The Brunelli Baby Bargain. KIM LAWRENCE

I am likely to joke about.’

      Despite the outraged note of offence in his interjection, Sam was not so sure. This man’s personality and the motives that drove him were still pretty much an enigma to her—ironic considering that he knew her more intimately than any man. At her side her fists clenched as she struggled not to think about how intimately.

      ‘But don’t you think this is a slight overreaction?’ He couldn’t see her so he wouldn’t know how badly she failed in her attempt at a smile—it was cold comfort when she was shaking hard from the inside out. As if things weren’t already complicated enough, he had to throw a crazy idea like this into the mix…and make her think about how different this would be if what they had shared had not been just sex.

      ‘To a situation as trivial as having my child, you mean?’

      ‘Our child.’ His sudden possessive attitude was something that made Sam uneasy and something she definitely didn’t want to encourage.

      He dismissed the correction with a fluid shrug. ‘I have some old-fashioned idea about family life.’

      ‘I’m sure your girlfriend might have some too. Look, I’m not treating this trivially, I’m just trying to make life easier on you. I’m not making any unreasonable demands.’

      ‘You should be,’ he said. Sam was still struggling to make sense of his condemnation when his distinctive dark brows drew together in an irritated frown of incomprehension. ‘Girlfriend…?’

      Will he dismiss me from his thoughts as simply when I walk from the room? Sam wondered bleakly.

      ‘Candice was leaving as I arrived.’

      ‘Candice need not concern you.’

      ‘She might have something to say about you marrying someone else.’ Probably very loudly, too. To people like the actress, publicity was a way of life. To Sam the idea of her personal life becoming the currency of gossip columns filled her with utter horror.

      An expression of baffled irritation settled on Cesare’s features. He moved his right hand in a dismissive arc. ‘What has it to do with her?’

      ‘Or me, I suppose?’ she suggested, utterly appalled by his display of callous unconcern for his ex-lover…maybe not even ex…? The man was clearly as ruthless in his personal life as he was reputed to be in business.

      ‘Do not be ridiculous!’

      The suggestion drew a laugh of sheer incredulity from her throat. ‘Me ridiculous?’ she echoed, laying her palm flat against her heaving chest. ‘I’m not the one saying we should get married. For God’s sake, you didn’t know my name until a few minutes ago!’ She lifted a hand to her brow and shook her head. This entire situation was beyond surreal and the scary thing was that for a split second she had almost started to consider it.

      ‘But I knew a lot of other things about you, Samantha.’

      The sexual inference in his deep drawl sent a flash of heat over her skin. ‘You don’t know me at all,’ she snapped back, her anger divided between him and herself. Why did she let him do this to her?

      He ignored her statement and asked, ‘Are you worried a blind man would not make a good father?’

      The frustrating thought of the many things he would never be able to do with his child rose in Cesare’s head to torment him. He realised he would never see his child’s face and the acknowledgement was like a knife thrust to his heart.

      ‘You being blind has got nothing to do with it,’ Sam said. ‘They say that women are instinctively drawn to alpha males to father their children.’ Up until now Sam had been able to say she was the exception to the rule. ‘And as you’re about the most alpha male on the planet…’

      ‘A man who requires guidance to cross the road cannot protect his child from danger.’ It was a father’s role to guard his offspring from the perils in the world, and the thought of this role reversal filled Cesare with a furious impotence.

      Sam studied his self-critical expression and felt her tender heart twist as she recognised the fear and doubts that lay under the confident front he presented to the world.

      ‘Being blind does not make you a bad father or role model.’ Unlike, to her way of thinking, sleeping with blonde actresses with long legs. ‘It has nothing to do with this situation at all, except,’ she admitted, adhering reluctantly to honesty, ‘that if you had been able to see none of this would have happened.’

      ‘You mean I would not have been in Scotland that night.’

      ‘I mean you would have been able to see me,’ she blurted. Irritated by his blank frown, she spelt it out. ‘I’m not your type.’

      She saw the flicker at the back of his eyes and wished she had let him continue to carry the clearly unrealistic image he had of her, but as tempting as it was, she couldn’t.

      ‘I think you should let me be the judge of that. I have seen your face with my fingers.’ Eyes half closed, his fingers inscribed a series of soft motions in the air.