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

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СКАЧАТЬ and she had seen no reason to stop taking it. ‘It’s none of your business why I was taking it.’

      I’ll bet, he thought grimly. ‘So why didn’t it work?’

      ‘Because…’ She sighed. ‘I guess because I had a bout of sickness earlier that week. In the heat of the moment, it slipped my mind. It was a million-to-one chance—’

      ‘I think that the odds were rather higher than that, don’t you?’ He raised his eyebrows insolently. ‘You surely must have known that there was a possibility that it would fail?’

      Unable to take any more of the cold censure on his face, she leaned over to throw another log on the fire and it spat and hissed back at her like an angry cat. ‘What do you want me to say? That I couldn’t bear for you to stop?’ Because that was the shameful truth. At the time she had felt as if the world would come to an abrupt and utter end if he’d stopped his delicious love-making. But she hadn’t consciously taken a risk.

      ‘And couldn’t you, Lisi? Bear me to stop?’

      She met his eyes. The truth he had wanted, so the truth he would get. ‘No. I couldn’t. Does that flatter your ego?’

      His voice was cold. ‘My ego does not need flattering. And anyway—’ he topped up both their glasses ‘—how it happened is now irrelevant—we can’t turn the clock back, can we?’

      His words struck a painful chord and she knew that she had to ask him the most difficult question of all. Even if she didn’t like the answer. ‘And if you could?’ she queried softly. ‘Would you turn the clock back?’

      He stared at her in disbelief. Was she really that naive? ‘Of course I would!’ he said vehemently, though the way her mouth crumpled when he said it made him feel distinctly uncomfortable. ‘Wouldn’t you?’

      She gave him a sad smile. He would never understand—not in a million years. ‘Of course I wouldn’t.’

      ‘You wouldn’t?’

      ‘How could I?’ she asked simply. ‘When the encounter gave me a son.’

      He noted her use of the word encounter. Which told him precisely how she regarded what had happened that night. Easy come. His mouth twisted. Easy go. She certainly had not bothered to spare his feelings, but then why should she? He had not spared hers. There was no need for loyalty between them—nothing at all between them, in fact, other than an inconvenient physical attraction.

      And a son.

      ‘He looks like you,’ he observed.

      ‘That’s what everyone says,’ said Lisi serenely, and saw to her amazement that a flicker of something very much like…disappointment…crossed his features. ‘And it’s a good thing he does, isn’t it?’ she asked him quietly.

      ‘Meaning?’

      ‘Well, I would hate him to resemble a father who wished that the whole thing never happened.’

      ‘Lisi, you are wilfully misunderstanding me!’ he snapped.

      She shook her head. ‘I don’t think so. You would wish him unborn, if you could.’

      ‘You can’t wish someone unborn!’ he remonstrated, and then his voice unexpectedly gentled. ‘And if I really thought the whole situation so regrettable, then why am I here? Why didn’t I just stay away when I found out, as you so clearly wanted me to?’

      She shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’

      ‘Then I’ll tell you.’ He leaned forward in the chair. ‘Obviously the circumstances of his conception are not what I would have chosen—’

      ‘What a delightful way to phrase it,’ put in Lisi drily.

      ‘But Tim is here now. He exists! He is half mine—’

      ‘You can’t cut him up in portions as you would a cake!’ she protested.

      ‘Half mine in terms of genetic make-up,’ he continued inexorably.

      ‘Now you’re making him sound like Frankenstein,’ observed Lisi, slightly hysterically.

      ‘Don’t be silly! I want to watch him grow,’ said Philip, and his voice grew almost dreamy. ‘To see him develop into a man. To influence him. To teach him. To be a father to him.’

      Lisi swallowed. This didn’t sound like the occasional contact visit to her. But she had denied him access for three whole years, wouldn’t it sound unspeakably mean to object to that curiously possessive tone which had deepened his voice to sweetest honey?

      And besides, what was she worrying about? He lived in London, for heaven’s sake—and, although Langley was commutable from the capital, she imagined that he would soon get tired of travelling up and down the country to see Tim.

      She knew how fickle men could be. She thought of Dave, her best friend Rachel’s husband, who had deserted Rachel just over a year ago. They had a son of Tim’s age and Dave’s visits to see him had dwindled to almost nothing. And that was from a man who had fallen in love with and married the mother of his child. Who had seen that child grow from squalling infant to chubby toddler. If he had lost interest—then how long would she give Philip before he tired of fatherhood?

      ‘I’d like to see him now, please.’

      This time there was no reason not to agree to his request, but Lisi felt almost stricken by a reluctance to do so. Something was going to end right here and now, she realised. For so long it had been just her and Tim—a unit which went together as perfectly as peaches and cream. No one else had been able to lay claim on him and, since her mother had died, she had considered herself to be his only living relation. He was hers. All hers—and now she was going to have to relinquish part of him to his father.

      A lump rose in the back of her throat and she swallowed it down.

      Philip was staring at her from between narrowed eyes. Did her eyes glitter with the promise of tears? ‘Are you okay?’

      ‘Of course I’m okay,’ she answered unconvincingly. ‘Why shouldn’t I be?’

      ‘Because you’ve gone so pale.’

      ‘I am pale, Philip—you know that.’ He had told her so that night in his arms. ‘Pale as the moon,’ he had whispered, as his lips had burned fire along her flesh. ‘Come with me,’ she said slowly.

      The two of them walked with exaggerated care towards the closed door with its hand-painted sign saying, ‘Tim’s Room’.

      Lisi pushed the door open quietly and tiptoed over to the bed, where a little hump lay tucked beneath a Mickey-Mouse duvet, and Philip was surprised by the clamour of a far-distant memory. So she still had a thing about Disney, did she?

      He went to stand beside her, and looked down, unprepared for the kick of some primitive emotion deep inside him. The sleeping child looked almost unbearably peaceful, with only one small lock of dark hair obscuring the pure lines of a flawless cheek. His lashes were long, he realised—as long as Lisi’s—and his mouth was half open as he took in slow, СКАЧАТЬ