‘Of course,’ I said and he grinned.
‘Can I tell Imran?’ he asked. ‘His daddy doesn’t own racing cars,’ he added, the proud, sweet smile making my heart expand in my chest. I had been accepted, and all I had had to do was ask.
‘Yes, you can tell Imran. We will tell everyone together,’ I said. I gathered him close and hugged his small body to mine, but as I drew back he put his hands on my shoulders, a serious expression on his face, and asked, ‘Can you kiss my mummy more, so you can make me a baby brother, like Imran’s mummy made him?’
I coughed, shocked not just by the innocent request but the surge of heat it brought with it—at the thought of making more children with Belle. The sudden urge to see her belly round with my child, the way Edie’s was with Dante’s, brought the surge of envy I hadn’t understood earlier into sharp, too sharp, focus.
What I felt for Belle wasn’t just sex. It had never been just sex. I knew that. But suddenly the amount I did feel for her—the visceral desire to make another child with her—terrified me even more.
My ties to my son, and before him to my brother, I understood. They were my flesh, my blood. I owed them my honour, my loyalty and what was left of my heart that I still had to give.
B
ut binding myself to a woman—wanting to make my relationship with Belle any more permanent than it already was—that could not happen. I could not allow it to happen. Because the only woman who had ever had such a tie to me had broken it at her earliest convenience. And almost broken me at the same time.
The panic tightened around my ribs. I couldn’t need Belle this much. I didn’t want to need her this much.
‘Cai, stop being so cheeky,’ Belle said, looking flustered.
‘Why is it cheeky? Imran said that’s what happens when his mummy and daddy kiss too much.’
I choked out a strained laugh at the child’s precocious explanation. But the claws digging into my chest were of fear. A fear I recognised from long ago, when my mother had deserted Remy and me after I had begged her to stay.
‘It’s cheeky because you shouldn’t keep asking Alexi for things,’ Belle said.
Cai leaned into me, his arms wrapping around my neck in a possessive gesture. ‘But he’s not Mr Alexi any more,’ he said. ‘He’s my daddy.’
I chuckled, attempting to let the surge of love for this bright, cheeky child overwhelm the rush of panic as I gathered him close and stood up. ‘Yes, but you should still always do what your mother tells you,’ I murmured.
We made our way up the steep steps from the beach back to the barbeque and I announced my relationship to Cai to the party guests. The surge of pride I felt at finally announcing our relationship was tempered by deep unease. And a desperate loneliness that only made the panic more acute.
We could never be a real family. We would never fulfil Cai’s wish for a baby brother or sister. Because I could not expose myself again to the same devastating betrayal I had suffered as a child.
Which brought me to only one conclusion. I would have to cut this tie to my son’s mother tonight, before it got the chance to cut me.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Belle
I GRINNED ACROSS the console at Alexi as he parked the Galanti GL8 in the garage under the house. Something wonderful, something immense, had happened today at the Allegris’ summer barbeque. Something I hadn’t expected but still felt so exciting, so new—unleashing all the feelings I had held in my heart for Alexi, not just for the last three weeks, but for the last five years.
When he’d announced to Cai that he was his father, with such tenderness, such humour and such understanding, it had felt as if the last bit of the wall between us was finally beginning to crumble.
But what had finally shattered it was the look he’d given me as he’d announced to everyone there that Cai was his son.
I hadn’t really realised how desperate I had been for him to make this final move in the last few weeks—weeks of awesome sex and even more awesome family outings—until he had finally said the words out loud to all the people who mattered to him.
Edie Allegri, with whom I had bonded instantly the minute I had met her, had been the first to congratulate me. And something she had said to me earlier—just before Alexi had stalked across the lawn to ask to talk to Cai and me privately—had been ringing in my head ever since.
‘Isn’t it odd?’ she had said with a knowing look in her eye that at the time had made me feel more than a little inadequate. Edie Allegri was a stunningly beautiful and an extremely confident woman. Not just confident in her career and her abilities as a mother but, from the way Dante looked at her, also one hundred percent confident in his love for her. ‘I’ve always thought of Alexi as handsome, charming and amusing, but also careless and shallow. I never could figure out how he had become so successful in the Super League when he didn’t seem to take anything seriously.’
‘Alexi takes the business of racing very seriously,’ I had said, jumping to his defence, but also confused by her description of him. I didn’t recognise it at all. Not only was he a brilliant businessman, but I’d always found him to be the opposite of careless and shallow. Our relationship in the last few weeks had been so intense, but even as a younger man he had always been serious. I knew he had a reputation as a playboy, but it had never really occurred to me what that might mean.
Before I’d had a moment to process the thought, Edie had smiled at me and added, ‘He also takes you very seriously, much more seriously than any of the other women he has introduced us to. He certainly seems to have bonded with your son.’
I had murmured some platitude about him being a good man, sick that I was still having to lie publicly about his real relationship with Cai.
But as I sat opposite him in the car now—after everything else that had happened since my conversation with Edie—the hope that I might be different from all the other women in his life came back. But this time it didn’t feel ludicrous or misplaced any more.