Italian Tycoon, Secret Son

His eyes were like stones. ‘Perhaps I should be asking you that question.’

She moved nearer. ‘I don’t understand.’

He rose and moved away as though he didn’t want to be too close to her.

‘I thought I’d found the one trustworthy woman in all the world,’ he said softly. ‘More fool me. I should have asked you questions, shouldn’t I?’

‘What kind of questions?’ she asked, stunned by the hatred in his eyes.

‘About you. About your life. About who you’re sleeping with these days. You know all about me, but I’ve taken you on trust.’

‘And now you think you shouldn’t have done?’ she asked, angry in her turn. ‘Are you going to tell me why?’

‘With pleasure. And when I’ve done that I’m going to throw you out with even more pleasure, and after that I never want to hear of or see you again. Because I don’t forgive. I thought you were…different. You made me think so back then, and again when you turned up here. But you just wanted to make a fool of me.’

She was too appalled to speak. This was the man she’d seen that first day-bitter, savagely angry, looking at her with something like hate.

Mandy’s head was whirling but she forced herself to be calm. She couldn’t afford to weaken now. She’d never seen so much concentrated fury in anyone’s face-and the sight of it directed at herself, from the man who’d loved her so tenderly the night before, filled her with dread.

‘Renzo, wait,’ she said. ‘Listen to me.’

‘Listen to you? I never want to hear another word you say.’

‘But how has this happened-after last night?’

‘Don’t dare mention that. Last night I believed in you, believed you might actually love me.’

‘But I-’

‘Don’t say it. I couldn’t bear to listen. Did you enjoy last night? Did it give you a good laugh? Did you call him afterwards and joke about how easily you tricked me? Or did you just snigger inside at how easily I succumbed?’

‘You must be quite mad to talk like that,’ she said, growing angry. ‘Why would I trick you? Why would I want to?’

‘I can’t imagine. Why don’t you tell me? Why did you come here!’

‘Because I spent two years grieving for you. I cried myself to sleep night after night because I thought you were dead. Those last two days we had together you were different, marvellous. I fell in love with you and it nearly drove me out of my mind when I thought you were gone.

‘When I heard you were alive I couldn’t just leave things there. I had to find you and know if you remembered me, if you were the same man-’

‘Don’t tell me lies,’ he said contemptuously. ‘It was an end game, wasn’t it? You did what you liked with me last time, and you had to prove you could do it again. Well, you did. Congratulations on your success. I jumped through all the hoops, didn’t I?’

‘Renzo-’

‘To think I carried you in my heart as a beautiful dream, someone too lovely to exist. Shall I tell you what happened to me after I fell? I lay in that frozen place for a time I can’t even guess. I was in such pain that I prayed for death. I thought you were dead too and after the time we spent together I didn’t want to live without you.

‘I saw you. You were there, beckoning me on, taking me to the place where you were, and we could be together for ever. I felt myself reaching out to you. I couldn’t have done because my whole body was trapped, frozen, but my heart reached out. I’d have followed you anywhere.’

‘Why did you never tell me this before?’ she cried in anguish.

‘Because it was wiped from my brain by everything that happened afterwards. I forgot it as though it had never happened. When I awoke I had only fractured memories that I couldn’t understand.

‘But last night everything came back to me as clearly as if it were yesterday. I lay in your arms after we made love and I was back there, buried under the snow again-everthing was the same except that there was no pain. You were with me, beckoning just as before, but not to death-to life. A whole new world opened because you were with me.’

He closed his eyes suddenly, as though the memories were more than he could bear.

‘Renzo,’ she whispered, going to him.

‘Stay away from me,’ he snapped, opening his eyes again. ‘Don’t touch me, don’t come near me. Just listen. I’d forgotten everything except my confused fantasies, but when you first came here and I finally saw you, it seemed that the fantasies were reality. I didn’t want to believe it. I tried to be cautious, to warn myself that no woman could be trusted, but I couldn’t help myself. Against my own will, I trusted you. That will teach me to be more careful in future.’

‘For pity’s sake, where does all this come from? Where did you get these crazy ideas?’

‘Do you know how much I’d give to believe they really were crazy? If only I could turn the clock back to before I heard you, and make it not happen!’

‘Heard me? Heard what?’

‘In the garden a few minutes ago. You should be more careful about taking phone calls.’

‘You were down there,’ she breathed. ‘I thought so, but then I couldn’t see you.’

‘Or you’d have been more careful,’ he raged.

‘About what?’

‘Calling him “darling”, telling him you loved him.’ He suddenly moved close to her, his eyes deadly. ‘Last night it was me you loved, or so you said. Today it’s him. Who’s in line for tomorrow?’

Mandy clenched her hands, close to hitting him for the desecration of what had been perfect. For a moment every feeling was expunged except a hatred that was as fierce as his own.

‘I’m going to make you sorry you said that,’ she breathed.

‘That’s doubtful. I enjoyed it too much.’

‘I’ll bet you did. Well, here’s something else for you to enjoy. You want to know who I was talking to? His name is Danny Jenkins.’

He paled. ‘Your husband?’

‘My son.’

That checked him, but only for a moment. ‘Really?’ he queried with an emphasis of contempt. ‘Are you going to tell me who his father is?’

‘I’ll do better. I’ll show you who his great-grandfather is.’

She snatched up the picture of Renzo’s grandfather from the bedside table, thrust it into his hands, then opened her purse, took out the snapshot of Danny that she always kept with her and held that before him.

‘This is my son,’ she raged. ‘Danny-short for Danilo.’

Slowly Renzo sat down, clicking from one picture to the other, with their likeness so pronounced that Mandy knew that he couldn’t doubt the child was his. But now she hated herself.

She’d dreamed of how she would tell him-gently, lovingly. She’d pictured his happiness as he understood the new hope that had opened before him.

And in the end she’d hurled everything at him in bitter, cruel rage and now nothing would ever be right again. She wanted to howl and bang her head against the wall.

She looked at Renzo, wondering what damage she might have done with her clumsiness. He’d placed the snapshot on top of his grandfather’s picture so that he could see them together. He seemed transfixed.

‘He was born at the end of October,’ she said. ‘Just nine months after we were together. Renzo-’

She touched his shoulder, worried by his silence.

‘I have…a son,’ he whispered.

She dropped to her knees beside him. ‘We have a son,’ she said. ‘Yours and mine. I used to wish he looked like you, but he’s the image of your grandfather.’

‘It never occurred to me…’ he murmured. ‘I just thought of myself, didn’t I? All this time…Why didn’t you tell me before?’

‘Because I couldn’t. The day I arrived and saw how you were, how could I have told you then? You’d have thrown me out-’ she gave a faint wry smile ‘-even faster than you actually did.

‘Ever since then I’ve been waiting for the right moment, but it didn’t come. You couldn’t remember that we’d