Modern Romance - The Best of the Year. Miranda Lee

it go?’ he asked now with deceptive softness, and something in him exulted when he saw how Sam paled slightly. ‘I think I’ve more than proved myself to be accommodating where my son and your deception are concerned.’

      Rafaele knew he was reacting to Sam’s almost patronising tone and to his anger at this inconvenient desire.

      His lip curled. ‘Do you really think I would be here in the suburbs with you if it wasn’t in my son’s best interests? Do you really think I want you working at the factory for any reason other than because I want to keep you where I can see your every treacherous move?’

      She paled even more at that, and Rafaele felt something lance him deep inside, but he couldn’t stop.

      ‘You’ve put us all in this position by choosing the path that you did. By believing that you knew best. Well, now I know best and you’re just going to have to live with it. You’re going to have to let it go, Samantha.’

      The hurt Sam felt at Rafaele’s words shamed her. He looked as hard and obdurate as a granite block just feet away. And as unyielding. The thought of them ever reaching some sort of amicable agreement felt like the biggest and most ludicrous fantasy on earth. And yet between her legs her panties chafed uncomfortably against swollen slick folds of flesh. She wanted to scream out her frustration at her wayward body.

      Just before he’d fallen asleep earlier Milo had asked, in a small, hesitant voice, ‘Will the man...I mean Rafelli...will he remember to take me in the car tomorrow?’

      Anger at Rafaele’s assertion that he was doing his utmost to think of Milo when all he seemed to be concerned about was needling her made her lash out. ‘You might feel like you’re sacrificing your glamorous life for your son, Rafaele, but when will you get bored and want out? Milo has been talking about you all day. He’s terrified you won’t remember to take him out in the car tomorrow. He’s fast heading for hero-worship territory and he’ll be devastated if you keep leading him on this path only to disappear from his life.’

      Sam was breathing heavily. ‘This is what I wanted to avoid all along. Milo’s vulnerable. He doesn’t understand what’s going on between us. You can punish me all you want, Rafaele, but it’s Milo who matters now. And I can’t say sorry again.’

      Rafaele was completely unreadable, but Sam sensed his tension spike.

      ‘What makes you think that I am going to disappear from Milo’s life?’

      The words were softly delivered, but Sam could sense the volcanic anger behind them.

      ‘You know what I mean. You’re not going to stay here for ever. You’ll leave sooner or later. Milo will be confused. Upset.’

      Sam was aware that she could have been talking about herself, about what had happened to her.

      Panic at the way Rafaele took a step closer made Sam’s breath choppy. Instinctively she moved back. ‘I think this was a very bad idea. I think you should move out before he gets too attached. You can visit us. That way he won’t be so upset when you leave...we’ll have proper boundaries.’

      ‘Boundaries, you say?’ His accent sounded thicker. ‘Like the kind of boundaries you put around yourself and my son when you decided that it would be a good idea not to inform me of his existence?’

      ‘You’re just...not about commitment, Rafaele. You said it yourself to me over and over again. And a child is all about commitment—a lifetime of it.’

      Rafaele was so close now that she could see veritable sparks shooting from those green depths.

      His voice was low and blistering. ‘How dare you patronise me? You have had the experience of giving birth to a baby and all the natural bonding that goes with it—a bonding experience you decided to deny me. I now have the task of bonding with my son when his personality is practically formed. He has missed out on the natural bonding between a father and son. You have deprived us both of that.’

      He stopped in front of her and Sam found it hard to concentrate when she could smell his musky heat. The anger within her was vying with something far hotter and more dangerous.

      ‘I can give my son a lifetime of commitment. That is not a problem. If and when I do leave this place he will know I am his father. He will be as much a part of me and my life as the very air I breathe.’

      His eyes pinned her to the spot.

      ‘Know this, Sam. I am in Milo’s life now, and yours, and I’m not going away. I am his father and I am not shirking that responsibility. You and I are going to have to learn to co-exist.’

      Sam’s arms were so tight now that she felt she might be constricting the bloodflow to her brain. ‘I’m willing to try to co-exist, Rafaele. But sooner or later you’ll have to forgive me, or we’ll never move on.’

      * * *

      Rafaele stood for a long moment after Sam had left, his heart still racing. She had no idea how close he’d come to reaching for her, pulling her into him so that he could taste her again.

      Sooner or later you’ll have to forgive me.

      For the first time Rafaele didn’t feel the intense anger surge. Instead he thought of Sam’s stricken pale features that day in the clinic. He remembered his own sense of panic, and the awful shameful relief when he could run away, far and fast, and put Sam and the emotions she’d evoked within him behind him.

      For the first time he had to ask the question: if he’d been in her position would he have done the same thing? If he’d believed that his baby was unwanted by one parent? It wasn’t so black and white any more. Rafaele had to admit to the role he’d played.

      Completely unbidden a memory came to him of something Sam had told him one night while they’d been lying in bed. It was something he avoided like the plague—the post-coital intimacy that women seemed engineered to pursue—but this hadn’t been like that. Sam had started telling him something and then stopped. He’d urged her on.

      It was her mention of her relationship with her father just a short while before that had brought it back to him. She’d told him then of how one night, when she’d been about six, she’d not been able to sleep. She’d come downstairs and found her father weeping silently over a picture of his late wife—Sam’s mother.

      Sam had said, ‘He was talking to her...the picture...asking her what to do with me, asking her how he could cope because I was a girl. He said, “If she was a boy I’d know what to do...but I don’t know what to do or say to her.”’

      Sam had sighed deeply. ‘So I went upstairs to the bathroom that night, found a pair of scissors and cut all my hair off. It used to fall to my waist. When our housekeeper saw me in the morning she screamed and dropped a plate.’

      Sam’s mouth had twisted sadly. ‘My father, though, he didn’t even notice—too distracted with a problem he was trying to solve. I thought I could try to be a son for him...’

      Rafaele could remember a falling sensation. Sam’s inherent lack of self-confidence in her innate sensuality had all made sense. He too had known what it was like to have an absentee father. Even though he’d spent time with his father growing up, the man had been so embittered by his wife leaving him that he’d been no use to Rafaele and had rarely expressed much interest in his son. In some small part Rafaele knew that even resurrecting the family car industry had been a kind of effort to connect with his father.

      It had been that weekend that Rafaele had let Sam stay in his palazzo. It had been that weekend that he’d postponed an important business trip because he’d wanted her too much to leave. And it was after that weekend, once he’d gained some distance from her, that he’d realised just how dangerous she was to him.

      And he’d just proved that nothing had changed. She was still just as dangerous and he must never forget it.

      * * *

      The following day Milo was practically bursting with excitement at being