The Italian's Christmas Secret

by Sharon Kendrick

  It was hearing someone else say it out loud which made it feel a million times worse—something Keira hadn’t actually thought possible. She rose unsteadily to her feet, terrified she was going to start gagging. ‘I... I’m going home now,’ she whispered. ‘Please forget I said anything. And...thanks for the drink.’

  Somehow she managed to get home unscathed, where her cold, bare bedsit showed no signs of the impending holiday. She’d been so busy that she hadn’t even bought herself a little tree, but that now seemed like the least of her worries. She realised she hadn’t checked her phone messages since she’d got back and found a terse communication from her aunt, asking her what time she was planning on turning up on Christmas Day and hoping she hadn’t forgotten to buy the pudding.

  The pudding! Now she would have to brave the wretched shops again. Keira closed her eyes as she pictured the grim holiday which lay ahead of her. How was she going to get through a whole Christmas, nursing the shameful secret of what she’d done?

  Her phone began to ring, the small screen flashing an unknown number; in an effort to distract herself with the inevitable sales call, Keira accepted the call with a tentative hello. There was an infinitesimal pause before a male voice spoke.

  ‘Keira?’

  It was a voice she hadn’t known until very recently but she thought that rich, Italian accent would be branded on her memory until the end of time. Dark and velvety, it whispered over her skin just as his fingers had done. Matteo! And despite everything—the wad of money and the blandly worded note and the fact that he’d left without even saying goodbye—wasn’t there a great lurch of hope inside her foolish heart? She pictured his ruffled hair and the dark eyes which had gleamed with passion when they’d looked at her. The way he’d crushed his lips hungrily down on hers, and that helpless moment of bliss when he’d first entered her.

  ‘Matteo?’

  Another pause—and if a silence could ever be considered ominous, this one was. ‘So how much did she pay you?’ he questioned.

  ‘Pay me?’ Keira blinked in confusion, thinking that bringing up money wasn’t the best way to start a conversation, especially in view of what had happened. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘I’ve just had a phone call from a...a journalist.’ He spat out the word as if it were poison. ‘Asking me whether I make a habit of paying women for sex.’

  Keira’s feeling of confusion intensified. ‘I don’t...’ And then she realised and hot colour flooded into her cheeks. ‘Was her name Hester?’

  ‘So you did speak to her?’ He sucked in an unsteady breath. ‘What was it, Keira—a quickly arranged interview to see what else you could squeeze out of me?’

  ‘I didn’t plan on talking to her—it just happened.’

  ‘Oh, really?’

  ‘Yes, really. I was angry about the money you left me!’ she retorted.

  ‘Why? Didn’t you think it was enough?’ he shot back. ‘Did you imagine you might be able to get even more?’

  Keira sank onto the nearest chair, terrified that her wobbly legs were going to give way beneath her. ‘You bastard,’ she whispered.

  ‘Your anger means nothing to me,’ he said coldly. ‘For you are nothing to me. I wasn’t thinking straight. I couldn’t have been thinking straight. I should never have had sex with you because I don’t make a habit of having one-night stands with strangers. But what’s done can’t be undone and I have only myself to blame.’

  There was a pause before he resumed and now his voice had taken on a flat and implacable note, which somehow managed to sound even more ominous than his anger.

  ‘I’ve told your journalist friend that if she prints one word about me, I’ll go after her and bring her damned publication down,’ he continued. ‘Because I’m not someone you can blackmail—I’m just a man who allowed himself to be swayed by lust and it’s taught me a lesson I’m never going to forget.’ He gave a bitter laugh. ‘So, goodbye, Keira. Have a good life.’

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Ten months later

  ‘I HOPE THAT baby isn’t going to cry all the way through lunch, Keira. It would be nice if we were able to eat a meal in peace for once.’

  Tucking little Santino into the crook of her arm, Keira nodded as she met her aunt’s accusing stare. She would have taken the baby out for a walk if the late October day hadn’t been so foul and blustery. Or she might have treated him to a long bus ride to lull him to sleep if he hadn’t been so tiny. As it was, she was stuck in the house with a woman who seemed determined to find fault in everything she did, and she was tired. So tired. With the kind of tiredness which seemed to have seeped deep into her bones and taken up residence there. ‘I’ll try to put him down for his nap before we sit down to eat,’ she said hopefully.

  Aunt Ida’s mouth turned down at the corners, emphasising the deep grooves of discontentment which hardened her thin face. ‘That’ll be a first. Poor Shelley says she hasn’t had an unbroken night since you moved in. He’s obviously an unsettled baby if he cries so much. Maybe it’s time you came to your senses and thought about adoption.’

  Keira’s teeth dug into her bottom lip as the word lodged like a barb in her skin.

  Adoption.

  A wave of nausea engulfed her but she tried very hard not to react as she stared down into the face of her sleeping son. Holding onto Santino even tighter, she felt her heart give a savage lurch of love as she told herself to ignore the snide comments and concentrate on what was important. Because only one thing mattered and that was her baby son.

  Everything you do is for him, she reminded herself fiercely. Everything. No point in wishing she hadn’t given away Matteo’s money, or tormenting herself by thinking how useful it might have been. She hadn’t known at the time that she was pregnant—how could she have done? She’d handed over that thick wad of banknotes as if there were loads more coming her way—and now she just had to deal with the situation as it was and not what it could have been. She had to accept that she’d lost her job and her home in quick succession and had been forced to take the charity of a woman who had always disapproved of her. Because how else would she and Santino have managed to cope in an uncaring and hostile world?

  You know exactly how, prompted the ever-present voice of her conscience but Keira pushed it from her mind. She could not have asked Matteo for help, not when he had treated her like some kind of whore. Who had made it clear he never wanted to see her again.

  ‘Have you registered the child’s birth yet?’ Aunt Ida was asking.

  ‘Not yet, no,’ said Keira. ‘I have to do it within the first six weeks.’

  ‘Better get a move on, then.’

  Keira waited, knowing that there was more.

  Her aunt smiled slyly. ‘Only I was wondering whether you were going to put the mystery father’s name on the birth certificate—or whether you were like your poor dear mother and didn’t actually know who he was?’

  Keira’s determination not to react drained away. Terrified of saying something she might later regret, she turned and walked out of the sitting room without another word, glad she was holding Santino because that stopped her from picking up one of her aunt’s horrible china ornaments and hurling it against the wall. Criticism directed against her she could just about tolerate—but she wouldn’t stand to hear her mother’s name maligned like that.

  Her anger had evaporated by the time she reached the box-room she shared with Santino, and Keira placed the baby carefully in his crib, tucking the edges of the blanket around his tiny frame and staring at him. His lashes looked very long and dark against his olive skin but for once she found herself unable to take pleasure in his innocent face. Because suddenly, the fear and the guilt which had been nagging away inside her now erupted into one fierce and painful certainty.

  She couldn’t go on like this. Santino deserved more than a mother who was permanently exhausted, having to tiptoe around a too-small house with people who didn’t really like her. She closed her eyes, knowing t
here was somebody else who didn’t like her—but someone she suspected wouldn’t display a tight-lipped intolerance whenever the baby started to cry. Because it was his baby, too. And didn’t all parents love their children, no matter what?

  A powerful image swam into her mind of a man whose face she could picture without too much trying. She knew what she had to do. Something she’d thought about doing every day since Santino’s birth, and in the nine months preceding it, until she’d forced herself to remember how unequivocally he’d told her he never wanted to see her again. Well, maybe he was going to have to.

  Her fingers were shaking as she scrolled down her phone’s contact list and retrieved the number she had saved, even though the caller had hung up on her the last time she’d spoken to him.

  With a thundering heart, she punched out the number. And waited.

  * * *

  Rain lashed against the car windscreen and flurries of falling leaves swirled like the thoughts in Matteo’s mind as his chauffeur-driven limousine drove down the narrow suburban road. As they passed houses which all looked exactly the same, he tried to get his head round what he’d learned during a phone call from a woman he’d never thought he’d see again.

  He was a father.

  He had a child.

  A son. His heart pumped. In a single stroke he had been given exactly what he needed—though not necessarily what he wanted—and could now produce the grandson his father yearned for.

  Matteo ordered the driver to stop, trying to dampen down the unfamiliar emotions which were sweeping through his body. And trying to curb his rising temper about the way Keira had kept this news secret. How dared she keep his baby hidden and play God with his future? Grim-faced, he stepped out onto the rain-soaked pavement and a wave of determination washed over him as he slammed the car door shut. He was here now and he would fix this—to his advantage. Whatever it took, he would get what he wanted—and he wanted his son.

  He hadn’t told Keira he was coming. He hadn’t wanted to give her the opportunity to elude him. He wanted to surprise her—as she had surprised him. To allow her no time to mount any defences. If she was unprepared and vulnerable then surely that would aid him in his determination to get his rightful heir. Moving stealthily up the narrow path, he rapped a small bronze knocker fashioned in the shape of a lion’s head and moments later the door was opened by a woman with tight, curly hair and a hard, lined face.

  ‘Yes?’ she said sharply. ‘We don’t buy from the doorstep.’

  ‘Good afternoon,’ he said. Forcing the pleasantry to his unwilling lips, he accompanied it with a polite smile. ‘I’m not selling anything. I’d like to see Keira.’

  ‘And you are?’

  ‘My name is Matteo Valenti,’ he said evenly. ‘And I am her baby’s father.’

  The woman gasped, her eyes scanning him from head to toe, as if registering his cashmere coat and handmade shoes. Her eyes skated over his shoulder and she must have observed the shiny black car parked so incongruously among all the sedate family saloons. Was he imagining the look of calculation which had hardened her gimlet eyes? Probably not, he thought grimly.

  ‘You?’ she demanded.

  ‘That’s right,’ he agreed, still in that same even voice which betrayed nothing of his growing irritation.

  ‘I had no idea that...’ She swallowed. ‘I’ll have to check if she’ll see you.’

  ‘No,’ Matteo interrupted her, only just resisting the desire to step forward and jam his foot in the door, like a bailiff. ‘I will see Keira—and my baby—and it’s probably best if we do it with the minimum of fuss.’ He glanced behind him where he could see the twitching of net curtains on the opposite side of the road and when he returned his gaze to the woman, his smile was bland. ‘Don’t you agree? For everyone’s sake?’

  The woman hesitated before nodding, as if she too had no desire for a scene on the doorstep. ‘Very well. You’d better come in.’ She cleared her throat. ‘I’ll let Keira know you’re here.’

  He was shown into a small room crammed with porcelain figurines but Matteo barely paid any attention to his surroundings. His eyes were trained on the door as it clicked open and he held his breath in anticipation—expelling it in a long sigh of disbelief and frustration when Keira finally walked in. Frustration because she was alone. And disbelief because he scarcely recognised her as the same woman whose bed he had shared almost a year ago—though that lack of recognition certainly didn’t seem to be affecting the powerful jerk of his groin.

  Gone was the short, spiky hair and in its place was a dark curtain of silk which hung glossily down to her shoulders. And her body. He swallowed. What the hell had happened to that? All the angular leanness of before had gone. Suddenly she had hips—as well as the hint of a belly and breasts. It made her look softer, he thought, until he reminded himself that a woman with any degree of softness wouldn’t have done what she had done.

  ‘Matteo,’ she said, her voice sounding strained—and it was then he noticed the pallor and the faint circles which darkened the skin beneath her eyes. In those fathomless pools of deepest blue he could read the vulnerability he had wanted to see, yet he felt a sudden twist of something like compassion, until he remembered what she had done.

  ‘The very same,’ he agreed grimly. ‘Pleased to see me?’

  ‘I wasn’t—’ She was trying to smile but failing spectacularly. ‘I wasn’t expecting you. I mean, not like this. Not without any warning.’

  ‘Really? What did you imagine was going to happen, Keira? That I would just accept the news you finally saw fit to tell me and wait for your next instruction?’ He walked across the room to stare out of the window and saw that a group of small boys had gathered around his limousine. He turned around and met her eyes. ‘Perhaps you were hoping you wouldn’t have to see me at all. Were you hoping I would remain a shadowy figure in the background and become your convenient benefactor?’

  ‘Of course I wasn’t!’

  ‘No?’ He flared his nostrils. ‘Then why bother telling me about my son? Why now after all these months of secrecy?’

  Keira tried not to flinch beneath the accusing gaze which washed over her like a harsh ebony spotlight. It was difficult enough seeing him again and registering the infuriating fact that her body had automatically started to melt, without having to face his undiluted fury.

  Remember the things he said to you, she reminded herself. But the memory of his wounding words seemed to have faded and all she could think was the fact that here stood Santino’s father and that, oh, the apple didn’t fall far from the tree.

  For here was the adult version of the little baby she’d just rocked off to sleep before the doorbell had rung. Santino was the image of his father, with his golden olive skin and dark hair, and hadn’t the midwife already commented on the fact that her son was going to grow up to be a heartbreaker? Keira swallowed. Just like Matteo.

  She felt an uncomfortable rush of awareness because it wasn’t easy to acknowledge the stir of her body, or the fact that her senses suddenly felt as if they’d been kicked into life. Matteo’s hair and his eyes seemed even blacker than she remembered and never had his sensual lips appeared more kissable. Yet surely that was the last thing she should be thinking of right now. Her mind-set should be fixed on practicalities, not foolish yearnings. She felt disappointed in herself and wondered if nature was clever enough to make a woman desire the father of her child, no matter how contemptuously he was looking at her.

  She found herself wishing he’d given her some kind of warning so she could at least have washed her hair and made a bit of effort with her appearance. Since having a baby she’d developed curves and she was shamefully aware that her pre-pregnancy jeans were straining at the hips and her baggy top was deeply unflattering. But the way she looked had been the last thing on her mind. She knew she needed new clothes but she’d been forced to wait, and not just because of a chronic shortage of funds.

  Because how could she possibly go shopping fo
r clothes with a tiny infant in tow? Asking her aunt to babysit hadn’t been an option—not when she was constantly made aware of their generosity in providing a home for her and her illegitimate child, and how that same child had disrupted all their lives. The truth was she hadn’t wanted to spend her precious pennies on new clothes when she could be buying stuff for Santino. Which was why she was wearing an unflattering outfit, which was probably making Matteo Valenti wonder what he’d ever seen in her. Measured against his made-to-measure sophistication, Keira felt like a scruffy wrongdoer who had just been dragged before an elegant high court judge.

  She forced a polite smile to her lips. ‘Would you like to sit down?’

  ‘No, I don’t want to sit down. I want an answer to my question. Why did you contact me to tell me that I was a father? Why now?’

  She flushed right up to the roots of her hair. ‘Because by law I have to register his birth and that brought everything to a head. I’ve realised I can’t go on living like this. I thought I could but I was wrong. I’m very...grateful to my aunt for taking me in but it’s too cramped. They don’t really want me here and I can kind of see their point.’ She met his eyes. ‘And I don’t want Santino growing up in this kind of atmosphere.’

  Santino.

  As she said the child’s name Matteo felt a whisper of something he didn’t recognise. Something completely outside his experience. He could feel it in the icing of his skin and sudden clench of his heart. ‘Santino?’ he repeated, wondering if he’d misheard her. He stared at her, his brow creased in a frown. ‘You gave him an Italian name?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because when I looked at him—’ her voice faltered as she scraped her fingers back through her hair and turned those big sapphire eyes on him ‘—I knew I could call him nothing else but an Italian name.’

  ‘Even though you sought to deny him his heritage and kept his birth hidden from me?’

  She swallowed. ‘You made it very clear that you never wanted to see me again, Matteo.’