Heir To His Legacy: His Unexpected Legacy / His Instant Heir / One Night Heir. Chantelle Shaw

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СКАЧАТЬ places, she pulled on jeans and an old T-shirt and quickly brushed her hair, but resisted the urge to put on a bit of make-up. It wasn’t as if she wanted to make herself look attractive for Sergio, she reminded herself firmly.

      A tantalising aroma of spicy food met her as she walked into the kitchen, reminding her that she had been too busy to eat lunch. Sergio was opening cartons of take-away food. He had found plates and cutlery, and she saw that he had washed up the breakfast bowls.

      ‘I ordered Thai,’ he said, glancing at her. ‘I remembered you like it and I’m guessing you haven’t eaten tonight. There’s nothing in the fridge except for a couple of out-of-date yoghurts. What had you planned to give Nico for dinner?’

      She prickled at the implied criticism in his voice. ‘I was going to call in at the supermarket on the way home from nursery. Here’s your bedding,’ she murmured, handing him the pillow and blanket.

      He gave her a sardonic look when he felt the coarse woollen blanket. ‘I’ve heard of monks wearing hair shirts. Have you decided that I should serve some sort of penance?’ he queried drily.

      She flushed. ‘You could always go back to your hotel.’

      ‘And give you an opportunity to steal Nico away?’ He gave a bitter laugh. ‘Not a chance, Krissie.’

      His use of the nickname that only he had ever called her by twisted a knife in Kristen’s heart, but somehow she managed to give a shrug as she sat down and began to help herself to food. Sergio opened a bottle of red wine that she assumed had been delivered with the meal, but when he went to fill her glass she shook her head.

      ‘Not for me, thanks. I rarely drink wine.’

      His brows rose. ‘Then how do you explain the half a dozen empty bottles that I put in the recycling bin?’

      ‘A few of my girlfriends came over last night. One of them has just gone through an acrimonious divorce and she wanted to celebrate being free and single again.’

      ‘And where was Nico while this drunken party was going on?’

      ‘It wasn’t a drunken party!’ She glared at him. ‘The girls just had a few drinks. Nico was tucked up safely in bed, and I didn’t touch any alcohol. I am a responsible parent.’

      ‘What about on Friday evening?’ Sergio pressed. ‘Where was Nico while you were in my bed?’

      Kristen choked on a prawn ball. ‘I certainly didn’t leave him on his own, if that’s what you’re implying. My neighbour babysat. Nico was in bed asleep before I left, but he knows Sally very well, and she adores him.’

      ‘You still haven’t explained why you were pretending to be a waitress at the party.’

      ‘The waitress bit was a misunderstanding.’ Kristen’s appetite suddenly disappeared. Sergio had finished his meal and she collected up the plates and carried them over to the sink. ‘Do you want to go into the sitting room while I make some coffee? There are a few photo albums with pictures of Nico in the bureau. Feel free to take a look at them.’

      She could tell he was curious to know why she was determined to change the subject of her visit to the Hotel Royale, but to her relief he made no comment as he strolled out of the kitchen.

      Five minutes later, when Kristen carried a tray into the sitting room, she found Sergio inspecting her huge array of gymnastics medals and trophies that she kept in a glass cabinet.

      He turned to her and took the cup of coffee she handed him. ‘Do you ever resent that you gave up your sport for Nico?’

      ‘Not at all, although I can’t deny that I sometimes wonder whether I would have been good enough to win a world championship title,’ Kristen replied honestly.

      ‘So when you returned to England and discovered you were still expecting, it didn’t cross your mind to end the pregnancy?’

      She drew a sharp breath, ‘Of course not. I was devastated when I had a miscarriage, and to be told that I was going to have a baby after all was wonderful—it felt like a miracle. How could you think I might not have wanted our child?’ She couldn’t disguise the tremor of hurt in her voice.

      It probably had something to do with the fact that when he had been a child his mother had frequently told him she had not planned to fall pregnant with him and his twin brother and wished she’d had a termination, Sergio thought to himself. He shrugged. ‘When we met, your pursuit of a gymnastics career bordered on obsessive. You might have considered sacrificing an unplanned pregnancy. After all, you put gymnastics before our relationship.’

      ‘That’s not true!’ Kristen was stung by the unfairness of his accusation.

      ‘You left me to devote yourself to achieving your dream of sporting glory.’

      ‘I left because you wanted our relationship, such as it was, to be solely on your terms. You demanded that I should give up my life—my gymnastics training, my university studies—to be your mistress, but you refused to make any compromises,’ Kristen said hotly. ‘The only thing that was important to you was your career. You travelled the world in pursuit of the next deal, the next million pounds to add to your fortune, but you refused to acknowledge that my dreams were important to me.’

      She bit her lip. ‘Our relationship was just about sex as far as you were concerned, wasn’t it, Sergio?’ Her anger faded as quickly as it had flared and left her with a dull ache in her chest. There was no point in opening up old wounds. ‘You asked me to be your mistress, but in the same breath you told me that you were not interested in commitment. What did you expect me to do,’ she asked bitterly, ‘give up everything I’d worked so hard for, for an affair that might last a few months at most?’

      ‘I couldn’t give you what you wanted.’ Sergio’s voice was emotionless, but Kristen was shocked to see a pained, almost tortured look in his eyes before he brought himself under control and his face became its usual expressionless mask. ‘I knew you hoped for more from me—women invariably do,’ he said sardonically. ‘When you returned to England I realised it was for the best.’

      ‘And so you married someone else.’ Kristen felt hurt that he had lumped her with his countless other mistresses and had regarded her as needy just because she had hoped for a more meaningful relationship with him than simply sharing his bed. ‘Your Sicilian woman must have been very special for you to have overcome your objection to commitment.’

      For a fleeting moment she sensed that he was tempted to talk about his first marriage, but he gave a non-committal shrug.

      ‘Yes, she was.’

      He picked up the photo album that he had been looking at earlier and stared at a picture of Nico as a newborn baby. ‘He looked so tiny when he was born. What did he weigh?’

      ‘He was a few weeks early and he was just over two kilograms, but I fed him myself and he quickly gained weight.’

      Sergio studied the photo, which had clearly been taken in the hospital soon after Kristen had given birth to Nico. She looked very young and scared as she clutched the tiny baby in her arms. Anger burned inside him—anger at her for robbing him of the first years of his son’s life, but a greater anger with himself because he had not followed his instincts four years ago and gone after her. She had dented his pride when she had refused to be his mistress, he acknowledged. СКАЧАТЬ