by Dora Bramden
“You married a ballerina, but I wasn’t a ballerina anymore.”
She was going to be a woman with a child who’d make demands. She’d done the only thing she could; take herself and her baby away and let Alessandro get on with his life. He’d resent her bitterly if being a dad, before he was ready, made him give up racing. She’d endured parents fighting and being a little girl bearing the brunt of looks that withered something inside. She’d never let that happen to her son.
“You meant more to me than that, bella.” He gritted his teeth when he said it, as though the words were bitter in his mouth.
If only that were true but his actions didn’t prove it to be so. Their marriage had never been normal. He’d never even introduced her to his mother. She’d met his uncle on the day of their registry office wedding; his lawyer was also present for the nuptials. He was friendly but the man Alessandro called Zio had only nodded to her with eyebrows pinched together. He disapproved of Alessandro’s choice of bride. She didn’t see him again until the night she ran from the marriage that had started so passionately but ended up being a sham.
.“You were in Melbourne last year for the Grand Prix, you didn’t come and see me then,” she said.
“You didn’t call me last year either when you had an excellent reason to do so. Dio, you were always flighty, Katrina. You danced into my life two years ago saying your career meant everything to you. Then you flipped without warning and blindsided me, asking if I still objected to starting a family. Saying you think you could still have a career and a baby. I couldn’t agree to have a child while I was still racing F1 cars. They have a habit of catching fire when you crash. Champions die.”
“That’s why I was so convinced I couldn’t tell you about the baby. Maybe that’s why I didn’t think he needed to know you until later.”
“I know I was adamant about that, but to do this–not give me a choice. Keeping my son a secret. I can’t believe you’d do that to me. But you have.”
A spike of guilt speared her, but she gathered herself. “You could have found out about him anytime. All it needed was one phone call. You can’t judge me. If you’d come home that rain soaked night, we might have had a chance. But you went straight on to Japan from Castello Rinaldo.”
Alessandro’s hands left his pockets. He held one hand out to her. “You needed time to think about what you really wanted. One minute you wanted only to be the prima ballerina at il Teatro alla Scala di Milano, the next you claimed to want a baby.” His extended palm flipped over. “It was, at the time, out of the question for me. There was no point returning to argue about it.” His palms slapped and brushed against each other in a washing motion.
Katrina had seen that hand gesture many times. After a difficult phone call with the race crew or after he’d hung up from speaking to his mother. Now she was getting it. What ever he thinks now, on that night two years ago he had finished their relationship. Telling him that she was pregnant would have been a disaster. He’d have made her stay and they would have been absolutely miserable and he would have resented his child. She hadn’t been wrong about that.
“In my heart, you’d left me. But even then, I didn’t just pick up and leave. I called you and when you didn’t answer or call back I went to your office to find you.”
“I didn’t know that,” he said. His tone conveyed a note of surprise.
“Didn’t your uncle tell you? He was at the Rinaldo Engineering office. He said you’d gone home to Castello Rinaldo on Lago di Como and that you wouldn’t return. He also warned me not to follow you there.”
It had stung so badly, not being good enough. She’d never been taken to the Palace on Lake Como where his mother resided. “He said I should find a man who wanted what I did, a man who wanted children.”
“Wait. My uncle knew you were pregnant?”
“I was upset, and he demanded to know what we’d argued about. But I didn’t tell him about the baby.”
He growled. “Zio has a lot to answer for. Even so, there were choices that we could have made together if you’d been honest with me.”
“You should thank me. I’ve spared you the inconvenience of an unwanted child. I went quietly. No money changed hands, even though your uncle’s offer was most generous.”
“Why would Zio offer you money if you didn’t tell him about the child?”
She hated talking about it. It made her flesh creep, remembering how cheap he’d made her feel. “I can only assume he wanted me to leave Italy so you could get a divorce and choose a suitable wife from your own class.”
“I see. He’s interfered in my life again.”
“What do you mean again?”
“It’s nothing to do with you or our son. Katrina, listen. I’m not my uncle. I will make sure I am a real father to my child.”
“You act like being Alex’s dad is a simple thing that you can just suddenly do. But you can’t instantly be Alex’s father, you’re a stranger to him.”
“Alex, short for Alessandro. You called him after me so you must have wanted me in his life then.”
She hesitated and then nodded. Naming her baby after his father, the man she had loved, meant that she’d feel Alessandro was still in her life even though he didn’t love or care for her anymore. When she looked into her baby’s eyes, she saw Alessandro’s and loved that Alex was a part of him she could keep forever. But she had another reason too, perhaps the most important one.
“I did want you to be a real father to him. I told you I hoped you come find us in the beginning. Now I think at least he has your name and he will know who his father is.”
She never wanted Alex to experience what she had, life as the child of a father who didn’t want them. She carried that private pain every day of her life. She vowed her son would only know acceptance and unconditional love from her.
"Even if all we had left was a paper marriage, we created a child. Alex is my heir. He has a birthright that you mustn't deny him.”
“He’s a baby, flesh, and blood. He needs to be wanted and loved. He needs me.”
“My son needs an education that prepares him for what he’ll one day inherit. The Rinaldo estate is vast. There’s an extensive property portfolio, and the engineering company alone is...” Alessandro’s eyes glazed and he seemed to look into a nonexistent future. “He’ll attend the best University money can provide.”
“What if Alex doesn’t want to take over the Rinaldo Empire? What if he wants to be an artist like his grandmother? He should stay here with me. I’ll love him for who he is and make sure he’s accepted for himself, whatever he decides to do with his life.”
The importance of having loving parents was forced upon her in an accident that killed her parents and also crippled her. While grieving for the parents she’d lost, she’d had to wait for an operation because she couldn’t afford to have it done privately. But a man contacted her lawyer, offering to pay because he was her biological father. She’d gone to him with hope in her heart of finally finding a father who’d really love her only to have that hope thrown back in her face. She couldn’t let Alex hope, as she had, and be let down. She’d rather lose an arm.
“He will be welcomed into an aristocratic family that has a rich history going back five hundred years. He’ll be wanted.”
“Yes, I get it. Alex is the Rinaldo heir. But he’s not your puppet, he’s my baby son.”
“A baby now, but he’ll grow into a man. That is a responsibility I can’t ignore.”
So, all her beautiful, lovable baby boy meant to Alessandro was responsibility. If he really wanted to be a loving father, the kind who puts his child first, then she would believe in miracles. But Alessandro’s uncle had told her about the previous girlfriends Alessandro had tired of. Having children wasn’t part of his big plan. Now it seemed he had a new plan and needed his heir.
She stole a glance. He shoved fisted hands in his pockets.
His glinting brown eyes leveled at hers. Katrina’s body respon
ded to his gaze in a way that it shouldn’t. She’d banished him from her mind, but she’d dreamed of him. Each time she did, it was her personal torment to wake up, aroused and lonely. Her body responded to a phantom of him. And now, his appraisal made her overly hot. Her nipples practically burned beneath her leotard.
The jumble of warring emotions sparked a need to get away. “I have to ice my knee.”
She took a few steps but her knee began to throb in earnest, and her muscles turned to jelly. She reached for the chair, but her tremulous hand didn’t find it close enough. Alessandro was with her in a moment, one arm around her waist supporting her.
Like a rag doll, liquid but warm, she leaned against him and drew in a drug-filled breath of his scent. Then her eyes drifted shut. She had missed his arms so much. Too many times she had longed for them to wrap around her. Now she surrendered like nothing had changed. She was again at home, exactly where she should be. His scent carried her back to a time when she lay, languid and sated in their bed, her lips still tingling from his kisses.
When he stepped away, his hands still gripped her arm, but the spell was broken. She forced her heavy lids open and stared at her worn silk practice shoes. Like them, she’d once been shiny and bright, but the hardships of life had worn her thin. Patches covered the bits that had taken the most punishment. These shoes would be thrown away soon. Funny, men treated her like that too.
She lifted her gaze to meet Alessandro’s. His mouth was a grim line. He looked handsome, proud and sure of himself, but he was like a shadow in her life, something that flitted in and out and had no substance. She couldn’t cling to that. After all this time he appeared like an apparition, delightful and exhilarating then suddenly devastating.
“I am here now. Being a father changes everything.”
“You don’t have to tell me everything changes. I’m the one who cares for Alex. I put my career second for him and was happy to do it. I had options, but I chose my son.”
“A child needs its mother and father. You never gave me that option. But now that I do know, I claim the right to make my own choices.”
His words were the ones she’d wanted to hear in Milan, two years might have been a lifetime ago. But now she questioned what kind of father he would be. A man who’d just admitted to cutting her out of his life for wanting a family. Alessandro had been consigned to the didn’t-work-out basket along with the other men in her life, like both her fathers.
She pushed away from him and he let her go. She slung her bag over one shoulder and limped toward the door.
He reached out a hand – she didn’t know if it was to take the tote bag that weighed down her shoulder or to touch her. But he’d hurt her so badly, letting her leave for wanting his child. His career and family had been kept separate from her. She’d inhabited a tiny slice of his life, and he wouldn’t give her a larger share. She’d been treated no better than a secret mistress. Her biological father had kept her hidden as well. His greatest fear was that his son would find out that he’d had an affair.
She’d been crazy to expect fatherly acceptance from her mother’s lover. He’d refused to acknowledge her and introduce her to her half-brother. Her teenage fantasy had been stripped from her when he’d threatened to stop paying for her tuition at The Australian Ballet School if she attempted to contact him again.
She’d sold out once, to become a ballerina. She wouldn’t sell out again. On her biological father’s death, her half-brother tried to contact her through a lawyer. She’d refused because she’d made a deal with the devil and she’d keep it.
Everything in her power had to be done to prevent Alessandro from browbeating her son into becoming the heartless Rinaldo brand of man. That meant keeping Alessandro and Alex apart for as long as possible.
The sound of her toddler’s feet on the wooden hall floor stopped Katrina’s heart. Her little boys voice could be heard as he approached down the long hallway. There was no other exit, The father of her child stood between her and her son.
Alessandro’s head shifted turning an ear to the open doorway. His gaze spun to her face, his facemuscles tensed. Her heart squeezed. Little Alex didn’t know his father, the man he was about to meet if she didn’t stop him. She side-stepped Alessandro’s outstretched arm.
Three
Alessandro’s gaze followed Katrina’s retreat to the doorway. She wasn’t getting away that easily. The child in the hall had to be his, otherwize she wouldn’t be fleeing the room.
“Katrina! Wait!”
But his words died on his lips as a commotion at the door turned his attention to a little boy. Red cheeked and smiling open-mouthed he looked every bit a Rinaldo, from the soft brown waves and chocolate eyes to his grandfather’s smile. An overwhelming urge to sweep the boy into his arms gripped him. His heart lightened and his list of responsibilities dissolved into a heart-full surge of love and a fierce need to protect his boy. He took two steps toward him but a young woman loaded up with a large tote bag rushed into the room and grabbed the toddler’s hand. Alessandro took a hit in the chest as if a hand had snatched out his heart. His son stood within reach.
The young woman noticed Alessandro. Her face flushed pink. “Oh, hello.”
“Janet, this is Alessandro,” said Katrina.
The baby’s bright brown eyes searched the room till they landed on his mother. He raised his hands and was lifted immediately into her arms. Katrina rested him on the hip furthermost from Alessandro and shot him a warning glare, a lioness protecting her cub. She should know lions don’t eat their own offspring.
“Too tight,” the baby said as he squirmed. Katrina loosened her embrace and he smiled shyly and pointed a quizical finger at Alessandro.
The baby’s Rinaldo smile warmed a place in his heart that had gone cold when he was nineteen. When he’d lost a child a he loved because a DNA test demanded by his Uncle to secure the legitimacy of the Rinaldo line had turned the happiest time in his life to the bitterest.
This child had his DNA, according to a test Katrina had done. His lawyer had found the evidence before Alessandro left Italy. Katrina must have done that for her own reasons, a financial claim on his death was a possibility. But that didn’t matter now. He loved this little boy on site and nothing would stop him being a real father to Alex now that he had found him.
He could ensure that Alex received every advantage that money could buy. But more than that, the powerful effect of meeting his son steeled his insides. A bond…A loyalty born of blood. He’ll never let anyone take this child away from him.
For a man who was always meticulously prepared, he had missed the most important part of this. A powerful pull raised a fierce protectiveness along with the gut-searing fear that he now had something more precious than his own life to lose.
He walked to within touching distance and stroked his son’s dark, soft waves. A broad smile plumped Alex’s cheeks before he turned his face into the protection of his mother’s bosom. Alessandro’s heart filled. “Questo e mio figlio.” Tears pricked at the corners of his eyes. His son peeked back out and once again turned his big brown eyes on his father.
He pointed. “Da.”
The bond between son and father crashed over him. Drowning and pulling and changing everything. The important parts of his life, endless rounds of plane flights, business meetings and Grand Prix circuits, lost their top priority status. Without his son in his life, there’d be a barren place in serious need of reconstruction. He couldn’t lose another child.
“He called me ‘Da.' He’s trying to say, Dad.”
“He calls everything he points at, Da, even slugs.” Katrina stepped back away from his reach.
Loss of contact hurt like a piece of his skin had been stripped.
Alessandro shot a glance at Janet, sizing up the younger woman who apparently took care of his son. Her eyes followed Alex as she stood nearby, ready to step in if needed. He’d have to ask Katrina about her qualifications. Only the best should take care of his
child. Alessandro’s fingers ached to stroke his son’s rosy cheek, but as he tentatively reached out, Alex made a sound of displeasure at the tall, Italian, father he’d never seen before. He buried his face in his mother’s bosom. Alessandro pulled his hand back. Disappointment burned deeper than a hot coal in his stomach. “He will grow used to me in time.”
Katrina said, “Alex needs a bath and his dinner,” as she turned away.
“Very well, I’ll be in touch with you soon. But Katrina…”
Her shoulders stiffened. “Yes?”
“Don’t forget to ice your knee.”
“I can take care of myself.”
He ignored that last statement that was so obviously untrue. When he’d held Katrina a moment ago, he’d been shocked by how little she weighed. Keeping up the schedule of a prima ballerina and running around after a toddler was taking its toll. He picked up her ballet bag and walked them out.
Katrina limped as she carried their baby. The pain must be intense, or she would refuse to favor it. He handed Janet the ballet bag while Katrina strapped Alex into a child seat in the back seat of a Mercedes Bens four-wheel drive. At least she had a good quality car with a high safety rating for driving Alex in.
He’d have to arrange for a child seat to be fitted into his hired Ferrari, no, he’d be changing it now for BMW four-wheel drive too.
Alessandro dreamed of her again that night. More vivid than ever, Katrina had been whirling towards him while he had stood ready to catch her with arms stretched wide. She was tantalizingly close, but as his arms wrapped around her, she had spun out and away. This morning he woke at six, frustrated and cursing himself for wanting a woman who’d chosen to leave him. Until three days ago, he’d believed that had been the best option for everyone.
