she adores him.’
‘You still haven’t explained why you were pretending to be a waitress at the party.’
‘The waitress bit was a misunderstanding.’ Kristen’s appetite suddenly disappeared. Sergio had finished his meal and she collected up the plates and carried them over to the sink. ‘Do you want to go into the sitting room while I make some coffee? There are a few photo albums with pictures of Nico in the bureau. Feel free to take a look at them.’
She could tell he was curious to know why she was determined to change the subject of her visit to the Hotel Royale, but to her relief he made no comment as he strolled out of the kitchen.
Five minutes later, when Kristen carried a tray into the sitting room, she found Sergio inspecting her huge array of gymnastics medals and trophies that she kept in a glass cabinet.
He turned to her and took the cup of coffee she handed him. ‘Do you ever resent that you gave up your sport for Nico?’
‘Not at all, although I can’t deny that I sometimes wonder whether I would have been good enough to win a world championship title,’ Kristen replied honestly.
‘So when you returned to England and discovered you were still expecting, it didn’t cross your mind to end the pregnancy?’
She drew a sharp breath, ‘Of course not. I was devastated when I had a miscarriage, and to be told that I was going to have a baby after all was wonderful—it felt like a miracle. How could you think I might not have wanted our child?’ She couldn’t disguise the tremor of hurt in her voice.
It probably had something to do with the fact that when he had been a child his mother had frequently told him she had not planned to fall pregnant with him and his twin brother and wished she’d had a termination, Sergio thought to himself. He shrugged. ‘When we met, your pursuit of a gymnastics career bordered on obsessive. You might have considered sacrificing an unplanned pregnancy. After all, you put gymnastics before our relationship.’
‘That’s not true!’ Kristen was stung by the unfairness of his accusation.
‘You left me to devote yourself to achieving your dream of sporting glory.’
‘I left because you wanted our relationship, such as it was, to be solely on your terms. You demanded that I should give up my life—my gymnastics training, my university studies—to be your mistress, but you refused to make any compromises,’ Kristen said hotly. ‘The only thing that was important to you was your career. You travelled the world in pursuit of the next deal, the next million pounds to add to your fortune, but you refused to acknowledge that my dreams were important to me.’
She bit her lip. ‘Our relationship was just about sex as far as you were concerned, wasn’t it, Sergio?’ Her anger faded as quickly as it had flared and left her with a dull ache in her chest. There was no point in opening up old wounds. ‘You asked me to be your mistress, but in the same breath you told me that you were not interested in commitment. What did you expect me to do,’ she asked bitterly, ‘give up everything I’d worked so hard for, for an affair that might last a few months at most?’
‘I couldn’t give you what you wanted.’ Sergio’s voice was emotionless, but Kristen was shocked to see a pained, almost tortured look in his eyes before he brought himself under control and his face became its usual expressionless mask. ‘I knew you hoped for more from me—women invariably do,’ he said sardonically. ‘When you returned to England I realised it was for the best.’
‘And so you married someone else.’ Kristen felt hurt that he had lumped her with his countless other mistresses and had regarded her as needy just because she had hoped for a more meaningful relationship with him than simply sharing his bed. ‘Your Sicilian woman must have been very special for you to have overcome your objection to commitment.’
For a fleeting moment she sensed that he was tempted to talk about his first marriage, but he gave a non-committal shrug.
‘Yes, she was.’
He picked up the photo album that he had been looking at earlier and stared at a picture of Nico as a newborn baby. ‘He looked so tiny when he was born. What did he weigh?’
‘He was a few weeks early and he was just over two kilograms, but I fed him myself and he quickly gained weight.’
Sergio studied the photo, which had clearly been taken in the hospital soon after Kristen had given birth to Nico. She looked very young and scared as she clutched the tiny baby in her arms. Anger burned inside him—anger at her for robbing him of the first years of his son’s life, but a greater anger with himself because he had not followed his instincts four years ago and gone after her. She had dented his pride when she had refused to be his mistress, he acknowledged. If he was honest, her rejection had hurt him and it had been the realisation that she made him feel vulnerable that had stopped him from following her to England.
‘How did you manage?’ he asked harshly. ‘Did you have to leave university when you realised you were pregnant?’
‘No, I was able to finish my degree before Nico was born, and afterwards I was lucky to get my current job at the sports injury clinic.’
‘It must have been a struggle, though.’
‘It hasn’t been easy...especially financially,’ Kristen admitted.
Sergio wondered why she suddenly seemed nervous. His eyes narrowed on her tense face. ‘Why did you come to the Hotel Royale on Friday night?’
Her tongue darted out to lick her dry lips. ‘I...came to tell you about Nico.’
‘Why now, when you had hidden him from me all this time?’
‘I was going to...to ask you for help...a financial contribution for him. You have no idea how expensive bringing up a child is.’ Kristen faltered when Sergio’s eyes darkened with anger. But when he spoke his voice was tightly controlled.
‘You’re right. I don’t know what it’s like to bring up a child, but I wish more than anything that I could have shared the experience of caring for our son from the moment he was born. As it is, I would not have discovered his existence if you had not decided to cash in your most valuable asset. Nico,’ he explained when she looked puzzled. ‘The knowledge that your child’s father is a billionaire must have been too tempting to ignore.’ His lip curled. ‘How much money did you hope to get from me? Did you plan to demand cash in exchange for allowing me to see my son?’
‘No!’ Kristen was appalled by Sergio’s accusation. ‘All this time I believed you had a wife in Sicily. But then I saw your picture in a newspaper and read that you were going to marry an Earl’s daughter, and I decided to ask you for a small contribution towards Nico’s upbringing.’
‘So your decision had nothing to do with the fact that you have debts amounting to several thousand pounds, mainly in the form of store credit cards?’ Sergio said coldly. ‘I saw the pile of letters and final demands for payment from debt-collecting agencies.’
Kristen swallowed. She had forgotten that the folder containing dozens of letters from creditors was in the bureau where she kept the photo albums. ‘You had no right to look at my private mail.’
He ignored her and said savagely, ‘Suddenly it all makes an obscene kind of sense. You’ve maxed out on your credit cards buying designer clothes and handbags, and so you’ve decided to use me as a cash cow to bail you out and assumed you could use Nico as leverage.’
‘The situation is not what it seems,’ Kristen said huskily.
‘Then what is it?’
‘It’s complicated.’
‘No, it’s very simple,’ Sergio said grimly. ‘You want money and I want my son. Name your price and the amount will be transferred into your account within twenty-four hours—with the proviso that you allow me to take Nico to Sicily.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous...’ Kristen