His Child: The Mistress's Child / Nathan's Child / D'Alessandro's Child

She thought of Tim in the sitting room, watching a video, and the lurch of her heart turned into a patter of alarm.

‘Hello, Philip,’ she said calmly. ‘This is a surprise.’

He gazed at her steadily. ‘Is it? Surely you didn’t think that I was going to go away without speaking to you again, Lisi?’

‘I have nothing to say to you.’

‘But I do,’ he said implacably.

He can’t make you do anything, she told herself. ‘I’m afraid that it isn’t convenient right now.’

He let his eyes rove slowly over her, and the answering flood of heat made him wish that he hadn’t.

Her dark hair was scraped back from her face into a pony-tail and she wore cheap clothes—nothing special—a pair of baggy cotton trousers and an old sweater which clung to the soft swell of her breasts. There was a fine line of flour running down her cheek which made him think of warpaint.

And she looked like dynamite.

‘Been cooking, have you?’

‘Am cooking,’ she corrected tartly. ‘Busy cooking.’

‘Mum-mee!’

Lisi froze as green eyes lanced through her in a disbelieving question.

‘Mum-mee!’ A child who was Lisi’s very image appeared, and Tim came running out from the sitting room and up to the door, turning large, interested blue eyes up at the stranger on the doorstep. ‘Hello!’

Lisi had always been proud of her son’s bright and outgoing nature—she had brought him up to be confident—but at that moment she despaired of it. Why couldn’t he have been shy and retiring, like most other boys his age? ‘I really must go, Philip, you can see I’m really—’

He ignored her completely. ‘Hello,’ Philip said softly as he looked down at the shiny black head. ‘And what’s your name?’

The boy smiled. ‘I’m Tim, and it’s my birthday!’ he said. ‘Who are you?’

‘I’m Philip. A friend of Mummy’s.’

Tim screwed his eyes up. ‘Mummy’s boyfriend?’

Lisi saw the cold look of distaste which flickered across his face, and flinched.

‘Does Mummy have lots of boyfriends, then?’ Philip asked casually.

‘Tim,’ said Lisi, a note of desperation making her voice sound as though it was about to crack, ‘why don’t you go and colour in that picture that Mummy drew for you earlier?’

‘But, Mum-mee—’

‘Please, darling,’ she said firmly. ‘And you can have a biscuit out of the tin—only one, mind—and Mummy will come and help you in a minute, and we can organise all the games for your party. Won’t that be fun? Run along now, darling.’

Thank heavens the suggestion of an unsolicited biscuit had captured his imagination! He gave Philip one last, curious look and then scampered back towards the sitting room.

Lisi tried to meet the condemnatory green stare without flinching. ‘It’s his birthday,’ she explained. ‘And I’m busy organising—’

‘So that was why you had to ring your mother,’ he observed softly.

It was not the aggressive question she had been expecting and dreading. She stared at him uncomprehendingly. ‘What?’

‘The night you slept with me,’ he said slowly. ‘I wondered why you should bother to do that, when we were only supposedly going for a quick drink,’ he added witheringly. ‘I guess you had to arrange for your mother to babysit. Poor little soul,’ he finished. ‘When Mummy jumps into bed with a man whenever the opportunity presents itself.’

For a moment, Lisi couldn’t work out what he was talking about, and then his words began to make sense. Tim was a tall boy, as Marian had said. He looked older than his years. And Philip didn’t even suspect that the child might be his. God forgive me, she thought. But this is something I have to do. For all our sakes. He hates me. He thinks the worst of me—he’s made that heartbreakingly clear. What good would it do any of us if he found out the truth?

‘I have never neglected my son, Philip,’ she said truthfully.

Did this make them quits? All the time he hadn’t told her about Carla, lying desperately sick in her hospital bed—Lisi had carried an awesome secret, too. A baby at home. And who else? he wondered. ‘So where’s the father?’ he demanded. ‘Was he still on the scene when you stripped off and climbed into my bed?’

‘How dare you say something like that?’

‘It was a simple question.’

She jerked her head in the direction of the sitting room door. ‘Just keep your voice down!’ she hissed, and then met the fury in his eyes. ‘Oh, what’s the point of all this? You’ve made your feelings about me patently clear, Philip. There is nothing between us. There never was—other than a night of mad impetuosity. We both know that. End of story. And now, if you don’t mind—I really do have a party to organise.’

He made to turn away. Hadn’t a part of him nurtured a tiny, unrealistic hope that her behaviour that night had been a one-off—that it had been something about him which had made her so wild and so free in his bed? And all the time she’d had a child by another man! It was a fact of modern life and he didn’t know why he should feel so bitterly disappointed. But he did.

‘Goodbye, Philip.’ Her overwhelming feeling was one of relief, but there was regret as well. She couldn’t have him—she would never have him—not when his fundamental lack of respect for her ran so deep. But that didn’t stop a tiny, foolish part of her from aching for what could never be.

He looked deep into her eyes and some sixth sense told him that all was not how it seemed. Something was not right. She was tense. Nervous. More nervous than she had any right to be, and he wondered why.

She started to close the door when he said, ‘Wait!’

There was something so imperious in his command, something so darkly imperative in the glacial green gaze that Lisi stopped in her tracks. ‘What?’

‘You didn’t say how old Tim was.’

She felt the blood freeze in her veins, but she kept her face calm. ‘That’s because you didn’t ask.’

‘I’m asking now.’

A thousand thoughts began to make a scrabbled journey through her mind. Could she carry it off? Would he see through the lie if she told him that Tim was four? It was credible—everybody said that he could easily pass for a four-year-old.

Her hesitation told him everything, as did the blanching of colour from her already pale face. He felt the slow, steady burn of disbelief. And anger. ‘He’s mine, isn’t he?’

If she had thought that seeing him again was both nightmareand dream, then this was the nightmare sprung into worst possible life. She stared at him. ‘Philip—’

‘Isn’t he?’ he demanded, in a low, harsh voice which cut through her like a knife.

She leant on the door for support, and nodded mutely.

‘Say it, Lisi! Go on, say it!’

‘Tim is your son,’ she admitted tonelessly, and then almost recoiled from the look of naked fury in his eyes.