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‘Yes.’ Allegra tossed her phone and clutch on a chair and wrapped her arms around herself. With her tumbled, fiery curls and her ice-blue gown she looked like a slender, burning flame, and Rafael wanted to wrap her in his arms, not out of desire now but to offer her comfort. The compulsion was so strong it felt like a pain, breaking open a scar deep inside him, a barely healed wound from when he hadn’t been able to help. To save anyone.
‘I should go to bed,’ Allegra said softly. ‘It’s late.’
‘Allegra...’ He wanted to say something of what he felt, desperately needed to offer her some comfort—and yet what comfort could he give? Tomorrow would bring whatever news it did, and there was absolutely nothing he could do about it.
A shudder racked her body and it felt like a wound to his heart. He hated seeing her suffer, knowing she was afraid, just as he was. Then she lifted her head, regarding Rafael with tear-damp, pain-filled eyes. ‘Goodnight, Rafael,’ she whispered, and walked out of the room.
CHAPTER SEVEN
ALLEGRA COULDN’T GET to sleep. She lay on her bed, staring gritty-eyed at the ceiling, everything leaden inside her. It had been such a magical evening, going to the concert with Rafael. All night excitement had been fizzing like champagne through her blood, bubbles popping inside her head. The music. The mood. The moment when Rafael had looked so sexy and intent...and then the realisation, cold and hard, that this was all ephemeral and tomorrow reality would return with a dreadful thud.
She pressed one hand against the soft swell of her bump. Oh, baby. Stay strong. Be safe. Yet she knew it wasn’t in her baby’s power to be healthy. It wasn’t in hers either.
Around two in the morning she finally rose from bed, knowing sleep wasn’t going to come. She was planning to make herself a cup of herbal tea and then sit out on the terrace, watching the city settle down to sleep, but she stopped on the threshold of her bedroom door, for Rafael was sitting in the living room, dressed only in a pair of loose, drawstring pyjama bottoms, a tumbler of whisky cradled in his hands.
He looked up at her quick intake of breath, giving her a smile that was both sad and wry. ‘You couldn’t sleep either?’
‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘I was going to make some tea. I’d ask if you wanted some, but I see you’ve got something stronger.’
‘I need it.’ Rafael’s voice was hoarse, and pain flashed like lightning across his face.
It surprised her, because although Rafael was doing what he saw as his duty by her, Allegra had assumed, rightly or wrongly, that he didn’t really want this child. He’d said as much back in Rome, and he’d refused to talk about the what if? scenarios until they knew more. She realised she’d assumed he hadn’t really cared, not the way she did, and yet now, looking at the set of his jaw, the slump of his shoulders, she wondered if he shared her fear, her agony. If he longed for their child to live and be strong and healthy as much as she did.
In the kitchen she brewed a cup of chamomile tea and then brought it to the living room, curling up on the opposite side of the sofa from Rafael. He looked unbelievably sexy, stubble shadowing his strong jaw and the perfect, sculpted muscles of his chest on glorious display, a sprinkling of dark hair forming a V down to the low waistband of his pyjamas.
But Allegra wasn’t thinking about how handsome he looked. She was realising how sad he seemed, and it made her ache.
‘I’ve felt the baby kick,’ she said quietly. Rafael turned to look at her, his mouth dropping open in surprise.
‘You have?’
‘Just in the last few days. I didn’t know what it was at first. It feels like bubbles popping inside me. Little flutters.’ She took a deep breath. ‘But they’ve become a bit stronger in the last day or two, almost...almost as if the baby knows. As if he or she is telling me...’ She broke off, her chest tight with the force of her feeling, the strength of her emotion.
Rafael leaned closer, his expression intent. ‘Telling you what?’
‘Telling me that he—or she—wants to live.’ She scanned his face, looking for clues to how he felt, what this could mean—for both of them. ‘That this baby wants to live, no matter what.’
