by Kim Lawrence
Was it possible he had jumped to the right conclusion after all? Had she given herself to this youth with as much passion as she had him? Had Ashley watched the concentration on her face as she fought to reach her climax? Had he felt...? Damping the sweat he could feel beading on his upper lip with a slightly shaking hand, he clamped down on the feverish speculation that would only feed the ever-present ache of wanting something he couldn’t have, something that, even after everything that had happened between them, he still had zero control over.
Zero control was a hard thing to admit for a man who prided himself on his, be it on the rock face, delivering a daily word count or picking apart an argument that had stupidity written all over it without losing his temper.
But what she made him feel was beyond his powers of self-deception. Far better to own a weakness than run away from it or get too hung up over it.
No point overcomplicating the situation. He was feeling something he didn’t want to feel; wanting her and not being able to have her was a kind of torture, but, he told himself grimly, he could live with it, treat it like any other chemical imbalance in his brain.
‘Interesting reaction,’ he drawled. ‘Have I touched a nerve?’
His sarcasm freed her from the embarrassment. ‘Ashley lives in the flat over the stables. He is only a boy.’ The moment Marisa said it she wanted to take it back, furious with herself for bothering to explain. Roman could think what he liked.
‘I was a boy once too and a few years’ age gap never seemed like an obstacle to me.’
‘I just bet it didn’t!’ she snapped back. ‘But before you start getting nostalgic about all the notches on your bedpost—’ she diverted her gaze to the game of football ‘—for the record and because you clearly judge others by your very low standards, I am not sleeping with Ashley.’ She shrugged and added, ‘Yet.’
‘Is that meant to make me jealous?’
‘I thought you already were.’
When he didn’t reply, she turned and lifted her gaze to Roman’s face, catching the tail end of a puzzling expression that vanished so quickly she decided she had imagined it. ‘Shall I call Jamie over?’
‘That’s what I’m here for.’
Marisa waved and called out, and with obvious reluctance Jamie came trotting over, his tall nanny following behind, the football in his hands.
‘Jamie, this is someone I want you to meet. His name is Mr—’
‘Roman.’
‘This is Roman and he has come to have tea with us.’
‘Tea...’ The lower lip came out. ‘I don’t want tea. I wanna play football with Ash and afterwards—’
‘Enough football for one day, mate. It’s my afternoon off,’ the nanny interjected.
Hands clenched at his sides, the little boy aimed a kick at the football that Ashley had placed on the ground. It went sailing away before he swung back to the trio of adults, looking mutinous, though most of his ire seemed aimed at Roman. ‘But that’s not fair...’
‘Not fair is expecting someone else to pick up your toys...’ Ashley nodded towards the ball that had sailed into a bed of flowers. ‘Go get it, and I’ll see you on Monday.’
Roman watched, the empty space in his chest aching, as the child gave a deep sigh and trotted off across the expanse of green grass.
‘He has quite a kick.’
Roman turned towards the nanny. Somehow the word did not fit a six-foot-three man with a tattoo on his neck, even one as innocuous as a rose with fallen petals.
He said nothing, seeing that the younger man was standing beside Marisa now. Clearly they’d been talking but he’d been too focused on his son to register the conversation. His eyes narrowed as he noticed how close the two were standing together, their posture, their body language revealing how comfortable they were with one another. He inhaled sharply. Jealous, she had said.
He made himself exhale again. She might not be sleeping with this particular man but it would be naïve of him to imagine that a woman of her sexuality had spent the last few years living the life of a nun.
Ashley made his goodbyes and turned to Roman with a polite, ‘Nice to meet you.’
Roman could only manage a nod in response, his glacial stare still in place, and he could see Marisa heave a sigh of exasperation before she added, ‘Enjoy your long weekend, Ash.’
‘I will.’
Roman watched as the nanny jogged off and out of view.
‘That was rude.’
One dark brow lifted. ‘If that was rude, what would you call not telling a man he is the father of your child?’ In his head the retort had not sounded quite so brutal but the result was the same.
All the animation went out of her face, and she stiffened, seeming to almost physically shrink back from him.
He should have felt satisfied at her reaction but her discomfort afforded him surprisingly little pleasure.
With clenched hands set on her hips, she turned to face him, her luminous eyes calm but determined in her pale face.
‘If you imagine you can close down any conversation by playing the victim card, I think you should go for another strategy,’ she advised him tartly.
And he had started to feel a glimmer of sympathy for her. Stung, he snapped back, ‘Victim?’
On another occasion Roman’s expression of outraged incredulity would have made Marisa laugh but at that moment laughter was beyond her. This was an impossible situation, which she couldn’t see getting better any time soon, but for Jamie’s sake she had to try.
‘If you’re always going to resent me, fine, that is your choice, but if you actually do want to form any sort of relationship with our son—’
‘A child should know who his father is.’
Her brow creased. ‘That wasn’t what I asked,’ she threw back, annoyed by his politician’s response.
Was he saying that he didn’t want a relationship with Jamie, that he didn’t want to be part of Jamie’s life after all? She shouldn’t be surprised and she definitely shouldn’t be disappointed...after all, it would make her life a hell of a lot easier.
As Jamie breathlessly trotted back with his beloved football, she flashed Roman a warning glance and dropped into a crouch. ‘That knee looks sore.’
‘I didn’t cry.’
‘Well, I would have,’ Marisa retorted.
‘You’re a girl.’
‘Boys cry too.’
Her son looked doubtful. ‘Do you cry?’ he asked Roman.
She held her breath, fully anticipating a tough male macho response, only to release it when he replied.
‘Everyone cries.’
‘Come on, let’s get that knee sorted and have some cake,’ she said.
CHAPTER SIX
ROMAN WAS STANDING by the window when the door was flung open and Jamie bounced into the room displaying a boundless energy that made it hard to imagine him as a child who had had a life-threatening illness, his knee sporting a sticking plaster and his hands now clean.
Marisa followed close behind carrying a tray, which she set carefully down on the table between the two big comfy sofas, then she took a place on one and motioned Roman to sit opposite her.
He considered ignoring the invitation and sitting beside her but practicality won out over perversity. Even across the room the scent of her perfume—or was it just the scent of her skin?—brought back too many distracting memories, and hunger clawed in his belly.
‘Do you want a biscuit, Jamie?’
‘Can I have two?’
‘No.’ The child responded with a small shrug and grinned. ‘Tea?’ Her eyes brushed Roman’s face.
He would have much preferred brandy but he nodded, unable to take his eyes off the little boy who was busy cramming his biscuit in his mouth. The son he had imagined in his head had been a blank canvas but he was discovering the re
ality was very different. Jamie was already a personality.
‘Are you my mum’s boyfriend?’
Roman’s eyes flew wide as the four-year-old did what few others ever had—threw him totally.
Marisa choked on her first sip of tea. ‘Jamie, you can’t say something like that!’
‘Why?’ The child’s mystification was genuine.
‘Indeed, why?’ There was nothing genuine about the puzzled look on Roman’s face, but the taunting gleam in his eyes spoke volumes as he glanced at a pink-faced Marisa.
As the child exchanged a look with his father, oblivious to his identity, Marisa was suddenly struck by the striking similarity in their body language. Her throat aching, she jerked her eyes downwards, feeling something she didn’t want to feel as she swallowed against the ache in her chest.
‘Sam at nursery, his mum has a boyfriend and Libby Smith says her mummy has two, but I don’t believe her. She shows off and she fibs. She says she can swim but I know she can’t.’
‘Can you swim?’ Roman asked curiously.
‘Y...’ His eyes slid to his mother’s face. ‘Well, I can with arm bands on and I can kick harder than anything. Can I have another biscuit now, please?’ His hand hovered over the plate. ‘Chocolate?’
Marisa responded to the opportunistic request with a distracted, ‘Yes.’ Glad of the distraction as her son snatched one before she changed her mind, she watched him pull a toy car out of his pocket before he bounded across the room making the appropriate noises.
‘You can be my mum’s boyfriend if you like.’
Marisa could feel Roman’s eyes on her face, but she refused to return his gaze, knowing full well she’d see mockery there and maybe something else... Besides, she would only end up staring at his mouth again and thinking about it sliding across her lips... The self-admission came with a tidal wave of heat that rose through her body until every inch of her skin tingled with embarrassment.
Or was that excitement?
‘I’d prefer Ashley, but Mummy is too old for him.’
‘Yes, she is much too old for him,’ Roman agreed gravely.
‘How old are you?’
‘Thirty-one,’ said Roman, feeling a lot older as he listened to the flow of childish confidences.
‘I’m five next time, and I can already count to ten in French and I know two people who went to heaven. How many do you know?’
‘Jamie, there are some bricks under the chair. Please will you go and put them back in the box?’ Marisa instructed.
Roman, reeling and pale under his tan, directed his question in a low choked voice to Marisa. ‘Does he mean...?’
Marisa, understanding shining in her eyes, tipped her head in confirmation, causing the cold knot in his belly to harden to an iron fist.
Shock bypassed his normal close-mouthed caution when it came to revealing anything about himself. ‘And I thought my childhood was traumatic!’ Caught up in his own thoughts, Roman didn’t register the expression on Marisa’s face. ‘He sounds so casual about knowing people who have died.’ He found that almost as disturbing as the brutal facts themselves.
‘Children who have been through what Jamie has, they grow up quickly in some ways, but they are remarkably resilient. More so sometimes than the adults.’
She spoke quietly, her soft voice carrying virtually no inflection but he could see the shadows in her eyes. For the first time he let himself think about what the nightmare experience must have felt like, wondering if her child was going to die. She had faced more than he had done in his life, and he felt humbled by the strength she had shown.
‘Jamie knew how ill he was?’ he asked.
‘They don’t lie to the children.’
‘Even when the truth is—’ He shook his head, appalled. ‘I cannot imagine how hard it must have been for both of you.’
He had known his child literally for five minutes and already he was positive that if it were required he would lay down his life to spare him a moment’s suffering. The absolute shock of this fresh discovery widened his eyes.
She would have done the same, he realised as he watched her throw out a word of encouragement and a smile to the child who was adding a final brick to the lopsided creation that looked in imminent danger of toppling.
But it hadn’t been an option for her; instead, she’d had to sit there, day in and day out, watching her child suffering and feeling totally helpless. Dios, he could not even imagine the sheer horror of what she and Jamie had been through.
‘I’m sorry.’ The words emerged almost against his will, the deepening furrow in his broad brow an instinctive response to the inadequacy of the words he had never expected to hear himself voice.
She was desperate—wasn’t that what Rio had said? Not that Roman had been listening, because he’d had no space in his head right then for reasons or excuses. Just anger, resentment and a strong sense of betrayal that still hadn’t gone away, but he could see past it now, although he didn’t want to, and it made him mad as hell to acknowledge even in the privacy of his own mind that Rio had only spoken the simple facts; Marisa had been desperate but not desperate enough to come to him.
And maybe she had been right?
He paused that chain of thought before it could get too uncomfortable, her soft voice providing the escape route that he grabbed hold of.
‘It wasn’t your fault that Jamie was ill.’
Her generosity was genuine enough to send a slug of shame through him. ‘I should have been there for both of you.’
She had bent over to scoop up a couple of the stray toy building blocks from under a table, and as she straightened, her ponytail landed with a gentle thud between her narrow shoulder blades.
Face gently flushed from the exertion, she flashed a glance to the corner of the room where Jamie was now playing with his toy car again, before responding to his statement.
‘You didn’t know. I should have told you, I see that now, but at the time I was—’ She turned her head but not before he had seen the sheen of unshed tears bright in her eyes.
Rio’s words came back to him again. Desperate. She had been desperate.
Clearing her throat, she turned back to face him. ‘When you’re in a situation like that, the only people who actually understand, really understand, are those who are living through it too. They become in some ways your support network. You’re all living in a bubble, and, although the world carries on as normal, for you nothing is normal even though you try your—’ She stopped, a self-conscious expression seeping across her face as their eyes connected and she gave a tiny jerky motion of her head, looking confused, as though she’d never actually articulated those feelings before.
‘So do you keep in touch with the other parents?’
‘A few.’ Her eyes filled with tears again and he saw her try to rapidly blink them away.
Roman considered himself immune to female tears and the soul-baring and accusations they frequently preceded. He generally pretended not to notice them and made himself scarce; he certainly never had to fight an urge to hold someone and tell them it was going to be all right. Even Marisa’s prosaic sniff before she launched into husky speech again located an unexpected vulnerable spot inside him, awaking a tenderness he didn’t know he possessed.
‘Amy, she...’ She glanced towards Jamie and Roman noticed with a touch of amused pride that his son had appropriated yet another biscuit while they’d been distracted in conversation. ‘We were both single parents; everyone else was part of a couple.’ She saw him flinch. ‘I wasn’t trying to...you know...make you feel guilty.’
‘I know you weren’t.’ It was becoming more than clear to him that Marisa did not play the blame game.
‘Actually I think Amy and I were lucky.’ Marisa saw his eyes narrowed with scepticism and she hastily explained.
‘From what I saw an i
ll child often puts a relationship under a lot of strain. At least two couples I met while Jamie was being treated are in the middle of a bitter divorce now and another couple are giving it another go, so who knows?’
‘Maybe the cracks were already there in those relationships,’ he suggested, threading his long fingers together as he looked at where Jamie had crawled under a table and was happily building a tower out of bricks. ‘Or maybe most marriages, once you look beneath the surface, are pretty toxic.’
The cynicism in his voice drew a wince from Marisa—he really didn’t seem to have a high view of marriage, which begged the question why had he once proposed to her?
‘Why—’ She stopped and pushed away the question that felt as though it belonged in another life now; the person she had been then no longer existed, the things she had felt, longed for, all gone, like smoke on the wind. She had completely changed so maybe he had changed too. Maybe he was sitting there congratulating himself on his own lucky escape from marrying her.
It turned out it wasn’t his own escape he had been thinking of.
‘My mother only started living again when she escaped her marriage.’ Distracted for a moment from the shocking developments that were dominating his own personal life, it was almost relief for Roman to turn his inner anger and frustration to another situation that he had even less control over.
His mother had freed herself from her marriage to a man who wanted to control every aspect of her life, a man whose warped idea of love was to cut the object of his affections off from everyone else who cared for her, who was jealous of anyone who took her attention away from him—including his sons.
And here she was getting involved with a man with one failed marriage already behind him. The thought of the theatre director his mother had been with for the last two years etched a frown into his brow.
He didn’t give a damn that the man was twelve years younger than her; he didn’t care that he was successful enough not to be after her money. His mother was a happy, confident woman now but Roman couldn’t get rid of the image of her as the woman she’d been before, afraid to make any decision for herself, while seeming happy and content to the outside world.