Queasily, she remembered his cold hostility when she’d refused to give up her job. Was that when their marriage had really ended? It was certainly the moment when she’d finally been forced to acknowledge the facts. That marrying Aristo had not been an act of impulse, driven by an undeniable love, but a mistake based on a misguided hope and longing to have a place in his life, and in his heart.
But Aristo didn’t have a heart, and he hadn’t come to her apartment to return a pack of cards. As usual, he just wanted to have the last word.
Crossing her arms to contain the ache in her chest, she lifted her chin. ‘If you believe that, then perhaps I should have given you the number for my doctor, as you’re clearly delusional,’ she snapped. ‘Wanting to carry on doing a job I loved didn’t make me self-absorbed, Aristo. It was an act of self-preservation.’
Aristo stared at her, his shoulders rigid with frustration. ‘Self-preservation!’ he scoffed. ‘You were living in a penthouse in Manhattan with a view of Central Park. You were hardly on Skid Row.’ He shook his dark head in disbelief. ‘That’s the trouble with you, Teddie—you’re so used to performing you turn every single part of your life into a stunt, even this conversation.’
They were both almost shouting now, their bodies braced against the incoming storm.
Her eyes narrowed. ‘You think this is a conversation?’ she snapped. ‘You didn’t come here to converse. I bruised your ego so you wanted—’
‘Mommy—Mommy!’
The child’s voice came from somewhere behind her, cutting through her angry tirade like a scythe through wheat. Turning instantly, instinctively, Teddie cleared her throat.
‘Oh, sweetheart, it’s all right.’
Her son, George, blinked up at her. He was wearing his pyjamas and holding his favourite toy boat and she felt a rush of pure, fierce love as she looked down into his huge, anxious dark eyes.
‘Mommy shouted…’
He bit his lip and, hearing the wobble in his voice, she reached down and curved her arm unsteadily around his stocky little waist and pulled him closer, pressing his body against hers. ‘I’m sorry, darling. Did Mommy wake you?’
Lifting him up, she held him tightly as he nodded his head against her shoulder.
Watching Teddie press her face against the little dark-haired boy’s cheek, Aristo felt his stomach turn to ice.
He felt winded by the discovery that she had a child. No, it was more than that: he felt wounded, even though he could come up with no rational explanation for why that should be the case.
His pulse was racing like a bolting horse, his thoughts firing off in every direction. He could hardly take it in, but there could be no mistake. This child was Teddie’s son. But why hadn’t she told him?
Thinking back to their earlier conversation, he replayed her words and felt an icy fury rise up inside of him. Not only had she said nothing, she’d lied to his face when he’d asked her about her family. Of course he’d been talking about siblings, cousins, aunts—but why hadn’t she told him then? Why had she kept her son a secret?
At that moment the little boy lifted his face and suddenly he couldn’t breathe. At the periphery of his vision he could see Teddie turning to face him, and then he knew why, for her green eyes were telling him what her mouth—that beautiful, soft, deceiving mouth—had failed to do earlier.
This was his son.
Like a drowning man, he saw his whole life speeding through his head—meeting Teddie at that dinner, her long dark hair swinging forward half-hiding a smile that had stolen his breath away, the echoing emptiness of his apartment, and that moment in the Kildare when she’d hesitated…
He breathed out unsteadily, and abruptly his pulse juddered to a halt.
Only, he wasn’t drowning in water, but in lies. Teddie’s lies.
The resentment and hostility he’d felt after she’d left him, the shock of bumping into her today—all of it was swept aside in a firestorm of fury so blindingly white and intense that he had to reach out and steady himself against a bookcase.
But the luxury of losing his temper with Teddie would have to wait. Right now it was time to meet his son.
‘I’m sorry too,’ he said gently, making sure that none of the emotions roiling inside his head were audible in his voice as he smiled at his son for the first time.
‘But you don’t need to worry.’ Skewering Teddie with his gaze, he took a step closer. ‘Mommy and I are going to have a chat, aren’t we?’
He turned to Teddie, making sure that the smooth blandness of his voice in no way detracted from the blistering rage in his eyes. Hearing her small, sharp intake of breath, he felt the glacier in his chest start to scrape forward. It had been barely audible, but it was all the confirmation he needed.
Forcing herself to meet his gaze, Teddie nodded mechanically, but inside her head a mantra of panic-stricken thoughts was beating in time to her heartbeat. He knows. He knows George is his son. What am I going to do?
Clearing her throat, she smiled. ‘Yes, that’s right. We’re going to have a grown-ups talk. And you, young man, are going to be taken back to bed.’
Although, given that her legs felt as though they were made of blancmange, that might be easier to say than do.
Aristo stared at her coldly. ‘But not before you’ve introduced me, of course.’
Her chin jerked up, but his glittering gaze silenced her words of objection.
‘This is my son, George,’ she said stiffly.
‘Hello, George.’ Aristo smiled. ‘I’m very honoured to meet you. My name is Aristo Leonidas, and I’m an old friend of your mommy’s.’
Gazing into his son’s eyes—dark eyes that were almost identical in shape and colour to his own—he felt his stomach tighten painfully. George had his jawline and his high cheekbones; the likeness between them was remarkable, undeniable. At the same age they would have looked like twins.
As George smiled uncertainly back at him he felt almost blinded with outrage at Teddie’s deceit. His son must be three years old. How much had he missed during that time? First tooth. First word. First steps. Holidays and birthdays. And in the future, what other occasions would he have unknowingly not attended—graduation, wedding day…
He gritted his teeth.
Maybe he’d not actually thought about becoming a father, but Teddie had unilaterally taken away his right to be one. How was he ever going to make good the time he’d missed? No, not missed, he thought savagely. Teddie had cheated him of three years of his son’s life. Worse, not only had she deliberately kept his son a secret from him for all that time, she had clearly been planning to keep him in ignorance of George’s existence for ever.
Hell, she’d even lied to him tonight, telling him that he had to be quiet because of her elderly neighbours.
Glancing up, he refocused on his son’s face and, seeing
