He had acknowledged Cai this afternoon, but by doing so it felt as if he had also acknowledged me. Intimacy had been growing between us these last few weeks—every time he touched me with such passion, every time he spoke to me with such respect, every time he strengthened his relationship with our son, while being sure to include me.
And the moment Cai had innocently mentioned getting us to ‘make him’ a baby brother I had seen the same flash of intense yearning in his eyes, when they had met mine, that was echoing in my heart.
Was it possible he wanted to make us a real family as much as I did?
I hadn’t dared hope for that. I’d been trying in these last weeks not to expect too much from him. Not to let all the old fantasies devour me again. But we had turned an important corner tonight and I was tired of being a coward.
I reached across the console to rest a hand on his arm as he turned off the ignition.
‘Thank you for today, it’s been...’ I laughed, so full of hope for the future I thought I might burst. ‘Pretty special for me and Cai.’
‘Good,’ he said, sounding oddly perfunctory.
I dismissed the flicker of concern. Alexi was a serious, intense guy. He’d never done gushing, or light-hearted, or certainly not with me.
He glanced back at our son fast asleep in his car seat with the toy car Alexi had given him that morning still clutched in his fist.
‘Let’s get him to bed,’ he said.
Need prickled over my skin and joy echoed in my heart as we exited the car together and Alexi lifted his newly acknowledged son out of his child seat.
We’d been through this ritual nearly every day for the last three weeks—putting Cai to bed together then retiring to my bedroom, where Alexi would invariably rip my clothes off in his urgency to feed the hunger which had been stoked to fever pitch as we’d avoided touching during the day.
Perhaps we wouldn’t do that so much any more, not now that Alexi had kissed me in front of Cai and explained the situation to him. I wondered vaguely if I’d miss that urgency.
I grinned at the silly direction of my thoughts as we closed the door on Cai’s bedroom after tucking him into bed and kissing him goodnight, the electric attraction buzzing in the air between us. Our hunger would always be volatile, exciting and full of heat—no amount of PDAs was going to defuse that.
But as I pressed myself against Alexi’s body and flung my arms over his shoulders—planning to take the initiative tonight—he jerked back and caught my forearms.
‘Don’t, Belle,’ he said, drawing my arms down to my sides. ‘We can’t, not tonight.’
‘Why not?’ I asked, shocked by the rigid expression on his face, especially as I could see the heat in his eyes and I had felt the beginnings of an impressive erection.
He gave my wrists a gentle squeeze, then let me go. He took a step back and raked his fingers through his hair. But he didn’t meet my eyes when he spoke. ‘I need to leave. I’ve got an early flight to London in the morning. And you’re starting work at Galanti tomorrow.’
‘Oh, I see.’ Although I really didn’t see. He had to leave early most mornings to avoid Cai finding us in bed to
gether. My heart kicked into overdrive again at the joyful thought we wouldn’t have to hide that from our son any more because it was totally normal for children to know that their parents shared a bed. I grinned at him, despite my disappointment. ‘I’ll take a rain-check, then,’ I said, trying out the flirtatiousness I was still learning. ‘And I appreciate you being so thoughtful about my new job. I’d hate my boss to think I was slacking on my first day after spending all night in bed with him.’
But as I leaned up on tiptoes to give him a teasing kiss, which I hoped would make him regret his decision, he pulled away again, his eyes strangely guarded.
‘I don’t think you understand, Belle,’ he said, his expression cold now, as well as rigid. He was starting to scare me. Why did he seem so distant all of a sudden? ‘There’ll be no rain-check. This is the end of our affair.’
‘What?’ I gave my head a shake, sure I must have heard that wrong. Had he just said...?
‘You’re going to be working for me, Belle, and I don’t screw around with my employees.’ His gaze raked over my figure—the heat in it somehow insulting. ‘However tempting.’
‘But...’
But I’m not just an employee. I’m the mother of your son, and I love you.
The admission exploded in my heart. It was the first time I had ever been brave enough to truly acknowledge it, even to myself. But it wouldn’t come out of my mouth, because right alongside it was the fear that had always stopped me from articulating it in the past. The fear that he would reject my love the way he had before. And that fear was real, raw and vivid now. As was the memory of the long-ago rejection I had struggled to recover from once before. I had thought it could never hurt as much again. I realised how wrong I had been as my heart shattered in my chest.
‘But what?’ he asked. ‘I thought you understood we were simply scratching an itch here. You’re not a child any more. You’ve slept with other men—you know how this works.’
But I haven’t slept with any other men and I don’t want to know how it works for you with other women. I thought I was different. I thought I was more.
The pleas died inside me, frozen out by the chill creeping through my body, the humiliation almost as excruciating as the pain. A pain I had to hide as best I could, or I would be reduced to nothing again, the way I had been once before. A nothingness I couldn’t afford to inhabit again because I had a son.