His Child: The Mistress's Child / Nathan's Child / D'Alessandro's Child. Catherine Spencer

how could they possibly form any kind of relationship to accommodate their son, unless she knew all the facts? However painful they might be.

      He nodded. ‘That night I left you I went straight to the hospital. The day before Carla had moved her fingers slightly and it seemed as if there might be hope.’

      She remembered that his mood that day had been almost high. So that had been why. His wife had appeared to be on the road to recovery and he had celebrated life in the oldest way known to man. With her.

      ‘But Carla lay as still as ever, hooked up to all the hospitalparaphernalia of tubes and drips and monitors,’ he continued.

      He had sat beside her and been eaten up with guilt and blame and regret as he’d looked down at her beautiful but waxy lips which had breathed only with the aid of a machine. Carla hadn’t recognised him, or had any idea of what he had done, and yet it had smitten him to the hilt that he had just betrayed his wife in the most fundamental way possible.

      His mouth twisted. To love and to cherish. In sickness and in health. Vows he had made and vows he had broken.

      He had always considered himself strong, and reasoned and controlled—and the weakness which Lisi had exposed in his character had come as an unwelcome shock to which had made him despise himself.

      And a little bit of him had despised her, too.

      ‘She died a few months later,’ he finished, because what else was there to say? He saw her stricken expression and guessed what had caused it. ‘Oh, it wasn’t as a result of what you and I did, Lisi, if that’s what you’re thinking.’

      ‘The thought had crossed my mind,’ she admitted slowly. ‘Even though I know it’s irrational.’

      Hadn’t he thought the same thing himself? As though Carla could have somehow known what he had done.

      ‘What did you do?’ she questioned softly.

      There was silence in the big room before he spoke again.

      ‘I went to pieces, I guess.’ He saw the look of surprise in her eyes. ‘Oh, I functioned as before—I worked and I ate and I slept—but it was almost as if it was happening to another person. I think I was slowly going crazy. And then Khalim came.’

      ‘Khalim?’ she asked hesitantly.

      ‘Prince Khalim.’ He watched as the surprise became astonishment, and he shrugged. ‘At the time he was heir to a Middle-Eastern country named Maraban—though of course he’s ruler now.’

      ‘How do you know him?’ asked Lisi faintly.

      ‘We were at Cambridge together—and he heard what had happened and he came and took me off to Maraban with him.’

      ‘To live in luxury?’

      He smiled at this memory as he shook his head. ‘The very opposite. He told me that the only way to live through pain and survive it was to embrace it. So for two months we lived in a tiny hut in the Maraban mountains. Just us. No servants. Nothing. Just a couple of discreet bodyguards lurking within assassination distance of him.’

      Her eyes grew wide with fascination. ‘And what did you do?’

      ‘We foraged for food. We walked for hours and sometimes rode horses through the mountains. At night we would read by the light of the fire. And he taught me to fight,’ he finished.

      ‘To fight?’

      He nodded. ‘Bare-knuckled. We used to beat hell out of each other!’

      ‘And didn’t he…mind?’

      Philip shook his head. ‘Out there, in the mountains—we were equals.’ Indeed, he suspected that Khalim had learned as much from the experience as he had—for certainly the two men who had emerged from their self-imposed exile had been changed men.

      She had wondered what had brought about the new, lean, hard Philip. Why he had looked so different—all the edges chiselled away. She swallowed. ‘And then?’

      ‘Then he offered me a job, working as his emissary. It took me all over the world.’

      ‘And did you enjoy it?’

      ‘I loved it.’

      ‘But you left?’

      He nodded.

      ‘Why?’

      ‘The time had come. Everything has its time of closure. Khalim fell in love with an English woman. Rose.’

      His mouth curved into a warm and affectionate smile and Lisi felt the dagger of jealousy ripping through her.

      ‘Khalim and I had developed the closeness of brothers—in so much as his position allowed. It was only right that Rose should have him all to herself once they were married.’

      In all the time she had been listening to his story, Lisi had been entranced, but as he drew to the end of it reality reared its head once more.

      She gave a little cough. ‘Would you like to see upstairs now?’

      ‘No, thanks—I’ve seen enough.’

      Thank God! She nodded understandingly. ‘Well, I’m sure we’ll be getting a lot more properties on the market—especially after Christmas.’

      He gave a slow smile as he realised what she was thinking. ‘You may have misunderstood me, Lisi,’ he said silkily. ‘I want this house and I want you to put an offer in.’

      ‘But it’s overpriced! You know it is!’ she declared desperately. ‘Ridiculously overpriced!’

      He wondered whether she tried to put other buyers off in quite such an obvious way, but somehow doubted it. ‘So Marian Reece told me.’

      ‘And they’ve stated unequivocally that they can’t possibly accept anything other than the full asking price.’

      ‘Then offer it to them,’ he said flatly.

      She could not believe her ears. This was Philip Caprice speaking—the man famed for driving the hardest bargain in the property market! ‘Are you serious?’ she breathed.

      He saw the way her lips parted in disbelief and he felt a wild urge to kiss them, to imprison her in his arms and to take the clips from her hair and have it tumble down over that masculine-looking jacket. His eyes slid down past the pencil skirt to the creamy tights which covered her long legs and that same wildness made him wonder what she would do if he began to make love to her.

      Should he try? See if she would respond with passion and let him slide his hand all the way up her legs and touch her until she was begging him for more. He struggled to dampen down his desire.

      ‘I’ve never been more serious in my life,’ he said, and then his voice became clipped. ‘Tell the vendors that my only condition is that I want in and I want them out. So let’s tie up the deal as quickly as possible, shall we?’

      If she could have had a wish at that moment, it would have been to have been given a huge sum of money—enough to buy back her own home herself instead of letting it go to Philip Caprice. Couldn’t he guess how much she loved the place? Wasn’t he perceptive enough to realise how heartbreaking she was going to find it, with him living here.

      Or maybe he just didn’t care.

      He was walking around the room now, touching the walls with a proprietorial air she found utterly abhorrent. She gritted her teeth behind a forced smile. ‘Very well. I’ll get that up and running straight away.’ There was a question in her eyes. ‘Though it’s going to need a lot of work to get it up to the kind of specifications I imagine you’ll be looking for.’

      His answering smile was bland. ‘Just so.’

      ‘You certainly couldn’t expect to be in before Christmas. Probably not until springtime at the earliest,’ she