‘That was Alex?’ Cara asked.
Dani nodded, knew her colour was rising.
‘Gorgeous, isn’t he?’ Cara sparkled. ‘He and Lorenzo are the most eligible bachelors in town—and not because of their bank balances or bodies. Although—’ she looked coy ‘—I don’t know that Alex is going to be a bachelor for much longer.’
Dani looked at Cara with great concern. ‘Can I get you a cup of tea or some cold water?’ Pregnancy was making the poor woman delusional.
Alone in his house, she found some ready-made soup in the fridge, ate it while standing. She sloped up to bed early. But despite feeling exhausted she couldn’t sleep. She went back downstairs and curled up on the sofa—but she couldn’t settle into a book, decide on a telly channel, or choose a movie. It was the tone she kept hearing—that discordant note in his voice when he’d rung. She couldn’t sleep until she’d seen him.
She heard the gates and the garage door. He wasn’t nearly as late as she’d thought he’d be. She listened to his slow, heavy tread on the stairs and waited. He appeared in the doorway and shock rippled through her. She sat up. ‘What’s wrong?’
He looked awful—his face all shadows and angles. And as he stepped further into the room she saw the shadows were darkened by something else—pain. He looked at her, his expression so tortured that the vulnerability struck a knife in her heart. She couldn’t believe this wreck of a man was Alex. Usually full of such vitality. She’d never thought he could look so destroyed.
‘Tell me.’ She needed to know. She needed to help.
But he was silent.
Her cheeks heated. He didn’t want to tell her. Was she overstepping the mark? Too bad. She reverted to blunt speak. ‘You look awful.’
A little puff of air escaped him and he flopped onto the sofa beside her. He closed his eyes, his brows knitting. Then suddenly he spoke. ‘I had a meeting with my father.’
Dani blinked. That she hadn’t expected. ‘But—’
‘Samuel Carlisle wasn’t my father.’
Oh—Dani thought it but no sound came out of her mouth. Instead she sat utterly still. And waited.
‘I always knew my parents weren’t that happy. It wasn’t fights all the time or anything. It was just…chilly. Then I heard my mother one day on the phone. I was only twelve but I wasn’t naive. It was an argument with her lover. I walked in to where she was and she hung up straight away. I asked her and she denied it, tried to laugh it off. But I knew. And I never told Samuel because I knew it would freak him.’
He went silent. ‘After that I went to boarding school. I was still close to Samuel, but not her. I went to university, went into the business. Then Da…’ he paused ‘…Samuel got sick. He needed a donor. She didn’t want me to be tested—said I was too young. But I did it anyway. The blood work came through. I’m a really rare type. I looked it up, and Samuel’s—had them checked. There was no way he could be my father.’
Dani bit down on her lips as she watched his pallor increase.
‘I confronted her—she admitted it but begged me not to tell him. To him I was his only child. It would kill him.’ He sighed. ‘So I didn’t, of course. But I wanted to know the truth. She wouldn’t say—said his name was irrelevant. Nothing more than a sperm donation. Insisted Samuel was my real father.’
‘And wasn’t he?’ Dani asked softly. ‘In every way that counted?’
He turned his head and looked at her. ‘I had the right to know. Samuel had the right to know.’
That was true. She nodded—she understood the need to know.
‘She died before she ever told me who my father really was. I could never ask Samuel. So I thought I’d never find out. Samuel lived for a few more years—desperately sick, desperate to see the bank succeed. So I made it succeed.’
The silence was long. And eventually Dani prompted him. ‘And then he died.
‘And almost a year to the day I got the call.’
Dani’s mind searched for the answer and then made the stabbing guess. ‘Patrick.’
‘So obvious now, isn’t it?’ His smile was faint and bitter. ‘He was their best man, can you believe that? He used to be like an uncle—always around when I was a kid. Now I know why. After she died he moved to Singapore—for business, apparently. He’s been there since. Never married. He insists the affair ended years before, but how can I believe a word he says? And now he wants a relationship.’ He turned and stared at Dani. ‘How can you have a relationship with someone when they’ve done nothing but lie to you all your life?’
He screwed his face up. ‘How could they? It could have been found out so much sooner if I’d ever been seriously sick. She ran the risk of it for years. But she never said anything. All my life I had the Carlisle duty drummed into me.’ His anger mounted. ‘The bank. The business. It was my destiny—rammed into me.’
‘What else would you have done?’
‘I’ve no idea. I never seriously thought about it. It just was. Even Patrick advised me to go into it—when he was doing his honorary uncle bit.’
‘But you’re good at your job, Alex. You enjoy it. No one could work the kind of hours you do if they didn’t enjoy it.’
‘You think? What about all those people who work two, three, four jobs just to get food on the table? It’s about necessity, Dani. And it was necessary for me. Samuel was sick—he was dying and the company hit the skids. I had to turn it round—rescue it while he was alive to see it saved. I had to prove to everyone that I was good enough to do it—that I deserved to be the boss, not just because I was his heir. I did it all for him. For her. And she’d lied to me. For years and years she lied.’
Betrayal. It hurt so much when a parent let you down. Dani understood that too.
He shook his head. ‘My whole life has been a lie, Dani.’
She looked at the tension etched into his face and took his hand in hers. ‘When did he call?’
‘Thursday, almost two weeks ago.’
The day before he’d kissed her. Now she understood why he had. He’d been having a rough time and gone for a moment of fun. And, boy, had he got a whole lot more than he’d bargained for. Poor Alex.
His anger rippled out again. ‘I insisted on tests. But it’s true.’ His fingers tightened unbearably on hers but she held in the wince, knowing he wasn’t aware of his strength. ‘Why should I have anything to do with him?’
‘People lie for all sorts of reasons, Alex. I’m not saying it’s right, but maybe you need to ask what those reasons might be.’
‘There’s no excuse.’
‘People lie to protect—sometimes themselves, sure, but sometimes to protect others too. Maybe they lied to protect you. They didn’t want to hurt you.’
‘Protect me from what? Not knowing hurt more, Dani.’ He lifted his hands from her and looked at them. ‘I used to wonder if she’d been raped.’
‘Alex.’ Her heart wrenched and she grabbed his hands again with both of hers and pulled them to her chest. Of course he’d have worried about the worst. Afraid of what his mother’s secrecy might have meant.
He looked at her, tormented. ‘And they let me wonder. Worry. For nothing. I can’t forgive them for that.’ The deepest hurt poured out. ‘He’s despicable, Dani. I don’t want anything to do with him. I can’t believe he’
s my father. I don’t want to be related to him.’
She had to reach out to him. She had to help somehow, because she understood that hatred—and the underlying fear that the badness might come through his blood.
‘I’ve lied to you too, Alex,’ she said quietly. It wasn’t even a lie that would affect him, yet she felt terrible for it. Even more so as she felt him freeze. ‘I told you my parents were dead,’ she said quickly. ‘And my mum is but my father isn’t.’
Silent, he stared at her.
She breathed in and then said it. The one thing she tried never to think about. ‘He’s in jail.’
‘Oh—’
‘As far as I’m concerned he died the day he came to see Mum when she was dying of cancer and conned the last of her life savings from her.’ Dani spoke fast, stopping his interruption. She wasn’t telling him this to get his sympathy, but so he’d grasp what she wanted him to learn. ‘He’s a crook, Alex. A conman—theft, fraud, you name it, he’s done it. The kind of lowlife who preys on the sick and dying.’ She hated him, hated the way her heart raced and her skin went cold when she thought of him. ‘He wandered in and out of our lives—between sentences, between better options. He’d come and sweet talk his way back to Mum, saying he was changed. Always lies. Right up to the end, he stole from her. He has no conscience, no empathy, nothing.’ And she’d wanted to believe him too, hadn’t she? Every time. So not only had he stolen from her mother, he’d stolen from her too—taken her credit card and maxed it out. She let go of Alex’s hand to push back the sweep of her fringe. ‘His blood runs through my veins, Alex, but I’m not like him,’ she said fiercely. ‘I’m not anything like him.’ She spoke faster, insistent. ‘It doesn’t matter who your biological parents are. You’re still you. You’re not him. You’ll never be him.’
Alex just kept staring at her. ‘Is it that easy to accept, Dani?’
‘No,’ she said honestly. ‘But you have to. We’re unique, right? It’s our experiences that shape us, not just our DNA.’