She opened her mouth to deny it, then reminded herself to think before she spoke. Almost choking on the words, she said, ‘It had nothing to do with money! At the time it seemed the best thing for him. But there are more important things for a child than money and what it can buy.’
‘Agreed,’ Zandro said. ‘A family, for one thing.’
‘I’m his family!’
His mouth turned down in a sceptical sneer. ‘Forgive me if I find this sudden maternal concern difficult to believe.’
‘It’s not sudden at all! You don’t know how hard it was, how much heartbreak…’ She stopped there, her eyes stinging, and quickly turned her head, trying to stem the threatening tears, her teeth sinking savagely into her lower lip. Weeping in front of this unfeeling man was humiliating.
One tear escaped and unthinkingly she lifted her towel-encased arm to swipe at it, impatient with her own weakness.
The coldness of the compress helped her steady herself. When she returned her defiant gaze to him Zandro hadn’t moved, standing as though fixed to the floor, watching her.
He shifted then, a slight movement of shoulders, feet, and thrust his hands into his trouser pockets, examining her as if for flaws—she was sure he could find plenty.
Unexpectedly he said, ‘You have a case, I suppose—morally, if not legally. There will be conditions, but provided no harm comes to Nicky I’m willing to talk about visiting rights.’
CHAPTER TWO
‘VISITING RIGHTS?’ He would concede his nephew’s mother the right to visit her child? Such magnanimity.
Swallowing the sarcastic addendum, she reminded herself again that losing her temper would do no good. ‘That isn’t enough,’ she said, with an effort sticking to understatement. ‘You can’t expect me to accept it.’
‘But you expect me to tamely hand over Nicky to you—a stranger?’
Her heart jumping with panic and then rage at the callous remark, she made another effort to steady herself. ‘His mother,’ she reiterated. If she repeated the words often enough surely they would seem more real, to herself as well as to him.
Zandro’s own anger escaped his iron control. ‘You haven’t been near him since he was two months old!’
‘That’s not my fault!’ Zandro couldn’t have forgotten the promise he’d extracted, made Lia sign her name to. ‘You wouldn’t let me near him!’
‘In the state you were in, do you blame me? It was for his sake.’
Did he truly believe that? Had anything more than family pride and possessiveness been behind his insistence that Rico’s son had a right to be raised as a Brunellesci and Lia must give him up?
No, she reminded herself. Zandro and his parents could have helped without taking Dominic away. If he’d really had the child’s interests in mind he’d have found some way to support its mother, not cut her off from any contact with her son. ‘It was a mistake,’ she said, ‘leaving him with you.’
His look held contempt and disbelief. ‘You would take him away from everything—everyone—he knows?’
‘I realise I can’t uplift him without warning.’ She might not know a great deal about children, but that much was basic. ‘I hoped you and your parents would be reasonable—allow him time to get used to me before…before I take him home.’
‘This is his home.’ His autocratic tone brooked no argument. ‘Where he will stay until he’s old enough to decide for himself.’
Moistening her lips, she formed her next words carefully. ‘Perhaps your parents will think differently. You don’t know how it feels to have a child. Your mother might understand.’
‘I know how it feels.’
An unpleasant shock stirred in her stomach. ‘You have a child?’
‘I have Nicky,’ he said. ‘And I don’t intend to let him go.’
Deadlock. In his rock-hard face she saw the same unyielding willpower he’d exerted in order to get his hands on Dominic, to force through the paperwork that made him the baby’s legal guardian, ensuring there could be no comeback if Lia changed her mind.
She wasn’t giving up, but banging her head against the brick wall of his intransigence wouldn’t accomplish anything at this point. ‘I’d like to see him,’ she said.
‘He’ll be having his nap.’
‘I’ll wait.’ Short of bodily throwing her out, or getting a henchman to do it, he wouldn’t shift her.
He regarded her consideringly for several seconds, perhaps weighing how much of a fight she’d put up if he did physically remove her. Then he gave a short, surprised laugh, strode to a discreet intercom on the wall and pressed a button. ‘Two cups and a pot of coffee please, Mrs Walker,’ he said into the machine. ‘And something to eat.’
Switching off, he wandered to a window, looking out at the driveway and lawns. Perhaps realising it was discourteous to present his back to a guest, however unwelcome, he turned abruptly. ‘When did you begin watching the house?’ he asked.
‘Yesterday was the first time.’
‘Have you been in Australia for long?’
‘Since the day before.’
‘Where are you staying?’
She told him, but he didn’t seem to recognise the name of the bed and breakfast accommodation. Small, cheap and basic, it was no doubt not the kind of place that he or anyone he knew would even notice. ‘It’s clean,’ she said. ‘And quiet.’
He glanced out of the window, then returned his attention to her. ‘I tried to keep track of you after you left here. You moved about a lot. I didn’t know you’d returned to New Zealand.’
‘You had me watched?’ Resentment at the intrusion coloured her voice. ‘Why?’ Had he anticipated that Lia might one day challenge his guardianship of her son? Hoped for some damning sign that would count against her, strengthen his position?
His mouth went tight. ‘I wanted to know if you were all right. You’re Nicky’s mother, after all. And Rico loved you, however wrong-headed he was.’
Rico, his younger brother who had loved life and lived for the moment, impatient with the restrictions and expectations of the Brunellesci family. And who had paid the price and died far too young in the wreckage of his car, leaving a baby and a desperate, injured and grief-stricken mother who couldn’t cope with what had happened to her and her child.
Even after securing legal custody of his brother’s child, Zandro had been concerned about Lia? Hard to believe.
He might, she supposed, have been protecting the family’s reputation, perhaps afraid of what Rico’s lover might say about his brother, about his parents, about Zandro himself.
‘I managed,’ she said. ‘My…my
