Modern Romance March 2019 5-8. Dani Collins

delayed his response for several moments. ‘It might speed things along if you cut down on the histrionics.’

      Her eyes narrowed on his face with dislike. ‘You know, your family’s sudden interest in Jamie seems just a little bit perverse. You’ve shown no interest in him before.’

      ‘I didn’t know he existed.’

      She blinked and tossed out a scornful, ‘You expect me to believe that?’

      He shrugged, his attitude oozing the sort of arrogant hauteur guaranteed to raise her hackles as he informed her in a bored-sounding drawl, ‘You can, and I’m sure will, believe whatever you wish. I have no intention of supplying you with documented proof.’

      ‘You let me tell you about Sami and Bruno and you didn’t say anything...’ Her voice quivered when she thought about the other things she’d told him, thinking he was a stranger she would never see again. ‘It was a cruel thing to do.’

      For the first time he looked slightly, not guilty, but, at least, disconcerted, but she held tight to her anger. She had offered an olive branch to Salvatore Greco and got an insult back.

      She had to assume Ivo was here because the legal intimidation and bribery hadn’t worked. And on that premise, he was the physical equivalent of a legal threat.

      She threw up her hands in an attitude of weary disgust and walked stiff-backed across the room before spinning back. Arms folded across her chest, where the tight knot of swirling emotions made her respirations uneven and painful, she fixed him with a tight-lipped glare, finally letting go a soft resigned sigh.

      ‘Fine, say what you have come here to say and just go away.’ She adopted an expression of determined uninterest and waited.

      ‘My grandfather is dying.’ He watched her uncompromising stance disintegrate as she tumbled from an attitude of righteous indignation to shock, before he saw her expression soften into compassion.

      Had the situations been reversed, had Salvatore learnt that the woman who stood between him and what he wanted had been given a death sentence, well, his eyes would not be softening with sympathy, that was certain.

      ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’

      The thing was they were not just words; he believed her. She was making this too easy and making him feel guilty—as if he weren’t carrying around enough of that! Her soft-hearted vulnerability was her problem, not his, he reminded himself, and if he took advantage she only had herself to blame.

      ‘Is there much pain?’

      He blinked, realising he hadn’t asked. ‘I don’t know. He doesn’t...confide.’

      She nodded as if she understood, but of course she couldn’t. Flora Henderson still believed in the basic goodness of humanity, which was where her greatest vulnerability lay. She had never really accepted that good was the exception, the norm was selfishness and avarice and basic ‘walk all over your fellow man to claw your way to the top’.

      It was inevitable that one day something would wipe the idealistic glow from her beautiful eyes. Ivo was glad that he wouldn’t be around to see it...unless he was the catalyst?

      ‘So you came.’ Her slender shoulders lifted in enquiry. ‘Because?’

      ‘He wants to see his great-grandson.’

      ‘That was never a problem,’ she pointed out. ‘He didn’t want to see Jamie, he wanted to buy him. He wanted me to give up any rights at all. I used to wonder what his family did that was so bad to make Bruno walk away, now I know.’ But this man hadn’t walked away; he was one of them. A fact that, for Jamie’s sake, she couldn’t allow herself to forget.

      ‘Sami and Bruno wanted me to...’ Her eyes fell, then lifted, blazing with defiance as they fixed on his face, daring him to throw last night’s admission back at her as she said in a voice that shook with sincerity, ‘I may not be the world’s best mother, but I love Jamie, and I’m not about to hand him over for any amount of money. I’m sorry your grandfather is ill but it’s not going to happen.’

      Dio. Fair play seemed to be this woman’s middle name, so why the hell did he feel so bad about using this to his own advantage?

      ‘Sure, I get that.’

      Her eyes widened before fluttering in confusion. ‘You do?’

      His gaze moved around the room before it landed on her face. ‘This place means a lot to you?’

      ‘They built it...for Jamie.’

      The quiver in her voice made his jaw clench. ‘Is it the life you wanted?’

      She gave him a blank look and shook her head, looking at him as though he were talking a foreign language.

      ‘You’re what? Twenty-five? Twenty-six?’ He was genuinely curious; had it ever crossed her mind to refuse the burden that had been gifted her?

      ‘You tell me, you seem to know everything,’ she retorted snappily. ‘I suppose you have some creepy file on my life.’

      He shrugged, the smile that lifted the corners of his mouth mocking. ‘It’s a very thin file.’ He demonstrated the point by extending his hand, holding his thumb and forefinger almost touching and watched her eyes widen with horror.

      ‘I wasn’t being serious!’ she squeaked.

      Welcome to my world, he thought. It was one she wouldn’t fit into. ‘Don’t worry, there was nothing Salvatore could use for leverage, or he already would have.’

      He sounded so chillingly casual that all Flora could do was stare.

      ‘I didn’t come here to blackmail you or bribe you or propose...’

       ‘What?’

      ‘My grandfather’s favoured option is we marry, and somewhere down the line divorce, at which point I will gain full custody of Jamie.’

      Her laugh was the result of nerves, not any appreciation of the joke. ‘You’re not serious?’

      ‘I’m not.’ But you had to hand it to Salvatore, there was a certain attractive simplicity to the plan. Not that he had for one moment considered the proposition any more than he would have considered allowing a vulnerable baby to be moulded into adulthood by Salvatore. His lips twisted into a self-derisory grimace as his glance flickered downward over himself. Look how well you turned out!

      Her teeth clenched as she watched one corner of his mouth twitch into a lazy half-smile. ‘Sorry, the amusing part has just passed me by. Care to share?’ she tossed out sarcastically.

      ‘Would it hurt to go along with a dying man’s last wishes?’ he asked, watching through the skein of his lashes as uncertainty swamped the anger in her blue eyes; followed a moment later by compassion, just as he’d known it would be.

      Damping an inconvenient stab of conscience, he reminded himself that it was not his task to protect her from her own kind heart, it was hers to toughen up. The alternative was going through life being used—he wasn’t the only unscrupulous bastard out there.

      It had been obvious to him within five minutes of meeting her that one of Flora Henderson’s flaws was that she would always do the right thing, even if that right thing made her miserable. She possessed the thing that made her one of life’s victims—a tender heart!

      He knew that she would not hesitate to sacrifice her own happiness if it was the right thing to do. All he had to do was convince her it was the right thing and he really didn’t think it would take an awful lot of effort on his part. Not once he actually got her back to Italy—the rest was inevitable. Once she saw the sort of life the baby could have being brought up as a Greco, the sort of advantages that he could give the child, she wouldn’t be able to help herself doing the right thing.

      ‘Obviously, I’m