The Italian's Secret Baby

And he had a right to be part of his life, but what sort of upheaval would that cause for Sam, not to mention herself. Scarlet didn’t feel capable of working out the implications of this; she no longer knew which way was up, let alone what was a lie or the truth!

Scarlet, totally focused on convincing him she wasn’t going to let him take Sam, didn’t even feel the pain as her neatly trimmed nails gouged into the soft flesh of her palms.

‘Sam’s life is with me,’ she asserted loudly.

Roman inhaled sharply and his hands fell from her shoulders. ‘He is my son. This will be much easier, Scarlet, if we work together. If we’re friends.’

‘Friends? Even if none of this had happened we could never be friends,’ she asserted hotly.

On this at least Scarlet could be totally confident. How could you be friends with someone whose way of life was a total anathema to you, someone with whom you didn’t have anything in common and someone who, furthermore, made your hormones act in an indiscriminate and mortifying manner?

Irritation showed in his deep-set shadowed eyes as he heard her out.

‘A little bit of give and take here—would it be too much to ask?’ he wondered, dragging his hand wearily through his already disordered hair.

Scarlet experienced an irrational urge to smooth down those disordered locks. ‘Me give Sam, and you take him! Sam is three—where were you when he had chicken pox? Were you there to hold his hand when they stitched up his head when he fell off his bike?’

‘I didn’t know I had a son.’

So far he’d only thought about the changes having a son was going to make to his life. For the first time he paused to consider the things he had already missed out on, things he would never see, like the child’s first steps. He was unprepared for the feeling of profound loss.

‘And now you do, so what? Are you going to change your entire lifestyle?’ I don’t think so. ‘It’s obvious you haven’t thought this through. What do you plan to do—fit Sam into your schedule between making your next million or wooing your next supermodel? You can’t walk in here and demand to be part of Sam’s life.’#p#????#e#

‘I’m not demanding anything.’

‘That’s not the way it looks from where I’m standing.’

‘There are things I can give Sam.’

‘Money—?’ she suggested scornfully.

‘Financial security, certainly,’ he agreed levelly.

‘Well, that was predictable. I wondered when the pound sign would start flashing.’ She raised an eyebrow and produced a disdainful sniff. ‘Well, you can put your cheque-book away; we don’t want your money,’ she completed contemptuously.

There was a short simmering silence. Looking down his patrician nose at her, he drew himself up to his full height. ‘Does it give you a nice sense of moral superiority to be able to throw my money back in my face?’

‘You can’t buy me,’ she gritted defiantly.

‘I’m not trying to, neither am I trying to score points. I’m trying to consider my son’s best interests.’

‘So am I!’ she rebutted uneasily, aware that her responses were becoming increasingly childish.

‘Are you? I’m a wealthy man—do you expect me to leave my son nothing?’

‘Well…I…I hadn’t thought…’

‘Sam will be the main beneficiary as soon as my solicitor has drafted my new will,’ he told her quietly.

She might want to reject his money, but Sam was his son. ‘You want to make him a beneficiary. I suppose that’s reasonable,’ she admitted.

‘I want to make him the beneficiary.’

‘Oh!’

‘There is no one else. Obviously I’ll reimburse you for any—’

‘I don’t want reimbursing. Don’t you understand? I don’t want anything from you! I think you’re—’

‘Shall we leave your feelings towards me to one side for a moment?’

Scarlet deeply resented him taking upon himself the role of impartial reason. ‘Feelings for you!’ she parroted. ‘I don’t have any feelings for you one way or the other.’

‘I’m perfectly aware I hardly come out of this looking good.’ You couldn’t defend the indefensible. ‘But it takes two and your sister denied me the right of knowing my son.’

‘You leave Abby alone!’ Scarlet yelled. ‘I’d say she knew what she was doing.’

‘So you think she made the right decision?’

‘Too right I do,’ Scarlet responded with hardly a qualm about lying through her teeth. ‘A spoilt, commitment-shy playboy is hardly most people’s idea of father material.’