Unwrapping the Innocent's Secret/Bound by Their Nine-Month Scandal

by Caitlin Crews

  That thought kicked her temper back into gear, and she frowned at herself in the reflection of the windows, because why was she trying to impress Pascal? Surely she should have gone the other direction and left herself and the cottage as slovenly as possible, the better to drive him away.

  But she didn’t change her clothes again.

  Nor did she empty the basket of Dante’s favorite toys across the rug, the better to be crunched painfully underfoot.

  And at some point she would have to face what it meant that she wanted so desperately for Pascal to see her, and this home she’d made for their child, at their best. Just as she would have to face the electric charge within her at the notion he was coming here, and her sneaking suspicion that it was not agitation that was so bright inside her.

  She was terribly afraid it was pure, undiluted anticipation.

  Another betrayal in a day chock full of them.

  When his knock came on her front door—a hard, commanding rap—her stomach fluttered about as if it was beset by butterflies and she hated herself. Fully. But she crossed the floor to let him in anyway.

  She wrenched open the door, prepared to be icily controlled and cuttingly polite, and caught her breath.

  Because she was never prepared.

  Pascal stood there, in profile as he stared off toward the lit-up abbey in the darkness. The light from inside the cottage spilled over him, making a meal out of his strong nose and sensual lips. Even his scars seemed to enhance his appeal, silvery across his jaw, then disappearing beneath the collar of the coat he wore.

  He took his time turning his head to look at her, and when his eyes met hers, the world began to burn.

  Her first and foremost.

  “I have raced to your side on command,” he said, his voice low and laced with too many dark things she did not wish to understand. Not when she could feel them all, each individual thread and threat, winding around and around inside her. “Never let it be said that I cannot take an order, cara. Like a dog.”

  Cecilia ignored the way that wound its way down her spine, settling worryingly low in her belly with a pulse she wanted to call pain. But it wasn’t pain.

  It most certainly wasn’t pain.

  She forced herself to turn her back on him, then led him into the room as if he was as threatening to her as the tottery old priest—even when every alarm inside her shouted that it was exactly the wrong thing to do. That she should never turn her back on a predator like him, no matter how many too-hot memories she had of a time she’d been pretending she’d forgotten.

  But she did it, and though her neck prickled, Pascal did not leap upon her with his fangs bared, or any such superstitious nonsense. Of course he didn’t, she told herself sternly. She waved him to the sofa before the fire, with its newly plumped pillows and a throw folded just so along the back to hide the stains from small, sticky hands. Then she took her favorite chair again, stuck as it was at a convenient angle to the sofa that allowed her to be close yet not in reach.

  “No offer of a drink?” he asked as he shrugged out of his heavy coat and tossed it beside him on the sofa. And then he sat, managing to overwhelm the small sofa with the sheer magnitude of his oversize frame and those shoulders. Cecilia somehow doubted she would ever look at that sofa quite the same way again. “No aperitivos to help us pretend we’re civilized?”

  “This isn’t a social call.”

  “Not even a few olives. I feel like a savage.”

  “That is between you and whatever passes for your god, Pascal,” she said tightly.

  She regretted it the moment she spoke. And then with far more fervor when his stark mouth moved into something far too sharp to be a smile.

  “Incivility does not suit you, Cecilia.”

  “I brought you over here to discuss introducing you to Dante,” she said, reminding herself that she needed to stay cool, controlled. No matter how his presence here seemed to suck up all the air in the main room, making it nearly impossible to breathe. “But the more you play little games, the more I second-guess myself on that score.”

  The hint of amusement on his face was extinguished as surely as if it had never been there, and she detested the fact that she could feel it. As if he was doing it to her. And that terrible pang of something like panic, urging her to do whatever she could to make it come back.

  No, she ordered herself. This is not about placating him. This is about choosing between right and wrong.

  But he was looking at her as if she was the enemy. “I suggest that you proceed with caution. Do you truly wish to set up a scenario in which we use our child as a bargaining chip between us?”

  Cecilia blinked. “That’s not what I meant.”

  “I can’t pretend to know what you have been thinking about while you made me sit in that clinic and relive the worst time of my life,” he said in the same dark tone, his gaze so hard on hers that she was surprised her skin didn’t open beneath the onslaught. “Revenge, I assume. But in between amusing memories of my accident and what it took to survive it, I have been entertaining myself with tales from the worst divorces.”

  Once again she hadn’t seen him coming. A sensation she did not enjoy. “Divorces? What do divorces have to do with our situation?” She tilted her head to one side. “Or is that what passes for your usual leisure reading material?”

  “I was studying custody battles,” he supplied, and he settled back against the couch. Another man might have looked idle. Pascal did not. “The nastier, the better. And do you know who suffers the most in such scenarios? Not the battling parents.”

  It was the second time today that someone else had obliquely rebuked her for her selfishness, and Cecilia found it didn’t sit well. She was far too flushed. And she wanted to throw the lamp beside her at his head for daring to lecture her on parenting, even in a roundabout way.

  But she had spent most of her life learning discipline of one sort or another, so she kept herself still.

  “You don’t think we should use Dante as a bargaining chip, and I agree, of course,” she said when she could be certain the lamp would remain where it was. “Perhaps you could also stop trying to use him to manipulate my emotions.”

  She expected him to argue. Instead, something in his black eyes gleamed gold. He lifted one finger as if to shrug without bothering to expend the energy required. Somehow that small gesture was breathtakingly infuriating.

  “Fair enough,” he said. Which was even more irritating. Cecilia hadn’t expected him to be remotely agreeable—and in fact, she went still when he smiled at her, because she knew better. “But I know about him now. There’s no going back from that, no matter how much of a grace period I give you to deal with the reality you already knew. Surely you must understand this.”

  He was giving her a grace period—Cecilia ordered herself to breathe before she exploded. Especially because there was something about the way he gazed at her that made her think an explosion was precisely what he wanted.

  “I would prefer not to be threatened by you at every opportunity,” she managed to retort. She laced her fingers together in her lap when all he did was raise that dark brow of his, because throwing lamps would not solve the problem. No matter how satisfying it might be in the moment. “I cannot deny Dante access to his father. Just because he hasn’t asked about you before now doesn’t mean he won’t in the future. I suppose I’ve been in denial about that.”

  He only watched her, and though he still lounged there on the sofa, she didn’t make the mistake of imagining that he was at ease. His entire body was poised. Alert. As if he might spring into action at the slightest provocation. She didn’t want to speculate what kind of action that might be.

  Cecilia swallowed and found her throat dry. And forced herself to keep going, even though it was hard, because this was ultimately about Dante. And there was nothing she wouldn’t do for him. Eve
n this.

  “I don’t have a father,” she said matter-of-factly. “There’s no possibility of my figuring out who he was, and at this point in my life, I’m not sure I would want to even if I could.” She held his gaze, though it made her skin feel much too tight. “And I know your experience with your father was no easier.”

  He didn’t laugh, though his dark eyes gleamed. “That is putting it more politely than he deserves.”

  She inclined her head and extended her olive branch. “I don’t see any reason why Dante should have to suffer the things that we did, if we can prevent it.”

  “This is very noble-minded of you, Cecilia, after all these years that handily belie that sentiment,” Pascal said, and his tone was so sardonic it seemed to lodge itself between her ribs like a bullet. “How exactly do you imagine this high-minded approach to our child’s life will unfold, practically speaking?”

  That was certainly not the expression of gratitude she’d anticipated. Cecilia sat a little bit straighter in her chair, and frowned at him. “What do you mean?”

  “I assume you will oversee the initial introduction, as it were.” Another flick of that finger, a shrug and a dismissal in one. She wanted to slap at it. “That makes sense. Perhaps you should take this opportunity to outline your ideal visitation schedule.”

  She felt herself go still as if she’d blundered into a trap in the woods and had only just noticed the steel jaws lying there, primed to slam closed. “If everything goes well, you can come and visit him whenever you like.”

  “Very generous indeed.” His dark eyes glittered. “But you see, I do not understand why you should get to control how much I see the child that you’ve concealed from me all this time. Perhaps he should come and live with me, and you can come visit him whenever you like.” He smiled then, and it was not a pleasant smile. It was all steel and jagged edges. “Behold my generosity.”

  “I’m his mother!” she snapped at him, not sure if it was fury or fear racing through her then. Both, perhaps. She caught herself. “A child needs his mother.”

  “A child needs his father, cara. Particularly a boy. Everyone knows this.”

  “Are you threatening to take him away from me?” she asked, throwing it out there because it was the worst thing. And it was better to keep it right there in the light, where she could see it.

  Not that seeing him in the cheery light of this cottage that had always seemed so safe and happy to her before tonight was doing her any favors.

  “I do not make threats.” Pascal was still lounging, one arm tossed down the length of the couch’s back, his long legs thrust out before him. But his gaze was dark and intense and focused entirely on her. “You have vastly underestimated the seriousness of the situation, I think.”

  “Of the two people sitting in this room, I’m the one who’s been raising a child alone. I don’t think it’s possible to underestimate that situation.”

  “I mean me.” And she realized for the first time that he wasn’t sitting like that because he was pretending to be at ease. He was doing it to keep himself in check. He was doing it to keep his hands to himself, and not on any lamps. Or her. Cecilia felt a terrible chill sweep over her. “You have underestimated me, Cecilia.”

  It occurred to her then, as he looked at her with that same lethal steel she could hear in his voice and see all over his powerful body, that she really didn’t know this man at all. The Pascal she remembered had been compelling, magnetic and charming. But the kind of power that emanated from the Pascal sitting before her tonight had been little more than a spark in that man. The Pascal sitting before her had created an empire in his name. He had taken what little he had and made it a force to be reckoned with on the global scale.

  She had known a grateful patient in a hospital, alone and conversant with his own near-death experience and the relief that he’d survived it.

  This man was fully alive in every sense of the term.

  And he’d made himself a king.

  Had she ever been in control of this situation? But even as the question flashed through her, he was speaking again.

  “I allowed the shock to get to me,” he said in that same dark, deliberate way that was far more terrifying than any display of temper or emotion. “I spent the first few days here in some kind of a daze, trying to make sense of this thing. But your refusal to engage with me was actually a favor. I should thank you.”

  “I was protecting my son.”

  There was a hint of a curve on that stark mouth of his, but no more, and she thought it was cynical, at best. Not anything like a smile.

  “You can call it what you like. Once I saw the child, so similar to me in every way, everything crystallized.”

  He actually shrugged then, with his shoulders. That, too, was worse.

  “I don’t know what you mean by crystallized,” she said, aware that she was talking too quickly. Too nervously. “But I do know that I’m not going to—”

  “I’ve heard a great deal about what you will and will not do, Cecilia,” Pascal said, a dark storm in him that she could feel all too well even without any rain. “But now it is time for me to tell you what I will and will not do.”

  “Pascal—”

  But it was too late.

  His expression was raw again, but this time with a fury that scared her all the more because it was controlled.

  “I will not relinquish my claim to my child,” he told her. “I will not meekly hand over custody of him. You have already stolen six years of his life from me. I can never get it back.”

  Another shiver sank down her spine, edged with foreboding. She tried to say his name again, but this time nothing came out.

  Too late, something inside her warned.

  And she had never seen his black gaze as dark as it was then.

  “I don’t see any particular reason why I shouldn’t take him for the next six years, Cecilia,” he said, far too calmly. “Just to make it fair.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  PASCAL SHOULD PROBABLY not have taken quite so much satisfaction in seeing her pale.

  But then, he had never pretended to be a good man. Save the months he’d spent here, that was, when he hadn’t known if he would live through it—and even then, only until the end of it. When he proved himself as lost to decency as ever.

  “That is never going to happen,” Cecilia threw at him through bloodless lips.

  Her hands were in fists in her lap, and she was curled toward him as if she imagined she might take a swing at him.

  He almost wished she would.

  “It will happen if I want it to happen,” he told her, pitiless and very, very certain. “I’m a very wealthy man, cara. And wealth is power whether you like it or not, even up here in this valley time has forgotten. Do you really think you could best me in court if I did not allow it?”

  “Now we’re going to court?” Her voice was fainter then, her color even more pale.

  And he almost felt sorry for her; he really did. But he had been here too long, with nothing to do but think through all the possibilities—and he’d concluded there was really only one. Only one possible ending to this situation that gave everyone involved what they wanted. Him more than her, perhaps, but then, he hadn’t concealed a child from her.

  Cecilia hadn’t reached the same conclusion yet. But Pascal couldn’t say he disliked the opportunity to teach her a lesson as she made her way toward the only possible outcome.

  Especially because she still haunted him. Even when he knew what she’d done. Even when she refused to let him meet his own son. None of that seemed to matter when he dreamed of her soft mouth, her honey-colored hair. Those eyes of violet that should not have been possible, and yet were perfectly natural.

  She haunted him even now, when she was in the same room, dressed like the date he’d wished he’d had while spending all of that ener
gy looking for an appropriate wife. She didn’t look like a cleaner tonight. She was dressed with a simple elegance that made him want to press his mouth to her collarbone, then bury himself inside her, the only way he could take part in that kind of sophisticated poetry.

  It had occurred to him at some point over the past few days that he had been unable to find the perfect wife when he’d looked because he’d already met her. He’d asked her to marry him and she’d refused him, but that was just as well, because it had given him time to understand that his reaction to seeing Dante on that field was just that. A reaction.

  He had waited. And he had vowed, with every passing day, that she would marry him as he wished. And she would pay.

  Over and over again, until he was satisfied.

  And Pascal was rarely satisfied.

  “I will do anything and everything I have to do,” he told her now, with a quiet intensity he could see rocked her. “If I feel compassionate, I suppose I might allow you to fly down to Rome and see him one weekend a month. Perhaps two.”

  “One weekend a month—” she began, her voice wild.

  But she bit off her own words. And swallowed as if her throat hurt, keeping them all inside. Then she blinked rapidly enough that he suspected it was tears of frustration she was trying to keep at bay.

  “I asked you to come over here tonight to discuss Dante’s best interests,” she said after a long moment of keeping herself together. She’d even managed to keep her voice even. “Which I’ve come to understand included you taking on the role of his father.”

  “I am his father. There is no role to take on. It is a fact.”

  “But you don’t seem to have any idea about what might be good for him or you wouldn’t suggest these things.” Another hard, visible swallow. And Pascal found himself fascinated by the telltale pulse in her neck. It told him how agitated she truly was, no matter how calm she might be pretending to be. “Let me remind you that I’m the woman you made all manner of promises to, all of which you broke when you disappeared. I have no reason to assume you won’t do the same thing to my child. And instead of giving me the space to work through this—”