‘Look, we ought to shut the door—we’re letting all the warmth out,’ said Alexa desperately, telling herself that she must not go to pieces. She couldn’t just couldn’t—not in front of her son. ‘Giovanni—’ This time there was a new appeal in her face, a subtle but dignified pleading in her voice. ‘Why don’t you come back tomorrow? You could come for tea—you’d like that, wouldn’t you, Pao—’
‘I’m not going anywhere,’ said Giovanni smoothly. ‘As long as Paolo doesn’t mind?’
Openly fascinated by such an exciting-looking man, and enchanted to be included in an adult decision, Paolo shook his head. ‘Can you play games?’ he questioned, tugging at Giovanni’s dark cashmere overcoat.
‘Just try me,’ Giovanni murmured.
Alexa watched him follow Paolo into the sitting room with an expression which bordered on disbelief, wanting to pinch herself, to tell herself this wasn’t happening, none of it—from the moment he’d strolled into the shop this afternoon, leaving a trial of emotional havoc in his wake to now. Hadn’t she imagined there could be nothing as bad as his reappearance? How naïve could you possibly get? Because this was far worse—Giovanni discovering the truth in this way.
But there’s a reason you didn’t tell him!
It was imperative that she didn’t forget that and stayed strong—because her strength was her only defence, and she needed every bit of it to protect Paolo.
Ignoring the hostility in his eyes, which bored into her whenever there was an opportunity during Paolo’s sweet but unfair domination of the dice game they were playing, Alexa lit a couple of lamps and set about making up the fire. Only when there was a cheerful blaze crackling in the hearth did she venture into the cubby-sized kitchen to make the promised cocoa.
She couldn’t imagine the sophisticated and urbane Giovanni sipping the milky, chocolatey drink—but she included a third mug, and some of the gingerbread men she’d made with her son, which were nearing the end of their life but were still just about edible. And Paolo would be so proud of them, she thought, as she slid them onto a plate—before pulling herself up short and slumping against the kitchen wall in horror.
What was she thinking about?
She wasn’t thinking—that was the trouble. For a moment back then she had slipped into some kind of normal programmed response of a mother serving drinks to a guest. But she wasn’t. This wasn’t an exercise in Happy Families—not by any stretch of the imagination. Showing off Paolo’s creative attempts at cookery was one thing—but that was as far as it went.
Except that she didn’t have a clue what was going to happen next. Alexa wasn’t stupid, and she had a measure of the man she was dealing with. The very last thing Giovanni da Verrazzano was going to do was jump back on a plane and disappear out of their lives again.
So what, then?
So she needed to have all her wits about her, that was what.
By the time she brought the tray into the sitting room the fire had really taken hold, and the whole room was lit with a crackling warmth. Firelight was not just forgiving—it was as flattering as candlelight. It flickered and danced and created all kinds of illusions, and it hid the shabby and rather ugly reality of the room—cloaking it instead with the golden-orange glimmer of flames. The cheap rented furniture glowed as deeply as any antique, and you didn’t notice the rug was threadbare beneath the glimmering light.
‘Here we are!’ said Alexa, her smile stretching so that she felt it might split her face, feeling as if she was performing in some horrible, cruel farce.
Two faces were raised to hers, so heartbreakingly similar—but while Giovanni’s eyes glittered with unashamed enmity Paolo’s were filled with love and trust.
Trust.
Would he still trust her after he had found out what was now screamingly inevitable? That he had a father. Why had she never stopped to think about that before?
Handing out drinks which nobody really wanted, she could see Paolo trying desperately not to yawn. And, although she was dreading the moment when she would be alone with Giovanni, Alexa knew that she couldn’t put off her son’s bedtime any longer. Scrambling to her feet, she held her arms out.
‘Come on, sunshine—time for bed!’
But Paolo didn’t leap up for a monkey cuddle, the way he usually did—instead he slid his hand into hers in a newly grown-up way which tore at her heartstrings and turned to look at Giovanni.
‘Will you be coming back?’ he questioned.
Giovanni nodded his dark head. ‘Oh, yes,’ he said. ‘I’ll be coming back.’ And then, lightening his voice and his mood by a conscious effort of will, he dazzled the child with the full-wattage smile he rarely turned on. ‘Shall I teach you an Italian game next time?’
Paolo nodded. ‘Are you…Italian?’
There was a frozen, split-second pause, and Alexa had to turn her gaze away from the bitterness in Giovanni’s face.
‘Si,’ he said. For now was neither the time nor the place to explain that he also had Kharastani blood running through his veins and so, by implication, did Paolo. Because that was a very big subject for a little boy to take on board. ‘I am Italian—and it is the most beautiful language in the world. Did your mother never teach you any?’
‘Mamma doesn’t speak Italian!’
‘Oh, I think you will find that she does—don’t you, Lex?’
Alexa’s eyes were drawn back to his face—like iron filings drawn irresistibly towards a magnet. She swallowed.
‘Not any more—I’ve grown rusty.’
‘What a pity,’ he murmured, but the platitude was laced with steel. ‘Every child should speak more than one language.’
Alexa ignored the silken threat underpinning his words. All she had to do was get her son safely to bed without some kind of terrible scene erupting. ‘C-come on, darling,’ she murmured unsteadily.
She went through Paolo’s bedtime routine on autopilot. No time for a bath tonight, but tooth-brushing, hair-untangling, face-washing and story-telling took on their uniquely calming rhythm. It isn’t his fault that stupid grown-ups had made a mess of their lives, she thought to herself fiercely as she pulled the duvet back.
But as she covered up his wiry little body—clad in soft blue pyjamas with little trains on them—she was struck by the guileless innocence in his face. Had Giovanni once looked at his mother in such a way—as if she could answer any question he put to her, solve any problem which came his way?
‘I like that man,’ confided Paolo sleepily, as he snuggled down beneath the covers and gave in to a yawn.
‘Night-night, darling,’ prevaricated Alexa, and wondered why her guilt should feel so intensely strong—as if someone had just flung a dank bucketload of it at her and left her dripping in it.
I did it for you, Paolo, she thought, as she gazed at where his lashes had fluttered down to form two dark arcs on his smooth, pale olive skin. Only for you.
Had she somehow hoped that by spinning out her goodnights Giovanni might have gone? Slipping away into the night like a bad dream?
But he had not gone anywhere. He had risen to his feet and was standing in front of the fire, with the flames behind him transforming him into a towering and threatening silhouette. She could not see the expression on his face and she didn’t need to—because pure anger was radiating from him in waves almost as heated as the fire itself.
‘Shut the door,’ he said softly.
‘Paolo—’
‘I said, shut the door,’ he repeated, his mouth hardening. ‘Just do it.’
Alexa’s hand was shaking as she complied, and she needed every bit of courage she had ever possessed as she turned round to face him.
Giovanni stared at her, observing the dark-fringed eyes and the berry-coloured mouth which trembled in dismay.
Had Alexa been hoping that by the time she came downstairs he would have gone?
His eyes bored ebony holes into her.
‘So, were you ever going to tell me?’ he questioned i
n a voice of dangerous silk.
‘Giovanni—’
‘Were you?’ he continued. ‘And—if so—when would it have been, I wonder? When he was eighteen? Maybe when he graduated? Or would it have been when he got married? Would I have been the spectre at the feast, Alexa—the unknown father turning up to curse the woman who had denied him his flesh and blood for all these years?’ He lowered his voice and began to walk towards her. ‘And if he had died—’
‘Stop it!’ she choked, clamping her hands over her ears.
‘If he had died,’ he continued brutally, enjoying her distress and her discomfort because, damn her—maladizione!—she had not cared about his, had she? If he could wound her with his words then he would aim for the jugular! ‘What then? I would never have known, would I, Alexa? That my son had been born and had lived and died without me ever setting eyes on him?’
‘No!’ she moaned, because no matter how much she tried to block the sound out his words came filtering through, hitting her like a persistent, heavy hammer.
Brutally, he wrenched her hands away from the side of her head.
‘How can you live with yourself?’ he continued remorselessly.
‘I did it for him!’
‘No, you lying little bitch—you did it for you! You did it because you wanted to keep him all to yourself!’ He caught hold of her elbows, imprisoning her, and Alexa wriggled like a snake caught in a corner—wanting desperately to escape. But Giovanni was quicker than her—his reactions more alert. Without warning he levered her powerfully close up against his body, and as Alexa’s eyes widened with fear and with a terrible yearning sense of recognition, he nodded his dark head.
‘Si,’ he agreed grimly. ‘You feel the hardness of me? You feel how much my body wants you, even while my soul despises you for what you have done to me and to my son?’ And, in a gesture born more out of anger than frustration, he drove his mouth down on hers.
For a second she struggled, but the grappling brought her even closer—so that she could feel the hard, seeking heat of his body, imprinting itself on the softness of hers. With expert pressure he prised her lips open and drove his tongue inside her mouth with a violent, stabbing movement which surely should have had her gagging, not responding—wanting greedily to kiss him back.
‘Oh!’ Astonished, dismayed, and so hot that she squirmed, she felt the way he arrogantly pushed up her jumper—his fingers homing in on a nipple which was almost indecently erect through the fine lace of her bra—while his other hand cupped itself over her buttock. She heard herself moan against him, felt her knees give way as a wild thought flew unbidden into her head.
Might this not absolve her from what she had done? If she gave him this, might he not find a tiny piece of his heart to forgive her? To see it her way—to try to understand the terror of losing her child to a man infinitely more powerful than a young girl on her own?
Giovanni felt his hard heat threatening to explode, and the temptation to tear down her jeans and impale her right there and then, against the wall, was overpowering. He could kiss her fraught cries quiet—feel his own power and domination as he brought her to orgasm. And as she shuddered around him he could draw comfort from his own swift conclusion—for surely the temporary obliteration of sexual pleasure was the only thing which would banish the black thoughts threatening to drive him insane?
But something stopped him. And it was not the thought that his son might hear. His son. Giovanni’s hands dropped from her as if they had been contaminated.
‘Donnaccia!’ he hissed. Clenching his fingernails into the ball of his clenched fist, he winced, just stopping himself from drawing blood—and only then did his dark torrent of accusation flow over her. ‘Slut! How many men have you allowed to take you against the wall like this, while my son slept upstairs unaware?’
CHAPTER FIVE
IT WASN’T Giovanni’s abuse which brought Alexa to her senses—after all, him calling her a slut was nothing out of the ordinary, and if she didn’t want him to think of her that way then she shouldn’t have gone to pieces in his arms like that, should she? No, it was those two small words of utter possession which had sent hackles of fear prickling down her spine, as if someone was jabbing her with a million tiny needles.
My son, he had said. And the powerful words had been underpinned with both threat and determination.
Alexa’s world was threatening to implode, and if she didn’t do something soon—if she didn’t take back some kind of control—then it might very well happen, and it would be too late for her to do anything about it.
‘Get away from me,’ she choked, gasping in a shuddering breath of air.
‘You have a sudden change of heart? Isn’t it a little late for that?’ he drawled witheringly. ‘Why, I could be inside you now if I had not stopped!’
His contempt was so overwhelming that Alexa felt faint—until she forced herself to think straight. You did nothing that he didn’t do, and you are not a victim, she told herself fiercely. And the sooner you stop acting like one, the better for all concerned—Paolo most of all.
‘Can’t you see why I didn’t want to tell you, Giovanni?’
‘No, I cannot,’ he snarled. ‘Never in a million years!’
‘All through our marriage you accused me of sleeping with loads of men,’ she said shakily.
‘On the evidence of what just nearly happened, can you blame me?’ he said, his mouth curving with disdain. ‘Or am I to flatter myself that you’ve been waiting for me to walk back into your life to turn you on again?’
She tried to imagine his disbelieving scorn if she said yes—but that was a pointless path she had no intention of trying to set off on. Yet she had to try to make him see it from her point of view—she had to. Alexa steadied her breathing. ‘Do you remember the last thing you said to me as I left Naples?’
‘Ciao?’ he bit out furiously.
‘You said: At least we must give thanks that you aren’t pregnant—for how would we ever know the identity of the father?’
There was silence for a moment while he stared at her incredulously. ‘Are you telling me that you used a statement I flung at you in anger as a reason for not telling me that I had a son?’
‘It was one of my reasons, yes.’
‘And the others?’ he demanded. ‘Perhaps you’d like to enlighten me about what you felt gave you the right to play God with other people’s lives?’
‘Like your black jealousy, you mean?’ she returned. ‘The ridiculous accusations you kept throwing at me?’ she continued steadily. ‘The fact that you had me on a par with a hooker—’
‘You should have told me you weren’t a virgin!’
‘I didn’t realise that an unbroken hymen was a condition of marriage—or have I just been living in a different century?’
‘It was your deceit which initiated my reaction,’ he cut in icily. ‘And today you have proved beyond any reasonable doubt that I was right not to trust you.’
Shaking her head with frustration, Alexa could see the great communication chasm which lay between them. They had fallen straight back into the pattern of charge and counter-charge, and nothing was going to be resolved—not in an emotionally charged situation such as this.
‘I think we’d both better calm down a bit, don’t you?’ she questioned shakily.
At that moment Giovanni could have taken her by the shoulders and shaken her, demanding how she dared speak to him in such a way—like a teacher in charge of a naughty pupil.
Abruptly he turned on his heel and walked over to the window, which looked out onto the star-spattered night, and tried to will away the lump which had welled up in his throat and was threatening to suffocate him.
His son.
His son.
He stared at the tiny garden, his slow gaze taking in a small plastic tractor which looked unreal in the silver-soaked light of the moon—and that cheap little toy seemed to symbolise all that he had lost. Or rather, all that she had stolen from him.
How long he stood there he did not know—but only when he considered he could face her without wanting to utter a torrent of invective did Giovanni turn around.
She was watching his face carefully, the enormity of her actions slowly beginning to dawn on her. She wanted to cry—but wouldn’t her tears look like a self-pitying gesture from the woman whom Giovanni had always judged detrimentally and continued to judge still?
‘I’m sorry—’ she began, but he stanched her flow with the flat of his hand, slicing dramatically through the air—as if he was decapitating her words as she spoke them. And suddenly the path she had chosen seemed a blurred one, and she felt a great shuddering of regret. ‘Maybe I should have told you about Paolo.’ Her eyes searched his face in silent appeal. ‘I didn’t want it to turn out this way, Giovanni—honestly I didn’t.’
‘Oh, spare me your lies,’ he grated. ‘You didn’t tell me, and you probably never would have done. It was only chance which brought me here today!’
‘But I wrote to you once—when I was…pregnant.’ She saw him flinch at her use of the word. ‘Do you remember?’
His eyes narrowed. Memories were always distorted—had she written? Or was it now convenient for her to imagine she had? But, no, he did recall a letter—a stilted little thing, received when he was still angry and hurting and cursing his own stupidity and lack of judgement. In it she had wondered whether they might be able to have a meeting, and he had sworn, crumpled the cheap paper into a ball and hurled it into the bin.
‘That bald little note?’ he questioned. ‘There was no mention of pregnancy in that, was there?’
She had been testing the waters, wanting to see if they were grown-up enough to be civil to one another. And she had been aching, too—broken by the shattering of her dreams, her heart missing the man she loved. His silence had seemed so final—and to her mixed-up way of thinking it had seemed to be for the best. He had wanted her out of his life, so why complicate matters further?
‘No,’ she admitted quietly. ‘But you didn’t reply.’
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