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

out. ‘The office had my number. You could have called me any time.’

      ‘The look on your face as you walked out that night made me think that you would be happy never to see me again. The disgust on your face told its own story.’

      Self-disgust, he thought bitterly. Disgusted at his own weakness and disgusted by the intensity of the pleasure he had experienced in her arms. A relative stranger’s arms.

      He put the wineglass down on the table and his eyes glittered with accusation.

      ‘The situation should never have arisen,’ he ground out. ‘You shouldn’t have become pregnant in the first place.’

      ‘Tell me something I don’t know! I didn’t exactly choose to get pregnant!’

      ‘Oh, really?’ The accusation in his voice didn’t waver. ‘You told me that it was safe.’ He gave a hollow laugh. ‘Safe? More fool me for believing you.’

      Her fingers trembling so much that she was afraid that she might slop wine all over her dress, Lisi put her own glass down on the carpet. ‘Are you saying that I lied, Philip?’

      His cool, clever eyes bored into her.

      ‘Facts are facts,’ he said coldly. ‘I realised that we were not using any protection. I offered to stop—’ He felt his groin tensing as he remembered just when and how he had offered to stop, and a wave of desire so deep and so hot swept over him that it took his breath away. He played for time, slowly picking up his glass and lifting it to his lips until he had his feelings under control once more.

      ‘I offered to stop,’ he continued, still in that hard, cold voice. ‘And you assured me that it was safe. Just how was it safe, Lisi? Were you praying that it would be—because you were so het-up you couldn’t bear me to stop? Or were you relying on something as outrageously unreliable as the so-called ‘‘safe’’ period?’

      ‘Do you really think I’d take risks like that?’ she demanded.

      ‘Who knows?’

      She gave a short laugh. If she had entertained any lingering doubt that there might be some fragment of affection for her in the corner of his heart, then he had dispelled it completely with that arrogant question.

      ‘For your information—I was on the pill at the time—’

      ‘Just in case?’ he queried hatefully.

      ‘Actually—’ But she stopped short of telling him why. She was under no obligation to explain that, although she had broken up with her steady boyfriend a year earlier, the pill had suited her and given her normal periods for the first time in her life and she had seen no reason to stop taking it. ‘It’s none of your business why I was taking it.’

      I’ll bet, he thought grimly. ‘So why didn’t it work?’

      ‘Because…’ She sighed. ‘I guess because I had a bout of sickness earlier that week. In the heat of the moment, it slipped my mind. It was a million-to-one chance—’

      ‘I think that the odds were rather higher than that, don’t you?’ He raised his eyebrows insolently. ‘You surely must have known that there was a possibility that it would fail?’

      Unable to take any more of the cold censure on his face, she leaned over to throw another log on the fire and it spat and hissed back at her like an angry cat. ‘What do you want me to say? That I couldn’t bear for you to stop?’ Because that was the shameful truth. At the time she had felt as if the world would come to an abrupt and utter end if he’d stopped his delicious love-making. But she hadn’t consciously taken a risk.

      ‘And couldn’t you, Lisi? Bear me to stop?’

      She met his eyes. The truth he had wanted, so the truth he would get. ‘No. I couldn’t. Does that flatter your ego?’

      His voice was cold. ‘My ego does not need flattering. And anyway—’ he topped up both their glasses ‘—how it happened is now irrelevant—we can’t turn the clock back, can we?’

      His words struck a painful chord and she knew that she had to ask him the most difficult question of all. Even if she didn’t like the answer. ‘And if you could?’ she queried softly. ‘Would you turn the clock back?’

      He stared at her in disbelief. Was she really that naive? ‘Of course I would!’ he said vehemently, though the way her mouth crumpled when he said it made him feel distinctly uncomfortable. ‘Wouldn’t you?’

      She gave him a sad smile. He would never understand—not in a million years. ‘Of course I wouldn’t.’

      ‘You wouldn’t?’

      ‘How could I?’ she asked simply. ‘When the encounter gave me a son.’

      He noted her use of the word encounter. Which told him precisely how she regarded what had happened that night. Easy come. His mouth twisted. Easy go. She certainly had not bothered to spare his feelings, but then why should she? He had not spared hers. There was no need for loyalty between them—nothing at all between them, in fact, other than an inconvenient physical attraction.

      And a son.

      ‘He looks like you,’ he observed.

      ‘That’s what everyone says,’ said Lisi serenely, and saw to her amazement that a flicker of something very much like…disappointment…crossed his features. ‘And it’s a good thing he does, isn’t it?’ she asked him quietly.

      ‘Meaning?’

      ‘Well, I would hate him to resemble a father who wished that the whole thing never happened.’

      ‘Lisi, you are wilfully misunderstanding me!’ he snapped.

      She shook her head. ‘I don’t think so. You would wish him unborn, if you could.’

      ‘You can’t wish someone unborn!’ he remonstrated, and then his voice unexpectedly gentled. ‘And if I really thought the whole situation so regrettable, then why am I here? Why didn’t I just stay away when I found out, as you so clearly wanted me to?’

      She shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’

      ‘Then I’ll tell you.’ He leaned forward in the chair. ‘Obviously the circumstances of his conception are not what I would have chosen—’

      ‘What a delightful way to phrase it,’ put in Lisi drily.

      ‘But Tim is here now. He exists! He is half mine—’

      ‘You can’t cut him up in portions as you would a cake!’ she protested.

      ‘Half mine in terms of genetic make-up,’ he continued inexorably.

      ‘Now you’re making him sound like Frankenstein,’ observed Lisi, slightly hysterically.

      ‘Don’t be silly! I want to watch him grow,’ said Philip, and his voice grew almost dreamy. ‘To see him develop into a man. To influence him. To teach him. To be a father to him.’

      Lisi swallowed. This didn’t sound like the occasional contact visit to her. But she had denied him access for three whole years, wouldn’t it sound unspeakably mean to object to that curiously possessive tone which had deepened his voice to sweetest honey?

      And besides, what was she worrying about? He lived in London, for heaven’s sake—and, although Langley was commutable from the capital, she imagined that he would soon get tired of travelling up and down the country to see Tim.

      She knew how fickle men could be. She thought of Dave, her best friend Rachel’s husband, who had deserted Rachel just over a year ago. They had a son of Tim’s age and Dave’s visits to see him had dwindled to almost nothing. And that was from a man who had fallen in love with and married the mother of his child. Who had seen that child grow from squalling infant to chubby toddler. If he had lost interest—then how long would she give Philip before