Page 11 of A Baby Scandal in Italy

Ivy remembered when she’d been a child and her mum had been so wrapped up in her latest romance that she hadn’t paid her much attention. Luckily, she’d had Gemma to turn to, but Bertie had no one else.How could she have forgotten her sister’s baby for even one second?

She stared at Rafa and despised herself for the way her body responded to his potent masculinity. ‘I should not have kissedyou.’

He strolled down the kitchen and dropped a coffee pod into the machine. ‘Forget it,’ he drawled in a bored voice. ‘I already have.’

‘Good, that makes two of us.’ Pride came to Ivy’s rescue and insisted on her having the last word before she walked out of the room with as much dignity as she could muster. The heart-rending sound of Bertie crying piled on more guilt, and when she hurried down the hallway and into his room the sight of his red face and tears on his cheeks made her feel that she was the worst person in the world.

She scooped him out of the cot and hugged his little body. ‘I’m sorry, Bobo,’ she choked, using her sister’s pet name for him.I’m sorry, Gemma, she apologised silently. Bertie was all that mattered to her, and she would never forget him again. She wished she’d never brought the baby to Italy or met Rafa Vieri. But when Bertie was older he would have the right to know the identity of his father. Much as Ivy wanted to take him back to England, she had to remain in Rome until the result of the paternity test confirmed her belief that Bertie was Rafa’s son.

CHAPTER FOUR

THEAUTOMATICGATESopened to allow Rafa to turn his car onto the driveway of his parents’ villa in an affluent suburb of the city. A crowd of photographers had gathered outside the estate, and they surged towards the car. The same thing had happened when he had driven away from the Palazzo Degli Dei hotel. A few of the paparazzi had even jumped onto motorbikes and chased after his car, hoping to snap a picture that would make it onto tomorrow’s front page.

Instead of driving up to the house, Rafa stopped halfway along the gravel driveway and switched off the engine. Before he had left the penthouse, he’d had a difficult conversation with his mother, when she’d tearfully asked why he had kept her grandson a secret. She was upset that she’d found out about the baby from reading the newspapers. Rafa had come to reassure his mother that Bertie was not his child, and Ivy wasn’t his lover.

But he had wanted to make love to Ivy. He grimaced as he remembered how she had threatened his self-control with her understated sensuality. He shouldn’t have kissed her, and he was furious with himself for coming on to her like a teenager with a surfeit of testosterone. It wasn’t his style, and he did not understand why she got under his skin. But she wouldn’t bother him for much longer. He was expecting the result of the paternity test, which would prove that Ivy was a liar who had caused him public embarrassment and possibly cost him his position as the CEO of Vieri Azioni.

Thankfully his father was not around to witness his humiliation. Emotion tightened Rafa’s throat. It felt strange, coming back to the family home where he had spent his childhood and teenage years, now hispapàwas no longer here. Guilt augmented his grief. His father hadn’t wanted him to move to America to play basketball, but Rafa had been driven by determination—and a fair-sized ego, he acknowledged ruefully—to make his own mark on the world.

As a young man, there had been a weight of expectation on him to dedicate his life to the family business in the same way that his father had done. When he had chosen a different path, he’d sensed he was a disappointment to his father, despite his successful career as a professional sportsman. The unspoken accusation that he was not committed to Vieri Azioni had added to Rafa’s feeling that he was not a good enough son.

It was for that reason he had decided not to pursue his interest in training to be a sports physiotherapist when his basketball playing days had been coming to an end. Instead he had returned to the fold and discovered that he’d inherited his father’s business acumen. The past eighteen months, when he had worked with his father, had been genuinely enjoyable, and Rafa had felt that they had become closer than they’d ever been.

But the sudden loss of his father meant that he’d faced the new challenge of proving to the board and himself that he was a worthy successor to run Vieri Azioni. Progress had been good and after an initial wobble, that had reflected investors’ shock at his father’s death, the value of the company’s stock had recovered as confidence in the new CEO had increased.

That had been until the story that Rafa had refused to recognise his illegitimate baby son had hit the headlines. It was still the most trended topic on social media. But he was about to receive proof that he had done nothing to bring shame on himself.

The ping of his phone alerted him to the arrival of an email. Relieved that he would be able to get his life back on track, he opened the report from the DNA testing clinic and read it several times. His mouth dried and he was conscious of his heart banging against his ribs. The report did not make any sense.

Ninety-nine point five percent probability.

Rafael Vieri is not excluded as the biological father of Roberto Bennett.

He had fallen into a nightmare. That was the only logical explanation. The notes accompanying the report explained that the paternity test could prove with one hundred percent accuracy that a man wasexcludedas the father of a child. That was the result Rafa had been banking on. But the high percentage of probability on the results sheet indicated that the possible father, i.e. himself, was most likely the biological father of the child, since all data gathered from the test supported a relationship of paternity.

Hell!

He pinched the bridge of his nose. Only once before in his life had he experienced such a gut-wrenching shock—when Tiffany had admitted that she’d lied, and the daughter he’d adored was not his child. But this was insane. He could not have fathered a child by Ivy’s sister. Rafa was sure he’d never met Gemma, yet the evidence that Bertie was his son was in front of him.

His phone rang, and he cursed softly before he answered it.‘Ciao, Mamma.’

‘Why are you sitting in your car? Are you too ashamed to face me?’

‘I had to deal with something important...for work.’ It was a white lie, but he did not know what he was going to say to his mother. The email had left him reeling. Once again, the result of a paternity test had blown his life apart, Rafa thought grimly as he drove up to the house.

The maid escorted him into the drawing room where Fabiana Vieri was lying on the sofa. She did not get up, but languidly held out her hand to him.

‘Mamma.’Rafa stooped to kiss her fingers. His earliest memories of his mother were of her lying in bed or resting on a sofa with her pills and tonics close to hand.

‘I have suffered greatly,’ she had once told him when she’d explained that her longed-for hope of another child had been dashed by several miscarriages.

‘You still have me,Mamma,’ the boy Rafa had tried to comfort his mother, but her sadness had permeated the house. He had been convinced that he wasn’t good enough and that was the reason she yearned for another child, a better child than him. When his mother had cried—often—and he’d been unable to console her, he had felt that he’d failed her and therefore perhaps he did not deserve for her to love him.

Now he was an adult, but the sight of a woman’s tears still made him feel as inadequate as he had when he’d been a boy because he did not know how to help. Deep down, he was wary of feeling rejected, as he’d felt when his mother had locked herself in her bedroom and he’d heard her crying.

These days, instead of taking herbal remedies for mostly imagined health complaints, his mother relied on oxygen cylinders to alleviate the effects of the incurable lung disease she had been diagnosed with six months ago. Rafa had assumed that he would lose his mother first and he was still trying to come to terms with his father’s unexpected death.

‘Why did you not tell me about my grandson?’ Fabiana reproached him. ‘You know how much I have longed for a grandchild. My heart was broken when you discovered thatl’angiolettaLola was not your daughter.’

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