at school.’
‘And?’ he prompted her softly, and she felt her heart hammering uncomfortably in her chest.
He hadn’t even raised his voice but somehow his tone had filled her with dread.
‘And nothing.’ She looked at him helplessly, her fingers curled into her damp palms. ‘I haven’t seen you since we left school. I truly don’t know what this is all about.’
‘But you’re not denying that you had treatment at my brother’s clinic?’ His tone was silky smooth, challenging her to dispute the truth.
‘No.’ She swallowed painfully, accepting the fact that he obviously had all the facts at his disposal. The file was nauseatingly comprehensive. ‘What would be the point of that when you’ve gone to so much trouble to find out every last detail about me? But that information should have been confidential.’
His mouth tightened. ‘And you were doubtless depending on that fact when you lied to us all. You were confident that you wouldn’t be caught.’
‘Lied?’ Abby’s eyes widened and she shook her head, totally confused by the conversation. It was like taking the lead part in a play when she hadn’t read the script. ‘I didn’t lie to anyone.’
‘Maybe not directly, but you were happy for Lucia to do it for you,’ he said harshly. ‘She lied about your age and your marital status.’
Abby blinked. ‘No, I—’
He made an impatient sound. ‘I have been intimately acquainted with your sex since I was fifteen years old and I can assure you that I am no longer taken in by a pair of wide blue eyes and an innocent expression. I know everything there is to know about female manipulation.’
Abby grabbed the back of a chair, shell-shocked. Nico was accusing her of something, but she still didn’t understand what. He was making no sense at all.
‘What am I supposed to have lied about?’ She let go of the chair and hugged her arms around herself. ‘I really don’t know what this conversation is about.’
He stared at her, his black eyes merciless. ‘No? Then let me spell it out.’ He paced across her small sitting room and she couldn’t help comparing him with a caged tiger. Only maybe a tiger would have been safer, she thought weakly. Nico in a rage was a lethal force. ‘You played a dangerous game and you have lost.’
She stared at him stupidly, her powers of speech temporarily suspended by shock.
He barely seemed to notice her lack of communication. As far as he was concerned, she’d been tried and found guilty. The only problem was, she had absolutely no idea what crime she’d supposedly committed.
‘I was willing to help you only because I believed your circumstances to be worthy of intervention. I have now found out otherwise and this changes everything.’
Was the man mad? When had he helped her?
She struggled to find her voice. ‘Perhaps you should be more specific,’ she croaked. ‘What exactly does it change?’
‘Everything. I no longer consider you a fit mother,’ he delivered in a cool tone. ‘I agreed to father your child because I believed you to be a woman in your late thirties in a stable relationship with a limited chance of producing a child naturally. That was what you and Lucia led me to believe. The truth was very different, as we both know. I never would have agreed to be the donor had I known that you were so young and on your own.’
She stared at him blankly, her brain slower than her hearing. ‘Donor?’
He ignored her croaked response.
‘You are clearly not able to give her the type of care I would wish for a child of mine, so I intend to apply for custody myself. I want my child.’
His child?
Donor?
The world stopped dead and Abby stared at him in mute horror.
Nico Santini thought that he was Rosa’s father?
She opened her mouth and then closed it again, unable to voice the words aloud because that might have given credence to his absurd claim. And it was absurd, of that she was sure.
‘Don’t bother denying it,’ Nico drawled, but Abby wasn’t listening. Her mind was locked on something he’d said a few sentences earlier.
Something about Lucia…
A hideous suspicion formed inside her mind and Abby lifted a hand to her head as she tried to clear the humming in her ears.
It was possible, just possible that…
Nausea rose in her throat and she reached out and grasped the bookshelves for support, but it made no difference. The room suddenly started to spin and she heard Nico swear softly in Italian.
‘Dio, fainting will not attract my sympathy.’
Sympathy? She didn’t want his sympathy. She just wanted him to be lying!! And she wanted him out of her house.
‘Sit down and put your head between your knees.’ His voice was rough and before she could protest he’d scooped her up into his arms and dumped her unceremoniously into a chair. Then she felt his long fingers biting into the soft flesh at the back of her neck as he forced her head between her knees.
She gulped in air, trying desperately to control the nausea that threatened to engulf her.
Finally the blackness receded and she gingerly tried to sit up. ‘You can move your hand now,’ she muttered sickly, ‘I’m fine.’
The pressure at the back of her neck eased and she sat up slowly, one palm placed across her chest. She needed to check that her heart was still beating.
Nico stood in front of her, his legs placed firmly apart in an aggressive stance, his expression brutally unsympathetic.
‘I always thought Lucia took the prize when it came to drama, but it seems I was wrong. I hate to disappoint you but I’m never impressed by female hysterics,’ he informed her. ‘Even less so in your case since you’ve always known that I might find out the truth.’
Abby was forcing herself to breathe normally in an attempt to get oxygen to her fuddled brain.
Finally she felt well enough to speak. ‘Are you really telling me that you think you’re the father of my baby?’
Her voice sounded thick, clogged with emotion. Totally unlike her own.
‘I don’t think.’ He spoke the words with dangerous emphasis. ‘I know.’
Her voice was little more than a whisper. ‘You were the donor?’
Please, let it be a mistake….
His black eyes flashed with impatience. ‘You know very well that I was. And we also know that you and Lucia fed me false information so that I’d agree. She knew that I would never agree to father a child for a woman in your circumstances. Family is something that I feel very strongly about. The two of you concocted the sort of story that you knew I would respond to.’
Abby licked dry lips. Was he telling the truth? Could Nico Santini be the father of her child?
She and Lucia had discussed the qualities that would make the ideal donor, but she’d never asked for any details.
What would have been the point? She’d assumed that the man in question would have been a stranger to her.
Had Lucia really persuaded her own brother to be the donor? Surely she never would have done that.
But if she had…
Abby sank her teeth into her lower lip, refusing to face the awful possibility that Nico might be Rosa’s father.
It was too shocking even to contemplate. She could see instantly that a man like Nico, an Italian who’d had the sanctity of the family