to take in.
He had never wanted a family, he was happy doing what he did. Happy, for goodness’ sake! He didn’t want a child in his life, disrupting his routine. The big question was, why had she told him now? Why not when she found herself pregnant?
His eyes blazed as a bigger scenario hit him. ‘I’m not the father, am I? Why in heaven’s name would you wait this long to tell me if I were? You’re after money. You’re trying to take me for a fool. Get out of here, Sienna. Get out!’
Never in his life had he been so angry. If Sienna had thought she could pull this stunt on him, she was very much mistaken. If the baby really had been his, she would have wasted no time in coming back. She would have made him face up to his responsibilities. Even if she hadn’t, no woman in her right mind would bring up her baby alone without seeking maintenance from the father. She would have insisted on that. She had to be lying.
Sienna’s back straightened and her fantastic blue eyes flashed with indignant fury. She looked like a tigress protecting her young. ‘He is definitely yours.’
‘So you say.’ He was not going to be so easily fooled. Words were easy. He had heard of women who did this sort of thing, who tricked their former partners or husbands into believing someone else’s child was their own.
‘Do you want proof?’ she demanded. ‘It can be arranged.’
Her eyes locked into his and held, and in that moment Adam saw nothing but blazing honesty. His brief suspicion was reluctantly relegated to the deepest recesses of his mind. Maybe it would resurrect itself. Maybe. Perhaps if he saw the child, he would know at once whether he was his or not. He’d had a strong resemblance to his own father so there was every reason to believe that he would see something of himself in this boy.
Adam folded his arms and looked hard into the blue of her eyes. ‘If the boy is mine, why have you waited so long to tell me about him?’ He was aware that his voice was still harshly condemning, and filled with more than a little suspicion, but, hell, she couldn’t drop a bombshell like this and expect no reaction.
His heart felt as though it was trying to escape from his chest and he was afraid to stand any closer to Sienna because he felt like shaking her. Why, for pity’s sake, had she kept her secret all this time? Why?
She looked stunning in a black and white top and stylish black trousers, which hid none of the curves of her sexy bottom. Her black high-heeled sandals gave her added height, even though they looked dangerously difficult to walk in. And her rich chestnut hair, which had always been her crowning glory, was cut in a short, chunky style that suited her elfin face.
She certainly didn’t look like the mother of an energetic four-year-old. She was dressed to kill. She had come here to drop her bombshell—and she had certainly done that. It was a wonder it hadn’t exploded and brought the whole apartment block down around their feet. Above them the sky was blue and serene but inside his body a war was raging.
‘My first instinct, when I discovered that I was pregnant, was obviously to tell you,’ she said, her eyes holding his.
Intense blue eyes, eyes that he had once felt himself drowning in. Eyes which now warred with his but were extremely beautiful nevertheless.
‘But as you’d told me enough times that you didn’t want kids, not for many years anyway, I knew it would cause another unholy row between us.’ Sienna lifted her shoulders and let them drop again. ‘So I decided to bring Ethan up on my own.’
And still she looked unswervingly into his eyes.
Ethan! The boy’s name was Ethan! He rolled the name experimentally on his tongue. ‘So why are you here now?’he asked harshly, ignoring the unease he felt at her words. It was true he had never wanted children and he hadn’t been afraid to say so. But he would never have ignored a son or daughter. They would have been given his love and he would have adapted his lifestyle. He would have had to.
Could he truly have done it, though? He hated himself for admitting that he would have been truly angry that his well-ordered life had been so rudely disrupted.
‘You said it wasn’t for money.’ He pushed his thoughts to one side for the moment. ‘What other reason can there possibly be?’ He did not understand her, not one little bit. The shock still hadn’t worn off and despite the fact that he didn’t drink he felt as though he could do with a generous slug of brandy. He needed something to restore his equilibrium.
‘Because,’ she began hesitantly, for the first time lowering her lids and looking slightly uncomfortable, ‘Ethan’s been ill, very ill.’ Then she looked at him again, a proud tilt to her head, trying to hide the pain in her eyes. ‘He had meningitis and I thought I was going to lose him. I realised that if he had died and you’d never even known you had a son, I would have done you an injustice.’
Adam felt a band tighten around his heart. He felt physical pain. His son had been close to death and he had known nothing about it! The blood roared in his head and he quickly closed the space between him and Sienna, taking her shoulders, gripping them so hard that he saw her wince. But he did not care.
‘What sort of a mother are you,’ he growled, ‘denying your son his father? Especially at a time like that. How could you? I’m presuming that he’s all right now?’
Sienna nodded and swallowed hard but she did not try to pull away from him. She stood there and looked sadly into his eyes.
He saw tears, big fat tears that welled and escaped and rolled slowly down her cheeks. One half of him wanted to brush them gently away with the tip of a caring finger, the other half, the angry half, wanted to shake her to within an inch of her life.
In the end he did neither. He released her and, pulling a handkerchief from his pocket, pushed it into her hand. Then he turned away, contemplating the London skyline instead. Not that he saw anything. His eyes were blinded by fury, by disappointment, by the knowledge that his son, his own flesh and blood, had lain at death’s door and he had been left in ignorance.
Adam felt a lump in his throat and an odd feeling he could not put a name to. He was not usually an emotional man, keeping an iron control over his feelings. He had a ruthless work ethic and it often crept into his home life as well. And yet Sienna had found a chink in his armour. She had hit him hard with this fresh piece of information.
Accepting the fact that he had a son had been bad enough, but to hear that he had almost died knocked him for six. How long he stood there staring into space he didn’t know. It was not until he heard Sienna’s tentative voice behind him that he snapped himself back to the present and turned to look at her.
Her eyes, which were sometimes more turquoise than blue, were incredibly pale at this moment. ‘I’m sorry.’ And her voice was so low as to be almost inaudible.
‘Pray tell me,’ he growled, breathing hard and looking fiercely into her face. ‘Would you have ever told me if—if my son—’ he wanted to say the name Ethan but he couldn’t get his head round it yet ‘—hadn’t fallen ill?’
‘I don’t know,’ answered Sienna quietly, still not taking her eyes away from his. ‘I honestly don’t know. But your reaction tells me that I did the right thing. You still don’t want children, do you? You still put your work first.’
Adam didn’t answer. She was so damned right that he felt guilty.
‘Ethan would have had
