‘You are saying you prefer this—’he gestured with his hand, his eyes sweeping the room, which was furnished with old-fashioned furniture from Vi’s younger days, worn now, as were the carpet and the curtains ‘—to the life you would lead as my wife?’
‘Yes,’ said Clare. ‘If all I cared about was your money, Xander, don’t you think I’d have told you I was pregnant—even if you had just thrown me out like garbage?’
His eyes flashed again. ‘I did not “throw you out like garbage”! I made suitable alternative arrangements for your accommodation. I gave you a suitable token of my apprec—’
‘Don’t say that word! If you say it one more time to me, I swear to God I will…I will…’
She sat down heavily on the bed, and the springs creaked. Her legs would not hold her up any more.
She looked across at him. He was standing stiffly, rigid.
‘Oh, go to hell,’ she mumbled. ‘Just go to hell, Xander. I know the law will let you have some visiting rights to Joey, and if you really insist on them I know I can’t stop you. But don’t ever think you’re going to get any more. I don’t want you in my life again.’
His face stilled. It sent a shiver of foreboding through her.
‘But I,’ he said, ‘have every intention of being in my son’s life. I have every intention of being his father.’
She gave a twisted laugh, cut short.
‘Father? You don’t know the slightest thing about being a father.’
For a moment there was a silence that could have been cut with a knife.
‘Thanks to you,’ said Xander, softly and sibilantly. ‘Because of you, I am a stranger to my own son. I did not even know his name when I spoke to him!’
Clare’s mouth tightened. She would not let him make her feel guilty. She would not. She stood up, forcing herself upright, folding her arms tightly across her chest. Her chin lifted.
‘Well, if you’re so keen to be a father, come and learn to be one. But listen to me—and listen to me well!’ Her expression grew fierce. ‘Fatherhood is for life, Xander! It’s not some novelty that you can amuse yourself with or get off on self-righteously because I dared to object to the way you treated me and never told you about Joey. Don’t think that being stinking rich means you can just have the easy bits and dump the rest on your paid minions! And above all—’ she bit each word out ‘—it is not something you do without committing to it for the rest of your life. Because if you hurt my son—if you cause a single tear to fall from his eyes because you get bored with him, or put yourself first, or put making money first or, God help you, play with your mistresses first!—then you won’t be fit to be his father!’
She could see anger light in his face, but she didn’t care. Didn’t give a toss! She glared at him, and he met her eyes with his dark, heavy ones. Then, abruptly, she spoke again.
‘I can’t cope. I can’t cope with this. It’s like a steam train going over me. The day before yesterday everything was normal. Now it’s—’ She closed her eyes. ‘A nightmare.’
‘A nightmare?’ Xander echoed her words. His voice was cold and vicious.
‘Yes!’ Her eyes flared open again. ‘I never wanted to see you again. Not for the rest of my life. But you’re here—and it’s a nightmare. And I can’t cope with it. I just can’t. I just can’t…’ She took a deep, shuddering intake of breath. ‘Look—I need time…time to get used to this. I’ve been in shock since that night at the hotel—and I don’t handle shock well. I can’t get my head round it.’
‘You want my sympathy?’ Xander’s voice was incredulous.
‘I don’t want anything from you!’ she bit back. ‘Like I said, I wish to God I’d never set eyes on you again. But it’s too late. So I’m simply telling you how it is for me—too much to handle right now. And you know something?’ Her eyes flashed again. ‘I don’t have to handle it right now. I don’t have to do anything until you come back here with a court order for access in your hand. Right now, if I wanted to, I could phone the police and tell them you’re an intruder here. So back off, Xander. Back off and give me the time I need to get my head round this.’
‘The time you need to run, perhaps? The way you like to do?’ His voice was silky and dangerous.
Her face tightened. ‘I won’t run, Xander. That would be playing into your hands, wouldn’t it? And besides—where would I go? I can’t leave Vi.’
He frowned.
‘You can pay rent elsewhere, not just to your current landlady.’
‘Vi isn’t my landlady. She’s my friend. And she doesn’t charge rent because I help look after her so she can go on living here, in her own home. She’s like a grandmother to Joey. Family. I could never leave her!’
She dropped her arms to her sides, weariness and defeat filling her. ‘Look, I can’t take any more right now. I want you to go. I won’t run—I can’t. If you don’t believe me, set some guards or whatever round the house to make sure I don’t. I don’t care. But just go. Say goodbye to Joey if you want.’
‘That is very generous of you.’ His sarcasm was open, and Clare felt herself flushing. Then her face hardened again.
‘Joey needs to take this slowly too, Xander. He needs to get used to you. And most of all—’ her eyes were like needles ‘—he needs not to depend on you to stay interested in him.’
For a moment she thought she could see murder in the dark, long-lashed eyes that had once, so long ago, melted her bones.
‘I don’t have to prove myself to you,’ he said, with a softness that raised the hair on the back of her neck. ‘Only to my son.’
Then he turned and walked out of the room, down the stairs. His tread was heavy on the floorboards. Like hammers going into her chest.
She stayed upstairs in her room, standing motionless, as if wire was wrapping her round, biting into her cruelly. It seemed for ever until she heard his tread on the hall carpet and the sound of the front door opening, then closing.
Slowly, she went downstairs again.
Joey was taking one of his picture books across to Vi, but as Clare came in he looked round.
‘That was my daddy here,’ he announced. ‘There’s a daddy in this book. Look.’
He opened the book to a page showing a happy nuclear family, sitting having a meal around a table, with a baby and a toddler. It wasn’t a book Clare liked—because of the nuclear family—but Joey had chosen it because it included a scene where the toddler was playing with a very impressive toy garage.
His stubby finger pointed at each person in the illustration.
‘Mummy, Daddy, me.’ Then he frowned. ‘Baby,’ he said. He looked at Clare. ‘We haven’t got a baby.’
Clare swallowed. ‘No, but we’ve got a nan instead. That’s a different family from us, Joey.’
Joey looked at her. ‘Can we keep my daddy?’ he asked.
Clare could see Vi’s eyes on her. Eyes that said nothing—and knew everything. She crouched down beside Joey.
‘Your daddy doesn’t live in this country, darling. He travels all over the world. Lots of countries. So you won’t see him very often.’
Joey’s eyes clouded.
‘He said he was coming back. When?’
‘Soon,’ said Clare. She got to her feet.
Too soon.
Her stomach churned at the thought.
Xander gave her till the weekend. He used the time to his own advantage. In a series of punishing meetings, and flights to Geneva, Milan and Paris, he got through of a formidable amount of work.
He also disposed of Sonja de Lisle. She was no longer a requirement, only an unnecessary complication.
When he gave her the news, she flew into a tantrum. Eyes spitting, language foul, she stormed out, with her suitcases filled to bursting with every garment, accessory and piece of jewellery he’d ever bought her.
Four hours later she was back on the phone to him, purring away and saying it had all been a mistake on her part, enticing him back to her, inviting him over to a very intimate dinner in the suite at the Grosvenor he’d taken for her, to ease her departure.
He hung up on her in mid-purr.
Memory sliced through him like a meat cleaver—to the time when he’d got rid of another woman from his life.
Those expressionless eyes, that very still face…
Now he knew why. She’d already known she was pregnant, and when he’d called time on her she’d decided that her revenge on him would be to keep his child from her. And she was doing the same thing in refusing to marry him. Keeping him at arm’s length from his son. Anger bit in him like a scorpion’s sting. And she’d had the unmitigated gall to claim it was because he was inexperienced with children—
Her doing. She kept my son from me, and now accuses me of knowing nothing about him.
Rage boiled in him. Then he quenched it. He would get his son. Joey would grow up with him. There was no question—no question whatsoever. Whatever it took to achieve that, he would do.
He picked up the phone on his desk and summoned his PA. His instructions to her had nothing to do with business…