her precious pennies on new clothes when she could be buying stuff for Santino. Which was why she was wearing an unflattering outfit, which was probably making Matteo Valenti wonder what he’d ever seen in her. Measured against his made-to-measure sophistication, Keira felt like a scruffy wrongdoer who had just been dragged before an elegant high court judge.
She forced a polite smile to her lips. ‘Would you like to sit down?’
‘No, I don’t want to sit down. I want an answer to my question. Why did you contact me to tell me that I was a father? Why now?’
She flushed right up to the roots of her hair. ‘Because by law I have to register his birth and that brought everything to a head. I’ve realised I can’t go on living like this. I thought I could but I was wrong. I’m very...grateful to my aunt for taking me in but it’s too cramped. They don’t really want me here and I can kind of see their point.’ She met his eyes. ‘And I don’t want Santino growing up in this kind of atmosphere.’
Santino.
As she said the child’s name Matteo felt a whisper of something he didn’t recognise. Something completely outside his experience. He could feel it in the icing of his skin and sudden clench of his heart. ‘Santino?’ he repeated, wondering if he’d misheard her. He stared at her, his brow creased in a frown. ‘You gave him an Italian name?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
‘Because when I looked at him—’ her voice faltered as she scraped her fingers back through her hair and turned those big sapphire eyes on him ‘—I knew I could call him nothing else but an Italian name.’
‘Even though you sought to deny him his heritage and kept his birth hidden from me?’
She swallowed. ‘You made it very clear that you never wanted to see me again, Matteo.’
‘I didn’t know you were pregnant at the time,’ he bit out.
‘And neither did I!’ she shot back.
‘But you knew afterwards.’
‘Yes.’ How could she explain the sense of alienation she’d felt—not just from him, but from everyone? When everything had seemed so unreal and the world had suddenly looked like a very different place. The head of Luxury Limos had said he didn’t think it was a good idea if she carried on driving—not when she looked as if she was about to throw up whenever the car went over a bump. And even though she hadn’t been sick—not once—and even though Keira knew that by law she could demand to stay where she was, she didn’t have the energy or the funds to investigate further. What was she going to do—take him to an industrial tribunal?
She’d been terrified her boss would find out who the father of her unborn child was—because having sex with your most prestigious client was definitely a sacking offence. He’d offered her a job back in the workshop, but she had no desire to slide underneath a car and get oil all over her hands, not when such a precious bundle was growing inside her. Eventually she’d accepted a mind-numbingly dull job behind the reception desk, becoming increasingly aware that on the kind of wages she was being paid, she’d never be able to afford childcare after the birth. She’d saved every penny she could and been as frugal as she knew how, but gradually all her funds were running out and now she was in real trouble.
‘Yes, I knew,’ she said slowly. ‘Just like I knew I ought to tell you that you were going to be a father. But every time I picked up the phone to call you, something held me back. Can’t you understand?’
‘Frankly, no. I can’t.’
She looked him straight in the eye. ‘You think those cruel words you said to me last time we spoke wouldn’t matter? That you could say what you liked and it wouldn’t hurt, or have consequences?’
His voice grew hard. ‘I haven’t come here to argue the rights and wrongs of your secrecy. I’ve come to see my son.’
‘He’s sleeping.’
‘I won’t wake him.’ His voice grew harsh. ‘You’ve denied me all this time and you will deny me no longer. I want to see my son, Keira, and if I have to search every room in the house to find him, then that’s exactly what I’m going to do.’
It was a demand Keira couldn’t ignore and not just because she didn’t doubt his threat to search the small house from top to bottom. She’d seen the brief tightening of his face when she’d mentioned his child and another wave of guilt had washed over her. Because she of all people knew what it was like to grow up without a father. She knew about the gaping hole it left—a hole which could never be filled. And yet she had sought to subject her own child to that.
‘Come with me,’ she said huskily.
He followed her up the narrow staircase and Keira was acutely aware of his presence behind her. You couldn’t ignore him, even when you couldn’t see him, she thought despairingly. She could detect the heat from his body and the subtle sandalwood which was all his and, stupidly, she remembered the way that scent had clung to her skin the morning after he’d made love to her. Her heart was thundering by the time they reached the box-room she shared with Santino and she held her breath as Matteo stood frozen for a moment before moving soundlessly towards the crib. His shoulders were stiff with tension as he reached it and he was silent for so long that she started to get nervous.
‘Matteo?’ she said.
Matteo didn’t answer. Not then. He wasn’t sure he trusted himself to speak because his thoughts were in such disarray. He looked down at the baby expecting to feel the instant bolt of love people talked about when they first set eyes on their own flesh and blood, but there was nothing. He stared down at the dark fringe of eyelashes which curved on the infant’s olive-hued cheeks and the shock of black hair. Tiny hands were curled into two tiny fists and he found himself leaning forward to count all the fingers, nodding his head with satisfaction as he registered each one. He felt as if he were observing himself and his reaction from a distance and realised it was possession he felt, not love. The sense that this was someone who belonged to him in a way that nobody ever had before.
His son.
He swallowed.
His son.
He waited for a moment before turning to Keira and he saw her dark blue eyes widen, as if she’d read something in his face she would prefer not to have seen.
‘So you played God with all our futures,’ he observed softly. ‘By keeping him from me.’
Her gaze became laced with defiance.
‘You paid me for sex.’
‘I did not pay you for sex,’ he gritted out. ‘I explained my motivation in my note. You spoke of a luxury you weren’t used to and I thought I would make it possible. Was that so very wrong?’
‘You know very well it was!’ she burst out. ‘Because offering me cash was insulting. Any man would know that.’
‘Was that why you tried to sell your story to the journalist, because you felt “insulted”?’
‘I did not sell my story to anyone,’ she shot back. ‘Can’t you imagine what it was like? I’d had sex for the first time and woke to find
