If that made him someone who was considered to be remote and emotionless he could live with that, and being called heartless by ex-lovers was not a high price to pay in his eyes.
No female had ever accessed the wild, dark inner depths of him until Marisa had walked into his life, and, to his horror, all the dormant suppressed emotions he’d always sensed were there had roared into life, his response to her primal and uncontrolled.
His jaw clenched as he tried to silence the memories. What he needed was...what?
He needed to do something—inactivity was not something he had ever mastered, and his usual ability to sleep anywhere any time had deserted him. There was too much time for thinking, for the frustration curdling in his gut to expand until he felt as if he’d explode!
Deaf to the polite question of the attendant standing at his elbow, he pressed his hands on the armrests and vaulted to his feet in one smooth motion, causing the attendant to take an involuntary step back.
He dragged his hair back from his forehead. The combined effects of the shock revelation and lack of sleep were beginning to kick in hard, but control was his bedrock, his strength, and although he had to dig deep he was able to stretch his mouth into something approaching a smile.
‘No...no, thank you,’ he said with a shake of his head. ‘I’m just going to—’ Gesturing in the direction of the adjoining compartment, he swiftly headed for the privacy of the bedroom suite.
Any personal items his twin might have left in there had been stowed away except for a snapshot of him and his brother tucked into the frame of the full-length mirror. He strode across, focusing on the snapshot rather than his own reflection, and two identical faces stared back at him. He felt something shift in his chest but before he could put a name to the emotion, he looked away quickly, directing his stare at his mirrored reflection.
Turning away again to avoid the accusation in the bleak dark eyes staring back at him, he retrieved his phone from the pocket where he had shoved it after he’d glanced at the replies to the stream of texts he’d sent once he’d rung ahead to commandeer the jet.
Scan reading was a useful skill but he wanted to be sure he had not missed any detail, though it was the missing details that were harder to deal with, or at least one in particular. It seemed unlikely that there was not a single photo of his son, James Alexander, in the public domain, but the investigative firm he was dealing with had always been efficient in the past.
He scrolled through the email and it didn’t take long—it was short and to the point. The more in-depth report would land in his inbox in the next twenty-four hours as he’d been promised. There were a few extras, like Marisa’s date of birth and her marital status, which he already knew... His thumb paused over the screen, his heart pounding as he discovered a detail he had not picked up first time around. Marisa Rayner was now a widow.
His mouth twisted into a cynical smile. At least his son would not be calling another man Father; other than that the detail was not relevant to him.
His glance returned to the stand-out detail that had drawn a smile of the blackest kind from him. The irony of it was darker than night. Marisa was to be found, with or without his son—that piece of information was apparently not available—in the five-star luxury of the Madrigal Hotel—the very same place where his son had been conceived.
His son!
He made a supreme effort and closed the lid on his rage. He would save it until he could vent it on the appropriate person. He made himself read the limited information once more, slowly and carefully.
No, he had it all memorised now; Marisa was a guest speaker at a fundraising international event being held at the Madrigal.
It didn’t say if she was combining business with pleasure.
Not that he gave a damn who she slept with, he told himself. Marisa was not his business, but his son was.
It was perfectly legitimate for him to feel anger at the prospect of her introducing another man he had not vetted into his child’s life, but she could take who she liked to her bed.
He could not imagine a woman with her sexual appetites being alone for long. Maybe she was a creature of habit and the Madrigal was her hunting ground.
It was a place to which he had never intended to return, as it was the scene of his complete humiliation. For months afterwards, what had happened had played on an unceasing loop in his head.
He remembered every word of his proposal, the ones he had got out anyway. Before he had got halfway through his prepared speech or even opened the box containing the ring he’d so carefully picked out, she’d begged him to stop.
‘Roman, please don’t say anything more. I came here today to tell you I can’t go on seeing you.’
‘You love me.’ He could still hear the certainty in his voice, his utter unshakeable conviction.
The memory of Marisa’s soft husky voice cracking as she had begged him not to say that still had the power to fill him with gut-tightening self-disgust.
‘Please, Roman, don’t do this. I don’t... I can’t...you don’t understand. I can’t marry you because I already have a husband.’
‘That can’t be true!’
Initially he had thought her confession was an invention. The discovery after the first night they’d spent together that she was a virgin had shaken him. Part of him had been angry that she had given him this gift with no warning, but another part of him had
