carys scurried ahead into an ugly square building, not looking back. Her shoulders were hunched and her head bent.
But she couldn’t avoid him. He stepped forward.
‘Signor Conte.’ Bruno waited on the pavement for him.
‘Yes?’ Alessandro paused, his eyes on Carys.
‘On the way here I received answers to the enquiries I made this morning. I didn’t like to interrupt your discussion with la signorina.’
Bruno’s careful tone snared Alessandro’s attention, dragging it from his furious thoughts. He turned to meet his security chief’s blank stare, sensing he wouldn’t like this.
‘And?’
‘There’s no record of a marriage. Signorina Wells is single.’
So, she hadn’t bothered to marry the baby’s father.
Alessandro shoved his hands deep into his pockets, refusing to examine the emotions stirring at that news.
‘There’s more?’
Bruno nodded. ‘The birth was just over a year ago here in Melbourne.’ There wasn’t a hint of expression in his voice and a tickle of premonition feathered Alessandro’s spine.
‘What other details did you get?’
‘The mother is given as Carys Antoinette Wells, receptionist, of this address.’ Bruno gestured to the tired red-brick block of flats.
Alessandro waited, instinct making his skin crawl. ‘And the rest?’
Bruno’s eyes flickered away. He drew himself up straighter. ‘The father is listed as Alessandro Leonardo Daniele Mattani of Como, Italy.’
Despite the fact that by now he’d half expected it, each word slammed into Alessandro’s gut with the force of a sledgehammer.
His name. His identity.
His honour.
Damn her for using him in this way! She’d taken his name and dragged it in the mud with her petty manipulations.
What did she hope to achieve? Money? Position? A hint of respectability even though her child was born out of wedlock?
But why hadn’t she come forward if she’d wanted to try screwing cash from him? Was she waiting for the most auspicious time to approach him?
As if there would ever be a good time for such a plan!
He felt his lips stretch in a grimace of distaste that bared his teeth. His nostrils flared and the blood pounded loud and fast in his ears.
‘Wait here,’ he barked. Without waiting for a response, he strode up the cement pavement to the eyesore of a building. A red mist hazed his vision. The need for justice, for retribution, spurred him on.
This was about far more now than curiosity. More even than the stirring of a libido that had been dormant since he’d woken in hospital twenty-two months ago.
Carys Wells had gone too far. She’d sullied his honour.
For that she would pay.
Carys had only just collected Leo from next door and put him down, still sleeping.
The rap on her door came too soon. She looked at Leo’s peaceful form and felt a tug of intense protectiveness. There’d been no time to decide how to deal with Alessandro.
Who was she kidding? She’d always been putty in his hands. Even now when she almost hated him, she had no illusions about that.
She’d never be rid of him until they had this out.
Reluctantly she walked through the miniscule flat, wiping her damp hands on her skirt. Her legs shook as another tattoo of raps sounded.
The glorious surge of anger had seeped away, leaving her prey to nerves and bone-melting exhaustion.
Fumbling, she unlat
ched the door and swung it wide.
Alessandro stood there, vibrating with a dangerous energy that wrapped right round her, squeezing her lungs. His eyes sizzled with a fury she’d seen only once before. The day he’d told her, with arctic composure, she’d outstayed her welcome.
Yet even now his potent charisma tugged at her. She bit down hard on her lip, desperate for the strength to face him.
Wordlessly he strode past her into the small sitting room-cum-kitchen. For such a big man he still managed to avoid brushing against her which, given the size of the entry, was a feat in itself.
Her lips turned up in a grimace as she pushed the door shut. He couldn’t bear to touch her now she’d called him on his behaviour. How different from last night when his hands had been all over her, marking her with his own special brand of sensual possession.
Hot shame suffused her.
‘You used my name for your bastard child.’
She spun round to find him towering over her, the image of disdain. But his anger was no match for hers.
‘Don’t ever talk about him like that!’ She ignored the blast of his disapproval and jabbed an accusing finger.
‘What? You’re telling me you married after all?’
‘No! Why would I go looking for a husband after my child’s father had already rejected us?’
Alessandro leaned forward, using his superior height to intimidate her. ‘For the same reason you perjured yourself, listing me as the father on the birth certificate. To try to claim some measure of respectability. Or financial support.’
The irony of his accusation hit her full force. If she’d expected support of any kind from Alessandro she’d been grossly mistaken.
She might have harboured a fatal weakness for this overbearing, arrogant, gorgeous man, but, where her son was concerned, she refused to be bullied. She stuck her hands on her hips and stared back, glare for glare.
‘It was for Leo. He has a right to know who his father is.’
‘Have you no shame?’ Alessandro’s dark green eyes sliced right through her self-possession.
‘Only about the fact that I was once foolish enough to…’ She stopped herself in time. She would not lay herself open to derision by admitting the feelings she’d once held for him. ‘To believe in you.’