The Brunellesci Baby. Daphne Clair

It was for his sake.’

      Did he truly believe that? Had anything more than family pride and possessiveness been behind his insistence that Rico’s son had a right to be raised as a Brunellesci and Lia must give him up?

      No, she reminded herself. Zandro and his parents could have helped without taking Dominic away. If he’d really had the child’s interests in mind he’d have found some way to support its mother, not cut her off from any contact with her son. ‘It was a mistake,’ she said, ‘leaving him with you.’

      His look held contempt and disbelief. ‘You would take him away from everything—everyone—he knows?’

      ‘I realise I can’t uplift him without warning.’ She might not know a great deal about children, but that much was basic. ‘I hoped you and your parents would be reasonable—allow him time to get used to me before…before I take him home.’

      ‘This is his home.’ His autocratic tone brooked no argument. ‘Where he will stay until he’s old enough to decide for himself.’

      Moistening her lips, she formed her next words carefully. ‘Perhaps your parents will think differently. You don’t know how it feels to have a child. Your mother might understand.’

      ‘I know how it feels.’

      An unpleasant shock stirred in her stomach. ‘You have a child?’

      ‘I have Nicky,’ he said. ‘And I don’t intend to let him go.’

      Deadlock. In his rock-hard face she saw the same unyielding willpower he’d exerted in order to get his hands on Dominic, to force through the paperwork that made him the baby’s legal guardian, ensuring there could be no comeback if Lia changed her mind.

      She wasn’t giving up, but banging her head against the brick wall of his intransigence wouldn’t accomplish anything at this point. ‘I’d like to see him,’ she said.

      ‘He’ll be having his nap.’

      ‘I’ll wait.’ Short of bodily throwing her out, or getting a henchman to do it, he wouldn’t shift her.

      He regarded her consideringly for several seconds, perhaps weighing how much of a fight she’d put up if he did physically remove her. Then he gave a short, surprised laugh, strode to a discreet intercom on the wall and pressed a button. ‘Two cups and a pot of coffee please, Mrs Walker,’ he said into the machine. ‘And something to eat.’

      Switching off, he wandered to a window, looking out at the driveway and lawns. Perhaps realising it was discourteous to present his back to a guest, however unwelcome, he turned abruptly. ‘When did you begin watching the house?’ he asked.

      ‘Yesterday was the first time.’

      ‘Have you been in Australia for long?’

      ‘Since the day before.’

      ‘Where are you staying?’

      She told him, but he didn’t seem to recognise the name of the bed and breakfast accommodation. Small, cheap and basic, it was no doubt not the kind of place that he or anyone he knew would even notice. ‘It’s clean,’ she said. ‘And quiet.’

      He glanced out of the window, then returned his attention to her. ‘I tried to keep track of you after you left here. You moved about a lot. I didn’t know you’d returned to New Zealand.’

      ‘You had me watched?’ Resentment at the intrusion coloured her voice. ‘Why?’ Had he anticipated that Lia might one day challenge his guardianship of her son? Hoped for some damning sign that would count against her, strengthen his position?

      His mouth went tight. ‘I wanted to know if you were all right. You’re Nicky’s mother, after all. And Rico loved you, however wrong-headed he was.’

      Rico, his younger brother who had loved life and lived for the moment, impatient with the restrictions and expectations of the Brunellesci family. And who had paid the price and died far too young in the wreckage of his car, leaving a baby and a desperate, injured and grief-stricken mother who couldn’t cope with what had happened to her and her child.

      Even after securing legal custody of his brother’s child, Zandro had been concerned about Lia? Hard to believe.

      He might, she supposed, have been protecting the family’s reputation, perhaps afraid of what Rico’s lover might say about his brother, about his parents, about Zandro himself.

      ‘I managed,’ she said. ‘My…my friends helped, when I got back home to New Zealand.’

      ‘Better friends, I hope, than the ones you had in Sydney.’

      Sydney was where Lia had met Rico, she on a working holiday from New Zealand, he escaping what he’d called the suffocation of his family home and business.

      It had been love at first sight; at least that was what they’d believed. One look at Lia and no other woman existed for Rico—he’d told her so on their second meeting. She’d felt exactly the same. The pace of their affair was matched by the pace of their lifestyle—fast, frenetic, sometimes wild. They were young, heedless, caring for nothing but each other, the need to enjoy every moment as if they knew their time would be short, eager to explore every heady new sensation to the fullest. Perhaps deep down they’d known that such sizzling, euphoric emotion couldn’t last. But never had Lia dreamed it could end so shatteringly.

      When she’d fled back to New Zealand it was to a totally different lifestyle, after finally realising how few people she could rely on once her laughing, handsome lover was dead, his money gone with him, her baby taken and her health broken.

      A plump middle-aged woman entered with a tray that she placed on the table nearest the visitor. Noticing the compress as she straightened, the woman looked surprised. ‘You’re hurt? Can I do anything?’

      Zandro looked at the compress. ‘Perhaps some more ice, Mrs Walker… Lia?’

      ‘No, it’s fine now, but maybe you could take this away?’ She unwound the compress, and when the housekeeper had left inquired, ‘What happened to Mrs Strickland?’

      ‘She retired and went to live with her daughter in Sydney.’ Zandro crossed the big room and poured coffee into the cups, silently indicating the sugar and milk on the tray. He picked up his cup as she added sugar to hers. ‘I would like to believe,’ he said, straightening with the cup in his hand, ‘that you have changed—a lot. Is that possible?’

      ‘What do you think?’ she demanded witheringly. ‘After losing Rico and having his baby snatched away, you supposed there’d be no change?’

      Something flickered across his face, too fast for her to identify it. Chagrin, perhaps—surely not compassion.

      It was quickly replaced by an impenetrable mask when he’d seated himself opposite her. ‘The fact is, you have no rights now. You agreed, and it was all legal and aboveboard.’

      He’d been much smarter than Lia. Taken her to a lawyer—his lawyer—to sign over her baby to him. No doubt the legalese was watertight.

      Her jaw ached and she looked down into her coffee, trying not to snap back a retort that would only antagonise him. ‘My information,’ she said, ‘is that a parent can rescind guardianship.’

      ‘Are you prepared to bear the scrutiny of a court on your suitability to care for Nicky?’

      Aware of being on frighteningly shaky ground, she gulped some coffee and tried to sound confident. ‘If you insist on taking it that far. I have nothing to hide.’ A barefaced lie. She told herself—not for the first time—that desperate situations demanded desperate measures. Saving a child from a life of misery surely justified a few unavoidable falsehoods.

      ‘Nothing?’ He seemed incredulous, and again she experienced a nervous, dreaded uncertainty.

      He couldn’t possibly have guessed her secret. His scepticism was based on what little