His Child: The Mistress's Child / Nathan's Child / D'Alessandro's Child. Catherine Spencer

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      ‘I’ll come at seven.’

      She shook her head. ‘Can’t we leave it until tomorrow?’ she pleaded.

      He gave her a look of pure scorn. ‘It has already been left three years too long!’

      ‘Then one more night won’t make any difference. Sleep on it, Philip—you won’t feel so…so…angry about it in the morning.’

      But he couldn’t ever imagine being rid of the rage which was smouldering away at the pit of his stomach. ‘How very naive you are, Lisi—if you think that I’ll agree to that. Either I come round tonight once Tim has gone to sleep, or I march straight in there now and tell him exactly what his relationship to me is.’

      ‘You wouldn’t do that.’

      ‘Just try me,’ he said, in a voice of soft menace.

      Lisi swallowed. ‘Okay. I’ll see you here. Tonight. Unless…’ she renewed the appeal in her eyes ‘—unless you’d rather meet on…neutral territory? I could probably get a babysitter.’

      But he shook his head resolutely. ‘Thanks, but no thanks,’ he said coldly. ‘Maybe I might like to look in on my sleeping son, Lisi. Surely you wouldn’t deny me that?’

      My sleeping son. The possessive way that he said it made Lisi realise that Philip Caprice was not intending to be an absentee father. Already! How the hell was she going to cope with all the implications of that?

      But what about Tim? prompted the voice of her conscience. What about him?

      ‘No, I won’t deny you that,’ she told him quietly. ‘I’ll see you here tonight, around seven.’

      He gave a brief, mock-courteous nod and then turned on his heel, walking away from her without a second glance, the way he had done the night his son had been conceived.

      She shut the door before he was halfway down the path, and looked down to see that her hands were shaking.

      She waited until her breath had stopped coming in short, anxious little breaths, but as she caught a glance at her reflection in the mirror she saw that her face was completely white, her eyes dark and frightened, like a trapped animal.

      I must pull myself together, she thought. She had a son and a responsibility to him. Today was his party—his big day. She had already messed up in more ways than one. She mustn’t let the complex world of adult relationships ruin it for him.

      She forced a smile onto her lips and hoped that it didn’t look too much like a grimace, and then she opened the door to the sitting room, where her beloved son sat with his dark head bent over his colouring, his little tongue protruding from between his teeth, just the way hers did. He’s my son, too, she told herself fiercely. Not just Philip’s.

      ‘Hello, darling,’ she said softly. ‘Shall Mummy come and help for a bit?’

      Tim looked up, his eyes narrowed in that clever way of his, and Lisi stared at him with a sudden, dawning recognition. His eyes might be blue like hers, but that expression was pure Philip. Why had she never seen it before? Because she had deliberately blinded herself to it as too painful?

      ‘Mum-mee,’ said Tim, and put his crayon down firmly on top of the paper. ‘Who was that man?’

      Not now, she told herself. How he must be told was going to take some working out.

      ‘Oh, he’s just a friend, darling,’ she said, injecting her voice with a determined cheerfulness. ‘A friend of Mummy’s.’

      But the words rang hollow in her ears.

      CHAPTER FIVE

      THE hours ticked by so slowly while Philip waited. He felt as though the whole landscape of his life had been altered irrevocably—as if someone had detonated a bomb and left a familiar place completely unrecognisable.

      He went through the motions of working. He faxed the States. He replied to his e-mails. He made phone-calls to his London office, and it seemed from the responses given by his staff that he must have sounded quite normal.

      But he didn’t feel in the least normal. He had just discovered that he was the biological father of a child who was a complete unknown to him and he knew that he was going to have to negotiate some paternal rights.

      Whether Lisi Vaughan liked it or not.

      He deliberately turned his thoughts away from her. He wasn’t going to think about her. Thinking about her just made his rage grow, and rage would not help either of them come to some kind of amicable agreement about access.

      Amicable?

      The word mocked him. How could the two of them ever come to some kind of friendly understanding after what had happened?

      He went for a long walk as dusk began to fall, looking up into the heavy grey clouds and wondering if the threatened snow would ever arrive, and at seven prompt he was knocking on her door.

      She didn’t answer immediately and his mouth tightened. If the secretive little witch thought that she could just hide inside and he would just go away again, then she was in for an unpleasant surprise.

      The door opened, and he was unprepared for the impact of seeing her all dressed up for a party. Red dress. Red shoes. Long, slim legs encased in pale stockings which had a slight sheen to them. He had never seen her in red before, but scarlet had been the backdrop to her beauty when she had lain with such abandon on his bed. Scarlet woman, he thought, and felt the blood thicken in his veins.

      ‘You’d better come in,’ said Lisi.

      ‘With pleasure,’ he answered, grimly sarcastic.

      She opened the door wider to let him in, but took care to press herself back against the wall, as far away from him as possible. She was only hanging onto her self-possession by a thread, and if he came anywhere near her she would lose it completely. But he still came close enough for her to catch the faint drift of his aftershave—some sensual musky concoction which clamoured at her senses.

      He followed her into the sitting room, where the debris from the party still littered the room. He wondered how many children there had been at the party. Judging by the clutter left behind it could easily have run into tens.

      There were balloons everywhere, and scrunched up wrapping paper piled up in the bin. Half-eaten pieces of cake and untouched sandwiches lay scattered across the paper cloth which covered the table.

      Philip frowned. ‘Weren’t they hungry?’

      ‘They only ever eat the crisps.’

      ‘I see.’ He looked around the room in slight bemusement. ‘They certainly know how to make a mess, don’t they?’

      Lisi gave a rueful smile, thinking that maybe they could be civil to one another. ‘I should have cleared it away, but I wanted to read Tim a story from one of his new books.’

      The mention of Tim’s name reminded him of why he was there. ‘Very commendable,’ he observed sardonically.

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