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But she couldn’t carry on feeling frayed and vulnerable like this. She had to stay in control and remember that she was dealing with a man for whom control was key. Some primitive part of her wanted to leave the door open—but she knew that the sound of their voices would carry and she couldn’t risk that. With a heavy sigh of resignation, she closed it behind them.
‘I need to use the bathroom,’ she said.
It seemed almost too intimate a thing to say—which was a bizarre thought in the circumstances—but Justina needed to do more than relieve her pregnancy-weak bladder. Pride made her tug a brush through hair which was hanging down her back like rats’ tails, and to slick on some pink lipstick which seemed to be the only colour in her white face.
She still needed to suck in a deep breath as she prepared to walk back in and face him. She felt sick with nerves—the way she’d used to feel just before she went out on stage—only this was much worse. On stage, her crippling fears had used to vanish the moment she heard the first chord of music and professionalism began to kick in. Today she had no idea how she was going to react to what lay ahead of her. These were new and uncharted waters—and she’d never seen anything more forbidding than the expression on Dante’s dark face as she pushed open the door and walked into the lavish sitting room.
He was standing in front of the massive floor to ceiling windows which overlooked the veranda and yet somehow he made them look insignificant. His face was hard—like granite—and his eyes were cold as they flicked over the massive swell of her belly, as if he couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing.
‘You’d better sit down,’ he said heavily.
She shook her head. Damn him for trying to act concerned. If he was so concerned then he wouldn’t have leapt out at her like that, downstairs in the foyer. ‘I’d prefer to stand,’ she said.
For a moment Dante felt immense frustration shimmer over his skin. Wasn’t that typical of Justina? So damned independent that she’d refuse to do the sensible thing. Even though her face looked as pale as flour, she was stubbornly refusing to sit down simply because he had been the one to suggest it.
‘Have it your own way.’
‘I intend to. How did you find me, Dante?’
‘It wasn’t difficult. You don’t exactly blend into a crowd at the moment. I saw the erratic press reports about your...condition, and I worked out that the baby could be mine. I kept thinking that if that were the case you would contact me.’ There was a pause and his eyes burned into her. ‘I kept waiting for you to get in touch, and when you didn’t I thought...’
His words tailed off. He’d thought that maybe he’d been mistaken, that it wasn’t his baby at all. And hadn’t the thought of that eaten him up with jealousy? The idea that he might have been just one in a line of men who had graced her bed? But the feeling hadn’t left him, and neither had the strange certainty which had flooded through him. It had been certainty which had made him track her down. Which had made him board his private jet to Singapore, where he had been informed that she was staying alone in Raffles Hotel.
Intently, he stared at her, and he could feel the powerful beat of his heart thundering in his chest. The crazy thing was that he wanted to go over there and place the palm of his hand on her belly, as if to convince himself that this was real. And if he did that could he guarantee that the same dark hunger wouldn’t flicker into life, the way it always did? Why was it that, no matter how much he tried to convince himself otherwise, he could never seem to stop wanting her?
‘Is there something you need to tell me?’
Justina nodded as a wave of emotion threatened to overwhelm her, but somehow she held it back. Don’t act ashamed or intimidated, she told herself. Just deal with the facts. But it was far from easy, because as she faced the accusation in his eyes a terrible yearning threatened to flare up inside her. She found herself wishing this could all have been different. That they were the same two people they’d once been—a couple in love who were planning to be together for the rest of their lives.
But it was not like that. It was nothing like that. Pointless to waste her time wishing that it was. Pretend you’re doing a television interview, she told herself. Act calmly. Take the emotion out of the subject and try not to turn this into a confrontation.
Her voice was almost gentle. ‘Is that a roundabout way of asking whether you’re the father, Dante?’
CHAPTER FIVE
‘AM I?’ DANTE STARED at her, and his eyes had never looked colder than they did right then. ‘Am I the father of your baby, Justina?’
For a moment she hesitated, tempted to tell hi
m no. Because wouldn’t that be easier all round? He could go back to New York and the life he’d made there. She would never have to see him again. Never. Financially—and hopefully emotionally—she could manage to be a good, single mother. Lots of women were.
But then she thought of the child she carried. The baby who was currently kicking beneath her fluttering heart as if it was trying out for a foetal football team. Could she wilfully deny her child the knowledge of its father just because that father didn’t love her? Wouldn’t that be the most selfish thing she could ever do—especially since she knew the pain and deprivation of growing up without a father? She knew how that could leave an empty hole which nothing could ever fill. She felt fiercely protective of this new life within her—and if she was being protective then that ruled out being selfish, didn’t it? It might be better for her if Dante was out of her life, but it wouldn’t be better for the baby.
‘Yes,’ she breathed—and then she said it again, so that there could be no going back. ‘Yes, you are.’
For a moment he said nothing. He could hear the loud ticking of a clock as a surge of adrenalin flooded through him—his body automatically gearing itself up for fight or flight. He stared down at the elegant table beside him, on which stood a bowl of fruit so perfect that it might have been made from wax. For a split second he wanted to smash his fist through it. To see the apples disintegrating into pulp and the squashed oranges spurting out their juice. The desire was so strong that his big hands clenched into tight fists and he almost raised one. Until he forced himself to face facts as well as to re-exert the habitual control which had momentarily threatened to desert him.
Don’t forget that this is a very single-minded woman, he told himself, as he stared into her wide amber eyes. Who will do anything to get what she wants out of life. He had witnessed her steely ambition first-hand. He had seen how she’d always put her career before him—it had been the main reason why he’d called off their wedding. So he needed to find out all the facts—not just the ones she had chosen to tell him.
‘How can you be sure it’s mine?’
Justina heard the rough challenge which distorted his voice. The question hurt—mainly because it sounded genuine and not asked simply as an attempt to insult her. Did he really think she behaved that way? Picked up men at weddings before taking them back to her room to have sex with them? She wondered how he would react if she told him that he was the only man she’d ever been intimate with, and that was how she knew he was the father. Would he laugh at her or simply pity her for spending the past five years without being able to move on?
‘I just am,’ she said flatly.
He shook his head. ‘You’ll have to do better than that.’
‘What are you talking about?’
