Modern Romance February Books 5-8. Jane Porter
his eyelids fluttered shut.
If only she could just crawl in beside him and close her eyes too. Remembering the look on Aristo’s face as he’d worked out that George was his son, she felt her pulse begin beating in her neck like a moth against glass. Despite his outer calm, she knew that he was angry—more angry than she had ever seen him, more angry than she could have imagined possible.
Not that she could blame him, she thought, guilt scraping over her skin like sandpaper. Had their roles been reversed she would have been just as furious. And the fact that part of her had always wanted to tell him the truth didn’t feel like much of a defence.
She really should be relieved, though, for it had been getting harder and harder to keep lying.
But now she would have to pay the price for those lies and face his anger. That was bad enough, but more terrifying still was the sudden knife-twist of realisation that Aristo had both a moral and a legal right to be in his son’s life. It didn’t matter about their divorce. George was his son, and if he wanted to press that point home he had the power and the money to do so emphatically—not just here in her apartment but in court.
The thought of facing Aristo in court made her want to throw up.
So face him now, she ordered herself. And, taking a deep breath, she stood up and made her way back to the living room.
He swung round towards her, and her heart began beating so fast she thought it would burst through her ribs. She had thought he was angry before, but clearly each minute that had passed during her absence had increased his fury exponentially, so that now, as he walked towards her, it was the arctic blast of his contempt that held her frozen to the spot.
‘I knew you were shallow and unscrupulous,’ he said, his eyes gleaming like black ice, ‘but at what point exactly did your morals become so skewed that you decided to keep my son a secret from me?’
‘That’s not fair—’
His black eyes slammed into hers. ‘Fair? You’re really quite something, Teddie. I thought you just stole money from me. Turns out you stole my son.’
‘I didn’t steal him—’ she began, but he cut her off.
‘Oh, I’m sure you’ve post-rationalised it. What did you tell yourself? What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him?’ he imitated her voice. ‘It’ll be for the best.’
‘I did do it for the best.’ Her voice was shaking, but her eyes were level with his. ‘I did what was best for me, Aristo, because there was only me.’
He felt his breathing jerk. ‘Not true. You had a husband.’
‘Ex-husband,’ she snapped. ‘We were divorced by then. Not that it would have made any difference. You were never there.’
His eyes didn’t leave hers. ‘You really can’t help yourself, can you? It’s just lie after lie after lie.’
Teddie swallowed. It was true—she had lied repeatedly. But not because she’d wanted to and not about the past. It wasn’t fair of Aristo to judge her with hindsight. He might be in shock now, but she’d had just the same shock four years ago when, thanks to him, she’d been homeless and alone.
‘I was going to tell you—’ She broke off as he laughed, the bitterness reverberating around the small room.
‘Of course you were.’
‘I didn’t mean now—today. I meant in the future.’
‘The future?’ He repeated the word slowly, as though not quite sure of its meaning. ‘What’s wrong with the present? What was wrong with this morning?’
‘It all happened so quickly.’ She looked at him defensively. ‘I wasn’t expecting to see you.’
Aristo stared at her in disbelief. ‘And that’s a reason, is it? Reason enough for my son to grow up without a father? Or have you got some surrogate daddy in mind? Is that why you ran out on me this morning?’
The thought stung. He might not have been celibate, but dating—certainly anything serious—had been the last thing on his mind for the past four years. Work—in particular the expansion of his empire, and more recently his upcoming flotation on the stock exchange—had taken up so much of his time and energy. On those occasions when he’d needed a ‘plus-one’, he been careful to keep her at a distance.
Clearly Teddie had found him far easier to replace.
His eyes narrowed. ‘I mean, it’s just what you do, isn’t it, Teddie? That’s your real act! Not all this nonsense.’ He held up the box of cards. ‘You set it all up.’ Set me up, he thought savagely. ‘Then take what you want and move on.’
‘If you’re talking about our marriage, I had plenty of reasons to leave. And I didn’t take anything.’
She felt a sudden sharp pang of guilt as she thought of her son—their son—but then she repeated his sneering reference to her work as ‘nonsense’ inside her head, and pushed her guilt aside.
Glaring at him, she shook her head, whipping her dark hair like a horse swatting flies with its tail. ‘And not that it’s any of your business but there is no man in my life, and there’s certainly no daddy in George’s.’
The outrage in her voice sounded real, and he wanted to believe her for his pride’s sake, if nothing else. But, aside from the faint flush of colour creeping over her cheeks, she had already told so many different lies in such a short space of time that it was hard to believe anything she said. Clearly lying was second nature to her.
His heart was suddenly speeding and his skin felt cool and clammy with shock—not just at finding out he was a father, but at how ruthlessly Teddie had played him.
‘So let me get this clear,’ he said slowly. ‘At some unspecified point in the future you were planning on telling me about my son?’
Teddie hesitated. If only she could plead the Fifth Amendment but this was one question that required an answer. Actually, it required the truth.
‘I don’t know. Honestly, most days I’m just trying to deal with the day-to-day of work and being a mom to George.’
And grieving for the man I loved and lost.
Blocking off the memories of those terrible weeks and months after they’d split, she cleared her throat. ‘We were already divorced by the time I found out I was pregnant. We weren’t talking, and you weren’t even in the country.’
His eyes bored into eyes. ‘And so you just unilaterally decided to disappear into thin air with my child? He’s my son—not some prop in your magic show.’
Stung, and shocked by the level of emotion in his voice, she said defensively, ‘I know and I’m sorry.’
He swore under his breath. ‘Sorry is not enough, Teddie. I have a child, and I fully intend to get to know him.’
It wasn’t an outright threat, more a statement of intent, but she could see that his shock at discovering he was a father was fading and in its place was that familiar need to take control of the situation.
She felt a ripple of apprehension run down her backbone. Where did that leave her?
Last time she and Aristo had gone head to head she’d been cast out from his kingdom, her unimportance in his life no longer just a private fear but an actuality.
But four years ago she’d been young and in love, unsure of her place in the world. Now, though, she was a successful businesswoman and a hands-on single mother—and, most important of all, she understood what she’d been too naive and too dazzled to see four years ago.
Aristo had no capacity for or interest in emotional ties. She’d learned that first-hand over six agonising months spent watching his obsession with work consume their marriage and