‘Hello, Nico.’ A faint tremor shook his voice and his expression softened as he studied the little boy. ‘Would you like to have a ride in my car?’
Kristen bit her lip. The man she had known four years ago had been so adept at hiding his feelings that she had believed him to be emotionless, but Sergio was clearly struggling for self-control.
Nico was sufficiently intrigued to cease crying. ‘What’s your car?’
‘It’s that big black one just along the road.’
‘I don’t have a child seat for him,’ Kristen muttered.
‘I believe there is an integrated booster seat in the rear of the car.’ Sergio dismissed her objection without sparing her a glance and focused his attention on his son.
‘What do you say, Nico? Will you stop crying if I take you to your nursery school in my car? Bene,’ he murmured when the little boy nodded. ‘Come on then, let’s get out of this rain, shall we?’
Kristen could not define the feeling that swept through her as she watched her son trustingly put his small hand into Sergio’s larger one. Nico was usually shy with people he didn’t know and the only male contact he’d had in his life was with elderly Mr Parker who lived next door. Yet he was happily walking off with Sergio and seemed to have forgotten about her, Kristen thought with a pang.
‘You shouldn’t encourage him to go off with a stranger,’ she said sharply as she walked quickly along the pavement to the waiting car. ‘He doesn’t know you. I don’t want him to think it is okay to get into a stranger’s car.’
Sergio’s eyes glittered. ‘It is not my fault he doesn’t know me. But that unfortunate situation will not continue and he will soon know me very well.’
Something in his tone caused a hard knot of dread to settle in Kristen’s chest. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean that I want to be involved in my son’s life. Dio,’ he growled when she made a choked sound, ‘I have just discovered that I am his father. Did you expect me to simply walk away from him? Boys need their fathers,’ he added in a curiously driven voice.
‘At his age, Nico needs his mother more than anyone else,’ Kristen said desperately.
‘A mother who dumps him in a nursery all day.’ Sergio’s tone was scathing. ‘A three-year-old child requires more parental attention than you are giving him.’
Kristen reeled as if he had physically struck her. ‘Nico is my world and I would willingly give my life for him. How dare you say that I don’t give him enough attention?’ Her voice trembled with anger at the accusation. Yet it was true that only three days ago she had decided she needed to spend more time with her little boy to help him get over the death of his grandmother, her conscience reminded her.
Nico’s voice dragged her from her thoughts. Sergio’s driver had lifted him onto the booster seat in the back of the car and secured the seat belt around him, but now there was a tiny quiver of uncertainty in Nico’s voice as he said, ‘Are you coming, Mummy?’
‘Of course I’m coming with you.’ Tearing her eyes from Sergio’s impenetrable gaze, Kristen handed his driver her umbrella and climbed into the car. To her dismay, Sergio slid in next to her instead of walking round to the other passenger door. His wet clothes were moulded to his body and Kristen could feel his hard thighs pressed against her through his rain-soaked trousers. He smelled of rain and expensive cologne, and the combination was so intensely sensual that her heart-rate quickened.
Heat pooled low in her pelvis and she instinctively lifted her hand to her throat to hide the urgent thud of her pulse just as Sergio turned his head towards her. His brows lifted mockingly and she flushed, aware that he had understood the reason for her betraying gesture. She had never been able to disguise her fierce awareness of him, she acknowledged bleakly.
Four years ago she had fallen for him so hard that nothing else had seemed important, not even her gymnastics training and the goal of winning a world championship title that had been her dream since childhood. When she had met Sergio she had dreamed instead of marriage, children, the whole happy-ever-after scenario. But the dream had ended when she had lost their child.
‘Perhaps it is for the best.’ Even now the memory of Sergio’s words had the power to hurt her. After she had lost their baby, she had been distraught. But he had paced around the hospital room and avoided making eye contact with her. His words had ripped her emotions to shreds as much as the agonising stomach cramps that had torn through her body during the miscarriage. The knowledge that he had not wanted their child had made her realise what a fool she had been to believe in fairy tales.
* * *
While Kristen gave the driver directions to the nursery, Sergio leaned his head against the back of the seat, conscious that his wet clothes were sticking to the car’s leather upholstery. But he did not give a damn that he could wring the water from his bespoke silk shirt or that his hand-stitched leather shoes made by the finest Italian craftsmen were probably ruined. Everything else faded to insignificance compared to the discovery that he had a son.
He looked over at Nico and felt a curious sensation as if his heart was being squeezed in a vice. His child—his little boy! It still hadn’t completely sunk in that the angelic-looking bambino was his flesh and blood. But the evidence spoke for itself. Nico bore all the markings of his Sicilian ancestry with his almost-black hair that, unlike Sergio’s own cropped style, was a mass of baby curls and his dark brown eyes. His complexion was olive-toned, although he was worryingly pale, which was not surprising when he had spent the first three years of his life in England’s unpredictable climate, Sergio thought bitterly. He was sure the child would thrive in Sicily’s warm sunshine, and the sooner he could take him home to the Castellano estate the better.
Nico...he silently sounded his son’s name. He was glad Kristen had given him an Italian name but it was a small consolation when she had stolen the first precious years of the little boy’s life from him. Anger burned like a branding-iron in his gut as his eyes were drawn to the woman sitting stiffly beside him. How could someone so goddamn beautiful be such a treacherous bitch?
He swallowed the bile that had risen in his throat. Three nights ago he had decided that he wanted her back in his life. Now he wanted... Slowly he unfurled his clenched fist and sought to control his rage. He knew what he was capable of if he lost his temper—and so did his mother’s lover who, when Sergio had been fifteen, had made the mistake of hitting him.
Dio! It had been twenty years ago, but the memory was still vivid in his mind and the shame he felt at what he had done still scourged his soul. It was no excuse that, after years of suffering physical abuse from his unpredictable, alcoholic mother, he had snapped, no excuse that for the first time in his life he had been driven to defend himself and hit back.
It had taken two security guards who had worked at the apartment block where his mother lived to pull him off her lover, while she had screamed hysterically. She had accused him of being a savage, he remembered grimly. After everything she had put him through—the misery of his childhood and the cruelty he had suffered almost daily—the irony had not been lost on him. The punk she had been sleeping with had deserved every blow Sergio had inflicted on him, but afterwards he had felt ashamed that he had sunk so low. He hated to admit that for a few seconds he had felt empowered by fighting back, and shockingly there had been a moment when he had imagined it was his mother he was hitting rather than her lover.
He had felt sickened with self-disgust. He wasn’t an animal, and he had vowed that day never to lose his temper again. He was almost afraid of his physical strength, afraid of what he was capable of. His anger had to be controlled, and the only way to do that was to cut off all his emotions. And so he had taught himself to bury his feelings and use his brain rather than his fists. Don’t get mad, get even, was his rule in life.
He stared