AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Francesco’s dark glance slewed once more towards the phone.a muscle along the angle of his jaw clenched as he wrenched his straying attention back onto the road ahead. At this moment he felt neither cool nor clear-headed.
But he did feel grimly determined.
It was sobering to acknowledge how close he had been to throwing the phone away. Fortunately something had made him switch it on before he had done so.
Erin had one message.
His steelily determined eyes fixed on the road ahead, Francesco recalled the moment when he had heard the polite voice on the machine apologise, and explain that the date of Mrs Romanelli’s next antenatal appointment had been brought forward a week.
His normally sharp, analytic mind numb, he had replayed the message three times before it had finally clicked.
He was going to be a father!
A man was meant to feel elation and joy at such a moment, but Erin had robbed him of that. Just as it now appeared increasingly likely she had planned to rob him of his child. He wondered how he would ever be able to forgive her for that.
Had she ever been going to tell him?
Even though over the last few days he had analysed the situation from every angle countless times, weighing up the possible explanations for her silence, no matter how hard he tried he still couldn’t come up with any halfway adequate excuse.
He had even given her the benefit of the doubt and accepted that she might not have known that she was pregnant when she had left, but she must have known for weeks now.
Weeks during which she hadn’t made any attempt to contact him except with that one letter expressing her wish to divorce as soon as possible. Erin had made a definite choice not to tell him he was going to be a father. The knowledge stuck in his throat like bitter bile.
She had taken a unilateral decision as though he were irrelevant. Even if she had decided they had no future together there were things to discuss … arrangements … options! Not that there was more than one option as far as he was concerned. Francesco was firmly of the belief that there was only one way to bring up a child, especially his, and that was with two parents.
And it wasn’t as if she had had to contact him. He had tried to contact her and given her every opportunity to tell him, but had simply been given the runaround, fobbed off by her wretched, manipulative mother.
Did Erin really imagine for one moment that she could have his baby without him finding out? The hard laugh that was drawn from his throat was cut off as the phone in his pocket began to ring again—whoever was trying to contact him was not giving up—and with a sigh of irritation he indicated to leave the motorway.
Erin had been surprised when Francesco’s cousin Valentina had contacted her and invited her to spend the weekend at the country home where she and her English husband Sam ran a stud farm.
It crossed her mind that Valentina did not know that she and Francesco had split up. She didn’t want anyone running away with the idea she felt as though her heart had been ripped out and in her most casual tone she had asked, ‘You do know that Francesc
o and I … that we’re not together?’
‘Yes, I know, and I’m really sorry,’ replied the Italian woman. ‘But it doesn’t mean we can’t still be friends, does it?’
Erin had been reluctant to accept the invitation, but Valentina had been so enthusiastic about seeing her that in the end Erin had felt it would be churlish to throw her kindness back in her face.
Erin had arrived the previous evening and Valentina had explained that the other weekend guests were not expected until today. She glanced at her watch and wondered if anyone had arrived yet.
It was the distinctive sound of horse hooves that drew Erin to the window of the sunny sitting room. Outside in the courtyard almost beneath her window a groom was having problems holding the leading rein of a black, snorting stallion that was dancing on his hind legs.
The first time she had seen him, Francesco had been sitting astride an animal not unlike the one outside. There had been more dust and sweat, but the creature had possessed that same untamed quality … so had his rider.
A haziness clouded Erin’s cornflower-blue eyes as her thoughts, as though responding to the tug of some invisible magnet, drifted backwards.
She could hear the sound of a horse’s hooves clicking on the worn cobbles as it trotted up the steep incline she had had to get off her bike to ascend.
The relief that had rushed through her at the time had been tempered by caution. She was a woman alone. And whose stupid fault was that?
The manager at the hotel had tactfully advised caution when she had explained her intention of hiring a bike to explore the area. When he had realised that none of her three companions was accompanying her he had abandoned tact and expressed his outright disapproval of her plan.
‘Signorina, it is not a good idea for a woman to travel alone. It is easy to get lost.’
Erin smiled politely, waved her maps at him, and ignored his well-intentioned, and, as it turned out, pretty damned good advice.
She could have explained that she wanted to be alone, she absolutely needed to be alone; she doubted he would have understood. She didn’t really understand herself how women whose company she enjoyed at home could try her patience so totally on holiday. How she had ever imagined they had a lot in common was an even greater mystery!
