A stab of hurt pierced into him. He had been nothing more than a bad secret to be swept out of sight. A child to be avoided, forgotten, not loved and finally knowing why only intensified the pain. The shadows cast by his past reached far into the future, destroying everything. If he hadn’t been able to love Lisa, how could he love his child?
Hell, he really didn’t need this guilt now. Not on top of recent revelations and now today’s headlines, which played to the one thing he hated—being illegitimate. The bastard child of the man who’d broken his mother’s heart and wrecked their lives without so much as an apology and definitely never an explanation. He’d walked out one night and never come back. Max had tried to console his mother, but, at eight, that had been a tall order and yet another failure as far as he was concerned.
Now he had to face that man’s legitimate son. The son he must have really wanted. His true heir. His half-brother, Raul, had only said that as part of his will his father had wanted him found and brought into the family business. So what was this all about? His father’s pathetic attempts to make peace?
He moved away from Lisa and all the complications, wanting to get this meeting under way. He paused outside the restaurant, took a deep breath and then opened the doors and walked in. It was empty of anyone except a couple who were locked in a heated debate. They were lovers, of that there wasn’t any doubt, lovers who hated and loved with equal passion. Neither was he in any doubt that he was looking at his brother.
For a moment Max waivered. If he couldn’t do emotions, could he be any kind of brother? Savagely he pushed the thought aside. He’d do this to show his father he wasn’t completely cast from the same mould as him.
* * *
Lisa’s nerves were so taut she could hardly sit still, the events of the day, which had unfolded at breakneck speed, only adding to her nausea. Raised voices had come from the room and the hasty retreat of another woman had made her more anxious. It had all gone quiet now. Too quiet.
‘How did it go?’ She jumped up from her chair as Max pushed open the door. From the look on his face she already knew the answer to that. She also had so many more questions to ask, not least who was the woman who’d fled the room, almost in tears. What had happened in there?
‘As well as such a meeting can go.’ He fired the words back at her, his jaw firm and hard, and a tremor of fear slithered down her spine.
‘That’s it?’ Lisa could see the defensive wall being built around him. He was shutting her out, keeping her away from him, from his emotions, just as he always did. Her heart softened. She’d picked the wrong day to tell Max he was going to be a father.
‘For now, yes,’ he said, but from the frown on his face, the tight set of his jaw, she knew things were far from right.
‘Will you see him again?’
Finally, Max looked at her properly, as if he’d buried all the hurt that must have come from meeting a brother he’d never met. ‘I will, yes. We have agreed not to let the past cloud the future. In light of the press headlines we will present a united front, but now it’s over I can deal with other problems.’
That fear turned to ice, draining any warmth from her body. Was she just another problem to be briefly addressed then pushed aside to be forgotten? ‘What other problems?’
‘Don’t play the innocent with me, Lisa. You know as well as I do that your news this morning is a problem.’
Was he blaming her? The accusation in his dark eyes and laced into every word certainly made it feel like that. Anger fired through her, its heat chasing away the chill of fear. ‘One you no longer need to worry about.’ Sickness filled her stomach, but she remained strong as she turned to walk away from him, in disbelief as he said nothing to stop her. He thought that little of her and the baby he was letting her simply walk away. She bit down the cocktail of anger and disappointment and continued walking, each step almost killing her.
Max caught up with her and took hold of her arm, bringing her to an abrupt stop. ‘Where the hell are you going?’
She whirled round to face him, freeing herself from his grasp. ‘As far away from you as possible.’
He looked at her, a frown of worry creasing his brow. ‘That will not be possible. You are coming home with me.’
Lisa looked at him with total shock. ‘I am not going home with you.’
‘We agreed.’ His lips pressed into a firm line, but she was too angry, too irrational to care what he thought.
‘You agreed and you can’t make me.’ She knew she sounded emotionally unstable, but she couldn’t help it, not when her body was full of pregnancy hormones, which flung her from highs to lows in just a few seconds. Or was that Max? Was he the one turning everything on its head?