for thinking otherwise?
‘Yes! Yes, of course he’s happy!’
But Ben had now started squirming and rubbing his fist into each eye in the way he always did when he was tired. And even though she longed to put him down in his cot—some sense of foreboding made her want to keep him up for as long as possible.
To act as a buffer between her and Casimiro? she wondered guiltily.
Ben gave another wriggle and Melissa sighed as she gave into the inevitable. ‘I’ll have to go and put him to bed.’ She hesitated as she was overwhelmed by a terrible and slightly hysterical urge to ask him in a sing-song voice if he wanted ‘to say goodnight to Daddy’? But common sense prevailed and she turned on her heel and went to get her son ready for bed, aware that Casimiro didn’t follow her. So there was to be no touching fairy-tale scene where the King’s hard heart melted over a bedtime story.
Somehow, she carried on with her usual routine. She wound up the brightly coloured plastic mobile above his bed which played ‘Baa Baa Black Sheep’ and she joined in with the nursery rhyme the way she always did. Smoothing her fingers through the silken tumble of his curls, she ran a gentle and loving palm down the side of his peachy-soft skin.
‘Goodnight, darling Ben,’ she whispered as she turned on the night light.
She had taken so long to settle him that, when she returned to the sitting room, Melissa half hoped that Casimiro might have grown bored with waiting and gone away—knowing that such a hope was foolish and irrational considering all the trouble she’d gone to in order to get him here. But, no, he was still there—a captive if unwilling audience—and it was up to her to make him realise that she was telling the truth.
It had been a fortnight since she’d seen him—when she’d stupidly let him seduce her on his island of Zaffirinthos. He had left her lying naked and confused on the sofa—his back turned to her as he had dressed in stony silence—and then suddenly agreed to travel to England to meet Ben for himself.
In those two weeks she had thought about him—actually, she’d thought about little else. Not just as a prospective father, but as a lover. He had been…what? Melissa bit her lip. He had been technically perfect yet emotionally cold during that swift coupling. Like a block of ice. Almost as if he’d enjoyed the power of bringing her to orgasm so quickly. Watching her shudder and gasp with an arrogant and triumphant look on his mockingly handsome face. And then distancing himself afterwards as if he couldn’t wait to get away from her.
Well, she wasn’t going to be such easy prey today—that was for sure.
‘Can I offer you coffee?’ she questioned politely.
‘I haven’t come here to endure pointless social niceties.’
‘So I’ll take that as a no?’
His eyes narrowed, for he did not like that hint of sarcasm in her soft English voice. He did not like it one bit. ‘I have come here to discuss your extraordinary claim.’
For a moment there was silence and Melissa knew that she could dance to his particular tune all evening. Both skirting around the inevitable with nothing being achieved except more and more layers of confusion. She looked into his amber eyes, knowing that she should probably feel cowed by his mighty presence in her humble home. Or slightly ashamed at the ease with which she had let him seduce her for a second time. But in truth she felt neither. Motherhood took as much from a woman as it gave—but what it infused you with more than anything was the urgent need to fight for what was your child’s right.
‘Except that it’s not so extraordinary now that you’ve seen him, is it?’ she questioned quietly.
Her cool challenge took him slightly off guard. ‘Meaning what, precisely?’
‘You can’t deny the eyes.’
‘The eyes?’
He’s deliberately misunderstanding me, thought Melissa despairingly. ‘I’ve never seen eyes that colour on anyone else but you.’
He gave a short and bitter laugh. ‘You might have trouble standing that up as a valid argument in a court of law!’
‘C-court of law?’
Sensing her sudden uncertainty, he struck. ‘Of course. You must surely have thought through the fact that this is not an ordinary paternity claim?’
‘I don’t…I don’t understand.’
‘Don’t you?’ Casimiro saw her bewilderment and felt a rush of triumph. Let her have something else to fill her head with other than thoughts of his memory loss! ‘Did you really imagine that you could approach a king…’ he paused, deliberately ‘…and announce that you had given birth to his son—and that he and all his people would rejoice at the news?’
‘I thought…I thought…’
‘What did you think, Melissa?’ ‘That you might be—’
‘What?’ he demanded. ‘Pleased? Delighted? The proud papa eager to introduce his offspring to the world?’
His cruel comments deflated her growing sense of defiance, but her mother-love could see nothing but joy in her little boy. ‘I thought that you would be pleased, yes—once the initial confusion had died down.’
‘Initial confusion?’ he echoed furiously. ‘Are you out of your mind? Do you have any idea what this is going to mean?’
She stared at him, remembering his initial assessment of his son. Is this how he always greets guests? How callous was that as a reaction—when confronted for the first time by the delicious little scrap which was Ben? And suddenly, Melissa thought that maybe no father was better than this father—because what child deserved a man who seemed incapable of any kind of real feeling?
‘It needn’t mean anything at all,’ she said fiercely. ‘You’re not happy about the news—fine! I’ve done my duty and told you—but we don’t need you, Casimiro. We’ve managed without you up until now and we can manage without you again. Your wish is about to come true. You can go away from here now and forget about what I’ve told you and we will never bother you again.’
A grim smile hardened his mouth. He waited—because she was playing the inevitable game of the successful negotiator: the long, long pause before naming terms. ‘So how much?’ he questioned softly.
‘How much?’
‘Do you want me to pay you?’
There was a moment when she really didn’t understand what he was talking about. When he might as well have been speaking in Greek. Until she saw the cynical golden gleam from his eyes and then she cottoned on, her heart lurching in her chest.
‘You think I’m blackmailing you?’
‘That’s a rather dramatic way of putting it, Melissa. I think that “buying your silence” is the generally more acceptable term in these circumstances.’
Acceptable? Acceptable? Melissa found herself remembering the old childhood rhyme: Sticks and stones can break your bones but words can never hurt you. Who were they kidding? Words
