CHAPTER 3

           His deliberate cruelty skewered Harley’s heart and she blinked back the rush of tears that burned her eyelids.

“How dare you?” she whispered thickly. “Don’t try and appease your guilty conscience by blaming me. You wanted to get rid of me because you’d set your sights on Chantal Auclair. She was fresh, exciting, voluptuous… Like a juicy orange, ready to be squeezed by Armel Mathieu de Roquefort. You were determined as hell to make Chantal your next mistress, but the stupid little English ex-mistress who was pregnant with your child would have seriously… cramped your style… N’est-pas, chérie? (Isn’t it, sweetheart?)”

          In her distress, Harley leaped off the bed and her head spun. The blood drained from her face and she swayed unsteadily before collapsing back onto the mattress.

“Ça suffit! (That’s enough!)” Armel growled as he stepped forwards and caught little Raphaël who was determinedly trying to wriggle off the bed. “Lower your voice and try to calm down. You’re upsetting the child.”

          Armel set Raphaël down on the floor and stared speculatively at his blonde curls for a moment before glancing back at his cheating mother.

“Look, I don’t want anything from you,” Harley stated in a lower voice but still very angry. “Certainly not money… I’m perfectly able to take care of my baby boy,” she added, unable to hide the flare of contempt in her eyes. “All I’m asking is for you to accept that I’m telling the truth… That Raphi is your son. I don’t want you to do it publicly, I couldn’t care less about the world outside. I just want you to admit it in front of me.”

          Harley stared into his brilliant sapphire eyes, that were so like Raphaël’s, and gave an angry sigh. She had no intention of pursuing him through the courts for a slice of his vast fortune as her grandmother had frequently suggested.

          He didn’t want her and he didn’t want Raphaël, and that was fine… She managed without him and his money up to this point, and she’ll keep doing it… for Raphaël’s sake. She just wanted Armel to accept that she had never cheated and lied to him.

“Why can’t you be honest with me? Again, I’m not interested in you and your fortune… I’m only interested in you admitting the truth,” Harley pleaded.

          Armel glanced down at her and tensed. Her thin hospital nightgown had come unfastened so that he could see the curve of one small, pale breast. To his utter disgust, he felt his body’s involuntary reaction… A shaming surge of heat in his loins as desire corkscrewed in his gut.

          She’d proved herself to be an unfaithful whore… who was still brazenly trying to pass off another man’s child as his… so, why, in the hell, was his body reacting this way? It was humiliating to realize the effect she still had on him.

          He didn’t want to want her… It dented his ego to know that he was seriously tempted to wind his hand into her hair, angle her head and plunder the softness of her moist pink lips in a kiss that would remind her of the passion they had once shared.

          Instead, Armel forced himself to move away from the bed and stared out of the window at the rain lashing against the window pane.

“Honesty, you say… What would you know of honesty, Harley?” he demanded coldly, his facial muscles tightening so that his skin was stretched taut over his cheekbones. “Did you really think I wouldn’t find out about your secret rendezvous with Nelson Miller, that two-bit street artist? Monaco is not that big, Harley, and gossip runs rife. Especially in Monte-Carlo…”

          Armel put his hands in his pockets and kept looking outside the window.

“You see, I’m well known in the principality and the speculation that I was being cuckolded by my mistress soon reached my ears. I might even have found the situation amusing,” Armel drawled sardonically. “It was certainly a novelty. But your attempts to saddle me with another man’s child were not so funny, chérie.”

“I swear I NEVER slept with Nelson,” Harley said urgently. “The bodyguard you’d assigned to protect me made a mistake that day. But at the time, when you said all those terrible things to me, I couldn’t think straight.”

          She had been so devastated by Armel’s refusal to believe that she was carrying his baby and so shocked by his accusation that she had slept with Nelson that her mind had gone blank and she had simply walked out of his apartment without even trying to defend herself.

“After that day, I’ve had a long time to think about what happened…” Harley added bitterly, “and now I believe I know what happened.”

          Harley paused for a moment and stared at Armel, faint hope bubbling in her chest when he remained silent. It was the first time since the fateful night two years ago, that they had actually spoken properly. The first time he had listened.

“It’s true… I spent a lot of time with Nelson, but he was just a friend, nothing more. You see, you were always busy working and I was feeling so alone and so lonely in your huge penthouse. So, I’ve tried to fill up the time spent without you. I’ve decided to learn better French, just to surprise you with my conversation. I’ve started to educate myself by doing research about the principality and its people because I didn’t want you to feel ashamed about me… I’ve taken long walks and, during one of these walks, I came to know Nelson,” she admitted quietly, thinking of the young English art student who had befriended her during her stay in Monaco.

          Armel kept listening without saying a word, so Harley went on with her explanation.

“Nelson had been touring the Mediterranean coast, scraping a living selling his paintings. Unlike your glamorous friends, he’d seemed refreshingly ordinary and down to earth, and I simply enjoyed his company… That’s all. We weren’t lovers, Armel… He was just someone from home that I liked to talk to.”

“And I suppose Louis was lying when he told me he’d seen you and Miller leave the beach arm in arm to return to his camper van?” Armel drawled. “Bon Dieu! (Damn it!) I paid Louis to protect you, but when he saw your distinctive pink jacket hanging on the van door and glimpsed you and your floppy-haired artist rolling around inside, he didn’t know what to do. He certainly didn’t want to be seen as a voyeur,” he added.

          He looked at her and his lip curled in distaste.

“My wealth brings with it a very real threat of kidnap and Louis knew that, as my mistress, you were… vulnerable. He didn’t want to leave you without protection, but neither did he want to hang around watching your booty call with Miller. In the end, he called me asking me what to do, while I was hurrying back from a business trip to take you out to dinner,” he countered grimly.

          When it was evident that she was beyond words, Armel decided to continue his verbal counterassault.

“Your announcement as soon as I walked through the door that you were pregnant was ill-timed, to say the least, chérie… I’d just learned from a man I trusted implicitly that you and Miller were lovers, and I was certain that I wasn’t the child’s father. It wasn’t difficult to work out that you were pregnant by your penniless artist and hoping to pass the baby off as mine.”

          The cold fury in his eyes caused Harley to shiver but this was possibly the only chance she would ever have to defend herself and make Armel see that he was wrong about her.

“A man you trusted implicitly… Instead of listening to me, of trusting ME, you’ve decided to push me aside without giving me the benefit of a doubt… Well, I guess that says it all about our relationship… Well, Louis was wrong, Armel. He didn’t see me,” she replied in a heartbreaking tone. “He just thought he did.”

“Really?”

“Yes, really. I’d gone to the beach to meet Nelson and a group of his friends, including his girlfriend, Helen. She was feeling cold and I lent her my jacket before I walked into the town. She has blonde hair like mine and Louis must have mistaken her for me…”

          Harley stumbled to a halt, her heart sinking at the mockery in Armel’s eyes.

“I didn’t go to Nelson’s van that day and I was never unfaithful to you, Armel,” she insisted. “And that’s the truth.”

          He stared at her in silence for a few moments and then laughed unpleasantly.

“Wow! You’ve had two years to create a story and this is what you came up with? Is that really the best you can do, Harley?”

          Armel paced the room like a caged tiger, his pent-up aggression almost tangible.

“Non, chérie!” he stated fiercely, slicing his hand through the air to emphasize his anger. “I refuse to be manipulated by you. I want a paternity test and once I’ve proved conclusively that you are a liar, I never want to see you or hear from you again. C’est compris? (Did I make myself clear?)”

“Still doubting… How can you be so sure that I’m lying, Armel?” Harley whispered numbly.

          Clearly, Armel’s opinion of her couldn’t sink any lower and she was shocked by how much it hurt. The contempt in his tone made her want to shrivel but pride brought her head up.

          The silence between them vibrated with a tension that shredded her nerves and Harley visibly flinched when Armel swung around and stared at her. His expression filled her with a curious sense of foreboding and she felt her stomach churn.

          She could not tear her gaze from the sculpted beauty of his face but his eyes were hard and cold and, despite the stifling warmth of the hospital ward, she shivered.

“Because, chérie,” Armel replied and paused for a second, “I had a vasectomy… years before we met,” added and observed closely the effect his words had on her. “So, you see, Harley, the truth is that it’s medically impossible for Raphaël to be OUR child.”