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She pushed against the despair threatening to engulf her. Had coming here been a terrible mistake?
‘Nico is your nephew,’ she reiterated, even though admitting the connection between this cynical, indifferent man and that innocent, funny, beautiful little boy made her stomach hurt. ‘He’s only three years old and he’s very ill—his only hope is an experimental stem cell treatment. We need at least a partial donor match but, with both his biological parents dead, Dr Patel says his best hope of finding a match is you—because you’re his father’s identical twin.’
Her voice trailed off because his face had remained impassive. Except for the tiny tic of a muscle in his jaw. Exactly how inhuman was he, that the plight of a child—his brother’s child—wouldn’t move him, even in the slightest?
But then his frown became more pronounced, as if he were considering what she’d said. Had he heard her? Would he at least consider helping?
‘If there even is such a child,’ he said, his tone laced with scepticism now as well as barely concealed contempt, ‘and he is actually sick, I think we both know there is no chance I will be a suitable donor.’
‘No, we don’t. How could we? If you haven’t been tested.’
‘Because there is no
possible way Alexei could have fathered this boy. Something your sister knew when she tried to claim the same thing four years ago.’
‘Why are you saying that?’ she asked, confused now as well as frightened. ‘You knew Alexei was the father, or you wouldn’t have given my sister fifty thousand dollars to have an abortion.’
His eyebrows rose then, and for the first time she could see she’d surprised him. ‘Is that what your sister told you?’
‘Yes, and I believed her—she would never have lied to me.’ Darcy had never had a single duplicitous or greedy bone in her body. She’d taken this man’s blood money, yes, but only for the sake of her child—to put a down payment on the tiny basement flat where they lived in Hackney, East London.
‘How melodramatic,’ he said. ‘I didn’t tell her to have an abortion, for the simple reason that I didn’t believe her story about being pregnant. And if she was pregnant I knew damn well the child wasn’t Alexei’s. If she thought that was what the money was for, that was her interpretation. I simply told her I was paying her the money to rid myself and Alexei of the problem she presented.’
‘But she was pregnant and Alexei is the father...’
‘I met your sister exactly once,’ Lukas interrupted, the contempt in his voice slicing Bronte to the bone. ‘Obviously I underestimated the problem. I thought she was simply a good liar, an accomplished gold-digger. I didn’t realise she was delusional and that she actually believed Alexei was the father.’
‘But Darcy wasn’t delusional. She was telling the truth.’
‘No, she wasn’t. Alexei could not possibly have fathered her child.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because my brother was infertile. He had been since the age of sixteen.’
‘But that can’t be true.’ Bronte’s mind stalled, the revelation a crushing blow. Had Darcy made a mistake? About Nico’s father? Had this mission all been a pointless, futile exercise which was likely to get her arrested for no good reason...?
‘I assure you it is true. My father got it on good authority from a number of specialists after a bout of mumps caused severe inflammation of Alexei’s testes as a teenager.’ The stormy expression on Lukas’s face lifted the veil of indifference—so he did care, about his brother at least.
Bronte ignored the biting anger in his tone and struggled to get her head around this revelation. What Lukas was saying simply didn’t stack up.
Alexei had been Darcy’s first lover—her only lover. Clearly Lukas believed what he was saying about his brother. Which would explain why Lukas had offered Darcy money to get rid of her, and Alexei had refused to answer her calls. Obviously the two of them had both thought Darcy was some kind of conniving gold-digger looking for a pay-off, and they’d wanted to protect Alexei’s pride. The fifty thousand dollars hadn’t been to pay for an abortion, as Darcy in her panic and confusion had obviously assumed; it had simply been to stop her from going public with the news of a pregnancy they both believed Alexei could not have been responsible for.
But how did any of that explain why Nico looked so much like the Blackstone brothers? And how could Darcy possibly have got pregnant by someone else? If she’d never slept with another man?
Whatever Lukas Blackstone believed, he had to be wrong. Because Alexei had to be Nico’s father. And that meant Lukas was still Nico’s best chance of a donor.
‘I don’t care if the whole world thought your brother was infertile. He wasn’t, because Nico is his son. Darcy said so, and you only have to look at him to know it’s true.’
Lukas’s face hardened, the tic in his jaw going berserk. The lion was about to pounce, but she didn’t care any more; she would prod and provoke him until he accepted the truth—and gave Nico a chance.
‘Clearly you’re as much of a fantasist as your sister.’ He drew a mobile phone out of his pocket and began to key in a number as he spoke. ‘Your time’s up, Miss O’Hara, and this farce is over.’ He lifted the phone to his ear.
‘Stop!’ She grabbed his arm, horrified by the spurt of heat that snaked up her torso at the feel of his muscular forearm tensing beneath the sleeve of his tuxedo. ‘Before you have me arrested. Just stop and think for a moment. What if the doctors were wrong? What if, by some miracle, your brother did father a child and Nico is all that’s left of him?’
‘I don’t believe in miracles,’ he said flatly, not surprising her in the slightest, but then he lowered the phone.
‘Neither did I...’ she said, because she hadn’t until this very second, but she could see the spark of irritation—and she thanked God for it, because it was enough to give him pause. ‘Let me show you a photo of Nico,’ she said, pouring the last of her hope into the plea. ‘I’ve got loads of them on my phone—which is in my bag hidden behind the industrial dishwashers in the kitchens downstairs.’ As well as the waitress uniform she’d used to sneak into the event. ‘If once you see it you’re not convinced to at least investigate the possibility that Nico is related to you and your brother, I’ll never darken your door again. I promise.’
