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

‘You’d better come in,’ said Lisi.

‘With pleasure,’ he answered, grimly sarcastic.

She opened the door wider to let him in, but took care to press herself back against the wall, as far away from him as possible. She was only hanging onto her self-possession by a thread, and if he came anywhere near her she would lose it completely. But he still came close enough for her to catch the faint drift of his aftershave—some sensual musky concoction which clamoured at her senses.

He followed her into the sitting room, where the debris from the party still littered the room. He wondered how many children there had been at the party. Judging by the clutter left behind it could easily have run into tens.

There were balloons everywhere, and scrunched up wrapping paper piled up in the bin. Half-eaten pieces of cake and untouched sandwiches lay scattered across the paper cloth which covered the table.

Philip frowned. ‘Weren’t they hungry?’

‘They only ever eat the crisps.’

‘I see.’ He looked around the room in slight bemusement. ‘They certainly know how to make a mess, don’t they?’

Lisi gave a rueful smile, thinking that maybe they could be civil to one another. ‘I should have cleared it away, but I wanted to read Tim a story from one of his new books.’

The mention of Tim’s name reminded him of why he was there. ‘Very commendable,’ he observed sardonically.

‘Can I…?’ She forced herself to say it, even though his manner was now nothing short of hostile. But she had told herself over and over again that nothing good would come out of making an enemy of him, even though the look on his face told her that she was probably most of the way there. ‘Can I get you a drink?’

‘In a minute. Firstly, I want to see Tim.’

She steeled herself not to react to that autocratic demand. ‘He’s only just gone to sleep,’ she said. ‘What if he wakes?’

‘I’ll be very quiet. And anyway, what if he does wake?’

‘Don’t you know anything about children?’ she asked, but one look at his expression made her wonder how she could have come out with something as naive and as hurtful as that.

‘Actually, no.’ He bit the words out precisely. ‘Because up until this morning, I didn’t realise that I might have to.’

‘Just wait until he’s in a really deep sleep,’ she said, desperately changing the subject. ‘He might be alarmed if he wakes up to find a strange man…’ Her words tailed off embarrassedly.

He gave a bitter laugh. ‘A strange man in his room?’ he completed acidly. ‘You mean it doesn’t happen nightly, Lisi?’

It was one insult too many and on top of all the tensions of the day it was just too much. Her hand flew up to his face and she slapped him, hard. There was a dull ringing sound as her palm connected, but he didn’t react at all, just stood there looking at her, his expression unreadable.

‘Feel better now?’

She bit her lip in horror. She had never raised her hand to anyone in her life! ‘What do you think?’

He turned away. He didn’t want her looking at him all vulnerable and lost like that. He wanted to steel his heart against her pale beauty and the black hair which streamed down her back, tied back with a scarlet ribbon which matched the dress. ‘You don’t want to hear what I think,’ he said heavily. ‘I’ll take that drink now.’

She went into the kitchen and took wine from the fridge and handed him the bottle, along with two glasses. ‘Maybe you could just open that, and I’ll clear up a little,’ she said.

He sat down in one of the squashy old armchairs and began to open the wine, but his eyes followed her as she moved around the room, deftly clearing the table and bundling up all the leftover party food into the paper cloth.

He wished that she would go and put on the baggy trousers she had been wearing this morning. The sight of the shiny red material stretching over the pert swell of her bottom was making him have thoughts he would rather not have. He was here to talk about his son, not fantasise about taking her damned dress off.

She had lit the fire, and the room flickered with the shadowedreflections of the flames. On the now-cleared table he saw her place a big copper vase containing holly, whose bright berries matched the scarlet of her dress. It was, he thought, with bitter irony, a delightfully cosy little scene.

She took the glass of wine he handed her and sat in the chair facing his, her knees locked tightly together, wishing that she had had the opportunity to change from a dress which was making her uncomfortably aware of the tingling sensation in her breasts. Just what did he do to her simply by looking? She twisted the stem of her glass round and round. ‘What shall we drink to?’

He studied her for a long moment. ‘How about to truth?’

She took a mouthful and the warmth of the liquor started to unravel the knot of tension which had been coiled up in the pit of her stomach all day. She stared at him. ‘Do you really think that you have a monopoly on truth? Why the hell do you think I didn’t contact you and tell you when I found out I was pregnant?’

‘What goes on in your mind is a complete mystery to me.’

Because you don’t know me, thought Lisi sadly. And now you never will. Philip’s opinion of her would always be distorted. He saw her as some kind of loose woman who would fall into bed with just about any man. Or as a selfish mother who would deliberately keep him from his own flesh and blood.

‘Think about the last words you said to me,’ she reminded him softly, but the memory still had the power to make her flinch. ‘You told me you were married. What was I supposed to do? Turn up on your doorstep with a bulging stomach and announce that you were about to be a daddy? What if your wife had answered the door? I can’t imagine that she would have been particularly overjoyed to hear that!’

He didn’t respond for a moment. He had come here this morning intending to tell her about the circumstances which had led to that night. About Carla. But his discovery of Tim had driven that far into the background. There were only so many revelations they could take in one day. Wouldn’t talking about his wife at this precise moment muddy the waters still further? Tim must come first.

‘You could have telephoned me,’ he pointed out. ‘The office had my number. You could have called me any time.’

‘The look on your face as you walked out that night made me think that you would be happy never to see me again. The disgust on your face told its own story.’

Self-disgust, he thought bitterly. Disgusted at his own weakness and disgusted by the intensity of the pleasure he had experienced in her arms. A relative stranger’s arms.

He put the wineglass down on the table and his eyes glittered with accusation.

‘The situation should never have arisen,’ he ground out. ‘You shouldn’t have become pregnant in the first place.’

‘Tell me something I don’t know! I didn’t exactly choose to get pregnant!’

‘Oh, really?’ The accusation in his voice didn’t waver. ‘You told me that it was safe.’ He gave a hollow laugh. ‘Safe? More fool me for believing you.’

Her fingers trembling so much that she was afraid that she might slop wine all over her dress, Lisi put her own glass down on the carpet. ‘Are you saying that I lied, Philip?’

His cool, clever eyes bored into her.

‘Facts are facts,’ he said coldly. ‘I realised that we were not using any protection. I offered to stop—’ He felt his groin tensing as he remembered just when and how he had offered to stop, and a wave of desire so deep and so hot swept over him that it took his breath away. He played for time, slowly picking up his glass and lifting it to his lips until he had his feelings under control once more.

‘I offered to stop,’ he continued, still in that hard, cold voice. ‘And you assured me that it was safe. Just how was it safe, Lisi? Were you praying that it would be—because you were so het-up you couldn’t bear me to stop? Or were you relying on something as outrageously unreliable as the so-called ‘‘safe’’ period?’

‘Do you really think I’d take risks like that?’ she demanded.

‘Who knows?’

She gave a short laugh. If she had entertained any lingering doubt that there might be some fragment of affection for her in the corner of his heart, then he had dispelled it completely with that arrogant question.

‘For your information—I was on the pill at the time—’

‘Just in case?’ he queried hatefully.

‘Actually—’ But she stopped short of telling him why. She was under no obligation to explain that, although she had broken up with her steady boyfriend a year earlier, the pill had suited her and given her normal periods for the first time in her life and she had seen no reason to stop taking it. ‘It’s none of your business why I was taking it.’