A cloud passed across Roman’s face, cancelling out the half-smile and darkening his eyes. ‘I get it from my father.’ Unfortunately the ability to make money was not the only thing he had inherited from his father. It seemed he’d also acquired the rage and the jealousy that had dogged his parents’ marriage.
‘I don’t remember him having your way with words, though. I read your last book.’ Santiago’s bushy brows lifted as his glance slid up from Roman’s dusty boots to his windswept head, taking in everything in between. ‘You been doing a photoshoot for your next cover? Channelling the inner lean and mean?’
Roman’s uncomfortable grimace made Santiago’s grin deepen, though underneath the laconic amusement he was relieved to see another slight lessening in the taut-tripwire level of tension that coiled the younger man’s body tighter than an overwound steel spring on the point of snapping.
‘I hear that you never write any hero stunt you haven’t done yourself?’
‘Don’t believe everything you read. How is Meg?’ Roman felt ashamed that his own self-centred concerns meant it had taken this long for him to ask.
‘She’s still in remission, and we’re both enjoying it. You should try it.’
‘What?’ Roman said as he walked alongside the other man towards the plane.
‘Marriage.’
‘I’m not the marrying kind.’
But then again, you weren’t the fathering kind, were you? And just look what happened.
‘Neither was I until I met Meg.’
‘The Megs of this world are rare.’ The Marisas were rare too, but in a very different way.
The Marisas of this world lied their way into a man’s head, made him think that she was as necessary as oxygen to him, and then went back to another man. Her husband. He had spent his life building up walls and she had knocked them down with one glance of those golden glowing, hungry eyes.
He let out another breath when the emotional shields he had constructed withstood the memory, as well as the image of a face of cut-glass delicate beauty. His nostrils flared; he’d been played and it had hit him where it hurt most—in his pride—but he had moved on.
It had taken some time for him to appreciate the fact that she had actually done him a favour in refusing to leave her husband; his collision with Marisa had been the spur he’d needed to shake him out of the rut he’d been in and into an entirely new life. He’d cut ties he’d no longer needed, been liberated from responsibilities he’d no longer wanted. He relied on no one but himself and no one relied on him; wasn’t that the very definition of freedom...?
The unacknowledged question mark that accompanied the thought twitched his dark brows into a frown that deepened as his thoughts took the next logical leap forward. Now he had a son, and that was a responsibility he couldn’t walk away from.
It was a responsibility he was running towards.
Maybe someone should warn the kid, mocked the sardonic voice in his head.
He tensed, unwilling even to acknowledge the deep-seated fear in his belly; it was an old fear that he’d always lived with. It was this fear and not a whim that had influenced his decision not to become a father. It was the responsible thing to do when you realised there was too much of your own father in you. Roman had intended to break the cycle because he didn’t want his legacy to be an emotionally damaged child. Dios, this wasn’t meant to be happening—there shouldn’t be a child.
He’d taken precautions, but everyone except an idiot knew the only foolproof form of contraception was total abstinence, and that option had been off the table from the moment he’d seen her standing in the lobby balanced on crazy heels that made her incredible legs look endless and wearing a mere sliver of silk that had clung to her sleek curves like a lover’s caress.
‘You joining me?’ Santiago nodded towards the cockpit.
Roman moved his head as if to dislodge the circling mesh of thoughts. ‘Not this time,’ he replied.
There were some familiar staff members on the flight and others less so, but he felt too drained to make the effort to even acknowledge the nods of recognition.
Fighting impatience, he took a seat and belted up. The effort of maintaining even an illusion of normality was beyond him at that moment, and he found it hard to imagine there would be any moments of normality in his life ever again.
He had a child!
When would it seem real to him? Hands clenched, knuckles bone white, he pressed his head into the backrest and allowed his eyes to close, the sweep of his dark lashes casting an extra shadow that highlighted the jutting carved contours of his high cheekbones. Inside his head the rapid thoughts and questions, the anger, carried on swirling, and, yes, even though he had pushed it right to the back of his mind, there was still the fear lurking, fear that he would do to his child what his father had done to him.
You’re so like your father!
How old had he been the first time he had heard those words? Far too young—and he’d heard them far too many times since.
High too was the number of times he had watched his father bully, berate and belittle his mother, or seen the signs of an imminent meltdown as his father’s face had become suffused with anger and his eyes had gone cold before he’d flown into a rage.
Roman had always used the same silent mantra on these occasions—I am not like him. I won’t be that man.
The childish determination had morphed into an adult resolution that had made
