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In the sitting room, Vivien closed her hands together in a nervous gesture and then hurriedly folded her arms. ‘I know you’re blaming me for everything and you’re right. What took place tonight was entirely my fault.’
‘I appreciate the way you so frequently save me from the necessity of criticising you,’ Lucca drawled. ‘You rush with suicidal eagerness to put your head in the noose.’
A flush of discomfiture washed her delicate face but her chin tilted. ‘I believe in taking responsibility for my mistakes.’
Brilliant dark golden eyes met hers with level cool and command. ‘That’s commendable and very apt for the occasion because what I’m about to say is likely to prove challenging for you.’
He looked utterly unapproachable. Yet it was only a few hours since he had been in bed with her. The ill-timed intimacy of that recollection made her fair skin burn and sparked enough mental turmoil to make her strained gaze duck away from his. If the detachment he exuded had been measurable in terms of actual distance he would have been a thousand miles away.
‘I want you to move back to London.’
Vivien froze. The tense silence seemed to surge like a rushing wave breaking with almost deafening force against her eardrums.
‘I want the chance to be a real father to my son,’ Lucca imparted with a measured clarity of tone that telegraphed his desire to make every word hit the right target. ‘But I can’t achieve that with an extensive geographical divide between us. I’d like to see Marco whenever I choose and a lot more often. My time with him shouldn’t always feel like a special occasion. I need the option of sharing the ordinary days too. I’d prefer to leave the lawyers out of it as well. I think that you and I will deal better on a more informal and friendly basis.’
Taken aback, Vivien strained to comprehend his exact meaning. Was he asking her to move back in with him? No, no, don’t go there, her brain urged her in disgust at the weakness betrayed by her own eager wish for such an approach from him. No, of course Lucca wasn’t suggesting reconciliation. He was talking solely about Marco and his desire to normalise his relationship with his child. But when he talked of leaving his lawyers out of the equation and mentioned aspiring to a more informal and friendly arrangement with her, sheer surprise at that unexpected development threw her into a loop.
‘Yes…er…but moving to London,’ she mumbled uncertainly, playing for time while she endeavoured to work out what exactly he meant by that invitation. Friendship? Platonic friendship? What else?
‘I’m quite sure some other academic institution would kill to have you or you could concentrate on research for a while. I would take care of everything,’ Lucca told her softly as she turned vague troubled eyes of clear trusting green on him. ‘I know how much you hate upheaval. Obviously you can retain this house and rent it out. All such matters would be dealt with on your behalf and according to your wishes. Naturally I will also cover all your expenses in London—’
‘No, that wouldn’t be necessary—’
‘But I would insist. I’m not in a position to relocate. Y
ou should not suffer in any way from a move that will benefit me. In any case…’ keen dark eyes rested on her perturbed expression ‘…now that we understand each other better, I’m sure I can speak with less fear of injuring my access to my son.’
Vivien lost colour at that veiled gibe. ‘You can say anything you like,’ she hastened to assure him while wondering dimly where he got the idea that she understood him better when she had never understood him in the slightest.
‘I consider this house or even its London equivalent to be an unacceptable home for my son.’
Her bemused gaze widened. ‘But what’s wrong with this house?’
‘I object to Marco being raised in a hovel.’
She flushed. ‘For goodness’ sake, this is hardly a hovel!’
‘It is on my terms. To bring Marco up in such a home is to cruelly deny everything that he is. He is a Saracino,’ Lucca asserted with cool pride. ‘He has a proud family name and lineage and even at this age he should be able to enjoy all the benefits of Saracino achievements.’
A hovel? Vivien swallowed hard. She had almost snapped back a defiant answer but she was badly hampered by the kind of mind that always examined both sides of an equation. It was true that Marco was the son of a very rich man and that measured against Lucca’s vast wealth her home could only seem poor. Was that fair to Marco? she was being forced to ask herself for the first time. Should she have allowed her personal preference for independence to rule the lifestyle choices she had made? Had she been horribly selfish when she’d denied her son the trappings of luxury? Whatever, she was learning that Lucca had very much resented her decision to raise his only child outside the privileged world that was his own.
‘You’re certainly giving me a lot to think about,’ she muttered heavily.
‘I hope so. My estrangement from my son has been a cause of great bitterness to me,’ Lucca admitted without hesitation. ‘I have been excluded from his life on almost all fronts and now I want all that to change. Are you willing to rise to that challenge?’
Her head was buzzing with the bewildering surge of semi-formed thoughts produced by stress and exhaustion. She drew in a shaky breath. ‘I need to think about this.’
‘Unfortunately, I’m not in the mood to be patient. You dislike being hurried into decisions but I feel I have the right to be selfish and put Marco’s needs first.’
‘Putting Marco’s needs first could never be judged selfish,’ Vivien hurried to assure him.
‘If you truly believe what you are saying, then you give Marco the chance to enjoy the comfort of easy access to both his parents,’ Lucca countered levelly.
Vivien was very tense, for the discussion was moving far too fast for her liking and she felt cornered. ‘If only it were that simple…’
‘But it is. Sit back, smell the roses. Let other people deal with the hassle on your behalf, cara.’
His incredibly sexy drawl vibrated through her tense frame and she struggled not to respond to it. When Lucca spoke in that darkly sensual, soothing tone, she felt dizzy and the very personification of weak womanhood. Only the powerful pain of the recent past held her back from the brink of a foolish decision. She loved him but he did not love her. Furthermore it was very possible that he had had sex with her purely as a means of expressing his contempt. So dark, so dreadful was that suspicion that she immediately shied away from it and felt quite ill. But her awareness that Lucca could be frighteningly hard, cruel and unforgiving lingered like a steadying influence on her softer nature.
