from behind the reception desk, ‘I have a class to conduct.’
‘I will see you this evening,’ he said, locking gazes with her. ‘I have a hire car so I can pick you up if you give me your address.’
Bronte thought of the modest little granny flat she and Ella lived in at the back of her mother’s house. She thought too of all the baby paraphernalia that would require an explanation if he was to insist on coming inside. She was not ready to explain anything to him after what he had done. He’d had his chance to find out about his baby and he’d callously thrown it away. ‘No, thank you,’ she said. ‘I can make it on my own.’
He gave her a gleaming smile. ‘So you’ve made up your mind to come after all?’
She gave him a beady look in return. ‘It’s not as if I have much choice in the matter. You’re hanging the threat of charging me an exorbitant rent if I don’t comply with your wishes.’
He reached out and trailed the point of his finger down the curve of her cheek, the action setting off a riot of sensation beneath her skin. ‘You have no idea what my wishes are, cara,’ he said softly and, before she could say a word in return, he had turned and left.
Chapter Two
‘OF COURSE I’ll mind Ella for you,’ Tina Bennett said to Bronte later that evening. ‘She’ll be tucked up in bed in any case by then. Are you going out with Rachel’s brother David again? I know he’s not exactly your type but he seems a rather sincere sort of chap.’
Bronte cuddled her fourteen-month-old daughter on her lap, breathing in her freshly bathed smell. ‘No,’ she said, meeting her mother’s gaze. ‘It’s someone I met while I was in London. He’s in Melbourne for a few weeks and decided to look me up.’
Tina’s slim eyebrows moved together in a worried frown. ‘Bronte, darling, is it him? Is it Ella’s father?’
Bronte nodded grimly. ‘I stupidly thought this day would never come. When he broke off our relationship the message I got was he never wanted to see me again. “A clean break,” he said. Now he’s suddenly changed the rules.’
‘You don’t have to see him if you don’t want to, darling,’ Tina said. ‘It’s not as if he knows about Ella. Anyway, after the way he treated you, I don’t think you are under any obligation to tell him.’
Bronte’s long heavy sigh stirred the soft feathery dark brown hair on the top of her baby daughter’s head. ‘Mum, I’ve always worried about the timing of it all. He broke things off before I knew I was pregnant. If I had found out just a week earlier it might have changed everything. Perhaps if he had known he might not have been so…so adamant about never seeing me again.’
‘Darling, what was a week either side going to do?’ her mother asked. ‘He had clearly already made up his mind. He wouldn’t even agree to talk to you on the phone let alone see you face to face. What were you supposed to do? Tell him via a third party?’
Bronte bit her lip as she looked at her mother. ‘Maybe that’s what I should have done,’ she said. ‘Perhaps then he would have agreed to see me again. We could have at least discussed options.’
Tina Bennett gave her daughter a streetwise look. ‘And what options might those have been? It’s my guess he would have marched you straight off for a termination. A man with that sort of lifestyle would not want a love-child to support. It wouldn’t suit his lifestyle.’
‘I would never have agreed to that,’ Bronte said, holding Ella even closer to her body. ‘I would never have allowed anyone to talk me into getting rid of my baby.’
‘Darling, you were young and madly in love,’ Tina said. ‘I know plenty of young women who have done things they later regretted just because the man they loved insisted on it.’
Bronte looked down at her little daughter, who was now snuggling against her chest, her dark blue eyes struggling to stay open as she fought against sleep. It worried Bronte that there might be some truth in what her mother had said. She had been young and madly in love. She would have done almost anything to keep Luca by her side. As it was, she had made a pathetic fool of herself chasing after him like a lovesick teenager, leaving countless ‘call me’ messages and texts on his phone, not to mention pleading emails that made her cringe to think about now.
‘You’re not going to tell him about Ella, are you, love?’ her mother asked.
Bronte gently brushed the soft hair off her sleeping baby’s face. ‘When he came into the studio unannounced like that today, all I could think was how much I hated him.’ She looked up at her mother. ‘But one day Ella is going to be old enough to realise she doesn’t have a father. She’s going to want to know who he is and why he isn’t a part of her life. What am I supposed to say? How will I explain it to her?’
‘You’ll explain it the way I did to you,’ her mother said. ‘That the man you thought would stay by you deserted you. Remember, Bronte: a father is as a father does. As far as I see it, Luca Sabbatini was nothing more than a sperm donor. One day you’ll meet some nice man who will love you and Ella. He will be a far better father to her than a man who cut you from his life without a backward glance. What’s to say he does it again if not sooner rather than later? He won’t be just hurting you this time, but Ella too.’
‘I guess you’re right,’ Bronte said on a sigh as she rose to her feet, carefully cradling Ella in her arms. ‘But there’s a part of me that thinks he has a right to know he fathered a child.’
‘Men like him don’t even like children,’ Tina said matter-of-factly. ‘They see them as too much responsibility. Believe me, I know the type.’
A small frown tugged at Bronte’s brow. ‘When my junior class arrived at the studio this afternoon he looked at them…I don’t know…almost wistfully, as if he was imagining being a parent one day.’
‘Bronte—’ her mother’s voice sounded stern ‘—think carefully about this before you do something you might regret. He’s a very rich man. A very rich and powerful man. He might take it upon himself to pay you back for not telling him about his child. He could take you to court. You’d have no hope of fighting him and, even if you did, you’d have the burden of paying for the legal work. And, don’t forget, given his pedigree background, he would have the best of lawyers at his disposal. The family court is much more accommodating when it comes to fathers these days, especially well-to-do ones. Even if he got partial custody, it would mean Ella would have to fly back and forth to Italy or wherever he currently lives. You might not see her for months on end, and then one day when she’s older she might decide not to come back to you at all.’
Bronte felt her heart contract in fear at such an outcome. Luca came from such a powerful dynasty. The Sabbatini clan would be the very worst sort of enemy to take on. Their power and influence reached all over the world. She hadn’t a hope in taking Luca on in a custody battle, let alone his family.
The bitter irony was she had never intended to keep Ella’s existence a secret. In spite of Luca’s insistence that he never wanted to see her again, as soon as Bronte had found out she was pregnant she had tried to contact him. After a couple of fruitless weeks of not getting through to him, she had eventually flown to his villa in Milan but the household staff had refused her entry. The housekeeper had told her rather bluntly that Luca was in America with a new lover.
The news had hit Bronte like a fist in the
