who she is, a voice reproved in Jemima’s mind and she moved through to the doorway and breathed in deep, struggling to bolster herself for what was to come. She opened the door briskly. ‘Mr Vitale...’
‘Jemima,’ he said drily, stepping inside, his sculpted lips unsmiling, an aloof coolness stamped across his lean bronzed face like a wall.
‘Nicky’s in here...’ Jemima pressed the living-room door wider to show off Nicky where he sat on the floor surrounded by his favourite toys.
‘His name is Niccolò,’ Luciano corrected without hesitation. ‘I don’t like diminutives. I would also like to meet my son alone...’
Jemima glanced up at him in surprise and dismay but he wasn’t looking at her. His attention was all for Nicky, no, Niccolò, and Luciano’s lustrous tiger eyes were gleaming as he literally savoured his first view of his son with an intensity she could feel. Jemima stared, couldn’t help doing it, noting with relief that the forbidding lines of Luciano’s lean dark face were softening, the hard compression of his beautifully sculpted hard mouth easing.
‘Thank you, Miss Barber,’ Luciano Vitale murmured, deftly planting himself inside the room and leaving her outside as he firmly closed the door in her face.
With a sigh, Jemima sat down on the phone bench just inside the front door. Of course he didn’t want an audience, she reasoned, striving to be fair and reasonable. Who was the woman waiting outside for Luciano? If she was his girlfriend, did he live with her? Was it possible that the girlfriend was unable to have children and that she and Luciano had entered the surrogacy agreement as a couple? And what did any of those facts matter to her? Well, they mattered, she conceded ruefully, because she cared a great deal about Nicky’s future but ultimately she had no say whatsoever in what came next.
As a whimper sounded from the living room Jemima tensed. Nicky was going through a stranger-danger phase. She could hear the quiet murmur of Luciano’s voice as he endeavoured to soothe the little boy. Sadly, a sudden outburst of inconsolable crying was his reward. Jemima made no move but her hands were clenched into fists and her knuckles showed white beneath her pale skin as she resisted the urge to intervene. The sound of Nicky becoming increasingly upset distressed her but she knew she had to learn to step back and accept that Luciano Vitale was Nicky’s father and his closest relative.
When Nicky’s sobs erupted into screams, the living-room door opened abruptly. ‘You’d better come in... He’s frightened,’ Luciano bit out in a harsh undertone.
Jemima required no second invitation. She scrambled up and surged past him. Nicky’s anxious eyes locked straight on to her and he held up his arms to be lifted. Jemima crouched down to scoop him up and he clung like a monkey, shaking and sobbing, burying his little head in her neck.
Luciano watched that revealing display in angry disbelief. Niccolò had two little hands fisted in his mother’s shirt, his fearful desperation patently obvious as he hid his face from the stranger who had tried to make friends with him. As Jemima quieted the trembling child Luciano registered two unwelcome facts. His son was much more attached to his mother than his father had expected and Jemima was very definitely the centre of his son’s sense of security. It was a complication he neither wanted nor needed. His attention dropped to the generous curve of Jemima’s derriere in jeans and he tensed, averting his gaze to the back of his son’s curly head as he felt himself harden. So, he liked women to look more like women than slender boys and she had splendid curves, but he abhorred that hormonal response that was so very inappropriate in Jemima Barber’s radius.
‘He’s teething, which always makes him a bit clingy,’ Jemima proffered in Nicky’s defence. ‘And this is the wrong end of the day for him because he’s tired and fractious—’
‘He’s terrified. Isn’t he used to meeting people?’ Luciano pressed critically.
‘He’s more used to women.’
‘But your parents must’ve been looking after him for you while you were in London,’ he pointed out, momentarily depriving her of breath as he reminded her of the lie she was living for his benefit. After all, nobody could be in two places at once and while Jemima had been teaching and covering Nicky’s childcare costs at a local nursery facility, Julie had been in London.
‘Dad’s retired but he’s still out and about a lot, so Nicky would’ve seen less of him,’ Jemima muttered in a brittle voice, crossing her fingers at a lie that made her feel guiltier than ever because Nicky adored his grandfather.
Nicky stuck his thumb in his mouth and sagged against Jemima with a final hoarse whimper. ‘Sorry about this...’ she added uncomfortably. ‘But in time he’ll get used to you.’
Luciano compressed his lips. He didn’t have time to waste.
‘Is that your girlfriend outside waiting in the car?’ Jemima asked abruptly, keen to know and to change the subject about Nicky’s lifestyle in recent months.
Luciano frowned, winged ebony brows pleating above hard dark eyes fringed by lashes as dense and noticeable as black lace. ‘No, the nanny I’m hiring.’
Jemima stopped breathing. ‘A nanny?’ she gasped in dismay.
‘I will need some support in caring for my son,’ Luciano countered drily, wondering what he was going to do about the problem his son’s mother had become.
Well, he certainly wouldn’t be marrying her as Charles Bennett had ludicrously suggested after the results of the DNA test had been revealed.
‘A paper marriage,’ Charles had outlined. ‘In one move you would legitimise your son’s birth, tidy up any future inheritance issues and gain a legal right to have custody of your son. As an ex-wife you could also give her a settlement without breaking the law. It would be perfect.’
Perfect only in a nightmare, Luciano reflected grimly. No way was he linking his name to a woman who was no better than a thieving hooker, not in a paper marriage of any kind.
He was employing a nanny, Jemima thought wretchedly as panic snaked through her in a cold little shiver of foreboding. Clearly Luciano was planning to remove Nicky from her care as soon as he could.
Luciano surveyed his infant son, who was engaged in contentedly falling asleep against his mother’s shoulder. He could rip him away from Jemima as he himself had once been ripped away from his own mother. All right, he had been almost three years old but he had never forgotten the day he was torn from his mother’s loving arms. Of course there had been a lot of blood and violence involved and naturally he had been traumatised by the episode. He would not be doing anything of that nature. He despised Jemima Barber but he did not wish her dead for having crossed him. At the same time, however, he deeply resented her hold on his son.
‘Nicky’s very emotional,’ Jemima remarked cautiously. ‘He does get upset quite easily.’
‘I’m surprised he’s so fond of you. You’ve spent most of your time in London and left other people looking after him,’ Luciano condemned.
‘I’ve spent much more time with him than you appreciate,’ Jemima protested, tilting her chin. ‘Of course he’s fond of me...’
‘But you always planned to give him away,’ he reminded her coolly. ‘As long as the pay-off was sufficient. Shouldn’t you have prepared him better for the separation?’
An angry flush illuminated her pale porcelain
