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

‘You bitch,’ he said softly. ‘You utter little bitch.’

She had played this unlikely scenario in her mind many times. Philip would magically appear and she would tell him about Tim, but she had never imagined a reaction like this—with him staring at her with a contempt so intense that she could have closed her eyes and wept.

‘Go away,’ she whispered. ‘Please, just go away.’

‘I’m not going anywhere. I want to know everything.’

‘Philip.’ She sucked in a ragged breath. Should she appeal to his better nature? Surely he must have one? ‘I will talk to you, of course I will—’

‘Well, thanks for nothing!’ he scorned.

‘But not now. I can’t. Tim will come out again in a minute if I’m not back and it isn’t fair—’

‘Fair?’ he echoed sardonically. ‘You think that what you have done is fair? To deny me all knowledge of my own flesh and blood? And then to lie about it?’

‘I did not lie!’ she protested.

‘Oh, yes, you did,’ he contradicted roughly. ‘It was—to use your own words, my dear Lisi—a lie by omission, wasn’t it? Just now, when I asked you his age, you thought about concealing it from me.’ His mouth hardened into a cruel, contemptuous line. ‘But I’m afraid your hesitation gave you away.’

‘Just go,’ she begged. ‘Don’t let Tim hear this. Please.’

He hardened his heart against the appeal in her eyes. He had lived with death and loss and all the time she had brought new life into the world and had jealously kept that life to herself. As if they had stumbled across unexpected treasure together, and she had decided to claim it all for herself.

‘What time does his party finish?’

She could scarcely think. ‘At around s-six.’

‘And what time does he go to bed?’

‘He’ll be tired tonight. I should be able to settle him down by seven.’

‘I’ll come at seven.’

She shook her head. ‘Can’t we leave it until tomorrow?’ she pleaded.

He gave her a look of pure scorn. ‘It has already been left three years too long!’

‘Then one more night won’t make any difference. Sleep on it, Philip—you won’t feel so…so…angry about it in the morning.’

But he couldn’t ever imagine being rid of the rage which was smouldering away at the pit of his stomach. ‘How very naive you are, Lisi—if you think that I’ll agree to that. Either I come round tonight once Tim has gone to sleep, or I march straight in there now and tell him exactly what his relationship to me is.’

‘You wouldn’t do that.’

‘Just try me,’ he said, in a voice of soft menace.

Lisi swallowed. ‘Okay. I’ll see you here. Tonight. Unless…’ she renewed the appeal in her eyes ‘—unless you’d rather meet on…neutral territory? I could probably get a babysitter.’

But he shook his head resolutely. ‘Thanks, but no thanks,’ he said coldly. ‘Maybe I might like to look in on my sleeping son, Lisi. Surely you wouldn’t deny me that?’

My sleeping son. The possessive way that he said it made Lisi realise that Philip Caprice was not intending to be an absentee father. Already! How the hell was she going to cope with all the implications of that?

But what about Tim? prompted the voice of her conscience. What about him?

‘No, I won’t deny you that,’ she told him quietly. ‘I’ll see you here tonight, around seven.’

He gave a brief, mock-courteous nod and then turned on his heel, walking away from her without a second glance, the way he had done the night his son had been conceived.

She shut the door before he was halfway down the path, and looked down to see that her hands were shaking.

She waited until her breath had stopped coming in short, anxious little breaths, but as she caught a glance at her reflection in the mirror she saw that her face was completely white, her eyes dark and frightened, like a trapped animal.

I must pull myself together, she thought. She had a son and a responsibility to him. Today was his party—his big day. She had already messed up in more ways than one. She mustn’t let the complex world of adult relationships ruin it for him.

She forced a smile onto her lips and hoped that it didn’t look too much like a grimace, and then she opened the door to the sitting room, where her beloved son sat with his dark head bent over his colouring, his little tongue protruding from between his teeth, just the way hers did. He’s my son, too, she told herself fiercely. Not just Philip’s.

‘Hello, darling,’ she said softly. ‘Shall Mummy come and help for a bit?’

Tim looked up, his eyes narrowed in that clever way of his, and Lisi stared at him with a sudden, dawning recognition. His eyes might be blue like hers, but that expression was pure Philip. Why had she never seen it before? Because she had deliberately blinded herself to it as too painful?

‘Mum-mee,’ said Tim, and put his crayon down firmly on top of the paper. ‘Who was that man?’

Not now, she told herself. How he must be told was going to take some working out.

‘Oh, he’s just a friend, darling,’ she said, injecting her voice with a determined cheerfulness. ‘A friend of Mummy’s.’

But the words rang hollow in her ears.

CHAPTER FIVE

THE hours ticked by so slowly while Philip waited. He felt as though the whole landscape of his life had been altered irrevocably—as if someone had detonated a bomb and left a familiar place completely unrecognisable.

He went through the motions of working. He faxed the States. He replied to his e-mails. He made phone-calls to his London office, and it seemed from the responses given by his staff that he must have sounded quite normal.

But he didn’t feel in the least normal. He had just discovered that he was the biological father of a child who was a complete unknown to him and he knew that he was going to have to negotiate some paternal rights.

Whether Lisi Vaughan liked it or not.

He deliberately turned his thoughts away from her. He wasn’t going to think about her. Thinking about her just made his rage grow, and rage would not help either of them come to some kind of amicable agreement about access.

Amicable?

The word mocked him. How could the two of them ever come to some kind of friendly understanding after what had happened?

He went for a long walk as dusk began to fall, looking up into the heavy grey clouds and wondering if the threatened snow would ever arrive, and at seven prompt he was knocking on her door.

She didn’t answer immediately and his mouth tightened. If the secretive little witch thought that she could just hide inside and he would just go away again, then she was in for an unpleasant surprise.

The door opened, and he was unprepared for the impact of seeing her all dressed up for a party. Red dress. Red shoes. Long, slim legs encased in pale stockings which had a slight sheen to them. He had never seen her in red before, but scarlet had been the backdrop to her beauty when she had lain with such abandon on his bed. Scarlet woman, he thought, and felt the blood thicken in his veins.