Claiming His Unknown Son Read online

  Well, it wasn’t exactly a secret. Alex had still been at school when Roman Bardales had been outed as the author of the bestselling thriller series that had taken the popular literature world by storm. Since then Hollywood had expanded the audience for the exploits of the enigmatic flawed hero of his books—Danilo, a man of few words with a taste for fast cars, extreme sports and beautiful brainy women, though the only permanent fixture in his life was his Czech wolf-dog, who was the canine version of his enigmatic lone-wolf master.

  The publicity machine claimed Roman Bardales cared deeply about realism and that he never had his hero perform a feat he hadn’t already mastered himself. Shots of him clinging, not a rope in sight, to the sheer rock face of a mountain with a dizzying drop below suggested this might not be all hype.

  Alex had not read any of the books but he was a massive fan of the films—his friends were going to be so jealous when he told them. Maybe he would get to shake his hand? Or even—

  ‘No, don’t ask for his autograph.’

  The youngster spun around. ‘I wasn’t—’ he began, his voice fading and his blush blooming as the senior steward gave him a knowing look and then suggested, not unkindly, that he might like to do some work.

  * * *

  It took a few moments for the sound of the familiar voice to penetrate the zone Roman had occupied for the entirety of his drive. It was a technique he used when he climbed. You didn’t think ahead, you just lived in the moment and focused on the next move, because if your mind wandered, if you allowed yourself to be distracted, the consequences could be life-threatening or, at the very least, life altering.

  Today the danger was not an unforgiving two-hundred-foot drop below his dangling feet, and it was not a rock face he was clinging to by his fingernails, it was his rage. The moment he started thinking more than one move ahead the red mist threatened to consume him all over again and he had to stop thinking again... His eyes slid to his clenched right fist and the broken skin on his knuckles.

  He flexed his hand, and rubbed it against his thigh. He and his twin had had any number of arguments before, some more heated than others. It was inevitable when two strong-minded individuals were involved—the clash of the alphas, their mother called it.

  The thought of their remaining parent lifted one corner of his mouth, softening his expression for a second or two before it flattened again. This time, his and Rio’s argument had been different; it had been...visceral.

  It wasn’t just the punch he had landed on his brother, it was the fact he had not wanted to stop hitting him, but Rio, damn him, wouldn’t defend himself and he... Roman took a deep breath and let it out slowly, his thoughts drifting back to their recent encounter, a memory that would take a lot more than time to heal.

  When his twin had begged him to hear him out, Roman had acquiesced, sprawling in one of the chairs, trying to hide his smile as he’d resisted the temptation to tease his twin a little. At that point he’d still been assuming his brother’s confession had something to do with the cosy domestic scenario he had walked in on. It seemed Rio had a kid he’d not known about...and the kid’s mother appeared to be in his dedicated bachelor brother’s life too. Roman could see why that story might necessitate the deep breath his brother took before he’d started to speak.

  He had allowed his brother to get to the end of his story. As it turned out, it wasn’t a story about Rio’s own domestic arrangements, but there was a secret child involved. Only it wasn’t Rio’s daughter, it was Roman’s son.

  Roman’s smile was long gone when he’d got to his feet, and it had been replaced by a ferocious scowl as he’d moved across the room until he’d stood toe to toe, shoulder to shoulder, with his identical twin.

  ‘Marisa...’ His Marisa, except of course she wasn’t his, she was someone else’s Marisa and she always had been, even while she’d been in his bed, while she was making him feel... Roman shook his head fiercely. It had all been a lie; even his own feelings, feelings that had felt real at the time, had been only an illusion, but the child was definitely real. ‘She came to you?’

  ‘It wasn’t easy for her.’

  The sympathy in his brother’s eyes had only added insult to injury, and the feral sound that had escaped his compressed white-edged lips had risen up from some deep place inside his belly as he’d stood there clenching every muscle and sinew.

  ‘But she was desperate. There was nowhere else for her to go.’

  ‘How about me? If she’d needed a bone-marrow donor for her son, preferably a “related” compatible donor—’ his lips curled as he drew mocking quotation marks in the air before his voice dropped to a base boom of fury ‘—then why not come to me if I’m the child’s father?’

  His stabbing finger stopped just short of his brother’s chest, but Rio hadn’t flinched an inch, he had just stood there looking as guilty as hell. A bit late for that, brother!

  ‘Because you—’ Rio had visibly bitten down on what he’d been about to say and finished flatly. ‘We’ve got the same DNA. The child urgently needed a bone-marrow transplant from a...yes...preferably related donor. Should I have refused her request?’

  ‘You should have told me...and because what? What were you going to say about why she hadn’t come to me instead of you?’

  ‘Because,’ his brother had finally flung at him, ‘you were all over the tabloids with that blonde flashing her ample cleavage in your face while coyly saying in a totally unconvincing way that your relationship was strictly professional. I had no reason to disbelieve the rumours that you were about to get engaged—and you certainly didn’t deny it.’

  ‘It was purely professional,’ Roman had gritted back, dismissing the irrelevance with a wave of his hand. ‘Petra was an agent for the film distribution company liaising with the publisher.’ And a great loss to the acting profession.

  The first time she had displayed her stage skills, Roman hadn’t seen the cameras, so he hadn’t had a clue what was going on when she had whipped off her glasses, unfastened several buttons of her blouse and plastered herself against him, her myopic blue eyes sending him a warning dagger look as she’d muttered an instruction to ‘play along’, snuggling up to him before displaying a very realistic shock when a series of camera flashes had exploded in their faces.

  She had earnestly backed up his stony declarations of ‘No comment’ with a fluttering display of denials guaranteed to look suspect.

  Roman didn’t like this reminder of poor judgement on his part. Initially Petra’s machinations had amused him and it hadn’t seemed important then, so he had allowed the situation to go on longer than he should have. By the end, though, Petra had been in danger of forgetting she was acting—or that might have been an act too, for all he knew.

  ‘Professional?’

  He’d scowled at his brother’s scepticism. ‘A trade-off, then. The film company execs were throwing fits because I had refused to participate in a promotional tour of the latest movie and I don’t give interviews, so they figured that, because everyone loves the idea of a romance, the occasional photo op with Petra would keep me and, more importantly, the film, on the front pages, without me having to say a word. I really don’t see what that has to do with anything.’

  ‘Then you really are stupid as well as forgetful.’

  ‘So because I am stupid you decided that you would ride to the rescue and save my child while taking it upon yourself to conceal the fact I even had a child from me—and now you thought you’d ease your conscience by confessing all. Tell me, Rio, whose idea was it not to tell me in the first place? Yours or Marisa’s? Did you offer her a shoulder to cry on? Yes, I can just see it now...’ And he had, so vividly, been able to see Marisa’s blonde head on his brother’s shoulder, her soft body pressed against Rio’s hard one... The taunting images had flashed in front of his eyes, and he’d furiously shrugged off Rio’s placatory hand on his shoulder.
r />   ‘I don’t expect you to forgive me, Roman, but I truly meant it for the best—’

  Playing the scene over and over again in his head, Roman was sure that Rio had seen the fist coming but he’d made no attempt to avoid it, he’d just stood there waiting for the punch to land.

  Roman had left his brother lying on the floor, rubbing his jaw and staunching the nose bleed he’d acquired from hitting the coffee table on his way down, and had walked away, or at least had driven away at high speed. It had been thirty minutes later that he had realised he didn’t have a clue where he was driving to, as for once his legendary sense of direction had deserted him.

  As he’d drawn over to the side of the empty road he’d remembered his twin’s penultimate words... ‘The jet will be waiting for you when you need it.’

  Roman had rejected the offer out of hand. ‘You think I’m going to chase after her?’

  ‘I thought you might like to see your son. If I were you, I would. They are in England.’

  ‘You’re not me, though, are you? And you can keep your nose the hell out of my business! I’m finished with you!’

  * * *

  Now the red mist had cleared, the fact there was a jet ready and willing to take him where he needed to go was not so inconvenient.

  ‘Santiago.’ Drawing his attention back to the here and now, Roman tipped his head in acknowledgment to the man who had been responsible for both him and his twin getting their pilot’s licences, as the older man walked over, his hand extended.

  The handshake morphed into a manly clap on the shoulder before the pilot stepped away, searching his face.

  Something in his calm steady gaze lowered Roman’s tension a couple of notches. ‘It’s been a long time, Santiago.’

  ‘Two years, but who’s counting? Oh, and thanks for the tip—still keeping your hand in, then?’

  Roman looked blank for a moment, then a grin flashed momentarily, lightening the sombre set of his carved features. ‘You invested in Raoul’s start-up, then, like I recommended?’

  The older man nodded. ‘I’d still be kicking myself if I hadn’t. Your friend wouldn’t have any problem raising money these days, would he? They say the simplest ideas are the best, and I’m glad they’re right. I have a nice pension fund for when I’m too old to fly these things any more.’ He glanced towards the fuelled and waiting plane then turned his attention back to the man who co-owned it. ‘You really can’t help making money, can you?’

  A cloud passed across Roman’s face, cancelling out the half-smile and darkening his eyes. ‘I get it from my father.’ Unfortunately the ability to make money was not the only thing he had inherited from his father. It seemed he’d also acquired the rage and the jealousy that had dogged his parents’ marriage.

  ‘I don’t remember him having your way with words, though. I read your last book.’ Santiago’s bushy brows lifted as his glance slid up from Roman’s dusty boots to his windswept head, taking in everything in between. ‘You been doing a photoshoot for your next cover? Channelling the inner lean and mean?’

  Roman’s uncomfortable grimace made Santiago’s grin deepen, though underneath the laconic amusement he was relieved to see another slight lessening in the taut-tripwire level of tension that coiled the younger man’s body tighter than an overwound steel spring on the point of snapping.

  * * *

  ‘I hear that you never write any hero stunt you haven’t done yourself?’

  ‘Don’t believe everything you read. How is Meg?’ Roman felt ashamed that his own self-centred concerns meant it had taken this long for him to ask.

  ‘She’s still in remission, and we’re both enjoying it. You should try it.’

  ‘What?’ Roman said as he walked alongside the other man towards the plane.

  ‘Marriage.’

  ‘I’m not the marrying kind.’

  But then again, you weren’t the fathering kind, were you? And just look what happened.

  ‘Neither was I until I met Meg.’

  ‘The Megs of this world are rare.’ The Marisas were rare too, but in a very different way.

  The Marisas of this world lied their way into a man’s head, made him think that she was as necessary as oxygen to him, and then went back to another man. Her husband. He had spent his life building up walls and she had knocked them down with one glance of those golden glowing, hungry eyes.

  He let out another breath when the emotional shields he had constructed withstood the memory, as well as the image of a face of cut-glass delicate beauty. His nostrils flared; he’d been played and it had hit him where it hurt most—in his pride—but he had moved on.

  It had taken some time for him to appreciate the fact that she had actually done him a favour in refusing to leave her husband; his collision with Marisa had been the spur he’d needed to shake him out of the rut he’d been in and into an entirely new life. He’d cut ties he’d no longer needed, been liberated from responsibilities he’d no longer wanted. He relied on no one but himself and no one relied on him; wasn’t that the very definition of freedom...?

  The unacknowledged question mark that accompanied the thought twitched his dark brows into a frown that deepened as his thoughts took the next logical leap forward. Now he had a son, and that was a responsibility he couldn’t walk away from.

  It was a responsibility he was running towards.

  Maybe someone should warn the kid, mocked the sardonic voice in his head.

  He tensed, unwilling even to acknowledge the deep-seated fear in his belly; it was an old fear that he’d always lived with. It was this fear and not a whim that had influenced his decision not to become a father. It was the responsible thing to do when you realised there was too much of your own father in you. Roman had intended to break the cycle because he didn’t want his legacy to be an emotionally damaged child. Dios, this wasn’t meant to be happening—there shouldn’t be a child.

  He’d taken precautions, but everyone except an idiot knew the only foolproof form of contraception was total abstinence, and that option had been off the table from the moment he’d seen her standing in the lobby balanced on crazy heels that made her incredible legs look endless and wearing a mere sliver of silk that had clung to her sleek curves like a lover’s caress.

  ‘You joining me?’ Santiago nodded towards the cockpit.

  Roman moved his head as if to dislodge the circling mesh of thoughts. ‘Not this time,’ he replied.

  There were some familiar staff members on the flight and others less so, but he felt too drained to make the effort to even acknowledge the nods of recognition.

  Fighting impatience, he took a seat and belted up. The effort of maintaining even an illusion of normality was beyond him at that moment, and he found it hard to imagine there would be any moments of normality in his life ever again.

  He had a child!

  When would it seem real to him? Hands clenched, knuckles bone white, he pressed his head into the backrest and allowed his eyes to close, the sweep of his dark lashes casting an extra shadow that highlighted the jutting carved contours of his high cheekbones. Inside his head the rapid thoughts and questions, the anger, carried on swirling, and, yes, even though he had pushed it right to the back of his mind, there was still the fear lurking, fear that he would do to his child what his father had done to him.

  You’re so like your father!

  How old had he been the first time he had heard those words? Far too young—and he’d heard them far too many times since.

  High too was the number of times he had watched his father bully, berate and belittle his mother, or seen the signs of an imminent meltdown as his father’s face had become suffused with anger and his eyes had gone cold before he’d flown into a rage.

  Roman had always used the same silent mantra on these occasions—I am not like him. I won’t be that man.

  The chi
ldish determination had morphed into an adult resolution that had made him the man he was today, the man who was aware of the need to keep his emotions under control, to never want anything or anyone so much that it became a dangerous obsession.

  If that made him someone who was considered to be remote and emotionless he could live with that, and being called heartless by ex-lovers was not a high price to pay in his eyes.

  No female had ever accessed the wild, dark inner depths of him until Marisa had walked into his life, and, to his horror, all the dormant suppressed emotions he’d always sensed were there had roared into life, his response to her primal and uncontrolled.

  His jaw clenched as he tried to silence the memories. What he needed was...what?

  He needed to do something—inactivity was not something he had ever mastered, and his usual ability to sleep anywhere any time had deserted him. There was too much time for thinking, for the frustration curdling in his gut to expand until he felt as if he’d explode!

  Deaf to the polite question of the attendant standing at his elbow, he pressed his hands on the armrests and vaulted to his feet in one smooth motion, causing the attendant to take an involuntary step back.

  He dragged his hair back from his forehead. The combined effects of the shock revelation and lack of sleep were beginning to kick in hard, but control was his bedrock, his strength, and although he had to dig deep he was able to stretch his mouth into something approaching a smile.

  ‘No...no, thank you,’ he said with a shake of his head. ‘I’m just going to—’ Gesturing in the direction of the adjoining compartment, he swiftly headed for the privacy of the bedroom suite.