The question popped into my head as something wholly unfamiliar tore through my insides. Something visceral and indiscriminate. I had to curl my fingers into fists to stop me from acting on the sudden urge to capture her face in my hands and claim those lush lips with my own—driving my tongue into the recesses of her mouth until she clung to me the way she had before and I plunged deep into her....
I tensed and shoved my fists into the pockets of my jeans, shocked by the direction of my thoughts.
Dio, I needed to get laid. Clearly the shock of seeing the child, of seeing her again, had had an unpredictable effect not just on my emotional equilibrium but on my libido.
I was off-kilter, not a condition I was used to, which explained this forceful and inexplicable reaction.
She nodded, apparently taking my answer at face value.
‘I... I understand,’ she said.
No, you don’t, but you will.
Whatever the result of the DNA test, she had kept the child’s existence from me for five years. And for that she would pay.
‘I should go,’ she said, strangely polite. ‘Cai is waiting for me. Let me know what you need and when for the test. I think it’s just a swab. I can make it into a game to explain it to Cai.’ She huffed out a breath to stop the babble of information, but her nervousness was visible in her trembling fingers as she pushed the shock of ruddy curls away from her face.
This was not an act. But then, if she had any idea what I was thinking, she had a lot to be nervous about.
‘I’ll... I’ll speak to you again about Cai, when you’re ready,’ she said.
Walking over to the sofa, she picked up a large bag, rummaged inside and produced a card. ‘This is my work number. I’ll...we’ll...be back in the UK by tomorrow night. And you can contact me there most week days between nine and five. Or my PA will take a message.’
She handed me the card and our fingers brushed. I managed to stifle the sudden jolt of reaction. Her, not so much.
Why did that make me want to smile, despite everything?
The tug of amusement died, though, as I read the address on her business card and recognised the location of Camaro’s R&D headquarters in London.
The surge of possessiveness was as visceral as that strange pulse of jealousy and lust, but I explained it to myself as I watched her sling her purse over her shoulder.
I might be unclear at the moment about how much of a father—or an uncle—I was capable of being to this child. But he would need to live in Monaco, to understand his Galanti heritage. And that would mean his mother would have to come too.
It would be no hardship offering her a position in our R&D operation, if her credentials were as good as Freddie had suggested, and I did still need a reserve driver. That situation hadn’t changed from when I’d first walked into this room. Even if everything else had.
‘Goodbye, Alexi,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry...’ She paused, her regret looking surprisingly genuine. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about Cai sooner. That was wrong of me. Call me when you’re ready.’
I nodded as the emotion I’d been keeping so carefully at bay swelled against my ribs.
I watched her disappear back into the changing area, probably to collect her racing suit. I strode out of the lounge area. The emotion threatened to choke me as I headed towards the track’s parking lot and away from the car hangars where the boy was with his babysitter.
You need to take stock, to know exactly what you’re dealing with before you proceed.
But, even as the mantra ran through my head, all the conflicting emotions churned in my stomach: grief, longing, desire, anger, confusion. My fingers shook as I fished my key out of my pocket and clicked the fob.
As I climbed into the car, fired up the engine and drove away, I knew my whole life had changed in the space of one afternoon. The reality of that fact was reinforced by the tug of something vivid and inescapable—was it lust, regret, longing or grief? Who the hell knew?
But the force of it was dragging me back into the past harder than the G-force in the driver’s seat of our newest model when it hit two hundred miles per hour.
I had been running from myself, and my sins against Remy, for five years, maybe longer, and now the truth of what I’d done, what we’d both done to him, had caught up with me.
In the shape of one boisterous little boy and a woman I had never been able to forget—unlike any other, even my own mother—even though I had tried.
CHAPTER FOUR
Belle
Dear Mlle Simpson