He spun around on his heel to pierce her with a stare. ‘I have no fear.’
‘Believe me Marco, I understand—’
‘You understand nothing.’
She remained silent for a moment and then, completely undaunted by his harsh tone, she said, ‘Tell me about your father.’
‘Which one?’ he flashed, incapable of caring if he hurt her now. She had found his wound and had twisted a knife in it.
The expression on his face must have frightened her, as she pressed back on her seat, but he couldn’t stop now. ‘The man I called father disowned me, along with my mother. He threw us both out on the street when he discovered that I wasn’t his child. He did that on Christmas Eve,’ he added bitterly.
Cassandra had turned ashen and looked horrified.
He should have known she wouldn’t leave it there.
‘And your mother?’ she pressed. ‘What happened to her?’
The look he gave her would have warned anyone else to back off, but not Cassandra.
‘You mother, Marco,’ she pressed him again.
‘She died when I was a boy,’ he said quickly, wanting to gloss over it. His mother’s death in poverty and squalor was something he preferred not to dwell on. He could never think back without feeling guilty, as if an eight-year-old boy could have somehow saved the situation.
‘And you?’ Cassandra queried. ‘What happened to you when your mother died?’
His lips felt wooden as he thought back. ‘I went to live in an orphanage.’
She was silent and then she said, ‘What about your real father?’
He laughed bitterly. ‘My real father? He had no interest in me. When the money tree shrivelled and died, he was gone.’
Cass was shocked into silence. What Marco had told her made her heart ache for a small child who had grown up thinking that he could never hold onto love. But she knew there was more, and even a tiny seed of bitter memory could grow if she didn’t root it out.
‘Why did the man you called father disown you? Didn’t he love you?’
‘Who knows?’ Marco’s keen stare grew unfocused as he stared blindly into the middle distance. ‘Maybe he did love me at one time. I thought he did, but once he knew the truth of my parentage he changed towards me. The child went with the mother, he said, and that’s all I know. That was how he insisted it must be. Paolo told me that he never forgave himself, that he was a changed man after that, and that it was the shock of my mother’s adultery that had unbalanced him that night—that and the way she had tried all those years to pass me off as his child. He regretted what he’d done to the day he died, Paolo said, but he was too proud to go back on his word.’
‘Oh, Marco.’ There were no words to console him; only love over a long period of time could do that, and now they had to talk about the future, and Marco’s child with her.
For the first time she put her hands flat against his chest when he tried to sweep her into his arms. ‘No, Marco. We have to talk.’
‘Talk?’ He frowned. ‘What about?’
‘About the future, of course.’
‘What future, cara?’
His words cut her to the heart, but she carried on. ‘I can’t stay in Rome for ever.’
‘For another three months?’ Marco shrugged. ‘I thought you were happy.’
‘I am happy, and I love my job at the embassy, but I have to look forward to when the baby’s born.’
Marco’s lips pressed down as he shook his head, as if he couldn’t understand her concern. ‘You’ve got nothing to worry about,’ he said as he shrugged out of his shirt. ‘Not tonight, at least,’ he insisted when she shifted position fretfully on the bed. ‘You’re tired. I’m tired—’
‘But we can’t just let things continue,’ she said. Sitting up, she searched his eyes for some flicker of reaction to this, but all she could see was heat.
‘Why can’t we?’ Marco demanded, smiling darkly as he move to drop kisses on her lips. ‘Everything’s perfect, Cassandra.’
‘Perfect?’ she said.
‘Sleep now,’ he soothed. ‘I’m going to take a shower and then I’ll join you in bed.’
He closed the bathroom door with relief. He didn’t want this conversation about the future until the baby was born and he could be sure he was the father. Talking about the past had brought everything back to him, and he would never subject a child to the experience he’d had. Yes, he had brought Cass to Rome to keep an eye on what might well turn out to be his unborn heir. He would claim the child if it was his, and he would provide for it financially. But emotionally? That was a step too far for him.