“You’re being a stupid, stubborn little bitch. For Christ’s sake, Maddie, just make the damned lasagne.”
“I’m kidding,” he was frowning, his eyes roaming her face with instant concern.
And he thought she was perceptive? “My grandfather had died a year or so earlier. It was hard on all of us. Yaya was devastated – we adored him. And his death, while reasonably swift, came at the end of a pretty harrowing cancer. Seeing him so weak and altered was…you know. It was hard.” When he swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbed in his hair-roughened throat.
“I’m sure it was,” she murmured sympathetically.
“But I had also just made the rather disturbing discovery that the infant I had been told was my son was, in fact, not. That the woman I was engaged to had been sleeping with another man. So you see, Maddie, I wanted very much to shut the world out for a while and make sense of that.”
Chapter 7
HE HATED SYMPATHY. HE hated it with a passion and yet the look on her face – undeniably rich with that emotion – just made him feel warm and understood.
He wasn’t sure why he’d told her about Alexander. He hadn’t planned to – he preferred not to think about the son he’d grown to love in the nine months he’d seen him fattening Claudette’s stomach, swelling her with the rounded promise of new life.
“Nico, that’s…I can’t believe it. How in the world is that possible?”
His expression was taut, carefully blanked of emotion. “She wasn’t faithful. I’m only surprised I didn’t realise sooner.”
“So you were dating her and she got pregnant…”
“We were sleeping together,” he corrected, vitally, because ‘dating’ made it sound like so much more than it had been. “It had been going on for a few weeks then I ended it.”
“Why?” She pounced and he smiled, because it was so like her. It was easy to see why he’d initially thought her to be a journalist – her inquisitive mind liked to leave no stone unturned.
“Because that’s what I do, Maddie. I’ve never been interested in relationships. A few weeks was more than enough with Claudette.”
Was he trying to inspire a reaction? She gave none. Her expression didn’t shift.
“A couple of months later, she showed up in my office announcing she was pregnant. She was thinking of having an abortion and wanted to let me know.”
Maddie’s eyes widened. “That must have been…a shock.”
His laugh was without humour. “That’s putting it mildly. I was floored. But from the minute I knew my baby was in her belly, Dio, Maddie, I would have moved heaven and earth to give that child a chance at life. I know that makes me a bastard, that it’s her body and her choice –,”
“It’s your baby too,” she said gently. “I can understand how you felt.”
“I just wanted to give her another option, you know?” He raked a hand through his hair, looking towards Maddie’s shoulder – how was it possible for even a sho
ulder to be beautiful? “I would have supported her, I guess, in whatever she chose. God knows my life would have been easier if she hadn’t been pregnant, but not for one second did I wish for that. I wanted that baby. It was my responsibility and in a fraction of a second, everything felt so clear.”
“So what did you do?”
“I proposed, of course. I offered her a generous trust fund for the child, and a marriage on any terms she wanted, just so I could be a regular part of the baby’s life.”
She lifted a hand, cupping his cheek. “You’re a good man, Nico.”
His features tightened.
“When Alexander was born, he had a rare genetic defect. I’m not a carrier. Nor is anyone in my family. In order to get him the best medical care, Claudette had to confess that there was some…doubt…as to the paternity.”
Maddie swore, the word on her lips so unexpected that his eyes dragged back to hers.
“I can’t even imagine.”
“I held that child in my arms,” he made no attempt to disguise the emotion that memory inspired. “I looked down on his face and believed he was mine. To lose him like that…”
“No wonder you needed an escape. Is Alexander’s biological father in the picture?”