At least when he was awake she had been able to focus on him and the distractions his multitude of questions had afforded.
Now he was asleep, looking cute in his booster seat, cuddling the dog-eared giraffe that had been his companion and comfort all through his illness, and she was left with no option but to make polite conversation with Roman, polite conversation that did not involve mentioning that searing kiss at the airport.
She just wished she could stop thinking about it.
Roman’s gaze kept repeatedly flashing to the reflection of his sleeping son in the rear-view mirror.
‘Does he always ask so many questions?’ He was here to ask the questions, and Marisa—his glance flickered to her profile—was here to drive him to distraction.
The kiss had not been a good thing. It had just made him realise what he was missing and had provided even more fuel for the ever-present ache inside him.
‘Yes, but he doesn’t always sleep like this, but it was his first flight and he bounced the entire way, he was so excited. Oh, is this—’
She strained her neck to look out of the window and Roman knew what she’d be seeing. They were passing through a massive ornate wrought-iron gate. The gatehouse beside it was lit up but although there wasn’t anyone in it, there were security cameras mounted there. The road they were now driving along had fewer ruts for Roman to negotiate and it was less winding than the one they’d been on previously.
‘Yes, we’re on the estate now,’ he confirmed, his thoughts travelling back to that moment in the airport when he’d thought the very worst had happened. Maybe you had to face having something snatched away before you realised how much you wanted it?
With the gut-freezing fear had come clarity. In that moment the idea of being a distant but supportive figure in his son’s life, never realistic, had become a complete non-starter. Marisa had asked him what he wanted and he had dodged the issue because he hadn’t known then. He had still been in denial and avoiding owning the fact that being a father absolutely terrified him.
Now he had shrugged off the uncertainty, he knew the answer he would give her. He wanted to be a father to Jamie, the best father he could be. He might not be very good, but if he messed up, no, he amended with a flash of uncharacteristic humility, when he messed up, as he no doubt would, he was sure that Marisa would put him right. His glance slid sideways long enough to register the delicacy of her profile as she gazed out of the window.
Long enough to disintegrate his determination to not want her as his body clenched in hungry desire. It was a complication that he would need to deal with at some point soon but his ability to effortlessly multitask appeared to have deserted him.
He thought of the glazed passion burning in her eyes after he had kissed her at the airport. Stopping so abruptly had just about killed him, so maybe he’d just let nature take its course?
Aware that his thoughts had taken a dangerous direction, he blocked them, but not before he realised that despite all the danger he had courted, all the extreme sports he had thrown himself into, this was the most alive he had felt in over five years.
His expression one of fake ferocious concentration, he turned his attention back to the road that he knew like the back of his hand from the days when he had learnt to drive in the gardener’s Jeep. Until Rio, taking his turn in the driver’s seat, had swerved to avoid a wild boar and they’d ended up upside down in a ditch. Roman had an interesting scar to show for it and Rio had climbed out without a scratch.
His father had banned them from driving after that, and grounded them for a month, but the real punishment had been his sacking of the gardener whose car they had totalled, making sure that his sons knew the man’s fate was on their heads.
That ex-gardener was now his mother’s personal driver but at the time it had felt like something they would never recover from.
How his mind took the seemingly seamless leap from the man who was now his mother’s personal driver to the burning question of whether he and Marisa could live under the same roof and not end up sharing a bed would remain for ever one of life’s mysteries, but it was there now, in his head, and it showed remarkable staying power.
‘Are you all right?’ Marisa sat on her own hands while her eyes kept straying to his. Roman’s long brown fingers curled around the steering wheel were exerting a strange fascination for her, but it turned to concern when his light grip tightened until his knuckles turned an almost bloodless white.
He shot her a frowning look. ‘I’d be better if you stopped asking stupid questions.’
As she hadn’t said a word for a good five minutes the implication that she had been bombarding him with chit-chat struck her as deeply unfair. Lips twisted, she debated with herself whether to challenge him, but decided against it as she conceded, at least in the privacy of her own head, that he was allowed to be irritated after being forced to drive so far to collect them. Also she didn’t want to distract him as the road they were travelling along had some pretty scary hairpin bends and a few dramatic drops.
It was ten minutes later, and Marisa had maintained her silence, if you discounted the couple of gasps when a bend had revealed a particularly awesome vista. She was starting to get an idea of the scale of the estate when they hit an avenue of tall trees lining what she assumed must be the last part of the drive. They were up-lit by spaced floodlights that gave the
