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‘Then why say it?’ he demanded. ‘To hurt me? To insult me?’
‘We all say things under pressure,’ she returned. ‘You said a few pretty wounding things yourself.’
‘Yes.’ He narrowed his eyes as he looked at her, unexpectedly vulnerable in her new-found condition. ‘Kate—’
‘I want you to know that this isn’t some kind of trap to get you to commit to me,’ she interrupted proudly, before he had the chance to make the accusation himself. ‘Unless you think I somehow punctured one of the condoms with my fingernails when you weren’t looking!’
‘Of course I wasn’t suggesting that!’ he exploded. ‘I was just…shocked…taken off-guard. I didn’t know what I was saying.’
‘We’re both shocked. Naturally.’
He studied her pale features and wanted to take her into his arms and smooth away the troubled look on her face, but her body was stiff with tension. She did not want him near her, he acknowledged—and who could blame her? He forced out the unbelievable words. ‘You still haven’t told me how pregnant you are.’
There was a pause. ‘Eight weeks.’ She watched him doing sums in his head. ‘It must have happened in Rome,’ she added.
Giovanni nodded. Yes, Rome.
He remembered her arrival. She had not been nervous, as she had been initially during that first trip to Barcelona. She had been the independent and confident Kate of their very first meeting, and he had been swept away by her.
Her beauty had been almost incandescent—like a fiery light which had surrounded her, and he had bathed in it. So had he been careless? So eager to lose himself in her that he had neglected to protect himself properly?
Kate watched him. ‘But it doesn’t really matter where or when or how, does it?’ she asked heavily. ‘The fact remains that it happened. Is happening,’ she emphasised painfully, and placed the palm of her hand on a still-flat stomach.
‘Yes,’ he said, for what else was there for him to say? That he was delighted? No. She would scent his hypocrisy immediately—she was far too perceptive to be given platitudes which disguised his true feelings.
Kate sucked in a breath as she saw his expression of disquiet. Sh
e must tell him that she was not planning to use this situation to imprison him in a life not of his choosing. Her gaze was very level as she looked at him. ‘Listen, Giovanni. I want you to know that I’m going to go ahead with the pregnancy. I’m going to have the baby and bring it up myself.’
‘And me?’ he questioned savagely. ‘You’ve got it all worked out, haven’t you? Don’t I feature in this whole scenario? Or are you planning to exclude me from this baby’s life, Kate?’
She tried to play fair, even though her heart told her how difficult it would be to cope with the occasional paternal visit from him. ‘You shall have as much or as little of this baby’s life as you choose to have,’ she said carefully.
‘And that’s what you want, is it?’
She didn’t answer that, not straight away. Of course it wasn’t what she wanted! What she wanted was the impossible—the happy little trio of a real family, with Giovanni the doting partner and the doting father at her side. But he hadn’t offered that, had he? Nor shown any sign of wanting it—certainly not before her announcement today—and even if he offered it now she could not contemplate a life with Giovanni staying beside her simply because it was his duty.
‘In the circumstances, there isn’t a lot else I can do,’ she answered quietly.
Her cheeks looked so translucent, as if her skin were made of rice-paper, and he felt his heart lurch as he realised how traumatic this all must have been for her. First of all finding out, and then having to tell him, fearing his wrath. And oh, he had given it, hadn’t he? Attacked her and blamed her when, in reality, she was blameless. ‘I’ll make you some coffee.’
‘I don’t want any coffee—’
‘You need something,’ he insisted forcefully. ‘You look terrible!’
She didn’t have the energy or the inclination to make a joke about that, and if the truth were known she felt terrible. Sick and troubled—and weren’t pregnant women supposed to feel glowing and radiant?
Maybe pregnant women whose futures did not look like some unknown black, gaping hole they were being forced to leap into.
He was in the middle of heaping coffee into the pot when he heard her strange, muffled cry, and the spoon fell unnoticed from his fingers—some terrible fear, some awful foreboding telling him that something here was very, very wrong.
He ran into the sitting room to find her doubled up, clutching at her abdomen, and rocking to and fro with tiny fraught cries coming from her lips.
‘Kate!’ He was by her side in an instant, and as she looked up at him he saw pain in her eyes. And terror. ‘Kate!’
He crouched down to her level. ‘What is it, cara?’ he questioned with soft urgency. ‘Is it the baby?’
‘I’m…’ Her fingers waved awkwardly to where she could feel the unmistakable warm flood of blood against her thighs. ‘Giovanni—there’s a pain! A bad pain!’ She reached out and clutched onto his arms, because right at that moment he seemed like the only sure foundation in her disintegrating world. ‘Help me, Giovanni,’ she whispered. ‘Please, help me.’
