Her expression betrayed her.
‘I’d never have given birth to him if I’d known it would come to this!’ she spat bitterly, shocked into silence as he pulled her out of her seat and shook her until her teeth rattled.
‘Don’t ever let me hear you say that again!’ he grated furiously. ‘If I thought for a moment you meant it you’d be out of here before you could turn round—without my child!’
The unfairness of it all galled her. He had fathered Nicky without even knowing it, and yet here he was daring to accuse her of being an unfit mother.
‘Marry me, Briony,’ he said in a hard voice, ‘otherwise I’ll find someone else who will.’
‘Give me time,’ she said tiredly. ‘I must do what’s right for Nicky. Two quarrelling parents aren’t. Surely you can see that, Kieron? Surely you can see that marriage between us might not necessarily be the best thing for Nicky?’
A sound from the bedroom drew her anxious eyes, but Kieron was there first, and when she went into the room he was sitting on the bed with Nicky. The little boy looked solemn and uncertain. His voice wobbled a little as he spoke her name, cuddling up against her as she took him in her arms. He pressed his face into her breasts, ignoring Kieron, and for a moment she felt triumph that he had turned from his father to her.
‘I meant every word I said, Briony,’ Kieron warned her quietly as she stood up with Nicky in her arms. ‘I want your answer tomorrow. You can take the day off, that way you won’t be able to accuse me of not giving you enough time to think.’
She was too engrossed in her own thoughts on the drive home to pay much attention to Nicky and was taken by surprise when, when the car stopped and Kieron came round to open the door, he demanded imperiously, ‘Man carry me.’ It infuriated her that Kieron did not even exhibit any triumph but merely lifted the little boy into his arms with a smile, Nicky’s face split by an enormous grin as he laughed down at his father.
‘Don’t even begin to think about running out on me, Briony,’ Kieron warned her as he put Nicky on his bed.
He followed her out into the living room, watching her unrelentingly as she stared out into the garden.
‘This afternoon you were quite ready to think Nicky was Matt’s,’ she reminded him bitterly.
‘And now I know he’s mine I want to give you both the protection of my name.’
‘Big of you,’ Briony said savagely. ‘But we don’t need you, Kieron. And when we did, you weren’t there.’
He went white at that. ‘I didn’t know you were pregnant, damn you! I’ve already tried to tell you.…’
‘And I don’t want to hear,’ she interrupted, swinging round, her eyes burning with fury. ‘Why are you doing this to us? Nicky and I were quite happy on our own.’
‘You might have been, but was Nicky? A child needs two parents, Briony, and if you’re honest you’ll admit that. I only want what’s best for him, just as you do. The moment I saw him and I knew that he was mine I realised I couldn’t let him go out of my life. He is flesh of my flesh…bone of my bone.…’
‘Conceived so that you could search the flat and find the evidence you needed to convict Myers,’ she concluded bitterly. ‘Oh get, out of here, you…you hypocrite!’
For a long time after he had gone she sat staring ahead of her, unaware that it had grown dark, or that Nicky’s chatter had stilled, trying to come to terms with this fresh blow fate had struck her. Kieron had not been making idle threats. He would fight to get his child. And surely no court would favour the claims of a working mother over those of a father who could provide both a luxurious home and a suitable stepmother? Who did he have in mind? Gail? Hardly, the blonde girl disliked children intensely, but Kieron would never be short of women to share his life.
The faint rap on the door startled her and at first she thought it was Kieron. When she opened the door, though, it was Gina who stood there, her eyes red from crying.
‘Oh, Gina, it wasn’t your fault!’ Briony exclaimed, hating herself for not going upstairs immediately upon her return. Had Gina thought she blamed her for the accident? ‘I would have been up to see you, but I had things on my mind. Kieron wants us to be married, for Nicky’s sake,’ she said abruptly, not knowing why she felt this need to confide in someone.
Relief spread over Gina’s face.
‘Oh, Briony! Some good news at last! When we got back here from the hospital Paolo’s papa was on the telephone. Paolo’s elder brother has been seriously injured in a car accident and Papa Guido wants us to go home right away. With Cesare in hospital there will be no one to run the vineyard, and I was dreading telling you that we must leave.’
As she listened to her friend’s story, Briony’s heart sank. Of course Gina and Paolo would have to go home, but who would look after Nicky? How could she go out to work if she had no one she could trust to leave him with? He was far too young for nursery school; even if such facilities had existed locally. The only other alternative—which she shrank from—was finding a baby-minder who had room to take him, but she had always wanted Nicky to grow up in familiar surroundings, which was why she had been so glad to let Gina and Paolo have the flat. She could advertise for another couple, but that would take time, and even if she fo
und someone suitable Nicky might not settle down with them as well as he had done with Gina, whom he had known since birth.
‘Marriage!’ Gina was saying romantically. ‘Oh, that is so good! I knew the moment I saw him that he was not the man to turn his back on his own child. You quarrelled, si? and pride would not let you tell him about the baby. Oh, Paolo will be so relieved! We were dreading having to tell you.…’
Briony knew exactly what she meant. Somehow she could not find the words to tell Gina that she did not want to marry Kieron. She was trapped. And it seemed doubly ironic that it should be through the love she bore his child, whom he had not even known existed until today, and whom he had made it clear he intended to have beneath his roof and bearing his name, even if he had to destroy Nicky’s mother to do so.
CHAPTER FIVE
‘SO the answer is yes?’
Kieron was standing with his back to her, staring out into the garden, his hands in the pockets on the hip-hugging dark trousers he was wearing. He had arrived just as she was putting Nicky to bed and the small sitting room was cluttered with the little boy’s toys. His broken arm had kept him inside, and Briony had just been going to shower and change when Kieron’s car slid to a halt outside.