I didn’t need this man’s approval. It had taken me five years to get over his rejection. When I’d arrived in the UK and discovered I was carrying his child, the grief for Remy and everything I’d lost the day he’d died had all but destroyed me.
My confidence, and my sense of self had been left in tatters but I’d dragged myself up off the floor, with the help of my wonderful second cousin, Jessie, and forced myself to concentrate on what mattered.
I’d had my child and dedicated myself to supporting us both with two jobs, while taking on a mountain of student debt and studying late into the night to realise a new dream that in the last year had finally started to take off.
I had been a fool to keep the news of his child from him, something about which I had become starkly aware in the last few minutes. I would have to rectify that as soon as I could manage the news in a way that wouldn’t hurt Cai.
But I didn’t have to defend my professional reputation to Alexi or anyone else.
‘That’s a shame,’ Alexi said, his husky voice sending goose bumps skittering over my skin. ‘Because, whatever Renzo is paying you, you’re worth more. And with the talent I saw on the track ten minutes ago it’s obvious you should be driving.’
‘I don’t want to drive, not competitively,’ I said, pushing past the sexual fog threatening to envelop me, to concentrate on getting him out of here. I didn’t have time for a negotiation. Or to obsess over the way he could still make me feel simply by looking at me.
Why did I have to be so affected by this man? It was as if a spell had been cast on me as soon as I’d hit puberty and I couldn’t escape the enchantment of my own body.
So not the point, Belle.
‘Why the hell don’t you want to drive?’ Alexi shot back, his frustration only making his dark good looks and intense gaze all the more overwhelming. ‘That was always your dream ever since you were a kid, wasn’t it?’
I was surprised he had remembered that much about me. As a teenager, and later as a man, he had always made a point of ignoring me. Until that night.
‘It was my dream once,’ I said. ‘It’s not my dream any more. Now, would you please leave before I call security?’ It was an empty threat, and we both knew it. No security guy in his right mind would eject Alexi Galanti from the track—the man was motor-racing royalty. But I was desperate.
Not surprisingly, he ignored the threat and, instead of leaving, stepped closer. Close enough for me to capture his intoxicating scent—spice, musk and the hint of pine soap. The aroma made my knees shake, propelling me back to that night—somewhere I so did not need to go ever again.
I stood my ground, though, because showing Alexi a weakness had never ended well.
‘Tell me why,’ he insisted, the frustration disappearing to be replaced with something much more disturbing—genuine interest in me and my life, something I’d yearned for all through my teenage years. ‘Tell me why you gave up on your dream, bella notte,’ he repeated, his voice soft, coaxing, as he used the nickname he had coined that night, no doubt to intimidate me more. ‘And then I’ll leave.’
I opened my mouth, determined to give him an answer, any answer that would make him leave and take this pointless yearning away again. But the only explanation I could think of was the real one.
Because I have a child, a son, who I love more than life itself. And I’m the only person he has. I can’t risk leaving him alone—dying the way Remy died. So I found a way to readjust my dreams. To feed my passion for racing—while also fulfilling my obligations to my child.
But I couldn’t tell him that.
As I racked my brains, trying to come up with a viable alternative reason Alexi would believe, it occurred to me I’d been hoisted by my own dishonesty.
And then the door burst open and Cai ran into the room ten minutes early, a four-year-old bundle of energy...and the black hole in the pit of my stomach imploded. For the first time in my life I was not pleased to see him.
My time had run out.
‘Mummy, Mummy, I saw the car!’ he cried, practically bursting with excitement as he raced towards me, oblivious to Alexi and everything else. ‘Mr Renzo let me touch it.’
He ran past Alexi, who stepped back, his dark brows launching up his forehead. Cai’s sturdy body barrelled into me and the love I had felt for him as soon as I’d held him in my arms after ten agonising hours of labour washed through me.
‘Mr Renzo said I could sit in it if I’m good.’
Cai’s arms wrapped around my legs as he peered up at me, the love in his eyes all-consuming and utterly uncomplicated. The blue of his irises was the same true, iridescent aquamarine as those of the man standing two feet away, staring at him as if he were an alien.
‘Can I, Mummy? Can I?’ he pleaded, completely oblivious to the tension now snapping in the room. I could almost feel Alexi’s mind working as he stared at my child and calculated dates and ages. Cai was tall for a four-year-old, probably because his father was six-foot-three, but that wasn’t going to help me.
With the light from the window shining onto Cai’s dark, wavy hair and illuminating his face and his Galanti bone structure—which had become more defined in the last year or two as he’d grown from toddlerhood into boyhood—the resemblance to his father was all the more striking.
Alexi was not a stupid man, and as my gaze connected with his over Cai’s head I watched as he figured out Cai’s heritage—the stunned disbelief turning to shock before a sharp frown flattened his brows and his sensual lips pursed into a tight line of accusation.
‘Can I, Mummy?’
My gaze dropped back to Cai, my thoughts in turmoil as my heart rammed my tonsils. I ruffled his silky hair, trying to stop my hand shaking. I needed to get my son out of here, away from Alexi. I didn’t want Cai to witness our impending confrontation. Whatever else I knew, I knew this was not his fault.