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

of his life had been altered irrevocably—as if someone had detonated a bomb and left a familiar place completely unrecognisable.

      He went through the motions of working. He faxed the States. He replied to his e-mails. He made phone-calls to his London office, and it seemed from the responses given by his staff that he must have sounded quite normal.

      But he didn’t feel in the least normal. He had just discovered that he was the biological father of a child who was a complete unknown to him and he knew that he was going to have to negotiate some paternal rights.

      Whether Lisi Vaughan liked it or not.

      He deliberately turned his thoughts away from her. He wasn’t going to think about her. Thinking about her just made his rage grow, and rage would not help either of them come to some kind of amicable agreement about access.

      Amicable?

      The word mocked him. How could the two of them ever come to some kind of friendly understanding after what had happened?

      He went for a long walk as dusk began to fall, looking up into the heavy grey clouds and wondering if the threatened snow would ever arrive, and at seven prompt he was knocking on her door.

      She didn’t answer immediately and his mouth tightened. If the secretive little witch thought that she could just hide inside and he would just go away again, then she was in for an unpleasant surprise.

      The door opened, and he was unprepared for the impact of seeing her all dressed up for a party. Red dress. Red shoes. Long, slim legs encased in pale stockings which had a slight sheen to them. He had never seen her in red before, but scarlet had been the backdrop to her beauty when she had lain with such abandon on his bed. Scarlet woman, he thought, and felt the blood thicken in his veins.

      ‘You’d better come in,’ said Lisi.

      ‘With pleasure,’ he answered, grimly sarcastic.

      She opened the door wider to let him in, but took care to press herself back against the wall, as far away from him as possible. She was only hanging onto her self-possession by a thread, and if he came anywhere near her she would lose it completely. But he still came close enough for her to catch the faint drift of his aftershave—some sensual musky concoction which clamoured at her senses.

      He followed her into the sitting room, where the debris from the party still littered the room. He wondered how many children there had been at the party. Judging by the clutter left behind it could easily have run into tens.

      There were balloons everywhere, and scrunched up wrapping paper piled up in the bin. Half-eaten pieces of cake and untouched sandwiches lay scattered across the paper cloth which covered the table.

      Philip frowned. ‘Weren’t they hungry?’

      ‘They only ever eat the crisps.’

      ‘I see.’ He looked around the room in slight bemusement. ‘They certainly know how to make a mess, don’t they?’

      Lisi gave a rueful smile, thinking that maybe they could be civil to one another. ‘I should have cleared it away, but I wanted to read Tim a story from one of his new books.’

      The mention of Tim’s name reminded him of why he was there. ‘Very commendable,’ he observed sardonically.

      ‘Can I…?’ She forced herself to say it, even though his manner was now nothing short of hostile. But she had told herself over and over again that nothing good would come out of making an enemy of him, even though the look on his face told her that she was probably most of the way there. ‘Can I get you a drink?’

      ‘In a minute. Firstly, I want to see Tim.’

      She steeled herself not to react to that autocratic demand. ‘He’s only just gone to sleep,’ she said. ‘What if he wakes?’

      ‘I’ll be very quiet. And anyway, what if he does wake?’

      ‘Don’t you know anything about children?’ she asked, but one look at his expression made her wonder how she could have come out with something as naive and as hurtful as that.

      ‘Actually, no.’ He bit the words out precisely. ‘Because up until this morning, I didn’t realise that I might have to.’

      ‘Just wait until he’s in a really deep sleep,’ she said, desperately changing the subject. ‘He might be alarmed if he wakes up to find a strange man…’ Her words tailed off embarrassedly.

      He gave a bitter laugh. ‘A strange man in his room?’ he completed acidly. ‘You mean it doesn’t happen nightly, Lisi?’

      It was one insult too many and on top of all the tensions of the day it was just too much. Her hand flew up to his face and she slapped him, hard. There was a dull ringing sound as her palm connected, but he didn’t react at all, just stood there looking at her, his expression unreadable.

      ‘Feel better now?’

      She bit her lip in horror. She had never raised her hand to anyone in her life! ‘What do you think?’

      He turned away. He didn’t want her looking at him all vulnerable and lost like that. He wanted to steel his heart against her pale beauty and the black hair which streamed down her back, tied back with a scarlet ribbon which matched the dress. ‘You don’t want to hear what I think,’ he said heavily. ‘I’ll take that drink now.’

      She went into the kitchen and took wine from the fridge and handed him the bottle, along with two glasses. ‘Maybe you could just open that, and I’ll clear up a little,’ she said.

      He sat down in one of the squashy old armchairs and began to open the wine, but his eyes followed her as she moved around the room, deftly clearing the table and bundling up all the leftover party food into the paper cloth.

      He wished that she would go and put on the baggy trousers she had been wearing this morning. The sight of the shiny red material stretching over the pert swell of her bottom was making him have thoughts he would rather not have. He was here to talk about his son, not fantasise about taking her damned dress off.

      She had lit the fire, and the room flickered with the shadowedreflections of the flames. On the now-cleared table he saw her place a big copper vase containing holly, whose bright berries matched the scarlet of her dress. It was, he thought, with bitter irony, a delightfully cosy little scene.

      She took the glass of wine he handed her and sat in the chair facing his, her knees locked tightly together, wishing that she had had the opportunity to change from a dress which was making her uncomfortably aware of the tingling sensation in her breasts. Just what did he do to her simply by looking? She twisted the stem of her glass round and round. ‘What shall we drink to?’

      He studied her for a long moment. ‘How about to truth?’

      She took a mouthful and the warmth of the liquor started to unravel the knot of tension which had been coiled up in the pit of her stomach all day. She stared at him. ‘Do you really think that you have a monopoly on truth? Why the hell do you think I didn’t contact you and tell you when I found out I was pregnant?’

      ‘What goes on in your mind is a complete mystery to me.’

      Because you don’t know me, thought Lisi sadly. And now you never will. Philip’s opinion of her would always be distorted. He saw her as some kind of loose woman who would fall into bed with just about any man. Or as a selfish mother who would deliberately keep him from his own flesh and blood.

      ‘Think about the last words you said to me,’ she reminded him softly, but the memory still had the power to make her flinch. ‘You told me you were married. What was I supposed to do? Turn up on your doorstep with a bulging stomach and announce that you were about to be a daddy? What if your wife had answered the door? I can’t imagine that she would have been particularly overjoyed to hear that!’

      He didn’t respond for a moment. He had come here this morning intending to tell her about the circumstances which had led to that night.