‘I don’t know,’ he said suddenly, in as rare and as honest an admission of confusion as he had ever made—something he could only attribute to the shock of being confronted by his own flesh and blood. ‘For while the logical part of my brain continues to tell me I have no desire for a child of my own—there is another part...a part which is more powerful. The part programmed by nature to perpetuate the species. To carry my own, unique genes forward into the future.’
Her face contorted, as if she’d just bitten into something very sour.
‘Is that all he is to you, Dimitri—a product of your gene pool?’
‘How else do you expect me to react?’ he demanded. ‘You have given me no opportunity to get to know him. You deny me even the knowledge of his existence. What did you imagine I would feel when I found out, Erin? Only, I was never expected to find out, was I, you cold-hearted little bitch? You would have kept it from me until I had drawn the last breath from my body.’
She flinched. ‘I don’t want this to deteriorate into a slanging match.’
‘At this precise moment I don’t particularly care what you want, but you will hear me out,’ he said icily. ‘Do you think I approve of the way you’ve reared my son? To see him making his home in a place like that?’
‘Externals aren’t everything,’ she flared back defensively. ‘And at least I managed to bring him up to be happy and healthy.’
‘But you could have done much more than manage,’ he argued. ‘You could have come to me for help. A man who was in a position to help you properly—so that you wouldn’t have to struggle bringing up my son in an apartment over a café and having to make a sham marriage because you needed money.’
His words brought Erin to her senses. What was she doing, letting him browbeat her like this? She knew enough of Dimitri to realise that he would take control in any situation if she let him, because that was his default setting. And she couldn’t afford to let him. Not over this.
‘You know exactly why I didn’t come to you,’ she said quietly.
‘Because I never wanted children?’
‘That was one of the reasons. I...’ She halted, suddenly at a loss. What has Tara done? she thought bitterly. What serpent has she unleashed here?
She swallowed as the enormity of her actions came crashing home in a way it had never done before. Or maybe she had just never allowed herself to think about it properly. She tried putting herself in his shoes and imagining how she would feel if the situation were reversed. Like him, she would be spitting mad and hurt and angry. Had her action of not telling him been motivated simply out of protectiveness for Leo, or had she also been protecting her own vulnerable heart?
Yes.
Yes, she had.
His dark world was not one she wanted her son growing up in. She wanted Leo to remain sunny and innocent—not be dark and complicated like his father. Yet as she looked into Dimitri’s proud face she thought she saw a flash of something she didn’t recognise in the depths of those icy eyes. Something almost...vulnerable. She gave herself a little shake, telling herself that it was a trick of the light. Because that was a mistake she’d made before. The Russian didn’t do vulnerable. He did hard and inviolate and proud.
But none of those facts impacted on the way she was currently feeling—an emotion which felt uncomfortably close to guilt.
‘I should have told you,’ she said slowly.
He gave the ghost of a smile, as if another small battle had been won. ‘Why didn’t you?’
Erin shook her head. It was difficult to think straight when he was this close. Tara had told her that she’d rung Dimitri because there was the possibility that he might have changed. But what if he hadn’t? What if his world was as dark and dangerous as before? And suddenly the truth came blurting out—the memory having the power to hurt her, even now.
‘But I did try to tell you. Don’t you remember?’
His eyes narrowed and he shook his head. ‘When?’
‘I came round to your home one Saturday morning, because I felt it best to tell you away from the office. It was just over two months since we’d slept together.’ She paused to let her words sink in. ‘I suppose it was my own fault. If I’d waited until midday, you might have been alone.’
She had been scared, na?ve, foolish, hopeful. It had been ten weeks since she’d spent the night with him. Ten weeks since he’d taken her virginity without realising and then acted as if nothing had happened. He had gone away to Russia on business and then on to the United States. She had suspected that he was deliberately putting distance between them. The weeks had drifted by and her contact with him had been limited to the strictly impersonal. To telephone calls and emails. Clearly he regretted that momentary lapse, which had started with an unexpected kiss and had ended with him thrusting into her over his dining-room table.