The Last Kolovsky Playboy by Carol Marinelli Page A

The press were about to be informed but first, though—as it was in normal families, right?—he shared the news with his mother.
    ‘The board will never buy it,’ Nina scoffed.
    ‘This isn’t for the board.’ Aleksi leant back in his chair. ‘This is for me. Since the accident, I’ve realised how much Kate—’
    ‘Oh, please.’ Nina scorned. ‘You, taking on some other man’s child? You, a parent?’ Nina laughed. She just threw her head back and laughed at the very idea. ‘How much are you paying her? Then again,’ she mused, ‘it wouldn’t take much! She’d be grateful just to share your bed and get free board…’
    Where had the apathy gone? Aleksi’s formidable temper was usually saved for the boardroom, but today he stood from his chair, walked over to where his mother sat and stared at her—stared into those pale blue eyes—and the anger that usually seethed deep within him bubbled to the surface, even though Nina was too foolish to see it.
    ‘When I had my accident,’ Aleksi said slowly, ‘she was there every day for me.’
    ‘Because you pay her to be!’
    ‘When I was in the Caribbean she called. She—’
    ‘Because, like every other woman in Melbourne, she’s crazy about you.’ Nina was as hard as nails. ‘You don’t have to get engaged to the halfwit. Are you really telling me that her child is moving in too? That the slut is bringing her—’
    ‘When I watch Kate with her daughter—’ he spoke over Nina’s filth, his voice slowly rising ‘—I see, for the first time, how a mother should behave.’ He was standing over her now. ‘I see how a parent should care for their child.’ Then he stopped. Not a word more was uttered, not a hand raised, but he stared at his mother till she blinked with nervousness. He opened his mouth and then closed it again, because if he spoke now he would annihilate her. And maybe she sensed it, because only when he had walked back to his desk did Nina find the bravado to speak again—her voice not quite so assured now.
    ‘If you do care for her, Aleksi, then what the hell are you doing? The press will crucify her.’ Her voice was almost sympathetic. ‘There will be huge interest in the engagement.’
    ‘Kate can handle it,’ Aleksi said, but though his voice was sure he himself was not. For the first time guilt was trickling in. He was more than used to the regular probes into his private life, and the girls he usually dated were delighted at any publicity—but Kate?
    ‘What about her child?’ Nina prodded again, smothering a satisfied smile as she found her son’s buttons and pushed them, though he tried to hide it. ‘Of course if you are in love, if this is what you want, then this is what you must do—but to bring an innocent child into theglare of publicity…Well, I hope you are very sure of your feelings for them both.’
    Aleksi wasn’t the only one whose heart was plummeting as Nina spoke.
    Kate’s shame and anger at Nina’s initial reaction was now being replaced by guilt—fear, even. Because, no matter what she could deal with, she didn’t want it to impact on her daughter. Yet on her way to work she had stopped at the school. Loath to cash the cheque, still not a hundred percent sure of her decision, Kate had paid the first term’s tuition with the very last of her savings and bought the uniform and books with her emergency credit card. And then, when panic had again overwhelmed her, she had asked to be shown the classroom once more. The sight of it had temporarily soothed her nerves.
    This was the right decision.
    It was the education her daughter needed.
    As Aleksi had said, relationships broke up all the time—but at least Georgie’s future was secured.
    ‘Your choice, Aleksi…’
    Kate could almost see in her mind’s eye Nina shrug her shoulders, and then, of course, she moved onto business.
    ‘Have you got the Krasavitsa projections?’
    ‘Sorry?’
    ‘You said you’d have them.’ Nina was curt. ‘I