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‘I didn’tthrowyou out,’ he argued vehemently.
‘It’s not worth fighting about,’ Milly parried quickly. ‘You were right when you said our relationship was an unholy mess. So, let’s not dig ourselves into a deeper hole. Leave things as they are.’
‘But I don’tlikehow things are,’ Lorenzo framed without apology. ‘This child will be my child as well and I want him or her to have my full attention from the start. I can’t achieve that if we’re living apart.’
Milly’s slight shoulders sagged wearily. ‘I’m not sure I’d have told you if I’d known you were going to make this much fuss. I’m pregnant...deal with it,’ she advised. ‘And once you’ve thought us over, you’ll appreciate that we were an accident that should never have happened. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t still respect each other and maintain a civil relationship for the sake of our child.’
Lorenzo’s sculpted features had shadowed and set hard. ‘I strongly disagree with everything you just said,’ he responded in unambiguous challenge. ‘I don’t think we were an accident and nor is our baby. I want more than acivilrelationship with the mother of my child. I’m a traditional man. I want my child’s mother to be my wife.’
The mug in Milly’s hand dropped from her nerveless fingers and smashed into a million pieces on the tiled floor. She jerked back a step to avoid being splashed by the hot liquid and then gasped as a tiny flying piece of china stung her leg, before stooping down in an automatic movement to pick up the broken china.
Lorenzo’s hands closed over hers and yanked her upright again. ‘Are you burned?’
‘No,’ she said limply.
‘But your leg’s bleeding,’ Lorenzo pointed out, bending down to lift her unresisting body up and settle her down on the kitchen counter out of harm’s way.
‘It’s only a little cut!’ she protested.
Lorenzo yanked the first-aid box off the wall and broke it open while frowning down at the blood trickling down her leg. Milly sucked in oxygen to steady herself, but she couldn’t get her whirling thoughts under her control. All she could hear was Lorenzo saying, ‘I want my child’s mother to be my wife.’ Had that been a marriage proposal? Surely not? That would be crazy. She blinked rapidly, wincing as he tugged the tiny sliver of china from her calf with tweezers and cleaned her up, covering the cut with a plaster as though she were a kid.
‘Thanks,’ she said as she watched him gathering up the broken china and cleaning up the mess she had made. Slowly, carefully, she slid back down to the floor and poured him a cup of coffee, extending it silently when he had finished.
‘Yes, Imeantwhat I said,’ Lorenzo breathed in a raw undertone before she could speak again. ‘I want us to get married as soon as possible.’
‘You’re not in a fit state to marry anyone, least of all me,’ Milly told him roundly. ‘A year and a half ago you were getting a divorce. Then your principles forced you into staying married and pretending. You got tangled up with me but that was only a sexual thing and clearly very casual when it all went wrong. Now you’re single again. You need to start again with someone fresh. You’ve already walked away from me.’
‘And look how that turned out for me!’ Lorenzo urged impatiently. ‘I’m back and I’m not leaving you again. And what we hadwasn’tcasual and itwasn’tjust sex.’
‘Maybe not on my side,then,’ she specified with precision. ‘But I was working blind in a marriage that was already dead, only I didn’t know that. I assumed that I had married you because I loved you. Now I know that I was never married to you at all...and, Lorenzo, no offence intended, but I don’twantto be married to a man who’s only marrying me because I’m pregnant.’
‘Well, at least I know you don’t want me for my money,’ Lorenzo replied with a wry smile. ‘But youknowthat I want you and I want our child as well.’
‘You can’t buy me like a package deal. I won’t come cheap or easy,’ Milly responded, tilting her chin at him before walking back towards the lounge with her tea. ‘Amazing sex isn’t enough to base a marriage on.’
‘Was I amazing?’ Lorenzo probed huskily behind her and she almost dropped a second mug at the same time as an involuntary smile tilted her lips.
‘You know you were...but then I don’t have anyone to compare you to yet, so—’ she protested jerkily.
‘Yet?’he queried, removing the mug from her hand to press her down into a seat, setting the tea down on the coffee table in front of her. Glittering dark eyes pierced her. ‘If I can’t have you, no other man can.’
‘I’m afraid it doesn’t work like that.’ Milly sighed. ‘We are both free agents now.’
‘You’re not free while you’ve got my baby inside you,’ Lorenzo shot at her, his lean bronzed face fierce and forbidding.
‘When you’ve finished your coffee, you should leave. I’m sorry but I’m very tired. Between the exhaustion and the morning sickness, I tend to go to bed early most nights,’ she confided. ‘I’m not in the mood to argue with you—’
‘I’m not trying to argue. I’m trying to make you see sense.’
‘You’re not getting any further with me than I got with you. You said you wanted to marry me, but I don’t think you’ve thought it through,’ Milly said anxiously. ‘There’s a lot more to marriage than sex and having a child together.’
‘I know. I love you,’ Lorenzo confessed without the smallest warning. ‘I was going to wait another month before approaching you again. I suppose I was trying to be a better man than I am. I didn’t want the newspapers writing stuff about you and upsetting you. I thought that if I waited long enough, they would lose interest in us both. But I can’tliveanother month without you, so here I am being bloody selfish and weak!’
Milly heard only the first half of that speech and his claim that he loved her knocked her for six. ‘Youcan’tlove me,’ she told him weakly.
‘I began to fall in love with you the day you awakened from the coma. I fell deeper in love with every visit. At first, I told myself it was just sexual attraction even though it had been years since I’d been physically attracted to Brooke. I assumed that once you recovered your memory you would switch back into being the Brooke I remembered, and I knew I would continue the divorce eventually.’
‘But before we went to Italy, you said we’d see how things went for us.’
