The Mistress's Child (9 page)

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 nickered with the shadowed reflections 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. About Carla. But his discovery of Tim had driven that far into the background. There were only so many revelations they could take in one day. Wouldn't talking about his wife at this precise moment muddy the waters still further? Tim must come first.

'You could have telephoned me,' he pointed 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 he tired of fatherhood?

'I'd like to see him now, please.'

This time there was no reason not to agree to his request, but Lisi felt almost stricken by a reluctance to do so. Something was going to end right here and now, she realised. For so long it had been just her and Tim—a unit which went together as perfectly as peaches and cream. No one

else had been able to lay claim on him and, since her mother had died, she had considered herself to be his only living relation. He was hers. All hers—and now she was going to have to relinquish part of him to his father.

A lump rose in the back of her throat and she swallowed it down.

Philip was staring at her from between narrowed eyes. Did her eyes glitter with the promise of tears? 'Are you okay?'

'Of course I'm okay,' she answered unconvincingly. 'Why shouldn't I be?'

'Because you've gone so pale.'

'I am pale, Philip—you know that.' He had told her so that night in his arms. 'Pale as the moon,' he had whispered, as his lips had burned fire along her flesh. 'Come with me,' she said slowly.

The two of them walked with exaggerated care towards the closed door with its hand-painted sign saying, 'Tim's Room'.

Lisi pushed the door open quietly and tiptoed over to the bed, where a little hump lay tucked beneath a Mickey-Mouse duvet, and Philip was surprised by the clamour of a far-distant memory. So she still had a thing about Disney, did she?

He went to stand beside her, and looked down, unprepared for the kick of some primitive emotion deep inside him. The sleeping child looked almost unbearably peaceful, with only one small lock of dark hair obscuring the pure lines of a flawless cheek. His lashes were long, he realised—as long as Lisi's—and his mouth was half open as he took in slow, steady breaths.

'So innocent,' he said, very softly. 'So very innocent.'

It was such a loaded word, and Lisi felt a strange, useless yearning. He thought her the very antithesis of innocence, didn't he? If only it could be different. But she knew in

her heart that it never could. She nodded, gazing down with pride at the shiny-clean hair of her son. Their son. He looked scrubbed-clean and contented. Good enough to eat.

She stole a glance at Philip, who was studying Tim so intently that she might as well not have existed. Strange now how his profile should remind her of Tim's. Had that been because he had not been around to make any comparisons? How much else of Tim was Philip? she wondered. What untapped genetic secrets lay dormant in that sweet, sleeping form?

Philip turned his head and their eyes made contact in a moment of strange, unspoken empathy. She read real sadness in his eyes. And regret—and wondered what he saw in hers.

He probably didn't care.

She put her finger onto her lips and beckoned him back out. She did not want Tim to wake and to demand to know what this man was doing here. Again. She shut the door behind them and went back into the sitting room, where Philip stood with his back to the fire, looking to all intents and purposes as if he were the master of the house.

But he never would be. She must remember that. In fact, it was almost laughable to try to imagine Philip Caprice living in this little house with her and Tim. The ceiling seemed almost too low to accommodate him, he was so tall. She tried to picture them all cramming into the tiny bathroom in the mornings and winced.

'Would you like some more wine?' she asked.

He shook his head. 'No, thanks. Coffee would be good, though.'

She was glad of the opportunity to escape to the kitchen and busy herself with the cafetiere. She carried it back in with a plate of biscuits to find him standing where she had left him, only now he was staring deep into the heart of the fire with unseeing eyes.

He took the cup from her and gave a small smile of appreciation. 'Real coffee,' he murmured.

At that moment she really, really hated him. Did he have any idea just how patronising that sounded? 'What did you expect?' she asked acidly. 'The cheapest brand of instant on the market?'

He shook his head, still dazed by the emotional impact of seeing his son. 'You're right—if anything was cheap it was my remark.'

And what about the others? she wanted to cry out. The intimation that she had deliberately got pregnant. Wasn't that the cheapest remark a man could ever make to a woman? He wasn't taking those back, was he?

'So who else knows?' he demanded.

Lisi blinked. 'Knows what?'