D'Alessandro's Child
Page 14
He was out of line and he knew it. From the way she stiffened in outrage, she knew it, too, and probably would have decked him if the ding-dong tone of the security alarm hadn’t warned her that someone had entered the house through one of the perimeter doors.
Flinging him a last poisonous glare, she crossed the pool deck and started up the steps leading to the house. By the time she reached the top with him close behind, the Japanese nanny and Jeremy had appeared on the terrace. He looked flushed and miserable, and the nanny looked worried.
“So sorry not to wait for your call before we came back,” she said, giving a little bow, “but Jeremy’s cold grew much worse overnight and this morning he complained of an earache, so I thought it best to bring him home.”
Stooping, Camille held out her arms. The little guy stumbled to her and buried his face against her skirt. She brushed a soothing hand down the side of his cheek and under his jaw. “You did the right thing, Nori,” she said, nodding reassuringly at the nanny. “He’s burning up with fever. Run a cool bath so we can sponge him down, will you, while I place a call to Doctor Hythe?”
The nanny scuttled away.
“Probably an ear infection,” Michael said, trying to be helpful.
Camille looked at him as if he were something that had crawled out of the woodwork. “And how would you know?”
“I might not know much about being a father, but I’m a pretty experienced uncle and I’ve seen this happen before when a kid his age gets a cold that starts acting up. If I’m right, the sooner he’s on antibiotics, the sooner he’ll start to feel better.”
“You think I don’t already know that?”
“I’m beginning to wonder. Why else would you be wasting time arguing the point? Here, let me take him while you make that phone call.”
“Absolutely not!” Small, perfect breasts heaving, she pulled Jeremy into the shelter of her arm and held him glued to her side as if she feared he might physically tear the boy away from her. “Nori!” she cried, so much terror in her voice that Mike winced.
Cripes, what kind of ogre did she think he was?
The nanny reappeared on silent feet, a huge bath towel draped over one arm. Edging toward the door, Camille gave the child a gentle push. “Go with Nori, darling. Mommy’ll be with you in a minute—as soon as she sees Mr. D’Alessandro off the premises.”
“Forget it, Camille. I’m not going anywhere,” Michael said, as the nanny trotted off with her charge.
“You’re not getting your hands on my son, either,” Camille informed him. “And just in case you’re thinking of resorting to brute force, Nori holds a black belt in karate and don’t think for a moment that she’ll hesitate to use it if you try to interfere. You’ll be flat on your back before you know what hit you.”
It was the last and most ridiculous in a tired list of threats. “Will you for Pete’s sake stop over-dramatizing and get your priorities straight!” he roared. “I’ve had it up to here with your nonsense, you hear? Like it or not, that’s my boy we’re talking about and I’m not about to be shoved aside like an old shoe when he obviously needs medical attention.”
“I’m his mother—”
“And making a hopeless mess of the job right now, if you ask me!”
She drew herself up to her full five-feet-five or whatever, aristocratic nostrils flaring. “You really are an insulting boor, aren’t you?”
“Honey, you have no idea the depths to which I can sink if I’m pushed far enough. But keep this up, and you’ll find out soon enough.”
Her gaze flickered, and she gnawed on her lip a moment. “Much though it galls me to admit it, you’re right,” she finally admitted. “Jeremy comes first. If you want to help, you can drive us to the clinic. We’ll take my car. You’ll find the keys on a hook in the rear hall, next to the door leading to the garage. I’ll meet you at the front entrance in ten minutes.”
She didn’t wait to hear his answer. She just left him to find his way through the house to the area in question. She might suffer all kinds of uncertainties in other areas of her life, but put her in mother mode and she dished out orders as if she owned the world.
They were headed home within the hour, complete with prescribed medications for the ear infection he’d predicted, and for all that she tried to hang on to her resentment, Camille couldn’t help being grateful that Michael was with her. For so long, she’d had only herself to rely on in a crisis. Having a man take charge, even of something as simple as driving and parking the car so that she was free to devote herself to Jeremy’s needs, made such a difference to the load she’d carried for the past three years.
Covertly, she glanced at him, searching for some physical likeness to Jeremy, but she could find nothing in the stern profile of the man behind the wheel which in the least resembled the sweet childish features of her son.
For that matter, there was nothing of the charming lover she’d briefly known, either. A new and disconcerting side of Michael had emerged, along with the truth of his identity. Underneath that sexy, easygoing exterior lurked the toughness of a street fighter. It would not be wise to alienate him, and wiser still not to let him see how afraid he made her.
Wetting her lips nervously, she said, “Thank you for caring enough to help us out when you already have so much else on your mind.”
“I thought I’d made it clear that nothing takes precedence over my son’s well-being.”
She almost cried out, Don’t you dare call him that! But the shocking reality was, he and Jeremy were genetically linked and no amount of wishing it were otherwise was going to sever the connection. So rather than start another all-out war, she buried her objection in a cough and took a more diplomatic tack. “It might be best,” she said, casting a cautious glance over her shoulder to make sure Jeremy couldn’t overhear, “if you didn’t say that in front of Jeremy.”
“He’s asleep,” Michael informed her curtly. “Has been for the last ten minutes. He can’t hear a thing.”
“Still, if he should get any inkling of…who you are, it would confuse him terribly. He’s already asked why he doesn’t have a daddy.”
“Well, now you can tell him that he does.”
“No, Michael!” Dismayed, she clutched at his arm.
He shrugged her off as if she were as inconsequential as a gnat. “Then I will.”
Terror rose up again, and try though she might, she couldn’t contain it. “Please don’t! He’s too little to understand why.”
“You mean to say you haven’t taught him all about the birds and the bees yet?” A bitter smile touched his mouth. “Shame on you!”
“This isn’t a joke.”
The glance he flung at her was so weary and disillusioned, she could have wept. “Hell, Camille, right now I’ll take my laughs any place I can find them.”
“What I meant was, if you tell him you’re his father, he’ll want to know why you don’t live with us. He’s just a little boy, Michael. Don’t expect him to believe you care about him unless you plan to be around to prove it.”
He blinked and looked away. A sigh shook him. “I’ve got to tell you, I don’t know how I’m going to leave him, Camille. I wish there was a way—”
Had the seed Fran planted taken root without her knowing it, or was it the wretched misery which crossed Michael’s face that made her blurt out rashly, “Maybe there is. We could get married—purely for Jeremy’s sake, of course. It might not be the ideal arrangement for you and me, but it’s what’s best for him that matters.”
The silence with which he greeted the suggestion was so lengthy and painful that she wished she could curl up into a ball and disappear. When she could bear the suspense of waiting for his reply not a second longer, she closed her eyes in an anguish of humiliation and mumbled, “On second thought, it’s a stupid idea. It would never work.”
Just as swiftly as her heart had sunk, it soared again when he said thoughtfully, “Hold your horses. I haven’t turned you down yet.”
She could! She could do whatever it took to keep Jeremy with her and make him happy, including turning a blind eye to the fact that Michael probably wouldn’t have looked at her twice if it weren’t that she had something he desperately wanted.
So what if he wasn’t in love with her? He was decent and kind and dependable. He didn’t buckle in the face of adversity. He’d never put his own interests ahead of Jeremy’s. And she’d lived with a weakling long enough to know that they were the qualities that really mattered, not how often he showered her with compliments or toasted her with champagne.
But to her disappointment, when he spoke again it had nothing to do with marriage or Jeremy. “Strange,” he said, slowing down to make the turn into her driveway. “I could have sworn I closed the gates when we left.”
“You did,” she said. “I distinctly remember it.”
“But they’re open now. Guess you must have company.”
He was right. As they rounded the last curve in the drive, a gray Mercedes-Benz, one she recognized with sinking dismay, loomed into view at the far end of the guest parking area next to the house.
The minute Michael brought the car to a stop, she leapt out and without waiting for him to lift Jeremy from the back seat, raced up the steps to the front door just as Nori, who must have heard their arrival, pulled it open. “They phoned,” she said, anticipating the question before Camille could ask, “and although I tried to put them off, when they heard you’d taken Jeremy to the doctor, they insisted on coming over.”
They would! Taking orders from a nanny, even one as impeccably polite and respectful as Nori, wasn’t in their nature.
“It can’t be helped. As long as they don’t know Michael was with me—”
Nori looked distressed. “They already do. They saw his car on the side of the road and recognized it.”
So the troops were in place, waiting to mount another offensive. And Michael, with a sleepy Jeremy in his arms, was climbing the steps and about to walk into the line of fire.
“Where are they now?”
“Having coffee on the terrace.”
Desperate to avoid what would undoubtedly be a disastrous confrontation, Camille said, “Okay, here’s what we’ll do. You get Michael to take Jeremy upstairs to bed and ask him to stay with him until I come up, and I’ll get rid of my parents.”
It wasn’t an ideal solution, but it was the best she could come up with at such short notice because she knew without bothering to ask that Michael wouldn’t just deposit Jeremy on the doorstep, then leave. Nor did she want him to, not with the question of marriage still hanging in the balance.
“We heard,” her mother started in, the second Camille stepped out to the terrace. “And it goes without saying that we are horrified.”
“Don’t be,” Camille said, deliberately misunderstanding. “It’s just a mild ear infection—nothing serious. He’ll be back to his usual self in no time at all.”
“We aren’t talking about Jeremy,” her father said. “Camille, we hoped that when you discovered the extent of that man’s mischief, you’d have the good sense to send him packing.”
“That man happens to be Jeremy’s father, Dad. Even if I wanted to, I doubt I could keep him away from his son.”
From the thunderstruck expressions on both their faces, it was obvious that their private investigator hadn’t done quite as thorough a job as her parents thought.
“That’s preposterous!” her father exclaimed.
“Nevertheless, it’s the truth.”
“He’s no such thing and if he told you he is, it’s just to cover up the fact that he’s had another woman on the side all the time he’s been inveigling himself into your life. The man is an outright liar.”
“And a money-grubbing opportunist,” her mother put in.
Her father waved that observation aside as if it went without saying that of course money was at the root of the whole problem. “What I don’t understand, Camille, is why a woman of your intelligence would swallow such an implausible story.”
“Because I found irrefutable proof that it’s true, that’s why. The woman he was visiting in St. Mary’s was Rita Osborne and if the name doesn’t ring a bell, it should. She was Jeremy’s birth mother.”
“So? What’s that got to do with anything?”
“Michael was her ex-husband.”
Her father turned faintly purple and swung his head like a wild animal sniffing out a hidden enemy. “Are you telling us he’s the lout who left her on the street with nothing but the clothes on her back?”
“No, because that never happened. It was just one of many in Rita’s web of lies. I’m telling you he was denied the knowledge that he’d fathered Jeremy and only recently discovered the truth. Unless we can come to some sort of amicable agreement, I’m terrified he’ll try to have Jeremy’s adoption rendered invalid.” She paused to let that information sink in before delivering what she knew they’d find the most shocking news of all. “Which is why I’ve asked him to marry me. I can think of no other way to protect my son from an ugly and damaging custody battle.”
“Dear heaven!” her mother squeaked, falling into the nearest chair. “Camille, you’ve lost your mind. You need professional help!”
“Because I’m prepared to do whatever it takes to prevent my son’s life from being turned upside down? I don’t think so, Mother.”
“Have you no understanding of the ramifications involved if you go ahead with this harebrained scheme?” her father bellowed. “At present, Michael D’Alessandro owns nothing but a two-bit construction operation somewhere in Canada. But throw in your lot with him, and your assets become his assets. He marries you, he takes you away from us—to a foreign country where the law will favor him. And once he’s established parental rights to Jeremy, he can divorce you and you’ll be the one left with nothing worth having.”
“Not necessarily. We could draw up a prenuptial agreement.” She flung out her hands. “It’s not ideal, I agree, but it’s something I can live with, and it’s a lot better than spending the rest of my life looking over my shoulder and afraid to let Jeremy out of my sight.”
“So he gets a rich wife, and a son he doesn’t deserve—”
“And I get peace of mind. You can’t put a price tag on that, Dad.”
“You’ll be selling yourself into bondage,” her mother said, “and I think you’ll find that to be quite a hefty price tag in the long run.”
“I’m prepared to make whatever sacrifice is necessary to keep my son, including selling my soul to the devil if I have to.”
“You don’t have to go to that extreme,” her father insisted. “I’ll hire the best lawyers in the city to make sure you don’t lose him. And if that vagabond tries to take my grandson out of the state, I’ll have him arrested for kidnapping and thrown in jail.”
“Your father’s right, Camille,” her mother said. “Forget this crazy idea. Michael D’Alessandro will never make you happy.” She shuddered fastidiously. “He’s too commonplace. Too…earthy.”
“Better listen to Mommy, Camille,” Michael said from the doorway behind her. “I’m all of that and more. It’d be a real step down for a princess like you to wind up married to a peasant like me. You’d be sacrificing everything your little heart’s been trained to hold dear.”
CHAPTER TEN
THE fact that he’d snuck up on them unobserved did nothing to increase his stock with Glenda Younge. Lurching out of her chair as if she’d found a viper in her drawers, she squawked, “And how long have you been listening in?”
“Long enough,” he said, dismissing her and addressing his next remark to Camille. “Not that I’d dream of deflecting you from more important issues, but just in case you’re interested, Jeremy’s medication is taking effect already. His temperature’s down and he’s fallen asleep again.”
; She had the grace to look somewhat sheepish. “Of course I’m interested. Thank you for keeping an eye on him for me.”
“You left him alone with Jeremy?” the dragon lady cried. “My heavens, Camille, you’ve just finished telling us you’re afraid the man might kidnap the child! What were you thinking?”
“I never said that, Mother. What I said was—”
“That you’re prepared to do whatever it takes to protect your place in his life, including marrying me if you have to.” Mike grimaced. “I’m overwhelmed! The lengths to which you’ll go and the sacrifices you’re prepared to make, all in the name of maternal dedication, are admirable, Camille.”
“Well, there’s no use pretending it would be a love match, is there?” she said, turning pink. “We’ve both been down that road before and ended precisely nowhere, so we might as well call a spade a spade and admit it would be purely a marriage of convenience.”
“You’re missing the point, my dear. In common with every other contract, a marriage of convenience requires one essential component to make it work. How many divorces is it going to take, Camille, before you figure out that trust between the parties involved is the glue that holds a partnership together?”
“If I didn’t trust you, do you really think I’d have suggested we share responsibility for Jeremy?”
“Sure I do. Your history speaks for itself. You used Todd to get Jeremy and now you’re willing to use me to keep him. And just in case there’s a loophole you’ve overlooked, you’ll get me to sign a prenup agreement to protect all your other interests. Talk about covering your ass!”