His own eyes closed now, and he nodded, as if dismissing all of the past for the moment. “When we are married, it will not matter. He’ll take my name, as will you.”
“No.” She shook her head. “You’re being ridiculous. You can move to London, by all means. Gradually become a part of his life. But I won’t marry you, Xavier. To do so would be madness.”
“Keeping my son from me was madness. This is the first decision you’ll make that has any merit, believe me.”
“Believe you?” She said with a nod, but it was a nod of dissent. “When all you’ve ever done is lie to me?”
“You can no longer bang me over the head with that. Not when your own judgement is so lacking.”
“I told you, I thought you were married. I thought you would be glad I stayed out of your life.”
“Glad?” His expression was one of barely-contained fury. “No man worth living would ever wish to be kept estranged from his own child.”
“You could have called me!”
“I didn’t remember you!”
They were at a passionate impasse, staring at one another, each with their own grievance firm in their chest, their conviction growing by the second.
“How could I have known that? Was I supposed to call you? To say, ‘Hi Xavier. I know I was just a sleazy hook up that meant nothing to you, but did you remember my name?’ Obviously not!”
“Obviously,” he interrupted with enough ice to freeze a volcano mid-explosion, “you were supposed to contact me when you discovered you were pregnant.”
“You didn’t leave me your number,” she said, thinking of the phone number she’d had. His mother’s. The call she’d placed to Maria, ready to be honest about her pregnancy, only to hear, once and for all, that Xavier had moved on. That had underscored her resolve, and she’d known – or believed at the time – that keeping Joshua to herself was best for everyone.
She paced towards a window that overlooked the beautiful private square that these houses had access to. When they’d moved in here, it had been summer. Beautiful and green with wildflowers sprouting up everywhere. Now, the trees had turned to wooden spindles, and the grass was crisp underfoot. Squirrels though brought a compensating degree of joy, with their furry little tales and curious eyes. Joshua could watch them for hours and Ellie could watch him, watching them.
“I cannot believe that.”
“You told me you’d call me as soon as you could, but you didn’t leave me with a way to contact you.” She wrapped her arms around the torso, not cold because of the winter’s day so much as the memories that were pushing into her mind. “It was very easy for me to believe that you had meant to walk right out of my life.”
“Even if that were so,” he said, frustration at his inability to recall the details and therefore defend himself colouring his tone. “A pregnancy changed everything.”
“Did it? How did I know I was the first woman you’d got pregnant? How do you?” She responded, turning around and lifting her brow expressively. “It’s possible that I’m one of several.”
He swore under his breath. “That’s not the case.”
“How do you know?” She demanded. “You don’t remember anything.”
“I remember you.” He contradicted, coming around to the side of the bench and then crossing the distance to her. And then he shook his head, the thought he was trying to express making no rational sense. “And I know I always use protection. It’s innate to me. I cannot believe I wouldn’t have with you.” His eyes narrowed. “Unless you told me you were on birth control? Or somehow manipulated me into believing we were safe not to take precautions?”
Her jaw dropped in disgust and surprise. “You have got to be kidding me.”
“What? Is that so implausible?”
“You’re trying to blame me?” She hissed, her head shaking so that her dark hair shifted around her shoulders.
“I don’t remember the details of the weekend we shared,” he said with a shrug, apparently unaffected by her offense. “It seems as likely as not, to me.”
“You’re unbelievable,” she said, jerking her head away.
“You’re saying we used protection?”
“Yes! We used protection!” She turned back to the window, the park across the street fading as the past overtook her mind. “You were pedantic about it and I was glad. It showed respect for me, respect for everything we’d talked about me wanting in my life.” She frowned and a little line formed between her brows. “I didn’t always remember, but you did.”
He expelled a long, soft breath from behind her. “So it was just an accident.”
“Yes.”
“Highly unlikely then that I have more children out there.”
“Not impossible though,” she couldn’t resist taunting him, even when she knew she was digging the knife in just for the sake of it. Because he was right – his use of protection had been ingrained.
“What would you like me to do, Elizabeth? Take an advertisement out in the all the English newspapers?”
“And the Spanish too,” she agreed with brittle condemnation. “I have no doubt you had women everywhere you went.”
“Stop right there,” he spoke the words with grim determination. “Do you know for certain that there were other mistresses besides you?”
She swallowed, refusing to look at him. It was one of the things she’d told herself, again and again, to justify her decision. If she’d been one in a string of mistresses, it somehow made his claim on Joshua even more tenuous.
“No,” she shook her head. “But I believe it very likely.”
“I don’t.” He swallowed, a muscle jerking in his jaw with the anguished movement. “I can’t remember what happened between us but I know certain things about myself. Like I saw you and knew you, and like I knew I would have used protection when we were together. I know that cheating is utterly abhorrent to me. That I did so once makes no sense and yet it’s obviously true. All I can think is that you were different. That there was something about you that made me forget, for a weekend, that I am a man of honour and integrity.” She sucked in a harsh breath as pain filtered through her, his words unconsciously hurtful for the way they segregated her into the ‘aberration’ column of his life’s ledger.
“It makes sense as to why I left you with no way to contact me,” he continued, his lips a grim gash in his face. “I believe I felt guilty at what I’d done, guilty at how I’d wanted you. I believe I regretted our time together and thought to run from that. I believe I intended to walk out of your life, Elizabeth, and never see you again.”
She swept her eyes shut but tears formed behind the lids, and she turned away from him, walking into the kitchen and flicking the kettle on out of habit. It did make sense. She’d reached that same conclusion herself, time and time again.
“I do not cheat,” he said darkly, firmly, as if the mantra could undo the stitch of regret that their relationship had caused him. “And I will be faithful to you when we are married, Elizabeth. I promise you that.”
5
“I’m not going to marry you!” She snarled, the very idea filling her with wet cement and panic. “You’re out of your damned mind.”
He eyed her with icy derision and she imagined for a moment what it would be like to sit opposite a man like Xavier Salbatore in a professional setting. What might it be like to be one of his minions, working for him, and incurring his wroth?
“Fine,” he surprised her by conceding a few tense seconds later. “That is your choice.”
She exhaled a breath she hadn’t even realized she’d been holding.
“You can be in his life,” she was spurred to offer, so relieved by his agreement that she found she wanted to offer him something in exchange. Perhaps this was going to be amicable and straight-forward after all.
“Oh, I will be.” He crossed his arms over her chest and a frisson of warning was back, filling her mouth with the taste of adrenaline.
“Fine then.�
� She swallowed, telling herself to relax.
“I’ll have my jet prepared for departure this evening. My assistant will come to collect him around five. Do not bother to pack a bag; I can buy whatever he needs.”
It wasn’t a question. Nor were they sentences that made any sense. “What are you talking about?”
“You’ve had the pleasure of raising our son for three years. Now, it is my chance to do the same.”
The world shook beneath her feet. “What?”
“You have had him for three years. I want my turn.”
“Your turn? He’s not a… a toy that we can share, Xavier!” She said, the words calm despite a growing sense of panic.
“No, he’s a child, our son, and he’s a person I should know intimately already. Does he like clowns or loathe them? Does he enjoy playing outdoors? Is he funny? Does he like to laugh? What does his laugh even sound like?” Each question had a bullet-like precision, landing squarely in her stomach with a wrenching, bloody burst.
“I deserve to know him as well as you do.” He spoke calmly but every line in his body was tense.
“And you can get to know him,” she insisted, ignoring the trepidation that was hovering in her mind. “I have no plans of keeping you from him.”
He arched a brow. “That’s hardly true. If I hadn’t discovered his existence for myself, I wouldn’t be standing here now, would I?”
A flush of shame heated her cheeks. “I would have told you about him.”
He swore in his native tongue, a word that needed no translation. He didn’t believe her; it was obvious. “Or would you have gone to greater lengths to hide him from me?” He prowled around the kitchen bench, stalking towards her, and she was powerless to move. “You had so many opportunities to be honest with me last night. You could have told me the truth about him, and us, but you didn’t. You ran away and I believe you had every intention of continuing to run.”
She didn’t reply; she couldn’t. Her teeth were chattering inside her mouth.
“Didn’t you say as much? That you would run away from me as often as it took?”
His lips were compressed in a line of furious disapproval. “But you didn’t mean that you would run. You meant that you would take our son, and would run from me, didn’t you?”
Had she?
“You meant that you would run and hide, with my child? As you’ve been doing these past three years?”
She shook her head on instinct, even when she couldn’t say with certainty what she’d meant, nor what she’d intended.
“So tell me, Elizabeth. Why should I not do exactly that? Why should I not take our child and hide him from you? Why should I not inflict the same loss on you as you’ve seen fit to hand me? All because I hurt your pride by sleeping with you when I was engaged to another woman…”
“Stop it,” she said angrily, and desperately. Panic had turned the blood in her veins to ice. The idea of what he was proposing made her want to throw herself on the floor and curl into a ball. “Just stop.”
“I will not stop,” he was relentless. “I will take him and I will keep him until your debt is repaid.”
“He’s not a pawn!” She shouted, and she reached behind her for something to hold onto, her fingers curving around the handle of the fridge. “He’s our son!”
“Yours and mine! My flesh and blood that you concealed and would have continued to conceal! My God, how can you live with what you’ve done?”
She was shaking all over.
“You think it does not matter? That it is not such a big deal? Then see how you like it.”
“Stop threatening me,” she demanded, lifting a hand and rubbing it over her eyes as though she could somehow erase this visage from her eyes. It didn’t work.
“This is no threat,” he said. “It is a promise. I will take our son from you and on his sixth birthday, we will discuss opportunities for shared custody. Understood?”
“No,” she shook her head from side to side, her body weakening. “Do you wonder why I kept him a secret? Look at the kind of man you are! It was bad enough when I knew you to be someone who would sleep with a woman while engaged to another, who would willingly engage in random affairs. But this? What you’re saying? You’re a ruthless, cold bastard and I hate you with all that I am!”
His eyes flared. “Hate me or not, it changes none of the facts.” His cold acceptance of her disdain and grief made everything so much worse. He was impenetrable, impervious to the emotions she was feeling and incapable of expressing sympathy or understanding. “Nor what I am capable of in the face of this, Elizabeth.”
She couldn’t stop the shivering now. It overtook her body. She squeezed her eyes shut as breath strained in her lungs.
“I want you to leave,” she whispered.
Silence fell, heavy in the room, and eventually, it emboldened her. She opened her eyes warily, to find him staring at her, a look on his face she couldn’t comprehend. But it was dark and angry, full of emotions that hurt to see.
“You have two options.” He spoke slowly, enunciating each word with a bite of derision. “Accept that it is your turn to lose our son for three long years…”
She sucked in a painful gulp of air and vomit burned her insides.
“Or marry me and raise him as my wife.”
The pain didn’t recede. She could hardly breathe. She was suffocating. “I can’t…”
He held a hand up to silence her. “You may choose what you can and can’t make your peace with. One of those two scenarios will play out though, Elizabeth. Decide which it is to be. I’ll come back at five to meet my son and hear your answer.”
And with that, he was gone.
Joshua returned from nursery school with a fever. His skin was pale, his eyes heavy, and he let Ellie cuddle him the whole way home – highly unusual for an independent little munchkin like him.
And she soaked up his clinginess, because after a day of angsting, she needed his hugs and love. She needed his sweetness and the reassurance of holding him close. But even as she did so, she knew one thing for absolute certain. She couldn’t lose him. Not for three years, not even for three days.
Letting him be raised by someone else was anathema to her, and she didn’t doubt Xavier Salbatore would do everything he’d threatened.
Oh, she’d fight him, but at what cost? Taking him to court would result in too high a price. Not financial, but emotional. What would it do to Joshua to know how deep his parents’ hatred raged?
What would Xavier say about her in court to discredit her? How would she fight back?
“I’m so-oo tired,” Joshua complained, and she kissed his curls and nodded, unlocking the door to their townhouse. It no longer felt like the lovely, homely sanctuary it always had.
She bathed him and administered some paracetamol, then attempted to get him to eat some toast and honey, and when that failed, she put him to bed with a tepid cup of chamomile tea.
But he took only two sips before snuggling down into his pillow and shutting his dark, heavy eyes.
“Oh, darling,” Ellie murmured, stroking his soft, damp curls, marveling at the face that was so like Xavier’s. She pressed a kiss to his brow and then snuggled his favourite toy, a panda bear, in the crook of his arm. Emotions swirled through her.
She bit down on her lip and left the room, throwing one last glance over her shoulder at the son she’d made with a man she couldn’t stand.
She pulled the door to Joshua’s room closed softly and then padded down the stairs to the kitchen, her eyes shifting to the clock on the oven.
It was close to five, but perhaps if she messaged him, she could put off the inevitable.
Just as she swiped her phone open and realized she still had no way to contact Xavier, for she didn’t have his number, the doorbell rang, peeling through the house.
She moved with alacrity, hating the thought of a sickly little boy being woken from his sleep, despairing even more so at the idea of the executioner’s blade
that was about to drop.
You can choose what you can and can’t make your peace with.
If only it was that simple! The truth was, she didn’t think she could easily make her peace with either suggestion!
She wrenched the door inwards without bothering to check who was there – even the way he rung a doorbell had a distinctly autocratic manner to it.
But the sight of him in casual clothes almost felled her. Xavier in a suit she could just about handle because she’d become used to that. But like this? In worn blue denims, a navy blue button-down and a leather jacket? She stared at him for several seconds before recollecting herself. She gripped the door more tightly, creating a barrier between him and the interior of her townhouse. “I was just about to call you when I realized I don’t have your number.”
His eyes narrowed imperceptibly. “No need to call me when I am here.”
“Yes, about that.” She cleared her throat, tossing a furtive glance over her shoulder. “Joshua isn’t feeling well, so this really isn’t a good time…” She dropped her gaze lower, noting for the first time that he carried a distinctive yellow shopping bag from Selfridge’s in one hand.
“What’s wrong with him?” Xavier asked, though the question was filled with barely-concealed skepticism.
“He came home sick from school.”
“Did he indeed? Well, isn’t that convenient?”
“No, Xavier. Nothing about my son being ill is convenient.”
“Our son,” he corrected. “And isn’t it possible you’re using him as an excuse? To delay giving me an answer?”
She blinked, his words unexpectedly commanding. And unwelcome, too. “He’s sick.”
He crossed his arms over his broad chest. “Then I will not take him to Spain right now,” he said through clenched teeth. “Tomorrow will do just as well.”
“Don’t talk like that,” she muttered, her insides trembling even when she appeared resolute.
“I gave you two options. What is it to be, Elizabeth? Marriage and happy families, or not?”
“Happy families?” She spat, the visage so awfully confronting that she stumbled back a little from her door. He took advantage of that and strode inside, eyeing her with a look of total disdain.
Claiming his Secret Baby & Blackmailed by the Spaniard (Clare Connelly Pairs Book 4) Page 6
