‘Well, I think it would be perfect if we had access to somewhere which is totally secure, where privacy is guaranteed and there are no prying eyes, like say a Spanish estate?’
‘Or a prison?’ she suggested bitterly, not hiding her displeasure at being played.
Something flashed across his face. ‘I have heard it called that before, but there are no locks.’
‘So much for security,’ she muttered darkly.
His lips twitched appreciatively. ‘I did not mean it literally. Look, why don’t we call it a holiday? Let me get to know my son away from prying eyes, allow me to introduce him to his roots. We all need to know where we come from.’
She looked at him, the internal conflict she was fighting shining in her amber eyes.
‘I think under the circumstances you owe me that much,’ he said, with no qualms about pressing home an advantage when he sensed it looming on the horizon.
Her slender shoulders drooped as if she were carrying something too heavy to bear, and he watched as she ran the tip of her tongue across her dry lips. ‘Three weeks.’
‘I’ll take that.’ His eyes narrowed and it was clear to Marisa that he’d gone up a mental gear. He had already moved on, his sharp mind turning to the next sequence of events.
‘I’ll arrange the flight and let you know the details. I have a few things I need to sort out, but if you could be ready for around...ten a.m. tomorrow, I’ll send a car—’
‘No.’
His eyes landed on her face with an almost physical sensation. She smiled back with determined serenity and was rewarded by his frustrated frown.
‘Don’t bother with the car. I’ll make my own way there and let you know what flight we get and when we land. If someone could get us from the airport that would be good.’
‘Someone?’
She watched his features rearrange themselves, moving in a cycle that took mere seconds from astonishment to clenched-jawed annoyance, finally settling into cynical amusement.
The latter bothered Marisa the most and brought her chin up to a defiant, some might have suggested childish, angle.
‘Are you sure about this, Marisa? You could land at a private airport, with no crowds, queues, delays...?’
It was her turn to channel superior amusement as he dangled that carrot in front of her nose. ‘Sounds lovely but I prefer not to be tied down to someone else’s schedule.’
He tipped his head in acknowledgment and slowly, elegantly unfolded his long frame from the sofa. ‘Jamie is a good flier, then?’
Anxious to reduce the extra height advantage he held over her, she sprang to her feet, dusting invisible specks from her sleeve as she dodged his gaze. ‘Excellent,’ she said smoothly, thinking wryly that there was a fifty-fifty chance she was right.
Their eyes moved in unison to the area where Jamie was playing, only to discover he was now curled up in a ball, thumb in his mouth, fast asleep.
‘I’ve only ever seen a puppy do that,’ Roman whispered.
‘You don’t have to whisper. He won’t wake up.’ She moved across the room and, despite her assurance, lowered her own voice as she posed over her shoulder, ‘Do you mind seeing yourself out? I’ll just take him to his room.’
She missed the flicker of expression on his face as he watched her scoop up the sleeping child into her arms with a smoothness that spoke of practice, the slender back she presented to him as much as her actions effectively shutting him out.
He slanted a last look at them before he turned and moved silently towards the door, struggling to combat a feeling that was utterly alien to him. It was such a weird reversal; he had spent his life avoiding women who were needy and now he found himself in a moment of weakness wanting a woman, a stiff-necked woman full of stubborn pride, to need him.
His hand was on the handle when a soft voice halted him.
He turned around, his breath catching in his throat. She was oblivious, he knew, to the image she presented standing there, the sleeping child cradled tightly against her body, his head tucked on her shoulder. Her face-framing silvery hair blazed with the sunshine that shone in through the window, and his hungry gaze roamed across her delicate features that didn’t need anything cosmetic added to enhance their delicate cut-crystal beauty.
The sheer loveliness of her tentative smile hit him like a kick in the belly, releasing a flood of hot longing that he couldn’t suppress.
For a long moment they stood there staring at one another, unspoken emotions zinging between them, until Roman found himself speaking, the words falling from his lips involuntarily, coming as much of a surprise to him as they seemed to be to her.
‘I have a son.’ He stared at Jamie’s flushed sleeping face before shifting back to Marisa’s. ‘I cannot say yet if I will be a good father, but perhaps the best any of us can do is simply hope we do no harm.’
‘You know, Roman, if I thought for one micro moment that you would be bad for Jamie,’ she told him fiercely, ‘in any way whatsoever, I would fight you tooth and nail to keep you out of his life.’
As her flashing amber eyes locked on his Roman felt a spark of unwilling admiration.
‘So you don’t think I would be bad for him?’ He wished that he shared her confidence. He found himself fervently hoping that his son had inherited his mother’s generosity of spirit.
‘The jury is still out at the moment.’ Her beautiful smile took the sting out of the warning and the defensive stiffness from his spine. ‘Don’t overthink it; just love him—that should be enough.’
If only he shared her belief in the power of love, but Roman knew all about its destructive power. His father’s love for his mother had definitely not been enough; it had been far too much!
‘I will send a car.’
Still wondering if she had imagined the shadow moving across his face, Marisa
