His Child: The Mistress's Child / Nathan's Child / D'Alessandro's Child
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Though she wouldn’t have been human if she hadn’t half hoped that he wouldn’t.
She put more logs on the fire and then watched while Philip wholeheartedly entered into playing with Tim. For a man with little or no experience of children, she was forced to the conclusion that he was very good with them. If Tim’s reaction was anything to go by.
He stared wide-eyed while Philip made a horse out of some balloons and then blew up some others and let the air whizz out of them in a sound which had Tim collapsing in peals of giggles.
She had taken all the remains of the tea back out to the kitchen, and when she returned it was to find them playing rough and tumble on the rug and she realised that there were some things that fathers could do, which mothers never could.
They both looked up as she walked in, both flushed with pleasure but tinged with a kind of guilt—identical expressions on their faces. How could I ever have thought that they weren’t alike? thought Lisi with a touch of despair. The colouring might be hers, but Marian was right: he did have bits of Philip—lots of Philip—in him. Of course he did.
Gently, Philip lowered Tim back down onto the carpet, from where he had been sitting on his shoulders, and stood up.
‘Am I interrupting your routine, Lisi?’
So I am the bringer of routine and order, and he provides the fun, does he? thought Lisi. Or was she being unfair?
Philip saw the look of discomfort which had pleated her brow and understood exactly what had caused it. She had agreed to let him get to know Tim, but she had probably not anticipated what a success it would be.
Neither had he.
A different child might have refused to answer him. Or spoken in sulky monosyllables. Not chatted so openly and with such obvious interest. And much of that must be down to her.
‘It’s your bathtime, Tim,’ she said, with a quick glance at her watch, and then forced herself to meet Philip’s gaze. ‘Unless you’d like to?’
He would like to. He wanted to bath his son more than he had wanted anything in a long time, but he recognised that Lisi might now be feeling the outsider. He shook his head. ‘No, you do it. He’s used to you.’
‘Philip do it!’ demanded Tim, unwilling to lose sight of his new friend.
Philip shook his head. ‘I have to make a few phone calls,’ he said.
She carried Tim to the bathroom and wondered who he was phoning on Christmas Day. Obviously somebody very close to him. He had told her that he wasn’t married—but that didn’t preclude a girlfriend, did it?
But he kissed you, a voice reminded her. He kissed you passionately and told you that he still wanted you—would he betray a second woman if he got the opportunity?
He isn’t going to get the opportunity, she told herself as she squirted bubble bath into the running water and watched it become big, foamy clouds. No matter how much she wanted to—it wasn’t right. There was too much bitter history behind them and only potential heartache lay ahead if she was crazy enough to give in.
She let Tim splash around in the bath for ages, wondering whether Philip would stick around. He might just get the message and go. But he was still there, talking in a low voice into his mobile phone as she carried a sleepy, pyjama-clad Tim past the sitting room to his bedroom and tenderly put him into bed.
‘Have you had a lovely Christmas, darling?’ she asked him softly.
‘Yes, Mum-mee.’ His eyes opened wide. ‘Is Philip coming tomorrow?’
She sincerely hoped not, but she made herself smile a placating smile. ‘We’ll see. Okay?’
He nodded against the pillow, letting his eyelids drift down, and then automatically stuck his thumb in his mouth.
He was almost asleep, but story-telling was sacrosanct and Lisi put her hand out and pulled out the nearest book, which just happened to be Cinderella. How very appropriate, she thought wryly, and began to read.
She waited until she was certain that he was sound asleep, then reluctantly made her way back to where Philip lay sprawled on the floor in front of the fire, his phone-call finished. He had, she noted with surprise, put all the toys neatly away, so that the room for once didn’t look as though a bomb had hit it. She had never had anyone do that for her before.
She hovered in the doorway, unsure of what to say or do. She could hardly ask him to leave. ‘Can I get you a drink of something?’
He heard the lack of enthusiasm in her voice. ‘One for the road?’ he suggested sardonically.
She shrugged. ‘If you like.’
He shook his head, got to his feet and went over to where she stood. ‘No, thanks. You must be tired.’
Again she had the sense of him dominating the room, of his raw masculinity exuding from every pore of that spectacular body. In an effort to distract herself, she said, rather awkwardly, ‘It went well, I think, didn’t it?’
‘Yes.’ He was aching to touch her, but he realised that he owed her something. ‘Thank you, Lisi,’ he said simply. ‘For letting me.’
She wasn’t going to read anything into what he said. This was a purely practical arrangement, solely for the welfare of Tim. ‘I had no choice, did I?’ she questioned tartly. ‘I imagine that if I’d refused you would have sought some kind of legal redress.’
Her brittle words extinguished the warmth he had been feeling, but did absolutely nothing to put out the fire in his groin. He knew he shouldn’t do this, but something drove him on—a need to see that cold, frozen look wiped clean off her beautiful face.
He reached his hand out to cup her chin, his thumb and his forefinger stroking along its outline almost reflectively.
Lisi shivered. Where he touched her, he set her on fire. She knew that she should move away but something was stopping her and she wasn’t sure what. ‘Please don’t,’ she whispered.
Her lacklustre words belied the shining darkness in her eyes and the need to kiss her overpowered him. ‘You want me to,’ he whispered back.
‘No—’
But he kissed the word away with his mouth, feeling its unresisting softness become as hard and as urgent as his.
She rocked against him—all the cold and the hunger and frustration she had experienced letting itself go as his mouth explored hers with a thoroughness guaranteed to set her on the path to inevitable seduction. She felt the prickling sensation as her breasts grew heavy and aroused, and a long-forgotten molten sweetness began to build up at the very core of her.
Her mind was spinning. She wanted to burrow her hands up beneath his sweater and to feel the warm bare silk of his skin once more, but she had been a mother for too long to let her own wishes be paramount. For one split-second she imagined what could—would—happen next, if she didn’t put a stop to it.
They couldn’t possibly let things progress naturally and make love in front of the fire—Tim might walk in at any second. Which left going to her bedroom and the embarrassment of silently getting undressed, of having to keep their voices—and moans—low, just in case they woke Tim.
She tore herself away.
What was she thinking of? She didn’t want to make love to him!
He had never been so frustrated in his life. ‘Lisi—’
‘No!’ She shook her head vehemently. ‘I am not going to have sex with you, Philip. The first time was bad enough—’
‘I beg to differ,’ he murmured, thinking how magnificent she looked when she was angry.
She carried on as if he hadn’t interrupted. ‘When I discovered you were married I felt like hell—but at least I thought that you had been so overcome with desire that you had been unable to stop yourself. Desire for me,’ she finished deliberately.
His eyes narrowed as he tried to work out exactly what she was getting at. ‘I’m not sure that I understand you, Lisi.’
‘It didn’t even have to be me, did it? I was just a vessel for your more basic needs!’ she carried on wildly. ‘Anyone would have done! Your wife was sick and you were frustrated—that’s what really happened, isn’t it, Philip?’
He went rigid. ‘My God,’ he said, in disgust. ‘You really know how to twist the knife, don’t you?’ He picked up his overcoat and walked to the front door and opened it without another word.
She wanted to call after him, to take back the hateful words which had seemed to come pouring out of her mouth like poison, but one look at the icy expression on his face as he turned round made her realise that it would be a futile gesture.
He gave a cold, hard smile. ‘If your idea was to insult me so much that I would go away and never come back again, then you have just very nearly succeeded,’ he said.
And, bizarrely, the thought that her hurt pride and resentment might have cost Tim a relationship with his father wounded her far more than anything else. ‘Philip—’
He shook his head. ‘Please don’t say any more—I don’t think I could take it. I’d better just tell you that this particular campaign won’t work. You see, Tim is far more important to me than the obvious loathing you feel for me. I’m here, Lisi—and I’m here for the duration. Better get used to it.’
And without another word, he was gone.
CHAPTER NINE
MARIAN Reece pursed her lips together in a silent whistle. ‘Good heavens—just how much do you think he’s spending on that property?’
Lisi looked up from her computer, and, lo and behold—another upmarket van was cruising past the office towards The Old Rectory. What was it this time? Lisi peered out of the window and read from the gold lettering on the side of the van. ‘Tricia Brady; Superior Interiors’. ‘He’s obviously having the place decorated now,’ she said, with a sigh.
Marian’s eyes goggled. ‘And how!’ she exclaimed. ‘I’ve heard of her—she must have come all the way down from London. This early in the New Year, too—I’m surprised she wasn’t fully booked.’
‘She probably was,’ said Lisi gloomily. ‘She’s probably got long blonde hair and legs up to her armpits and Philip probably just outrageously batted those beautiful eyes at her and she probably cancelled every engagement in her diary!’
Marian gave her a shrewd look. ‘Do I detect a sign of the green-eyed monster?’ she asked.
Lisi replaced the gloomy look with a fairly good impression of devil-may-care. ‘Not at all,’ she said airily. ‘I expect that’s exactly what happened. Either that or he’s paying well over the odds.’
‘He must be,’ said Marian. ‘It’s only the middle of January—and already he’s transformed the place! I’ve never known builders be quite so willing, or so efficient!’
‘No,’ said Lisi tonelessly.
Marian shot her a glance. ‘How’s it going between you two?’
‘It’s not between us two,’ replied Lisi carefully. ‘The only relationship I have with Philip is that we happen to share a child.’
‘Only?’ spluttered Marian, then sighed. ‘And is it…amicable?’
Lisi sighed. She had vowed to keep it that way, but ever since her outburst on Christmas night he had been keeping his distance from her. He had been round three times to see Tim, and the atmosphere had been awkward, to say the least.
For a start, the house always seemed so much smaller when he was in it, and the unspoken tension between them was so strong that Lisi was surprised that Tim wasn’t made uncomfortable by it.
But no. Tim didn’t seem to notice anything or anyone—he was so enraptured by the man he had almost immediately taken to calling ‘Daddy’.
The first time he’d done it, Lisi had spoken to him gently at bedtime that night. ‘You don’t have to say Daddy if you don’t want to,’ she suggested gently. ‘Philip won’t mind being called just Philip, I’m sure.’
He didn’t answer and she wasn’t even sure if he had registered her words or not, but he obviously had, because at the end of Saturday’s visit Philip paused on his way out of the front door, his eyes spitting with undisguised rage.
‘Did you tell Tim not to call me Daddy?’ he demanded.
She sighed. ‘That’s not what I said at all.’
‘That’s what he told me!’
She kept her voice low, tried to stay calm, though heaven only knew—it wasn’t easy. ‘I merely suggested that he might find it easier to call you Philip. For the time being—’
‘Until you decided that the time was right, I suppose?’ he questioned witheringly. ‘And when would that be, Lisi? Some time? Never?’
She stuck to her guns. She was not going to let his hostility get to her. She was not. ‘I just didn’t want him to feel that he was being railroaded into anything—’
‘By me?’
‘Not by anyone!’ she retorted, her voice rising. ‘It’s just such a huge thing to suddenly start calling you Daddy!’
He had moved a little closer, his body language just short of menacing—so how come she didn’t feel in the least bit intimidated by it? How come she wanted to tell him to forget their stupid rows and to kiss her like he had done on Christmas night?
‘Or is it just that you feel threatened by it, Lisi?’
‘Threatened? Me?’
‘Yes, you! Unwilling to share him, are you? Do you want all his love for yourself, is that it?’
‘Oh, don’t talk such rubbish!’ she snapped. ‘I was thinking of Tim!’
‘So you claim. When it would clearly suit you far more to have me as far away from you as possible! Well, just don’t use him as a pawn in our little disagreement—do you understand, Lisi!’
Little disagreement? If this was his idea of a little disagreement, then she’d hate to enter into all-out warfare with him!
Marian was still staring at her with a question in her eyes, and Lisi shook her head.
‘No,’ she said slowly, in answer to her boss’s question. ‘It isn’t exactly what I’d call amicable—even though that’s what we both wanted originally.’
‘You should talk to him about it!’ urged Marian.
But there didn’t seem anything left to say, thought Lisi as she picked up the telephone which had just begun to ring. ‘Good afternoon, Homefinders Agency.’
‘Lisi? It’s Philip.’
Of course it was Philip—no one else had a voice that rich, that deep, that dark. ‘Hello, Philip,’ she said, cursing her body’s reaction as she felt the inevitable prickle of excitement. ‘What can I do for you?’
Silently, he cursed. How shocked she would be if he answered that question truthfully.
‘I’m up at the house,’ he said.
‘Here?’ she questioned stupidly, her heart racing. ‘In the village?’
‘Yeah. I drove up early this morning.’
He was here, just down the road and he hadn’t even bothered to tell her he was coming. Just why that should hurt so much she didn’t know, but it did.
‘I’m having the house decorated,’ he was saying. ‘Someone is over here now with some sample fabrics.’
She certainly wasn’t going to pander to his ego by telling him that she had seen the plush van driving by. ‘Really?’ she asked pleasantly.
‘Really,’ he echoed, mocking her insincere tone. ‘And I wondered whether you were free for half an hour?’
Her pulse began to race. ‘Why?’
She could be so damned abrupt, he thought. ‘I didn’t know if you wanted to choose some colours for Tim’s room.’
Time stopped. He seemed to be speaking in some strange, terrible language. ‘T-Tim’s room?’ she croaked.
Something in the way she said it made him want to offer reassurance, until he remembered her monstrous accusation on Christmas night, and he hardened his heart against the tremor in her voice. Did she think that he didn’t have feelings, too?
‘That’s right. He will need his own room, Lisi—surely you realise that?’
The only thing she realised was that she was fighting to control her breath. ‘I have to discuss this with you, and we can’t do it on the phone,’ she said.
‘Then come up to the house.’
‘I’m working.’
‘Doesn’t Marian owe you a few hours? For your unscheduled work when I demanded that you show me around the rectory?’
‘I’ll ask her,’ she said, in a low voice. ‘I can’t promise anything.’
His voice sounded noncommittal. ‘Suit yourself. It’s up to you, Lisi—you’re the one who wants to talk.’
She put the phone down, feeling close to tears, and saw Marian looking at her with concern.
‘Philip?’ she asked.
‘How did you guess?’
‘Normal clients don’t usually leave the agent looking as though the bottom has just fallen out of their world.’
Maybe it just had. Lisi cleared her throat. ‘Marian—would it be possible to take an hour off? I need to talk to Philip and he’s up at the rectory.’
‘Of course it would.’ Marian hesitated. ‘Listen, my dear—have you thought about consulting a lawyer?’
Lisi shook her head. ‘There’s no point—it would achieve precisely nothing. He isn’t being unreasonable. Tim adores him. He’s his father—by law he is allowed contact. It’s just me who has the problem with it.’
Marian nodded. ‘Take as long as you need.’
Lisi gathered up her coat and wrapped herself up in it, but once outside it seemed to offer little protection against the bitter wind, although maybe it was the bitter heartache which was making her teeth chatter.
She trudged up the lane to The Old Rectory, and for a moment she stood stock-still with amazement, for she had seen the comings and goings of various vans and contractors, but had deliberately stayed away from the place, telling herself that it would be too traumatic to see her former home being completely changed.
But her amazement was tinged with admiration, because, whatever Philip was doing inside the house, on the outside, at least—his taste could not be faulted.
The exterior had been painted a cool, pale grey and all the mildew had been removed. Window frames were gleaming, as was the newly painted front door, and the garden had obviously been lovingly attacked by experts.
The front door was slightly ajar, and when she received no reply to her knock she pushed it open and walked into the hall where another shock awaited her. The walls were a deep, vibrant scarlet—red as holly berries—and the floorboards gleaming, with an exquisite long, silk runner in shades of deepest cobalt and scarlet and jade.
It looked utterly beautiful, she thought, and a lump rose in her throat as she called.
‘Hello?’
‘Hello, Lisi,’ came a voice from upstairs. ‘Come on up—we’re up here.’
We? And then she remembered the interior design van.
With reluctant feet she made her way slowly upstairs in the direction of the voices she could hear speaking and laughing, and she felt a wave of objection that he should feel happy enough to laugh while her world seemed to be caving in.
To her horror, the voices were coming from the direction of a room she knew only too well—her old childhood bedroom—and her heart sank even further. Had he known, or guessed, she wondered, or was it simply coincidence which had made Philip select that particular room for Tim?
Drawing a deep breath, she walked straight in, and then stopped.
Two heads were bent close over a swatch of fabrics—one dark and nut-brown, the other blonde, and Lisi almost gave a hollow laugh. She had imagined Tricia Brady to be blonde with legs up to her armpits, and in that she had been uncannily accurate—but she had imagined the blonde hair to have come out of a bottle and for an aging face to be caked in heavy make-up.
But this woman fulfilled none of those criteria.
Her shiny blonde hair was fair and pale and completely natural, and when she lifted her head at the sound of Lisi’s footsteps she didn’t appear to be wearing any make-up at all. But then she didn’t need to—skin that flawless and china-blue eyes that saucer-like did not need any help from nature to enhance them.
She was dressed practically and yet stunningly—in a pair of butter-soft suede trousers which must have cost what Lisi earned in a month. A cream silk shirt and a sheepskin-lined waistcoat completed the look and Lisi shuddered to think what her off-the-peg department store workaday suit must look like in comparison.
Philip smiled, but the expression on his face was as cool as it had been since Christmas. ‘Lisi, hi,’ he said. ‘This is Tricia Brady—she’s helping me with decor for the house.’
She’s helping me. It didn’t sound like a strictly working relationship, did it? thought Lisi indignantly. He could have said, Tricia is the designer, or, Tricia is working for me.
‘Hello,’ she said, thinking how wooden her voice sounded. ‘I’m pleased to meet you.’
‘Me, too.’ Tricia grinned. ‘I would shake hands, but my fingers are freezing—I keep telling Philip to turn the heating up, but he won’t listen!’
‘That’s because people tend to go to sleep if it’s too warm. Not good—but especially not good for people who are working,’ he responded drily, but flashed her an answering smile.
Lisi felt sick, but she guessed that this was something she was going to have to get used to. If it wasn’t Tricia it would be someone else. Some beautiful, expensively dressed woman who would temporarily or permanently share Philip’s life one day.
And become a surrogate mother to Tim while he was here, she reminded herself, gritting her teeth behind a smile which pride forced her to make.
‘Lisi is the mother of my son,’ explained Philip. ‘And so I thought she could give us some input on colours and fabrics.’
It was the coldest and most distancing description he could have given her—and yet, when she thought about it, how else could he have put it? She wasn’t his girlfriend—current or past.
Pulling herself together, she walked over and looked down at the swatch of fabrics which Tricia was still holding. ‘May I?’ she asked pleasantly, and Tricia handed it to her.
She pretended to lose herself in them, though her mind was only half on the task—but she had spotted immediately the one which Tim would like the most.
‘This one,’ and she jabbed at the brightly coloured piece of material which depicted Mickey Mouse dancing all over it.
‘Lisi likes Disney,’ Philip explained with a smile, thinking how jerky and unnatural her movements were. ‘She always has done, haven’t you, Lisi?’
He was remembering her birthday cake, and so was she. That innocent start to a supposed friendship which had brought so much heartache in its wake. She nodded. ‘Wh-what colour are you planning to do the walls?’
Tricia peered down at the fabric and pointed a perfect fingernail at several of the colours. ‘We could pick out one of these shades,’ she suggested and turned her head. ‘What do you think, Phil?’
Phil?
Phil?
Lisi wanted to scream and to demand what right she had to call him by a nickname that she had never heard used before, but there was absolutely no point at all. Tricia could call him anything she liked, and probably did—in bed at night when he was making mad, passionate love to her.
‘I like the…I like the yellow.’ She swallowed.
‘Mmm!’ Tricia smiled. ‘Perfect! Sunny and positive—and with all that glorious light flooding in—’ She waved an expansive arm at the window. ‘The room will look irresistible!’ She shot a look at Philip, and her eyes glimmered. ‘We could do it in the same colour as your London dining room, in fact—or would you rather something different down here?’
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