The Italian's Secret Baby

She was cool, he had to give her that. ‘You didn’t ask me how I knew you weren’t his mother?’

She shrugged her shoulders and still betrayed none of the guilt he had expected her to when confronted. ‘I suppose I assumed someone mentioned it in passing. David, maybe?’

‘David?’

‘The vice-chancellor.’

‘You call the vice-chancellor David?’ His voice was heavy with suspicion.#p#????#e#

‘He went to school with my uncle, I’ve known him since I was a little girl so, yes, I do call him David.’

‘And he knows Sam isn’t your son?’

Scarlet shook her head in total bewilderment. ‘It’s not like it’s a secret. Everyone knows, I suppose.’

He looked at her, his dark brows drawn into a straight line.

‘Why? What did you think?’

His eyes were hidden beneath the lustrous sweep of his lashes as he looked across at her, but his attitude suggested he was wary. ‘Then who is Sam’s birth mother?’

‘My sister Abby was Sam’s mother.’

CHAPTER EIGHT

COMPREHENSION struck Roman with the force of a tidal wave. Of the scenarios he had imagined—and he had imagined plenty—this one had never occurred to him.

The people he employed on those occasions when he required a background check were both efficient and discreet. He could have had the information she had just provided in literally a matter of hours, maybe less. Instead he had taken a far more tortuous route, and had his DNA compared with the hair sample he had taken from the child.

At the time he had told himself that the fewer people who knew what he was doing, the less chance there was of the story leaking out. He’d wanted to know for certain he didn’t have a son without having to involve a whole string of people. Now he was forced to consider the possibility that the truth had only been part of what he had wanted—he had wanted someone to blame.

Not just someone.

The stranger who was bringing up his child without his knowledge had to be guilty of something—! He had wanted to confront Scarlet, to make this personal—it was personal!

His stillness was scary, she thought. It was actually a relief when his shoulders lifted and a soundless sigh shuddered through his powerful frame.

‘Was…?’

Scarlet looked away and with a gesture that was intensely weary rubbed the bridge of her nose; the glasses were gone but the habit remained. She blinked hard to clear her blurry vision as tears filled her eyes.

Damn—! She really didn’t want to cry in front of him.

It wasn’t as if she couldn’t talk about Abby without getting upset; she made a point of talking about her with Sam, who had a photo of his mother in his room.

‘Here, have this,’ he said brusquely.

She released a wry laugh as she automatically took the glass he handed her. ‘I was wondering if you ever say please?’ she explained in reply to his questioning look.

A puzzled frown developed on her smooth brow as their glances meshed. ‘Why are you here, Roman?’

‘Your sister is dead?’

Scarlet nodded, and took a swallow of the wine.

‘I’m sorry.’

‘There’s no need to be; you didn’t know her.’

She caught a flicker of something in his expression that she couldn’t put a name to, but it wasn’t there when he walked back from the Welsh dresser with a clean mug in his hand. He proceeded to slosh some wine into it.

‘It’s cheap supermarket plonk.’

He looked at her, his piercing regard intense. He drew a deep breath and his hands coiled at his sides. ‘You’d better sit down,’ he said abruptly.

‘People say that when they’re about to tell you something you won’t like hearing.’

He didn’t deny it.

Scarlet moved a cushion and sat down on the sofa. Her stomach was churning with apprehension.

‘You’d better sit down yourself,’ she said with an irritable frown. ‘You look terrible,’ she added, observing the grey tinge to his olive-toned skin and the definite tautness in the lines around his mouth and eyes.#p#????#e#

Her frown deepened.

He still looked pretty damned marvellous.

She watched as he did what she suggested, folding his long, lean frame into a bucket chair beside the TV. It was laughably inadequate for his length and he ought to have looked silly but he performed the action with his usual inimitable grace. Scarlet loved to watch him move; clearly she was losing her mind.

‘It upsets you to talk about your sister?’

Scarlet didn’t hear him at first, because she was covetously watching him, imagining the shift of tight, hard muscles in his shoulders as he moved. He had unzipped his jacket and underneath he wore a simple white designer tee shirt. It was fitted enough to suggest the strongly defined musculature of his upper body, a strong body.