Page 52 of Hidden Heir With His Housekeeper

He cringed. How needy and pathetic was that?

He’d expected contempt, maybe even derision, but when her gaze searched his, all he saw was compassion. And that crippling tenderness that made him feel like that little boy again, wanting and waiting for something that he could never have.

‘Oh, Mason,’ she said. ‘Why would I not fall in love with you?’ She tucked her hand over her bump. ‘You gave me a baby, and in many ways you also gave me my freedom.’ She sighed. ‘It hurt to hear it at the time, but you were right about what I’d allowed myself to become because I was too scared to stand up to my father.’

‘That’s nonsense, Beatrice,’ he said. ‘You would have figured it out eventually, without me seducing you and getting you pregnant, then dumping you the very next day in the most callous way imaginable.’

He’d apologised for the way he’d spoken to her that morning. But the more he’d thought about the way he’d behaved in the last month, the more he’d realised an apology wasn’t enough.

She cleared her throat, the pale blue of her eyes sparkling. ‘Excuse me, but who seduced whom that first night? Because I’m pretty sure you’ve got that the wrong way round.’

He let out a brittle laugh. God, she was adorable. But the ripple of amusement faded almost as quickly as it had come.

He looked away from her because he couldn’t look at her and explain the rest.

‘You want to know why you really had to leave Italy?’ he managed.

‘Why...’ she asked, so sweet, so trusting.

He blew out a breath and pushed the words out. ‘I told Joe to tip off the press.’

The murmured confession felt like a gunshot. Her eyebrows lifted but the tenderness remained, because she didn’t seem to be able to process the whole sordid truth.

‘I forced your hand,’ he explained. ‘Because I didn’t want to wait. And I convinced myself that what I wanted was the only thing that mattered,’ he raced on, the hideous reality of what he’d done starting to strangle him. ‘So instead of allowing you to make your own decision, I went behind your back to stack the odds in my favour.’

He could still remember her stubborn determination not to give in to his demands in the pizzeria in Rapallo. Her insistence that she needed to be independent. And, in a lot of ways, he’d admired her for it. But when the press hordes had descended the next morning, it hadn’t taken him long to qualify his actions and justify doing whatever was necessary to get what he wanted.

It was what he’d always done. Deflect, evade and cover up the truth until things went the way he wanted them to. That was the real man behind the myth. Not the self-made billionaire who had worked his way up from nothing, taken insane risks and reaped the hoped-for rewards, but the boy who even a mother couldn’t love. The boy who had done terrible things to escape his fate.

And he could see so clearly now. He hadn’t forced her hand to protect her or the baby, which was what he’d told himself at the time, but because he’d been terrified, even then, that, given the choice, she wouldn’t choose him.

He heard her let out a breath and he braced himself for her anger, and her disgust.

But when she eventually spoke, all he heard in her voice was that same compassion.

‘Well, I’m glad you told me about that, and it was a pretty sneaky thing to do,’ she said, in what had to be the understatement of the century. But then her delicate hand landed on his knee, and she squeezed it softly. ‘But FYI, I think you only really speeded up the inevitable.’

He turned to her, shocked by the easy affection in her tone—and the quiet acceptance.

‘Really?Beatrice? That’s it?’ he said, starting to feel annoyed now. ‘That’s all you’ve got to say? I manipulated you. I ripped you away from a life you loved and had spent months building for yourself and I took away all your choices—and you’re just gonna forgive me for it?’ Make that a lot annoyed.

‘Well, to be fair, I really didn’t love scrubbing toiletsthatmuch,’ she said.

‘This isn’t a joke.’ He dragged a hand through his hair, then stood and paced to the window, unable to sit still. And unable to have her look at him like that, as if what he’d done didn’t matter, when he knew it did.

He swore softly. ‘Is this some leftover from that bastard who fathered you? That you think you have to accept my bad behaviour because you love me,’ he said, doing sarcastic air quotes, because he was just that mad.

‘No, it’s not.’

She jumped up and crossed the room, the quiet acceptance gone.Finally.

‘And if you ever do something like that again...’ Her chest puffed up and her gaze narrowed. ‘You will definitely be sorry.’

Which would have been more of a threat if he wasn’t so sorry already.

‘But it seems to me you’ve tortured yourself enough so there’s not much point in me torturing you too. And the fact you told me what you did is important. Because now we can have trust.’

‘Trust?’ he murmured. Did she even know what that meant? How could she be so gullible...? He cupped her neck, pressed his forehead to hers, unable not to touch her this one last time. ‘How can you trust me, Beatrice, if you don’t know who I really am?’

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