The Italian's Baby of Passion. Susan Stephens

crying her eyes out.’

      ‘Pardon me but I don’t empathise with incompetence, especially when that incompetence puts my family in danger,’ he explained grimly.

      Contrary to Alice’s prediction, the ‘poor girl’ in question was neither terrified nor crying. She was walking down a university corridor where people who would normally have called out a cheery greeting took one look at her usually sunny face and changed their minds.

      Others stared curiously when she walked past practising out loud—the acoustics were excellent—one of the cutting home truths she would like to deliver personally to Mr Roman O’Hagan.

      ‘Get to the point,’ he’d said. What did he think she’d been trying to do while he’d been cracking jokes at her expense?

      Of course she should have called for an ambulance, she knew that—did he think she didn’t know that?

      David Anderson, the university’s vice-chancellor, looked incredibly relieved as she walked through the door.

      ‘I thought you were only going to be a second, Scarlet?’ he said, drawing her a little to one side and out of earshot of the pale-faced woman sitting in the chair.

      ‘How is she?’ Scarlet asked, responding to his hand signals to keep her voice low.

      ‘Better than she was, I think. She wants me to ask her driver to bring her car around.’

      ‘I wouldn’t bother, David; her son is on his way over,’ she revealed casually.

      On the whole, and considering how stressed David was already, Scarlet didn’t see much point explaining that the millionaire property developer in question was in a very vengeful and litigious mood.

      Obviously threats were part and parcel of Roman O’Hagan’s modus operandi. Scarlet knew the type; she had suffered in silence at the hands of bullies during a lot of her school years. Years of unhappiness that she could have been spared if she had realised earlier that all you had to do with a bully was show them you weren’t scared—even if you were!

      It hadn’t been bravery in her last year at school that had made her turn around and tell her gang of tormentors exactly what she thought of them, it had been simply a matter of reaching the end of her tether.

      The experience had left Scarlet with a loathing of bullies and a determination to never again put herself in the role of victim. Every time she replayed the phone conversation in her head she felt her anger rising. How dared he threaten her? It wasn’t just what he had said, it was the way he had said it.

      And that voice; she recalled the inexplicable reaction she had had to the low drawl. Incredibly it had actually produced a physical response. She had reacted to it like a cat whose fur had been stroked the wrong way, her skin literally prickling in an uncomfortable way.

      He had the sort of voice that could make an eviction notice sound sexy.

      The vice-chancellor shot her a look of annoyed disbelief, which she pretended not to notice.

       ‘You called Roman O’Hagan after she specifically asked you not to?’ He groaned.

      ‘Did she?’

      ‘I know she did, Scarlet, because I was there at the time and I heard what she said, not once, but twice.’

      ‘So maybe she did,’ Scarlet conceded. ‘But she also specifically asked us not to call a medic or ambulance,’ she reminded him. ‘And I thought that was wrong too.’

      ‘She’s a very important woman; we can’t go around ignoring her wishes.’

      ‘You didn’t; I did.’

      David looked somewhat mollified by this reminder. ‘That’s true.’

      ‘Just call me Scarlet the scapegoat,’ she suggested cheerfully.

      David shot her a reproachful look from under his halfmoon specs. ‘I’ll just go and organise someone to meet Mr O’Hagan.’

      A three-man job at least, Scarlet mused scornfully: one person to grovel, another to sprinkle rose petals in his path and, last but not least, one to stroke the guy’s massive ego. She for one didn’t envy anyone the task of being nice to him. Even allowing for his concern over his mother, the mega-rich playboy had come across as a nasty bully of a man. Being rich, in her view, did not give anyone carte blanche to be rude.

      ‘Where’s a spare red carpet when you need one?’

      David shot her a wary look. ‘I hope you weren’t rude to him.’

      Scarlet adopted a puzzled expression, her eyes wide and innocent.

      ‘Don’t look at me like that, Scarlet, it worries me. I’ve known you since you were six years old,’ he reminded her drily.

       ‘Why would I be rude to the man? I rang to tell him his mother wasn’t well.’

      ‘Hummph.’ David left her with a firm admonition not to take any further unilateral decisions if she wanted to keep her job.

      ‘Are you feeling any better?’ Scarlet asked, approaching the slim, elegant figure who was dressed in a soft apricot suit that hinted tastefully at a good cleavage.

      ‘Much better, thank you,’ Natalia O’Hagan replied in her soft, attractive Italian accent.

      She didn’t look nearly old enough to have a son the age of Roman O’Hagan.

      Unless he had begun his infamous playboy lifestyle when he was still at school he had to be in his early thirties at least to have fitted in all the beautiful women who had reputedly enjoyed his admiration. As aloof and arrogant as he was widely reported to be, he was rarely photographed without some lush beauty gazing adoringly up into his face.

      Scarlet smiled at Natalia. She had taken to the older woman immediately. Unlike her son she came across as a warm, genuine woman with no airs and graces. Just thinking about the vile son with his hateful, sarcastic drawl sent a shudder of antipathy down Scarlet’s spine.

      Maybe Roman O’Hagan had inherited his arrogance from the paternal side of the equation. It was quite a combination of genes, Italian and Irish, Scarlet reflected, and on the evidence so far she’d say the result of that fusion had produced a person who lacked the charm of the Irish and the charisma of the Italians.

      Despite her reassurance as she lifted the glass of water, there was a visible tremor in the older woman’s hand.

      ‘Let me,’ Scarlet said, taking the glass from her and placing it back on her own desk.

      On closer inspection she could see that the scary bluish tinge had receded from around the older woman’s lips. This was good news, but despite these small signs of improvement the woman still looked far from well.

      ‘Can I get you anything else?’

      Natalia O’Hagan lifted her head, her lips formed a weak smile, but she didn’t appear able to respond to the question.

      Scarlet’s anxiety increased. She privately called herself every sort of weak idiot for not having stood her ground in the first place and rung for a doctor straight off as she’d wanted.

      In that at least her wretched son had been right.

      She could have insisted, but when the university bigwigs, who had tagged along with David for the official opening ceremony of the crèche, had overruled her, what had she done? She’d meekly rolled over.

      As far as the powers that be were concerned they weren’t going to risk upsetting the woman whose generous donation had been responsible for the refurbishment and extension of the crèche facilities, not to mention the new state-of-the art IT building. And Natalia O’Hagan had managed to make it quite clear despite her weak condition, that she did not want a doctor.

      That was fine and their call to make, but where were they now, those men and women in suits who knew