He inclined his head slightly, his dark eyes cool and level. ‘I am sure. I’ll come in with you.’
‘Oh.’ An unreasoning terror gripped her. ‘She’ll be asleep.’
Without replying he got out of the car, and she had no option but to do the same. Walking up to the porch with him in a sort of numb trance, she thought helplessly of how it had been this time last night. Last night he’d been content never to see Vivi or know a personal thing about her. Support from afar, wasn’t that the agreed position?
She had the giddy sensation that all her worst nightmares were about to be realised. Once he saw her…
Her heart plunged. How would he not want her?
She inserted her key into the lock, then at the last instant turned and faced him, her back to the door. Her throat felt drier than the Gibson Desert. ‘Are you sure this is what you want? Didn’t you say you’d be better off not knowing anything about her?’
His eyes shimmered with comprehension and she felt so ashamed to be revealing her fear, but there was no containing it.
‘She is already alive in my mind,’ he said quietly. ‘How can I not see her?’
Somehow her hand turned the key, and she opened the door.
Alessandro stepped into a foyer. It was lit by a lamp and smelled like lemon furniture polish. Inside the door was a hallstand with a mirror, various coats and hats hanging from its hooks. What struck him about it immediately and sent a pang searing through him was a small yellow raincoat.
Lara led him past a set of French doors to a flight of stairs at the rear. He noticed childish paintings pinned to the wall, then his eye followed them all the way up the staircase.
He placed his foot on the lowest stair, conscious of a sudden rise in his blood pressure. He mounted the stairs behind Lara, his anticipation increasing with every step. By the time he reached the landing on the upper floor, his heart had quickened to a ridiculous gallop.
Curiosity. It was only natural.
He stood back while Lara paused outside a white-painted door and gave a soft special knock, then followed her inside.
He was in an airy, comfortably furnished sitting room, divided by an archway from a small dining room and kitchen. French doors led to the narrow balcony he’d seen from the street, but they were closed now. The room was pleasantly warm, courtesy of a fireplace with low flames leaping behind glass.
There were books, pot-plants and flowers, pictures on the walls, but he couldn’t take it all in, focused as he was on one thing only.
‘Mum, I’ve brought Alessandro.’
He glanced around and saw Lara’s mother rise from the sofa where she’d obviously been reading in the light of a standard lamp. At Lara’s words she exchanged a glance with her daughter, then turned her warm gaze on him.
Her shrewd blue eyes examined what felt like every atom of his soul, then she held out her hand and clasped his warmly. ‘Good to see you, Alessandro.’ She glanced back at Lara. ‘I’ll leave you to it, dear.’ She kissed Lara’s cheek. ‘See you in the morning.’
Lara murmured something to her mother, then the older woman gathered her things and left, closing the door behind her.
Once he and Lara were alone, tension crackled in the room higher than the flames in the fireplace. She looked white, her face set as if for an ordeal, her eyes strained and shadowy.
‘Will you wait here a second?’ She gestured to him to stand still and not move, then left to hurry through a door leading from the dining room. She came back a few moments later, still pale, but looking resigned.
‘All right.’ She sent him an appeal in her glance. ‘You’ll-you’ll have to promise not to wake her.’
He could hear her anxiety, but what reassurance could he offer? It was his right to see his child, and he was claiming it. He merely nodded and followed when she motioned him.
With the blood suddenly pounding in his ears he was hardly aware of the room she showed him to, just a blurred impression of deep rose and white surroundings, the narrow bed with a net canopy like the bower of a fairy-tale princess, and the little girl.
At first sight of her his heart seized. She was sleeping on her side, her cheek on the pillow, so he couldn’t at once see her face in total.
A toadstool lamp by the bed shed a soft light on her head of silky dark hair. Her rosy lips were parted, and incredibly long, curly dark lashes fanned in a perfect semi-circle against the softest, purest cheek he’d ever laid eyes on.
The breath constricted in his lungs. As he stared, immobilised, drinking in her exquisiteness, her long lashes gave a few rapid tremors and she made a restless movement and flung out one arm.
‘She’s dreaming,’ Lara whispered, bending to gently rescue a worn-looking doll in danger of being crushed. She replaced the covers over the girl’s small shoulders.
After a few thundering minutes, or it might have been hours, Lara telegraphed a querying look at him and he roused himself from his trance to gaze at her across the divide. She dropped her eyes, defensive and inaccessible, even though the naked imprint of her slim, nubile body was so freshly seared into his own.
He returned with her to the sitting room, but didn’t stay to talk. With the uproar pounding in his head and the storm in his soul he needed to be alone.
The last thing he remembered was Lara standing on the staircase, watching him leave, her hands contorting before her.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
LARA woke late, with an immediate sense of something irrevocable having happened. Even the sensual impression left by Alessandro’s lips and hands and big lean frame was overwhelmed by her anxiety. Her restless night had taken its toll.
She lingered in her bed, torn by conflicting fears.
If only she had some way of predicting what he might do. Now that he’d seen Vivi, would his curiosity be satisfied? Would he go on his way and never look back at his child? At her?
She felt a deep wrench within her. True, that had been what she’d thought she wanted, but now…
With a rush of certainty she knew it would not be for the best. Not for Vivi.
As for herself…He’d said some wonderful things to her last night, things she could have sworn were sincere, but so he had the last time he was here. She’d put all her faith in them then, and love and trust had turned to bitterness and heartbreak.
Even now, if he said he loved her, if by some wild turn of the card he decided he wanted to marry her, could she crush down her hurt and misgivings over his casual treatment of her in the past and go through with it?
A misty little fantasy nudged its way in through the barriers. The scenario in which seeing Vivi last night had inspired him. He’d been enchanted. He’d understood then how beautiful and special a gift a child was, and he felt proud of her. So proud. He’d decide to stay and be a proper father. He’d marry Lara, not because she was the mother of his child but because he loved her, and when they went walking he’d hold Vivi’s hand, and Vivi would have a dad she could take to the Year One Father’s Day Picnic…
Her throat thickened and tears rushed into her eyes. Even if all that miraculously happened and she hadn’t absolutely blown her chances by telling him straight off that she wouldn’t marry him, could she do it simply because he wanted Vivi? Wouldn’t the old betrayal always be there, undermining their happiness?
And how likely was the Marquis of the Venetian Isles to give up his sophisticated globe-trotting lifestyle for domestic bliss?
She cancelled the fantasy, reached for a tissue and gave her eyes a good wipe.
As usual, Vivi was up and about, probably since first light like a little bird. Lara could hear her voice from her playroom, singing to Kylie Minogie one minute, ordering her to sit up straight and pay attention or march to the time-out room the next.
She roused herself and drifted in to greet her darling, then wandered into her bathroom.