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‘Maybe I wasn’t taking it as fastidiously as I used to.’ Jennifer shrugged listlessly. ‘Blame it on me, if it makes you feel better.’
‘I don’t want to blame anyone!’ he grated. ‘Recriminations aren’t going to help us.’
Matteo was silent for a moment as for the first time in his life he felt authority slip from his fingers. He could not get his way here by coercion or charm. Jennifer was in the process of divorcing him. She no longer loved him. What happened now was her decision. She was in the driver’s seat, and suddenly he felt out of his depth. ‘What do you want to do?’ he questioned quietly.
‘I’m having the baby,’ she said flatly.
‘Of course you are!’ But a great warm wave of relief rolled over him and for the first time he smiled—a smile so wide that he felt it might split his face in two. ‘And look at you, Jenny—you are so big…it must be…’
She could see him doing mental arithmetic and the expression on his face was almost comical. Jennifer smiled too—realising how long it had been since she’d done that. ‘Nearly sixteen weeks.’
‘That long?’ he breathed. ‘My God. Jenny…this is a miracle.’
‘Yes,’ she said simply. And in that moment the divorce and the anger and the bitterness and the tearing apart of a shared life all seemed inconsequential when compared to the beginning of a brand-new life.
But her emotions were volatile, and hot on the heels of her heady exhilaration came the despair of the situation into which their baby would be born.
A shuddering sob was torn from her throat and Matteo sprang to his feet, going over to her side and taking her hand between his. ‘You are in pain?’ he demanded.
She shoo
k her head. ‘No, I’m not in pain,’ she sobbed. ‘I’m just thinking how hopeless this all is.’
‘Shh.’ Now he lifted his hand to her wet cheeks and began to smooth the tears away, his heart contracting in genuine remorse as he saw the expression in her blurry eyes. ‘It is not hopeless,’ he said softly.
‘Yes, it is! We’re getting a divorce and you don’t love me!’
‘But, Jenny, I will always—’
‘No!’ She sat up, her face serious, the tears stopping as if by magic. ‘Never say it, Matteo,’ she urged. ‘Don’t say something to try and make it better, because if it isn’t true then it will only make it worse. I’m not a little girl who needs to be given a lolly because she’s hurt her knee. This isn’t about me, or the way I feel, or the mess we’ve made of our relationship. This is about someone far more important than both of us now…our baby.’
Matteo stared at her, his fingertips lingering for one last moment on her face. ‘You sound so strong,’ he breathed, in open admiration.
‘I have to be,’ she said simply. ‘I’m going to be a mother—maybe it comes with the job description.’
And he needed to be strong, too.
He needed to take control. But he must not do it in a high-handed way or she would rebel; he knew that. He must allow Jennifer to think that she was making all the decisions.
‘Have you thought about what you want to do?’
‘I’ve tried.’ There had been a fantasy version, about taking a time machine and fast-rewinding so that the episode in the lift had never happened. Or back further still, to a time when they’d still been in love and they could have conceived their baby out of that love, instead of out of lust and anger and passion.
But she was dealing with reality, not fantasy—and that posed all kinds of problems.
‘Oh, Matt—I just don’t know what to do for the best. If I stay around here—or even if I go back to the States—it’ll soon become obvious that I’m pregnant.’ She glanced down at the swell of her belly. ‘Though you can tell that even now, can’t you?’
‘Yes. Any eagle-eyed observer would spot it—and there are hundreds of those out there.’
‘I know. And once word gets out everyone will want to know who the father is—and I won’t know what to say.’
‘But you do know who the father is!’
‘And think of the questions if we tell them! Are we getting back together? And if we aren’t then why am I pregnant by you? Or what about the worst-case scenario? Some sleazy journalist bribing someone at the hospital to get my due-date! Then they could work it back to the Cannes Festival—and I’ll bet that at least one of the staff at the hotel could be bribed into giving them a story that we came out of the lift in a state of partial undress! Can you imagine the scoop that would provide?’
‘Jenny—’
She shook her head. ‘Or, if we don’t tell them, then the questions and conjecture will be even worse! Every single man I’ve so much as said good morning to will come under intense scrutiny! There will be all kinds of tasteless headlines—Who Is The Father Of Jennifer’s Love-Child?’
