The Italian's Christmas Secret

‘Pay me?’ Keira blinked in confusion, thinking that bringing up money wasn’t the best way to start a conversation, especially in view of what had happened. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘I’ve just had a phone call from a...a journalist.’ He spat out the word as if it were poison. ‘Asking me whether I make a habit of paying women for sex.’

Keira’s feeling of confusion intensified. ‘I don’t...’ And then she realised and hot colour flooded into her cheeks. ‘Was her name Hester?’

‘So you did speak to her?’ He sucked in an unsteady breath. ‘What was it, Keira—a quickly arranged interview to see what else you could squeeze out of me?’

‘I didn’t plan on talking to her—it just happened.’

‘Oh, really?’

‘Yes, really. I was angry about the money you left me!’ she retorted.

‘Why? Didn’t you think it was enough?’ he shot back. ‘Did you imagine you might be able to get even more?’

Keira sank onto the nearest chair, terrified that her wobbly legs were going to give way beneath her. ‘You bastard,’ she whispered.

‘Your anger means nothing to me,’ he said coldly. ‘For you are nothing to me. I wasn’t thinking straight. I couldn’t have been thinking straight. I should never have had sex with you because I don’t make a habit of having one-night stands with strangers. But what’s done can’t be undone and I have only myself to blame.’

There was a pause before he resumed and now his voice had taken on a flat and implacable note, which somehow managed to sound even more ominous than his anger.

‘I’ve told your journalist friend that if she prints one word about me, I’ll go after her and bring her damned publication down,’ he continued. ‘Because I’m not someone you can blackmail—I’m just a man who allowed himself to be swayed by lust and it’s taught me a lesson I’m never going to forget.’ He gave a bitter laugh. ‘So, goodbye, Keira. Have a good life.’

CHAPTER FIVE

Ten months later

‘I HOPE THAT baby isn’t going to cry all the way through lunch, Keira. It would be nice if we were able to eat a meal in peace for once.’

Tucking little Santino into the crook of her arm, Keira nodded as she met her aunt’s accusing stare. She would have taken the baby out for a walk if the late October day hadn’t been so foul and blustery. Or she might have treated him to a long bus ride to lull him to sleep if he hadn’t been so tiny. As it was, she was stuck in the house with a woman who seemed determined to find fault in everything she did, and she was tired. So tired. With the kind of tiredness which seemed to have seeped deep into her bones and taken up residence there. ‘I’ll try to put him down for his nap before we sit down to eat,’ she said hopefully.

Aunt Ida’s mouth turned down at the corners, emphasising the deep grooves of discontentment which hardened her thin face. ‘That’ll be a first. Poor Shelley says she hasn’t had an unbroken night since you moved in. He’s obviously an unsettled baby if he cries so much. Maybe it’s time you came to your senses and thought about adoption.’

Keira’s teeth dug into her bottom lip as the word lodged like a barb in her skin.

Adoption.

A wave of nausea engulfed her but she tried very hard not to react as she stared down into the face of her sleeping son. Holding onto Santino even tighter, she felt her heart give a savage lurch of love as she told herself to ignore the snide comments and concentrate on what was important. Because only one thing mattered and that was her baby son.

Everything you do is for him, she reminded herself fiercely. Everything. No point in wishing she hadn’t given away Matteo’s money, or tormenting herself by thinking how useful it might have been. She hadn’t known at the time that she was pregnant—how could she have done? She’d handed over that thick wad of banknotes as if there were loads more coming her way—and now she just had to deal with the situation as it was and not what it could have been. She had to accept that she’d lost her job and her home in quick succession and had been forced to take the charity of a woman who had always disapproved of her. Because how else would she and Santino have managed to cope in an uncaring and hostile world?

You know exactly how, prompted the ever-present voice of her conscience but Keira pushed it from her mind. She could not have asked Matteo for help, not when he had treated her like some kind of whore. Who had made it clear he never wanted to see her again.

‘Have you registered the child’s birth yet?’ Aunt Ida was asking.

‘Not yet, no,’ said Keira. ‘I have to do it within the first six weeks.’

‘Better get a move on, then.’

Keira waited, knowing that there was more.

Her aunt smiled slyly. ‘Only I was wondering whether you were going to put the mystery father’s name on the birth certificate—or whether you were like your poor dear mother and didn’t actually know who he was?’

Keira’s determination not to react drained away. Terrified of saying something she might later regret, she turned and walked out of the sitting room without another word, glad she was holding Santino because that stopped her from picking up one of her aunt’s horrible china ornaments and hurling it against the wall. Criticism directed against her she could just about tolerate—but she wouldn’t stand to hear her mother’s name maligned like that.

Her anger had evaporated by the time she reached the box-room she shared with Santino, and Keira placed the baby carefully in his crib, tucking the edges of the blanket around his tiny frame and staring at him. His lashes looked very long and dark against his olive skin but for once she found herself unable to take pleasure in his innocent face. Because suddenly, the fear and the guilt which had been nagging away inside her now erupted into one fierce and painful certainty.

She couldn’t go on like this. Santino deserved more than a mother who was permanently exhausted, having to tiptoe around a too-small house with people who didn’t really like her. She closed her eyes, knowing t