Claiming His Secret Love-Child: The Marciano Love-Child / The Italian Billionaire's Secret Love-Child / The Rich Man's Love-Child

‘Sorry,’ he said, looking uncharacteristically uncomfortable. ‘Perhaps I should have phoned first.’

Scarlett wondered why he hadn’t. But then, looking at him now, she realised he had probably needed time to gather himself. The news would no doubt have shocked him. He had clearly not expected to be proved wrong.

She felt for him, even as she felt angry that she had suffered alone for so long. It was a bewildering mix of emotions: resentment, regret, hate, love…

No she didn’t love him any more, she decided. How could she? She had suffered too much as a result of his lack of trust. She wasn’t going to allow herself to get caught out a second time.

‘Can I wear my racing-car jammies?’ Matthew asked as she carried him out of the small living-room.

‘Sure you can,’ she said. ‘I washed them yesterday.’

‘You won’t tell Daddy I still sometimes wet the bed, will you Mummy?’ he asked in another whisper, but his little voice carried regardless.

‘No,’ she said. ‘Not if you don’t want me to.’

Alessandro turned to look around the room, knowing it was pointless feeling shut out and angry. It was his fault for being so arrogantly confident. He should have at least given her the benefit of the doubt. He could have repeated the tests. He could even have checked the statistics on the internet like any other layman, for God’s sake. He’d done it after he’d left the doctor’s surgery, ashamed that he hadn’t thought of it earlier.

It was all there. He’d even read of two pregnancies occurring five years after surgery.

He wondered how those two men had treated their partners. Had they cut them from their lives, accusing them of being unfaithful. Or had they stayed close, supporting them, and guiding them through what to all intents and purposes was an unplanned pregnancy.

It shocked him to the core that he hadn’t once considered Scarlett’s feelings about being pregnant at twenty-three. That was considered young these days, when most women got their career established before they thought about settling down. She had not only been young, but only just qualified as an interior designer. And he had thrown her out on the street, late at night in a foreign country, pregnant and alone.

No wonder she still hated him.

His eyes went to a photograph sitting on a side table and he picked it up and looked at it, emotion beginning to tighten his chest. It had obviously been taken the day she left hospital after the birth of Matthew. He could see the run-down outer-suburbs hospital building in the background.

Scarlett was holding him, a tiny bundle of blue in her arms, her still-swollen stomach visible, her breasts fuller than normal, and her gaze full of love as she looked down at the infant. But there was sadness in her smile. He could sense it.

You should have been there, the voice of accusation thundered in his brain. You missed the birth of your child out of arrogance, ignorance and prejudice.

Three whole years had passed.

He had not been there for a moment of his son’s life. Not a single moment. He hadn’t felt the first fluttery kicks in Scarlett’s womb with his hand pressed against her abdomen. He hadn’t been there for the first ultrasonic image of his son. He hadn’t witnessed the moment of birth, heard that first mewing cry, had never been woken in the night by the howls of hunger that only an infant could perform with such fervour. He had missed everything, but he had no one to blame but himself.

Scarlett had faced it all alone, and how in the world he was going to make it up to her, or even to Matthew, was anyone’s guess.

But he wanted to.

Oh, dear God, he wanted to—but there were several hurdles in the way.

The first one was to find out if Matthew was healthy. He certainly looked it; his limbs were strong and rounded with the plumpness of early childhood, his hair was glossy black, and his eyes clear and bright.

But Marco’s had been too, until their world had been turned upside down…

CHAPTER TEN

SCARLETT tucked her son’s night nappy out of sight under the elastic waist of his pyjamas and led him by the hand back out to the small living-room.

Alessandro was standing with his back to them, a photograph in his hands, and as he heard their footsteps he placed it back on the side table and faced them.

‘Matthew would like to say goodnight,’ Scarlett said, with a look he couldn’t quite decipher.

He looked down at the child, the ache in his chest so unbearable he felt like he was going to cry, like he had done so uncontrollably at Marco’s funeral.

‘Can I call you Daddy?’ Matthew asked, blinking up at him.

‘Of course,’ Alessandro said, squatting before him. ‘But in Italy where I come from children call their father Papa. Can you say that?’

‘Papa,’ Matthew said with a dimpled grin. ‘Is that right?’

Alessandro reached out and touched his child for the first time. He laid a hand on the boy’s shoulder, but then, wanting more skin-on-skin contact, he placed his hand on the curve of his tiny cheek. ‘That is perfect, my son,’ he said, his voice breaking slightly over the words.

‘Will you tuck me into bed and read me a story?’ the little boy asked—and then, glancing briefly at his mother as if to ask her permission, added as he turned back, ‘Mummy won’t mind. She’s always tired after work and she even skips a few pages. She thinks I don’t notice, but I do.’

Alessandro smiled even though it hurt. Marco had been the same. He’d only had to hear a story once to have it memorised word for word. ‘Sure, I would like to do that, very much,’ he said. ‘That is, if your mother does not mind.’

Scarlett met his gaze. ‘No,’ she said, trying but not quite managing to smile. ‘I don’t mind at all.’

A few minutes later Alessandro read a story about a wombat and an echidna, and how they managed to have a workable friendship in spite of their many differences.

He looked down after he had finished the second-last page, and saw the fan-like lashes of his son’s eyes flutter a couple of times then close over his eyes, a soft sigh of total relaxation deflating his tiny chest, covered by a thin cotton sheet. In his hand was a tiny matchbox car, a black Maserati, the sight of which had affected Alessandro almost more than anything else so far.

He looked at that tiny chest moving up and down, and wondered if Scarlett had any idea of what could be lurking inside there, waiting like a time bomb to leap out in the future and cast a dark shadow over all of their lives.

When he came back out Scarlett was sitting with a magazine in her hands, her reading glasses perched on her nose, giving her that studious, intellectual look he had always found so incredibly sexy.

She looked up and removed her glasses. ‘Is he asleep?’

‘Yes,’ he said, taking the sofa-chair opposite, a particularly uncomfortable one, he noticed. A spring of some sort was protruding into his left buttock, and he had to move a few times to avoid its insistent prong.

A silence threatened to halt all communication, but Alessandro had things to say and didn’t want to let any more time pass. ‘Is he well?’ he asked somewhat abruptly.

She blinked a couple of times. ‘Yes…mostly.’

He found himself leaning forward on the sofa, which activated the prodding spring once more. It made him realise how hard she had struggled to provide for their son. The irony of it was particularly heart-wrenching—she decorated penthouses worth millions, and yet she lived in a tiny cramped flat with furniture that looked like it had come out of a charity shop.

He cleared his throat, as if by doing so he could clear away his guilt, but it was pointless. It rose like a debris-ridden tide inside him, making his voice sound husky. ‘What do you mean by “mostly”?’ he asked.

‘Alessandro, he’s three years old.’ Her tone was matter-of-fact. ‘He’s had numerous colds and stomach bugs. He’s a little kid—they get sick all the time.’

‘How sick?’

She frowned at the intensity of his gaze. ‘Not enough to be hospitalised, although he came close once.’

He leaned forward even further. ‘What happened on that occasion?’

Scarlett found his penetrating stare almost too much to cope with; she had to really fight to hold his gaze. ‘He had a serious chest infection,’ she said. ‘He became wheezy, and it took a while for the antibiotics to kick in. The first lot the doctor prescribed gave Matthew an allergic reaction.’

‘But he was not hospitalised?’

‘No. I took a few days off work and treated him at home with an alternative antibiotic. He was fine in a week or so. It was a bad winter. Everyone went down with the same bug.’

‘Is he particularly susceptible to chest infections?’

She chewed her lip as she thought about the other mothers she knew at crèche and what she knew of their children. ‘No,’ she answered at last. ‘No more than the average child. Why are you asking such questions?’

He gave a little shrug, his expression giving nothing away. ‘I have missed out on three years of his life. I am just trying to fill in the gaps.’

Her grey-blue gaze hardened as it met his. ‘You could have been there from the first moment, but you chose to disbelieve me. I take it the doctor you saw confirmed my version of events?’

He let out a sigh that snagged at his throat like a mouthful of barbed wire. ‘Yes. It has now been confirmed. It is rare, but it does occasionally happen. I have had a spontaneous rejoin of my vas deferens.’

‘Do you need a DNA test to confirm Matthew as your son and not someone else’s?’

Alessandro was ashamed to admit he had thought of it—but as soon as he had seen that child he had known he was his. A DNA test would only confirm what he already knew—Matthew was his son, the living breathing image of himself and his younger brother Marco, with all its harrowing burdens and consequences.

‘No,’ he said, not meeting her gaze. ‘That will not be necessary. I have all the information I need.’ For now, he added silently. A DNA test would have to be performed at some stage, but not the one she was thinking of.

Scarlett sat opposite him, trying to push her righteous anger to one side, but she couldn’t quite manage it. She was secretly terrified he might take it upon himself to insist on regular access to Matthew.

Matthew had only known her as his chief care-giver. He hated being at crèche, in spite of the loving and well-trained staff, and on the few occasions Scarlett had been out at night the only people he liked babysitting him were Roxanne or her mother.

‘Scarlett…’He pushed a hand through the black silk of his hair and met her gaze. ‘I would like to discuss the role I want to play in Matthew’s life now that I know he is mine.’

Here it comes, she thought, her stomach twisting and turning with dread. ‘He’s only three years old,’ she said, sending him a flinty look. ‘I hope you’re not expecting him to fly back and forth like a parcel between Sydney and Milan several times a year? Because I won’t allow it.’

A frown drew his brows together. ‘I was not thinking of any such thing, not yet in any case. He is too young to be without his mother for one thing, and the other…’

Scarlett waited for him to continue, but instead he let out a sigh and got to his feet. She watched, her breath feeling as if she was drawing it into her lungs through a crushed drinking-straw, as he reached down and picked up the hospital photograph again. He stood looking down at it for endless seconds. His face side-on was like an expressionless mask, and yet she was almost certain she could see a film of moisture in his eyes as he put the frame back down and faced her fully.

‘Tell me about him,’ he said in a voice that didn’t sound like his at all. ‘Tell me everything.’

Scarlett wasn’t sure where to begin. She didn’t want to overload him with guilt, but neither did she want him to think it had been a breeze having his child without emotional and financial support. ‘He’s a lovely child,’ she said. ‘He was born at eleven in the morning and weighed seven pounds and three ounces. He’s very advanced for his age; he walked at ten months, and spoke in full sentences at eighteen, which is unusual for boys; they are often slower with language. He loves cars, as you can see, and he loves animals. I wish I could have given him more than I have, but… Well, I gave him what I could when I could.’

‘You did your best,’ he said. ‘I am amazed that you have achieved what you have while trying to raise a small child.’

‘It wasn’t always easy,’ she admitted. ‘But my mother has been down this road before, so I more or less knew what I was in for.’

Scarlett looked at his tortured expression. Seeing him finally accept Matthew as his son had been so incredibly poignant, it had moved her to tears. It would take him a few days, maybe even weeks, to realise the full extent of what he had missed out on in his son’s life so far. He was so obviously affected by the realisation that he had made the biggest mistake of his life. He was doing his best to find a way to make amends, but how that was going to impact on her and Matthew remained to be seen.

‘I want an active role in his life,’ Alessandro said. ‘I know it will be hard for you to accept, but I want to be a real father to him now.’

She didn’t answer, just stood there before him with uncertainty and fear in her gaze. And no wonder, Alessandro thought. He still found it hard to believe just a thin wall of plasterboard separated him from the sleeping form of his son. The son he had betrayed by being so adamant Scarlett had lied to him.

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