Page 22 of Forgotten Mistress, Secret Love-Child
What did she hope to achieve? Money? Position? A hint of respectability even though her child was born out of wedlock?
But why hadn’t she come forward if she’d wanted to try screwing cash from him? Was she waiting for the most auspicious time to approach him?
As if there would ever be a good time for such a plan!
He felt his lips stretch in a grimace of distaste that bared his teeth. His nostrils flared and the blood pounded loud and fast in his ears.
‘Wait here,’ he barked. Without waiting for a response, he strode up the cement pavement to the eyesore of a building. A red mist hazed his vision. The need for justice, for retribution, spurred him on.
This was about far more now than curiosity. More even than the stirring of a libido that had been dormant since he’d woken in hospital twenty-two months ago.
Carys Wells had gone too far. She’d sullied his honour.
For that she would pay.
Carys had only just collected Leo from next door and put him down, still sleeping.
The rap on her door came too soon. She looked at Leo’s peaceful form and felt a tug of intense protectiveness. There’d been no time to decide how to deal with Alessandro.
Who was she kidding? She’d always been putty in his hands. Even now when she almost hated him, she had no illusions about that.
She’d never be rid of him until they had this out.
Reluctantly she walked through the miniscule flat, wiping her damp hands on her skirt. Her legs shook as another tattoo of raps sounded.
The glorious surge of anger had seeped away, leaving her prey to nerves and bone-melting exhaustion.
Fumbling, she unlatched the door and swung it wide.
Alessandro stood there, vibrating with a dangerous energy that wrapped right round her, squeezing her lungs. His eyes sizzled with a fury she’d seen only once before. The day he’d told her, with arctic composure, she’d outstayed her welcome.
Yet even now his potent charisma tugged at her. She bit down hard on her lip, desperate for the strength to face him.
Wordlessly he strode past her into the small sitting room-cum-kitchen. For such a big man he still managed to avoid brushing against her which, given the size of the entry, was a feat in itself.
Her lips turned up in a grimace as she pushed the door shut. He couldn’t bear to touch her now she’d called him on his behaviour.
How different from last night when his hands had been all over her, marking her with his own special brand of sensual possession.
Hot shame suffused her.
‘You used my name for your bastard child.’
She spun round to find him towering over her, the image of disdain. But his anger was no match for hers.
‘Don’t ever talk about him like that!’ She ignored the blast of his disapproval and jabbed an accusing finger.
‘What? You’re telling me you married after all?’
‘No! Why would I go looking for a husband after my child’s father had already rejected us?’
Alessandro leaned forward, using his superior height to intimidate her. ‘For the same reason you perjured yourself, listing me as the father on the birth certificate. To try to claim some measure of respectability. Or financial support.’
The irony of his accusation hit her full force. If she’d expected support of any kind from Alessandro she’d been grossly mistaken.
She might have harboured a fatal weakness for this overbearing, arrogant, gorgeous man, but, where her son was concerned, she refused to be bullied. She stuck her hands on her hips and stared back, glare for glare.
‘It was for Leo. He has a right to know who his father is.’
‘Have you no shame?’ Alessandro’s dark green eyes sliced right through her self-possession.
‘Only about the fact that I was once foolish enough to…’ She stopped herself in time. She would not lay herself open to derision by admitting the feelings she’d once held for him. ‘To believe in you.’
But she sensed he wasn’t listening. He was absorbed in his own thoughts.
‘Leo? You called him—’
‘Leonardo. After your father.’ She hesitated, aware now of her sentimental folly in choosing a family name for her son. She’d wanted to give him a link to his paternal family, even though that family had roundly rejected him.
Had she secretly thought one day Alessandro might be pleased to have the baby named after the father he’d lost? How misguided she’d been. He looked as she imagined some aristocrat of old must have when confronted with a troublesome serf.
‘You dared to—’
‘I’m not ashamed of what I did,’ she bit out between clenched teeth. ‘Live with it, Alessandro!’
A muffled wail sounded. Immediately Carys spun round and hurried to the bedroom she shared with Leo. She refused to stay and be reviled by Alessandro Mattani of all men.
