by Various
‘I believe you are protesting too much, Anna,’ Luc mocked, far from over the shock of discovering exactly who this woman was.
Just the name Balfour was synonymous with scandal. With beauty, glamour and style also, Luc allowed grudgingly, but most especially with scandal.
Luc had spent the past few years completely avoiding the sort of publicity that the Balfour family, the Balfour daughters in particular, seemed to take such delight in creating. Hardly a day went by, it seemed, when one or the other of them did not appear at the centre of one scandal or other.
Admittedly, Luc never bothered to read anything that was written about them in the newspapers, deciding that they were a group of silly young women with more money than sense.
Much like he had been until four years ago?
Perhaps.
Although he seemed to recall there had been an even bigger than normal Balfour family scandal on the front page of every national and international newspaper the previous month. Something to do with one of the daughters being illegitimate…?
Oscar Balfour had so many daughters—seven, no, eight at the last count—that Luc was surprised that anyone cared about whether or not they were all legitimate!
His top lip curled contemptuously. ‘Perhaps you would rather not have dinner with me this evening after all?’
Annie easily guessed the reason for the contempt she could clearly see in Luc’s expression. Not only were her sisters always involved in one scandal after another, but Annie herself was the single mother of a three-year-old boy.
Whether to tell Luc that Oliver was also his son was something that Annie was still undecided about. Even more so after seeing the contempt Luc had for her whole family!
‘You’ve decided we have nothing to talk about after all?’ she said sarcastically.
His jaw hardened perceptively. ‘Nothing that would not result in more insults being traded between us, no.’
Annie felt the stinging heat of mortification in her cheeks. ‘Never heard the saying about people in glass houses, Luc? I seem to remember that Luca de Salvatore was something of a wild child in his youth,’ she added as Luc raised questioning brows.
A nerve started pulsing in his tightly clenched jaw. ‘Fortunately, I grew up.’
‘You aren’t the only one who had to grow up fast, Luc—’ Annie broke off abruptly, realising she had said too much when she saw the glitter of speculation in those narrowed dark eyes. ‘If you wouldn’t mind opening the lift doors now?’ she prompted stiffly. ‘I have some papers that I need to read through and fax to my father this evening.’
After Luc’s reaction to learning exactly who she was, Annie also had a lot more thinking to do!
Annie had never confided the identity of Oliver’s father to anyone. How could she, when until today she’d had no idea that the Luc of four and a half years ago was actually the billionaire businessman Luca de Salvatore! But she knew exactly who he was now. And that knowledge only made her decision concerning whether or not to tell him about Oliver all the harder to make.
Luca de Salvatore was a hard and remorseless man. A man who would maybe not want to just play the active role in Oliver’s life that she was prepared to offer him, but to take Oliver away from her completely…
Luc gave a humourless smile. ‘So you work for your father?’
‘And I hate it,’ she admitted immediately.
‘Then why do it?’
‘Why?’ she echoed. ‘Because, despite what you might think to the contrary, I needed a job to earn the money to keep both my son and myself. And working for my father was the job least disruptive to Oliver,’ she added defensively. ‘Besides, you work for your own father, don’t you?’ she pointed out accusingly.
Luc’s eyes narrowed. ‘My father retired some years ago and left the running of the company to me.’
Annie eyed him mockingly. ‘Isn’t it nice to know that nepotism is alive and well and living in Italy!’
Luc’s mouth compressed at her deliberate insult. His father hadn’t just retired; he had been forced to do so through ill health, leaving it to Luc to restore the de Salvatore business empire after he had almost ruined it. Almost? His arrogant overconfidence in business matters had been solely responsible for bringing that empire crashing down around their ears!
He looked coldly at Anna Balfour. ‘In England too, it would seem.’
She sighed wearily. ‘You’re right, Luc, we’re only insulting each other by continuing this conversation.’
That was indisputable. And yet…
A few minutes ago Luc had wanted this woman as deeply as her heated response had told him that she had wanted him. Damn it, if Annie—Anna Balfour—hadn’t called a halt to that lovemaking Luc knew he had been perfectly capable of completing the act right here on the lift floor!
Such impetuosity, such stupidity, was completely out of character with the man he now was.
With the man he intended to continue to be.
Chapter Four
‘YOUR son is three years and eight months old!’
Annie had opened the door to her hotel suite in answer to a sharp knock, staring up at Luca de Salvatore now as if transfixed. He was dressed casually this evening in faded denims and a black polo shirt, but the roiling fury emanating from that hard, muscled body and glittering black eyes gave him the look of an avenging predator.
She should have checked through the spy hole before opening the door! Shouldn’t have just assumed that it was room service with the club sandwich she had ordered for her dinner! Should have—
What did it matter what she should have done before opening the door? The cold and furious Luca de Salvatore who looked down at Annie so contemptuously was more than capable of kicking that door down if she had refused to open it!
‘Isn’t he?’ he bit out harshly as the flat of his hand knocked the door out of Annie grasp before he strode past her into the sitting room of her suite, the depth of his fury a tangible thing.
Annie winced, delaying facing Luc immediately by lingering to draw in several deep breaths before she quietly closed the door and turned around. One glance at Luc’s ruthlessly etched features showed her those few seconds’ respite hadn’t changed the force of his blistering anger in the slightest.
Of course it hadn’t. Luc wasn’t stupid—far from it!—and no doubt he was perfectly capable of doing the appropriate maths and working out that Oliver was his son too.
The fact that Luc looked as if he were perfectly capable of strangling her with his bare hands and that he would enjoy doing it told her that he had done exactly that.
Annie ran the damp palms of her hands down her denim-clad thighs. ‘I told you earlier that Oliver is my son—’
‘While omitting to mention that he is also my son!’ he snarled, a nerve pulsing rapidly in the pallor of his tightly clenched cheek, those black eyes blazing dangerously.
Annie moistened suddenly dry lips before swallowing hard. ‘Isn’t that rather a drastic assumption for you to have made considering…considering the tarnished reputation of the Balfour sisters?’ she asked shakily.
Luc clenched his jaw tightly, his hands curled into fists at his sides as he resisted his inclination to take hold of this woman and shake her until her teeth rattled. To shake her until she cried out for mercy. To shake her until she admitted the truth to him.
He gathered his rapidly fragmenting control and took a deep breath. ‘Not when I have seen the evidence with my own eyes, no,’ he said.
‘Evidence?’ she echoed sharply, paling slightly. ‘You can’t possibly have seen Oliver since we parted earlier!’
‘Of course not.’ Luc’s mouth twisted scathingly. ‘I had my assistant in Rome fax copies to me here of photographs of the boy from several newspaper archives.’
And been shocked to the very centre of his being as he had looked at those photographs. As he looked at images of a healthily sturdy little boy with thick and curling black hair, and laughing eyes the same magnetic bl
ue of his mother’s, in a face that bore a startling resemblance to Luc’s own at the same age.
He was sure, certain, that this woman had borne a son from their brief time together four and a half years ago. His son!
A son whose existence she had chosen not to share with Luc!
‘Why would you do such a thing?’ she breathed.
Luc gave a humourless smile. ‘Curiosity, mainly.’ His mouth tightened. ‘I had no idea that curiosity would reveal your perfidy! Would show that unless you also made love with my brother—a brother I do not have,’ he added sarcastically, ‘that your son also happens to my son!’
‘I—’
‘I seriously advise you not to even attempt to lie to me, Anna,’ he said menacingly.
Her chin rose defiantly. ‘I’m not one of your employees, Mr de Salvatore, and so thankfully don’t have to take orders from you.’
‘You will take more than orders from me if you do not cease this ridiculous charade and admit that the boy is mine!’ Luc reached out and took a firm grasp of her shoulders.
‘Take your hands off me, Luc!’ she exclaimed.
‘It disgusts me to even touch you!’ He released her so suddenly that Annie thought she was going to fall over, Luc’s expression savage as his glittering gaze raked over her mercilessly.
Annie felt as if her legs would have buckled beneath her if she hadn’t grasped the back of a chair to steady herself. ‘What do you want from me, Luc?’ she asked weakly as he stood far too close to her and towered over her ominously.
‘The truth, of course!’ he said.
‘Why?’ she asked warily.
He raised an eyebrow. ‘So that I may begin the process of claiming my son, of course.’
Annie felt the heated colour drain from her cheeks and her mouth once again went dry. ‘Claiming him?’
Luc’s mouth thinned. ‘He is a de Salvatore—’
‘He’s a Balfour!’ Annie protested.
Luc gave a hard snort of derision. ‘And the whole world knows what a prestigious name that is!’
‘No less prestigious than your own past wild behaviour has made the de Salvatore name!’ she snapped back, her chin raised in challenge.
Luc became very still. ‘What do you know of my so-called past wild behaviour?’
Annie wasn’t fooled for a moment by his apparent calm. ‘I experienced it firsthand, for goodness’ sake. I’m the woman you picked up on a ski slope, spent the night with and then dumped the following day and forgot about, remember?’
Luc continued to look at her through narrowed lids. ‘It would appear that the only redeeming quality we have between us is our son—’
‘Oliver is my son—’
‘And mine.’ Luc’s voice became dangerously soft. ‘A fact that a simple blood test will no doubt prove if you continue to be difficult,’ he added confidently.
No matter how much Anna Balfour might try to deny it, Luc was certain he couldn’t mistake the evidence of his own eyes; he knew that the small boy in the half a dozen photographs he had looked at earlier was his son.
An heir who would one day carry on the de Salvatore name as head of the family business empire.
‘He has a name,’ Annie snapped.
Luc nodded. ‘Oliver de Salvatore.’
She gasped. ‘No!’
‘Yes!’ Luc insisted harshly.
Annie gave a protesting shake of her head, knowing that the full name on Oliver’s birth certificate, Oliver Luc Balfour, was even more damning.
She moistened dry lips. ‘I had already decided I was going to tell you about Oliver—’
‘When?’
‘Over dinner this evening.’
‘Why do I find that so hard to believe?’ Luc bit out scathingly.
Annie’s eyes flashed deeply blue. ‘Possibly because you choose not to believe it!’
This was worse, so much worse, than Annie could ever have imagined. Maybe if the Luc she had been involved with hadn’t turned out to be the reputedly ruthless Luca de Salvatore, she might have stood a chance of fighting this. As it was…
She had absolutely no doubts that all of her family—her mother, father, as well as her sisters—would stand with her on any legal battle that might ensue over custody of Oliver; they may be a dysfunctional family at the best of times, but when push came to shove, the Balfour family stood by one another.
Except in this case Annie knew that Luca de Salvatore—she could no longer even think of him as the Luc she had met and briefly been bedazzled by—was more than justified in staking his claim as Oliver’s father. There had only ever been one lover in Annie’s life, so how could Oliver’s father possibly have been anyone other than Luca de Salvatore?
She moistened dry lips. ‘What do you want from me?’
‘From you? Nothing! What I want is my son,’ Luc growled.
‘You want visiting rights? Joint custody? Just tell me what it is you want!’ Her voice broke emotionally.
Luc drew back sharply as Annie’s words unwittingly confirmed that Oliver Balfour was indeed his son.
He really did have a son. A beautiful dark-haired, blue-eyed little boy of almost four years of age.
Luc dropped down abruptly into one of the armchairs to stare unseeing down at the floral carpet as he took in the enormity of his discovery.
In all of his thirty years Luc had only ever given cursory thought to the day when he would hold his son in his arms. The first twenty-six years of his life had been spent in a whirl of decadence and overindulgence, and the last four Luc had been too busy rebuilding the de Salvatore business empire to think of anything beyond that. If he had thought of marriage and begetting heirs at all, then it had only ever been in the abstract, something to be contemplated in the distant future, once he was confident that the de Salvatore wealth and business prestige had been fully restored.
To learn that he already had a son, a son named Oliver that he had never even seen in the flesh, let alone held in his arms, was almost beyond belief. Almost.
Luc raised cold, narrowed black eyes to look at Anna Balfour as she stood in the middle of the sitting room staring down at him in wary apprehension. She was right to feel wary! Even now it was hard to believe this woman was the mother of his son. That her slender body had become ripe and swollen with his child. Her breasts would have become larger too, in preparation for that child’s birth. Had she fed him herself from those engorged breasts? Or had the spoilt and capricious daughter of Oscar Balfour passed their child on to a nanny as soon as he was born? To be nurtured and hidden away in a nursery while she carried on with her own life?
Luc’s mouth thinned ominously. ‘What do you think I want, Anna?’
Annie swallowed hard as she easily heard the edge of menace in Luc’s tone. As every part of her screamed in alarm at the danger she sensed in Luc’s too-still body and the coldness in those remorseless black eyes.
But it was too late—far too late!—for her to even attempt to avoid this confrontation. Maybe if she had told Luc about Oliver earlier today rather than letting him find out in this way…It was no good thinking of what she should have done; she had to deal with here and now, not what-ifs. ‘I’ll do anything you want, Luc, agree to anything you want, if it means avoiding dragging Oliver through a public custody battle.’
He raised dark brows. ‘What do you have that I could possibly want?’
She frowned her agitation. ‘Stop playing games, Luc, and just name your price!’
He regarded her closely. ‘You believe everyone has one, then?’
Her father certainly thought so—at least, as far as business was concerned. Had assured Annie on numerous occasions that it was only a question of finding that price. But this wasn’t a business deal. She and Luc were talking about their son’s future, not some inanimate object. And Luca de Salvatore was rich enough, powerful enough, to make a good case for taking custody of Oliver if that was the route he decided to take. A route that Annie wished to avoid if at all possibl
e.
‘I’ve usually found that to be the case, yes,’ she answered cautiously.
‘And you are willing to give me anything, Anna?’
The hairs on the nape of Annie’s neck rose in alarm at the danger she once again sensed in the very softness of Luc’s tone. But what choice did she have? What choice was Luc giving her!
‘Anything,’ she echoed huskily.
Luc stared at her unblinkingly. Relentlessly. ‘You love Oliver that much?’
‘Well, of course I love him that much!’ she answered impatiently. ‘What sort of mother do you think I am?’
‘I have no idea what sort of mother you are,’ he cut in harshly. ‘At the moment you appear to be an absent one.’
‘Oliver is at home, with my mother—’
‘That would be Oscar Balfour’s second wife who has lived conveniently close to him in the gatehouse at Balfour Manor since the death of her second husband?’ Luc drawled insultingly.
‘I live in the gatehouse at Balfour Manor too!’ Annie said resentfully. ‘As does Oliver.’
‘Could the reason for that be because Oscar Balfour prefers to keep his only grandchild, a grandson born out of wedlock, hidden away from the public eye?’ Luc’s voice was steely at the thought of his son being treated in such a way.
There had been very little information for Luc’s assistant to find and send to him on Oliver Balfour. Just the name of his mother and when he was born, and those few photographs that the press occasionally managed to snap of him when he appeared at one family occasion or another. Other than those things there was very little known about the young boy. Certainly any mention of who his father was had been conspicuous in its absence!
The hastily compiled file he had demanded Marco gather for him on Anna Balfour was even less informative.
‘Of course my father hasn’t hidden Oliver away.’ She snorted in disgust. ‘As you say, Oliver is my father’s only grandchild, and he absolutely adores him,’ she said.
Luc nodded tersely. ‘So much so, it would seem, that Oliver very rarely leaves Balfour Manor.’
‘I’m the one responsible for that decision,’ she said agitatedly.
