‘Alfie’s his kid. He should be looking after him and taking care of all his needs!’ Jordan countered heatedly.
‘You abandoned my son in the street, where anything could have happened to him?’ Pixie yelled at him full blast.
‘No, I stood out of sight and watched to see that he was taken into the house before I walked away. I’m not an idiot and he is my nephew. He may be a nuisance, but I do care about the little tyke!’
‘What house?’ she demanded in sudden sincere bewilderment.
There was another wildly frustrating hiatus while Jordan explained how he had paid some man he met in a pub to find out Tor’s London address. By the time she’d dug that information out of her sibling she’d already ordered a taxi—because no way, no how, when her baby boy was in danger, was she heading out on a bus or a train to reclaim him!
Jordan pursued her right out onto the street, heatedly arguing his point of view, which was that her attitude towards caring for Alfie had been wrong from the start.
‘You could’ve made a killing out of having that child and now you will,’ Jordan declared, striking horror into her bones. ‘And it’ll be all thanks to me for looking out for your interests.’
‘Not everything is about money, Jordan,’ Pixie breathed in disgust. ‘And I did not have Alfie to feather anyone’s nest!’
She slumped in the taxi, sick to her stomach. When had money come to mean more to Jordan than his own flesh and blood? Had she always been blind to that side of her brother? How had she contrived to ignore the fact that Jordan had only begun supporting her desire to have her baby after he had grasped that Alfie’s father was a very rich man? Even back then, had Jordan been viewing her little boy as a potential source of profit? As the ticket towards an easier life? Her stomach shifted queasily. And what on earth was her brother expecting to happen now that he had confronted Tor Sarantos with the child he didn’t want to know about?
Was Jordan hoping that Tor would pay handsomely for her and Alfie to go away and not bother him again? What other scenario could he be picturing? And how could she continue living with and entrusting Alfie’s care to a man who could behave as he had done and put an innocent child at risk?
Still in a panic, Pixie leapt out of the taxi and rushed up the steps of the imposing town house. It was a three-storey Georgian building in a grand city square with a private park in the centre. She rang the bell and thumped the door knocker as well, so desperate was she to reach her son.
An older woman with an expressionless face answered the door.
‘My son was left here...accidentally,’ Pixie said with a shaky smile. ‘I’m here to collect him.’
In silence the door widened, allowing her to step into a cool, elegant hall. A fleeting glance was all it took for Pixie to feel shabby, poor and out of her comfort zone as she stood there clad in her cheap raincoat and scuffed trainers. The aromatic scent of beeswax polish lingered in the air, perfectly matching the gracious interior of polished antiques and a truly splendid classical marble sculpture that looked as though it should be in a museum.
‘I will ask if Mr Sarantos is free to see you,’ the woman said loftily.
As Pixie hovered, she saw two men in suits standing almost out of sight down a short side corridor, both men avidly studying her, and she flushed and turned her head away, relieved when the older woman reappeared and asked her to follow her.
A clammy feeling of disquiet engulfed Pixie’s body, quickening both her heartbeat and her breathing as she contemplated the unpleasant prospect of meeting Tor Sarantos again. A man who had utterly rejected her during her pregnancy, who insisted he didn’t recall ever even meeting her before? Of course, she didn’t want to see him again.
But, sadly for her, Jordan had made it impossible for her to continue sitting on the fence and avoiding the issue of Alfie’s existence and his father’s responsibility towards him. Now she had to come clean about events eighteen months earlier, regardless of how embarrassing or humiliating that might be. Pixie lifted her chin and reminded herself that all she should still feel guilty about was surrendering to a meaningless sexual encounter while neglecting to protect herself from the risk of a pregnancy.
That horrid little scene in Tor’s office had clawed away the finer feelings of guilt that he had once induced in her. Going through a pregnancy and the delivery of her child with only Eloise’s occasional support as a friend had made Pixie less self-critical. She had done all right alone; she might not have done brilliantly but there were many who would have coped worse and complained a great deal more. She had nothing to apologise for, she told herself bracingly.
Tor was in a very grim mood. He didn’t like mysteries or unexpected developments and the instant the same woman who had forced her way into his office the previous year appeared in his office doorway, a chill of foreboding slid down his rigid spine. Who the hell was she? Stymied by the lack of information about her that day, he had failed to establish her identity after the event and had waited impatiently to see if any claim for child support arrived with his lawyers. When no such claim had arrived, he had written off her visit to a possible mental-health issue. But if she was the child’s mother, who was the man surveillance had on tape who had left the child on the doorstep?
‘I’m here to pick up my son,’ Pixie announced stiffly, her slim shoulders rigid because being even the depth of a room away from Tor Sarantos was too close for comfort. ‘I’m sorry you’ve been dragged into this...er...situation.’
There he stood, tall, poised, predatory dark eyes locked to her like grappling hooks seeking purchase in her tender skin. He was angry, suspicious, everything she didn’t want to be forced to deal with but, even with him in that mood, she wasn’t impervious to how gorgeous he was, clad in an impossibly elegant dark grey designer suit, sharply tailored to his lean, powerful frame. And while still being that aware of his movie-star-hot looks annoyed her, it also reminded her of how very strange it was that she could ever have conceived a child with a man so far out of her league.
That night they had been together so briefly loomed like a distant and surreal fantasy in the back of her mind and her face heated with mortification because that night was the very last thing she wanted to think about in his presence.
‘You need to come in, take a seat and explain what you describe as a “situation” to me,’ Tor said coolly, watching her like a hawk.
She was incredibly tiny and curvy with a torrent of golden curls that framed her heart-shaped
face and enhanced her crystal-blue eyes. Something about her eyes struck him as weirdly familiar; there was something too about that soft, full, pink mouth and the stirring of that vague chord of familiarity spooked Tor as much as a gun held to his head. Because Pixie Miller, whoever she was, was not his type. He had always gone for tall brunettes and certainly not a tiny blonde, who from a distance could probably still be mistaken for a child.
‘I don’t want to talk to you... I just want to collect my son,’ Pixie told him truthfully.
‘I’m afraid it’s not that simple. I need to know what’s going on here and then I need to contact social services.’
‘Why would you need to contact them?’ Pixie gasped in dismay, the colour draining from her face.
‘Come in, sit down,’ Tor repeated steadily, wondering why she was so skittish and reluctant to speak up when presumably the baby had been dropped as a most effective way of grabbing his attention and forcing such a meeting. ‘And then we can talk.’
Pixie clenched her teeth together hard and steeled herself to walk into the book-lined room. He planted a seat down in front of his desk and tapped it.
Pixie slung him a mutinous glance. ‘I’m not sitting down while you stand over me,’ she warned him. ‘Where’s my son?’
‘In a safe environment being cared for by a nanny. If it makes you feel more secure, I will sit down as well,’ Tor breathed impatiently, stepping back behind his desk and dropping down into the leather office chair there.
‘You mentioned social services,’ Pixie reminded him tautly. ‘Why?’
Tor ignored the question. First, he wanted some facts. ‘Who was the man who left the baby outside this house?’
Pixie stiffened. ‘My half-brother, Jordan. We had an argument...er...a misunderstanding,’ she corrected uncomfortably.