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His eyes devoured her body once more, purposefully looking for changes now. Her neat breasts were still small and round, just enough to fill his palms. But perhaps there was a new roundness to them he hadn’t appreciated before...
He swallowed past the bitterness. He would process her betrayal later. Once he knew his baby was okay.
The doctor lifted a part of the machine and pressed it to Skye’s belly, and Skye made a soft moaning noise.
‘Is it painful?’ Matteo asked instinctively.
‘No, not at all.’ The doctor spun the cart around so that Matteo could see the screen. He lifted his eyes to it and frowned.
‘What am I looking at?’
‘It’s too early to see anything clearly. I would say she is perhaps six weeks.’ The doctor smiled at him kindly. ‘Your baby is around the size of a lentil.’
‘A lentil?’
‘A legume,’ she clarified. ‘But I can see good blood-flow generally. There’s nothing here that worries me.’ She went to lift the wand but Matteo spoke, arresting her movement.
‘What is that?’ He pointed to a line at the bottom of the screen.
‘Ah. That is the heartbeat.’
‘The heartbeat?’ He closed his eyes as the reality began to thunder through him.
Emotions gripped him, so strong, so raw, and suddenly he wasn’t capable of speech. He stepped away from the bed, from his wife, from the doctor, and sucked in a deep breath of air.
‘Why don’t you get changed, Signor Vin Santo? You’ll be no help to her if you’ve come down with a flu.’
He didn’t answer. He was busy analysing the situation, trying to make sense of it.
Skye was pregnant with his child. With the Vin Santo heir. And she’d wanted to keep the information from him.
Unless... He turned slowly, his eyes locked to the doctor’s. Hope briefly flared in his chest. ‘You asked if she knew. Is there any way she wouldn’t have known?’
The doctor’s empathy was palpable. ‘Of course. It is still very early. If she hasn’t mentioned it to you, I think it is highly likely that she didn’t yet realise. It really depends on whether she had any other symptoms, and if she had a reason to do a pregnancy test. Were you trying to conceive?’
‘No.’ Their marriage was about one thing, and one thing only. The hotel. A child would just have complicated matters further.
How the hell had this even happened? She’d been on the pill, hadn’t she?
‘Your wife will be awake soon.’ The doctor leaned over and lifted one of Skye’s eyelids, then nodded confidently. ‘You will be able to ask her.’
It was suddenly imperative for Matteo to know the truth. No, it was imperative for him to know that she hadn’t known. He couldn’t believe that Skye would have planned to keep this information from him. Despite the evidence against her, he still had hope. A part of him believed she would never do something as calculated as taking a baby from its father.
No matter what he’d done, no matter what she believed, this was different. Their baby was not a pawn; it deserved better than to be used by either of them as a bargaining chip.
But worse was the belief she hadn’t intended to use it as a bargaining chip at all. Worse was the realisation that she had simply meant to disappear. To get on a plane and fly out of his life, taking his son or daughter with her.
He ground his teeth together and turned back to the bed.
His heart rolled.
It wasn’t possible.
‘Matteo? Where am I?’
Her thin, raspy voice drew his attention. He stared at her long and hard before speaking. ‘You’re in the hospital. In Venice.’ His expression was guarded, but he felt anger in his every expression, beneath the mask of civility he had donned with effort.
‘Hospital?’ Her eyes swept shut. ‘I fell. No, I fainted. That happens sometimes.’
