Riccardo's Secret Child (6 page)

‘She's five years old! She's hardly going to sit down and analyse the situation!'

‘She might be five years old but she is not a fool!' He leaned forward, his mouth a thin line of ruthless determination. ‘She was clever enough to ask me exactly who I was! What do you suggest I tell her? The plumber? And I will be back to pay another visit to take care of the leak? Oh, and by the way, I shall return with more presents? Do you imagine that she would have fallen for something like that?'

‘I would have thought of something!' Julia snapped back. ‘Eventually. When I thought the time was right.'

‘Well, perhaps I am not prepared to play your waiting game, Miss Nash. No,
Julia
. Now that you and I are going out together.'

‘We are not going out together!' The way he had said her name. Like a caress. It had stolen over her heated skin and something else had thudded through her. It was something Julia had no intention of focusing on. Instead, she rose to her feet, muttering under her breath, and poured herself a glass of wine.

‘And by the way,' she ranted, one hand on her hip, the other holding her full glass, ‘make yourself at home, why
don't you? Just waltz along and help yourself to the drinks!'

Riccardo looked at her and felt his lips begin to twitch into a smile. The picture she presented! All ruffled outrage, cheeks flushed, her rimless spectacles glinting furiously in the light, five foot three of womanly fury. He had seen many women and in many different lights, but this sort of outspoken fury, unrelated to anything sexual, was a first.

‘Are you going to sit down and listen to what I have to say or are you going to stand there exploding?'

‘Has anyone told you that you, Mr Fabbrini, are an arrogant swine?'

Riccardo carefully considered the question. ‘No, but then you might want to remember that perhaps my arrogance has to do with the situation you have thrust upon me.'

Julia muttered again, but sat down and drank a long, soothing mouthful of her wine.

‘I have to get to know my daughter. Gradually. For that, I have to have a reason to visit her, if you don't want her to know who I am. What better way to visit on a regular basis than in the guise of your lover?'

Julia felt a steady heat begin to pulse in her veins. His eyes roved lazily over her flushed face.

‘That way, I can get to know her. I can be allowed the chance to know my own daughter. To bring her the presents I have been denied the pleasure of doing for five years, to hold her hand in mine, to receive her trust. Because she loves and trusts you and it might make it easier for her to accept me through you.'

His deep, slightly accented voice washed over Julia, filling the corners of her body like incense. She was dimly aware that he was being reasonable.

‘And it is not as though I am competing with anyone
else,' he finished smoothly, dipping his eyes so that his long lashes drooped against his cheek. ‘Is it?'

‘That's not the point,' Julia said stubbornly.

‘No, but it makes things a lot easier. It's a nice house,' he said, looking around the kitchen. ‘Nothing at all like the house we shared.'

Julia followed his eyes but said nothing. The house he had shared with Caroline had been, according to her descriptions of it, a show home. A place designed for the sumptuous entertaining of important people.

‘It's very comfortable and homely,' he mused. ‘A family home.'

‘Are you surprised?'

‘Surprised because Caroline never seemed interested in homeliness. She always preferred the trappings of wealth.'

Julia laughed and he looked at her narrowly.

‘Care to share the joke?'

‘The joke is,' Julia said sardonically, ‘that Caroline hated the trappings of wealth.'

A dull flush crept into his face. He felt like someone on the edge of some impossibly big secret, a secret that everyone knew about but had managed to keep from him. ‘According to you,' he said coolly, and Julia raised her eyebrows.

‘According to Caroline, actually. She loathed the army of interior designers who spent weeks swarming through your mansion. When she and Martin bought this house she chose everything herself. From the colours of the paint on the walls to the shade of every tie-back in every room. How on earth could you have lived with someone, been married to them, and not have realised that what they truly wanted was a cottage in the country, and if not the cottage in the country then at least an unpretentious family house in the city?'

‘I don't appreciate being patronised,
Julia
. You'll have to be aware of that if this relationship of ours is to stay the course.'

‘We don't
have
a relationship, as I've already told you. And I'll be as patronising as I like. You might be able to give orders to all your minions, but I'm afraid I'm not open to being ordered about.'

Riccardo carefully placed his empty wine glass in front of him and proceeded to relax in the chair, hands behind his head. He looked at Julia with interest. Funny, but when she was still she gave the appearance of someone serene, something in the calm set of her features and the way she seemed to observe without comment would lead anyone to assume that she was as placid as a lake. But there were times when she spoke and her face was alive with animation. Like now. Like earlier on, when she had stormed into the kitchen, all fire and brimstone.

His eyes dropped from their interested inspection of her face to the swell of her breasts, just visible under the sexless shirt. His interest became somewhat less dispassionate and he straightened up to conceal an inappropriate stirring in his loins.

‘Is it any wonder your mother is tearing her hair out at the prospect of you finding a man?' Riccardo drawled, pulling the tiger's tail. He felt a sudden thrill of excitement when she stood up and came across to where he was sitting. She leaned towards him, quivering with aggression, her face pink with anger, hands firmly placed on her boyish hips.

‘My mother is not
tearing her hair out at the prospect of me finding a man
,' Julia hissed. ‘And I utterly resent you voicing opinions on
my private life
, about which you know
absolutely nothing
! You met me for the first time
yesterday
and
don't you dare
think that you are somehow entitled to
shoot your mouth off
as though you know me.
You don't know me
and you never will!'

‘Never say never,' Riccardo informed her silkily. He knew that he was pushing her to the limits of her patience. After what he had been through, that in itself should have been a source of immense satisfaction, but there was something else. He was enjoying her open display of temper. He wondered what she would do if he really gave her something to get worked up about. If he pulled her towards him and kissed her. Covered that angry mouth with his own. He imagined that she would fight him, but then what? Melt? And if she did melt, how would that feel?

‘I think it's time you left, Mr Fabbrini.'

‘The name is Riccardo. Use it.'

‘Or else what?'

‘You don't want to lay down any gauntlets for me,' he said softly and watched her grey eyes hesitate as she wondered whether to continue the argument. She backed away, leaning against the kitchen counter, waiting for him to stand up and leave.

‘To all intents and purposes, you and I are now an item. Are we not,
Julia
?'

There he went again. Saying her name in that velvety, caressing voice. He was doing it deliberately. Laughing at her. And he talked about
her
patronising
him
!

‘If you think it would help you in getting to know your daughter then I shall oblige, but…'

‘But…?'

‘But don't think that that gives you any rights over me…'

‘Rights? What kind of rights?'

Julia didn't know what kind of rights. She knew what she wanted to say but she just couldn't find the words, so she glared impotently at him.

‘It's time you left. I have to work tomorrow and I don't want to be late.'

‘It's…' Riccardo calmly consulted his watch ‘…eight-forty-five. Surely not even a primary-school teacher with an over-developed sense of duty could call that late. And what about dinner?'

‘What
about
dinner!'

‘Perhaps we should have some.' Perversely, now that the object of his visit had retired to bed, instead of rushing to leave, to clear out of the company of this woman whom he had seen from the outset as a conspirator in his ex-wife's plot to deceive him, he wanted to prolong his stay.

Aside from anything else, he had no intention of being seen to be malleable. She might be able to call the shots,
for the time being
, as far as his daughter was concerned, but there her temporary power ended.

‘I want to find out about Nicola,' he inserted when she made no move to abandon her mutinous stance by the kitchen counter. ‘I know nothing about her and I have a lot of catching up to do.'

‘What sort of things do you want to know about?' Julia asked distantly, and he stood up and moved across to her with such speed that she was barely aware of his intent until he was standing directly in front of her, caging her in with his hands, his face dark with sudden anger.

‘What do you think? Why don't you use your imagination and figure it out? Pretend for a moment that you're in my shoes. Wouldn't you have just a little shadow of curiosity about your child?'

Julia was finding it difficult to breathe, never mind pretend anything. His face was so close to hers that a sudden movement would involve physical contact of the most disastrous kind.

‘All right,' she said weakly. ‘I'll…do something for us
to eat and you can ask me any questions you like…' He didn't move and she was formulating a polite way of telling him that cooking was an impossibility while she was being held hostage against a kitchen counter, when he suddenly reached out with one hand and removed her spectacles.

Without them, Julia felt hideously vulnerable. She blinked rapidly. ‘What are you d-doing?' she stammered.

Riccardo didn't know what he was doing. He had wanted to see her eyes without the barrier of her glasses. They were a pure shade of grey and without her spectacles concealing them were fringed with thick, long lashes. He stared at them and then abruptly pushed himself away, while she turned and immediately re-armed herself with her glasses.

‘When did she start school?' he asked gruffly, sitting back down, shaken by the realisation that he had wanted to kiss that quivering mouth of hers again. He reminded himself that, aside from being on the opposite side of the fence, she was not the sort of woman he was attracted to. ‘Does she enjoy it? Does she have friends?'

Julia breathed deeply and began answering his questions while she rummaged in the cupboard for a saucepan and busied herself with chopping mushrooms and onions, efficiently preparing a light pasta dinner for them. Something that could be cooked and eaten within the hour, after which he would have no excuse to stay. His presence in the kitchen was wreaking havoc with her normally very unruffled nervous system and the sooner he cleared out the better.

‘And was she happy?' he asked when his plate had been deposited in front of him and he had poured them both another glass of wine. ‘Here? With Caroline and your brother? Did she ever ask about me?'

Julia glanced across the table to him. ‘I don't know. I
wasn't living under the same roof, so I don't know what questions she asked or didn't ask about you.'

‘And you didn't have any thoughts on the matter?' he pressed on mercilessly. ‘The three of you were perfectly content to erase my existence? What about your brother? Did he share the same cavalier attitude?'

‘We've been through all this,' Julia said tightly.

‘And we'll go through it again. Tell me.'

‘Caroline felt as if she was caught between the devil and the deep blue sea,' Julia sighed, closing her knife and fork and propping her chin on the palm of her hand. ‘You want to make her out to have been without any morals, but she was afraid that if you knew about the pregnancy, about the baby, you would take Nicola away from her. She said that you were fiercely family-oriented, that you came from a big, close family and that the thought of sharing the up-bringing of your child with another man would have been unacceptable to you. And Martin loved her. He agreed because he only ever wanted what made her happy. I know you don't want to hear any of this, but you did ask.'

‘Was she
that
scared of me?' he asked and Julia hesitated, not knowing whether he really wanted an answer or whether he had just been thinking aloud, turning over the thought in his mind.

‘Answer me!' he commanded, which was Julia's cue to spring to her feet and begin clearing away the dishes.

‘You frightened her,' she said eventually, her eyes flicking to his own shuttered, brooding gaze. ‘Or maybe I should say that you overwhelmed her.'

‘And I suppose she lost no time in confiding all these girlish secrets to you?' he asked acidly. ‘Instead of confiding in me and trying to make a success of our marriage, she sought comfort in the arms of a stranger and found
release in pouring out her problems on any receptive ear she could find, just so long as it wasn't mine!'

‘Stop making yourself out to be the angel, Riccardo!' Julia snapped, only realising afterwards that she had called him by his name, conferring an intimacy on the situation between them that she strenuously resisted.

‘Oh, but I was the angel,' he said smoothly. ‘There were times when I could easily have taken a lover, when the thought of returning to the house and to a wife who made love as though under sufferance would have been incentive enough, but I didn't.'