Claiming His Unknown Son (Mills & Boon Modern) (Spanish Secret Heirs, Book 2)

by Kim Lawrence

Her eyes slid from his.

  ‘You are the best sex I have ever had, and we already have a son together so I don’t think it would require any great sacrifices for us to work in partnership to ensure the best interests of our child. It will require a few adjustments, but we could divide our time between Spain and England, and I think exclusivity is an obvious—’

  His ability to make the outrageous sound normal took Marisa’s breath away but she finally managed to speak. ‘Let me get this straight. You are offering me exclusive access to your body in exchange for letting you be part of Jamie’s life?’

  ‘A bit simplistic but essentially, yes. You have no family, no support network.’

  ‘So you want to be my family, but you also want your freedom. You want to take me to bed but you don’t want to take me on a date,’ she charged angrily.

  ‘You want to go on a date?’

  ‘Right now I want...’ Her eyes slid to the sensual line of his lips and instantly he moved in closer.

  ‘You can have everything you want,’ he promised throatily.

  But not love, she thought sadly, not love.

  ‘I want to be Jamie’s dad.’

  ‘I know, but... What if you meet someone else who—’

  ‘I suggest we cross that bridge if we ever come to it.’ He arched a brow. ‘You’re not saying no, so you’re thinking about it.’

  ‘Family is about love, not convenience, Roman.’

  ‘I love Jamie.’

  She swallowed. ‘I know you do,’ she admitted, standing there and letting him kiss her.

  ‘We could make this work, Marisa.’

  The words were whispered against her mouth.

  ‘What do you say?’ Another drugging, persuasive kiss.

  ‘I don’t know... We could maybe try...?’ she murmured, unable to think straight.

  The kiss swept her off her feet and they sank together back onto the cushions of the daybed.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  IT HAD BEEN three weeks since they had made love by the pool and so far their unconventional arrangement meant that some of his clothes hung in Marisa’s wardrobe and there were two toothbrushes in the bathroom.

  Was it enough?

  Not nearly but it was all she had.

  Would she walk away from it? Did she even want to?

  It seemed to Marisa that her life suddenly had a lot more questions than answers. There had been moments when her doubts had become so deafeningly loud that she felt as if her head were exploding, but then she saw Roman and Jamie together, a look, a laugh, a small hand enfolded in a strong one and the noise abated to a soft, bearable murmur of unease.

  She glanced at her phone before she slid it back into her pocket. Roman had taken Jamie to visit the stables so that he could give the carrot he’d selected to the pony he had fallen in love with. She had expected them back some time ago, but had they already returned and she’d missed them?

  If Jamie had fallen for the pony, he had fallen even harder for his father. Yesterday she had found him sitting alongside Roman in his study, cutely mirroring everything his father did. She decided to try there first before she checked out the stables.

  The study was empty but, drawn to the crayon drawing on the desk that Roman had framed, she wandered in to take a closer look. As she picked it up, a smile curving her lips, she hit the corner of the desk and the open laptop wobbled and came to life.

  She was about to close the lid when she saw what was on the screen and froze.

  An hour later Roman was making his way along the hallway to his study when he saw Marisa coming out of it; she was still in the study when she heard Roman’s footsteps in the hallway, her face a mask of grim determination.

  ‘Where’s Jamie?’ she demanded.

  ‘Were you looking for me?’ Roman asked, looking past her through the open doorway she had just appeared through. He was still buzzing with what had just happened outside and he had an idea that he wanted to run past her. An image of the wistful look on Jamie’s face as he’d watched two of Maria’s brothers playing together appeared in his head. Would Marisa also see the logic in wanting to give Jamie a brother or sister?

  Marisa said nothing, just turned and walked back into his office.

  ‘Did you tell Jamie I’m his father?’ he asked.

  She shook her head and looked confused for a moment.

  ‘Well, he knows.’

  She frowned. ‘No, that isn’t possible.’

  ‘I’m telling you, he knows—I heard one of Maria’s brothers ask him if I was his dad and Jamie said yes... The thing is he sounded so casual, like it wasn’t even a big deal.’ He gave an incredulous laugh and dragged a hand through his hair. ‘And we were worrying about when to tell him. I suppose kids hear more than you imagine, and...’ His brow furrowed as he registered the tear stains on her pale cheeks, and his concern was immediate. ‘What’s wrong? Are you all right?’

  Hands on her hips, she fixed him with an ice-cold stare. ‘I said, where’s Jamie?’

  Right, so something was wrong, very wrong. Roman didn’t need to be psychic to see that.

  ‘He’s playing with Maria’s brothers, the two youngest. He was so thrilled when they invited him to play. It’s fine—they can speak enough English to make themselves understood.’

  ‘I need him to come back here now.’

  ‘OK...’ he said slowly. ‘Maria said she’ll fetch him back in time for lunch. Marisa, you should have seen his face when he was watching them play, before they invited him to join them; he looked so wistful. I always had Rio... Do you ever think Jamie’s lonely?’

  Marisa just stared at him. ‘Did you hear what I said?’

  ‘What’s the hurry? He’s safe and enjoying himself.’

  ‘We are going home!’

  His eyes narrowed and without his even moving a muscle his body language made a dramatic shift. When he spoke his voice was flat, his speech slow and deliberate. ‘Are you going to tell me what’s wrong?’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure you’ll tell me. After all, you already know everything about me, don’t you, Roman?’ She threw him a look of utter disdain and stalked stiff-backed across to his desk where his laptop lay open. ‘I was looking for you when I bumped into the desk. The thing woke up...and can you imagine my surprise when I saw my name on the PDF file on-screen?’

  As she spoke, a chill spread through his body. He knew before she’d reached the big reveal what had happened. Dios, the file was only there because he had intended to delete it and then... He couldn’t even remember what had distracted him. The missed call from his mother, maybe—he still hadn’t rung her back.

  ‘This isn’t what it looks like, Marisa.’

  ‘Oh, you mean you didn’t sit there and let me spill my guts to you about my dad’s gambling and my mother finding me so lovable that she wiped me out of her life, while already knowing all about it?’ Marisa’s voice cracked and she had to take a deep breath before she could trust herself to go on. ‘You let me open up to you, Roman, when all along you already knew every last tiny detail. There is stuff in that file that even I had forgotten.’

  She stood there willing him to intervene, willing him to say something that would put her in the wrong. She so wanted to be wrong about this. But his stony expression and the sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach told her she wasn’t.

  He might not love her, but she had started to believe and respect the fact that he didn’t pretend, that he was upfront, and all the time he’d been manipulating her emotions to get what he wanted. Frustration and fear settled over her like a dark fog. She had started to fool herself that they had something beyond the physical and Jamie, but she was wrong.

  She had wanted to believe that Team Jamie was some sort of permanent solution, which only made her look completely sad and pathetic, she concluded.

  It begge
d the question: how many nasty realities was she prepared to turn a blind eye to? Without warning an image of her dad’s face floated into her head, his optimistic smile that he had fallen lucky, that he was onto a sure thing that would turn around their fortunes, even though she had been able to see the sadness in his eyes, because he didn’t really believe it himself.

  Her hunger for security and continuity and Roman’s love was, she realised now, as strong as her poor dad’s drive to be the big personality, the success story.

  The memory of her first instinct when she had seen her name on the open file surfaced. She hadn’t closed the laptop or her eyes—but she had really, really wanted to. Would she keep her eyes open the next time...and the next...or one day would she close them? Did she want to live her life with that same desperate fake optimism she had regularly seen in her dad’s eyes? And how long would it be before Jamie could see all the lies too?

  She squared her shoulders and unconsciously donned a quiet dignity as her eyes found his.

  ‘Have you any idea how it makes me feel,’ she said quietly, ‘to know that all the time I was opening up to you, you knew? You knew about Dad’s debts after he died, the men who threatened me when I couldn’t pay the money back, and said I could make things easier on myself by being nice to some of their friends. Somehow sleeping my way out of debt didn’t feel like such a great option to me. You know, that look on your face really is very convincing,’ she admired nastily as the betrayal rising up inside her grabbed her in a vicious chokehold. ‘You’ve got the horrified thing off really well.’

  He shook his head, looking more shattered now than shocked, but she refused to be influenced by his superlative acting skills. She’d been fooled by him before.

  ‘It’s all there in black and white.’ She pointed at the computer screen. ‘My life has tabloid headlines written all over it, doesn’t it? Maybe one of your Hollywood friends could make it into a movie?’

  It took Roman several moments before he could trust himself to speak, to control the images her shocking disclosures had stirred to lurid life in his head. Several more moments to move beyond the protective rage that made him feel nothing was more important than seeking revenge on the animals who had issued the vile threats to her. Ripping the world apart until he found them did not seem at all excessive to him.

  A sordid world had touched Marisa but she had emerged untainted. She was, he decided as a surge of cleansing emotion supplanted his anger, the strongest person that he knew.

  ‘I didn’t know.’ It sounded as pathetic a response as it felt, his brow furrowed as he registered his own outstretched hand. He saw her flinch away and let it fall, acknowledging the knife thrust of pain that her rejection inflicted on him.

  Marisa’s body was tense, every muscle quivering and taut. She had wanted so much to be able to reach out and be pulled into his body, to pretend that none of this had happened. There was still a shameful part of her that wished she had not confronted him.

  ‘Do you know how all this makes me feel?’

  Betrayed, she thought, ruthlessly pushing down the sob in her throat.

  ‘Other than I don’t want to be in the same room as you?’

  She saw his nostrils flare as he inhaled sharply as if she had struck him, and told herself she didn’t care. She wanted him to hurt, because he had hurt her; he had betrayed her trust.

  ‘I’ve never told anyone about my mum and her other family either, not even Dad. He never knew that she had remarried, and that her social-media accounts are full of photos of her great, talented stepsons and her lovely daughter—my half-sister.

  ‘Turns out, you see, that it wasn’t motherhood she couldn’t cut, it was me. And to escape me she ran all the way to America, where she has a lovely family she dotes on, bakes cakes for the church fetes and fundraisers for the local school. But, yet again, I’m only telling you what you already know—aren’t I?’

  ‘I am so sorry, Marisa,’ Roman said, aching for her pain, seeing vividly the little girl who had lived with the worst possible rejection grow up only for it to happen all over again. ‘If I had known—’

  What, Roman? What would you have done?

  Protected her!

  The thing she needs protecting from is you! sneered the unrelenting voice of disdain in his head.

  ‘Do not dare say that,’ she hissed through clenched teeth. ‘And don’t dare to act as if this is all news to you. You already know everything about me, whether I’ve chosen to tell you or not.’

  ‘I know you’re the bravest, kindest, warmest, strongest person I know.’

  And I love you, he thought desperately as the self-deception he had clung to like a lifeline finally slipped through his exhausted grip like wet rope. Maintaining that deception had been such a struggle, but letting it go came without relief because along with it went the protection it had afforded.

  While he had been able to deflect and think only of chemistry, sex, passion—anything but love—he had been able to tell himself that this situation was manageable, desirable even.

  People spent their lives looking for love, but he had spent his life avoiding it, knowing better than most the dangerous, destructive powers of living with such an all-consuming obsessive passion.

  The sincerity in his voice as he’d listed her qualities had clearly only made her angrier than ever. She gave a shudder of disgust and held up her hand as he surged towards her, his hands outstretched. ‘No!’

  He stopped at her command, his hands falling to his sides once more, his face a mask of pain.

  He saw the hurt, the pain, the utter rejection in her face and felt his heart sink. Was she right to hold him off? True, he hadn’t done what she’d imagined, he’d never read that extended report on her, but he was capable of doing a lot worse, he knew that. He was never going to be a positive influence in her life or Jamie’s.

  How could he be? He was far too flawed. His father had not set out to hurt him, but the end result was the same and he was his father’s son, wasn’t he? It was a fact and a fate that he could not escape.

  His father had crushed his mother with his love, instead of setting her free. The idea of inflicting that sort of pain on Marisa and their son was too painful for Roman to contemplate.

  In one way at least he could prove that he was not his father’s son, that he was better than that, or at the very least possessed some self-awareness of the damage he could do.

  The cost...the price...would be high but the only way he could prove his love for Marisa and Jamie was to let them go.

  It was something he knew he had to do before his selfish instincts, the ones that were screaming at him to keep them close, drowned out his better self.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  It was subtle, almost imperceptible, but the change, the something in his manner brought a defensive stiffness to Marisa’s attitude. She found herself bracing herself for something—though the what remained elusive.

  ‘I think you’re right, this isn’t working,’ he said.

  She knew this, she’d been screaming for him to recognise this, so why did hearing him confirm what she already knew feel as though someone had just kicked her in the stomach?

  ‘So what...?’

  ‘If you want to go home I’m not going to stop you.’

  She took a deep breath, and refused to flinch as his words and their meaning hit painfully home. She passed a hand across her eyes as she blinked away tears of anger and humiliation. This was one occasion when she didn’t want to be proved right.

  It didn’t matter that she’d been planning to walk through the door anyway. It was, she discovered, an infinitely more humiliating thing entirely to have it held open for you as you went.

  ‘I never needed your permission,’ she flared back before, a moment later, her haughtiness morphed into bitterness. ‘So you got bored with being a father after all.’ It
was as if he’d just decided the hassle was all too much trouble, easier by far to walk away. Only better still, he didn’t have to because this was his home and she was the one walking away from him.

  Something flashed in his dark eyes, but a moment later it was gone. His voice was flat and even as he said quietly, ‘I’ll make sure the jet is available.’

  Pride was the only thing stopping her falling down as he walked away. The moment he vanished so did her defiance, but she was robbed of the release of tears because Jamie arrived smelling of the stables and demanding she come with him so he could show her the correct way to groom a horse.

  The castillo had never felt this empty before.

  Roman had locked himself in his study and sat looking at a decanter of brandy, although his glass remained empty. He knew it wouldn’t help because it would take a lot more than alcohol to dull the pain, the emptiness inside him.

  The first time his mobile rang he ignored it. The second time he intended to do the same, then with a sudden intake of breath he reached for the offending instrument. What if it was Marisa and she needed him? It was amazing how many nightmare scenarios a man could imagine in between grabbing a phone and ramming it to his ear.

  ‘Roman, my, you are a difficult man to get hold of.’

  His shoulders sagged. ‘Mother.’

  ‘So glad you recognise my voice after all this time and, before you say it, I know I wasn’t very welcoming the last time you saw me, but hospitals really do not bring out the best in me. I wanted to tell you that I am back home now after what I hope will be my last surgery. Everything went well and I’m planning to visit my granddaughter shortly. I thought you could possibly join me at the beach house? You have no idea how happy I am that at least one of you is settled. I was always worried about Rio.’

  ‘Why Rio?’ Roman asked, pretending an interest he didn’t feel as he reached for the decanter and filled the glass. It might not help but he was now working on the theory that it could surely not make things any worse.

  ‘I know I’m being silly, but he could just be so possessive as a child and, when he was angry, he had a way of holding his head that occasionally made me think of... But of course, he is nothing like your father.’