The Sicilian's Passion (13 page)

Almost imperceptively he raised his brows. Was she
deliberately
staying far away from him physically, he wondered, or was he simply imagining it? ‘Shall I open some wine?'

Not for me, she was about to say, until something made her bite the words back. ‘That would be lovely,' she said weakly. ‘And after that you could unpack, couldn't you—while I throw it all together?'

‘Sure,' he said impassively, with an almost imperceptible elevation of his dark brows as he put the opened bottle of Sicilian red on the table to let it breathe.

He hung his clothes up, and placed a package for her on the bed and when he returned she was dishing the meal out. He sat down at the table and poured them both a glass of wine.

Kate sat down opposite him, glad for the relief thrown on their faces by the flickering candlelight. At least he wouldn't be able to read her expression.

He raised his glass to hers. ‘
Saluti!
' he said softly.

But she merely brushed her lips against the crimson liquid, she did not drink. Even the smell of it was making her stomach clench once more.

Giovanni ate his food, noticing that she did little but move hers around on the plate, arranging it in little piles, in order, he guessed, to appear as if she had actually eaten some of it.

He wondered whether she now saw the role of mistress as too submissive. His independent Kate. Had she decided that this kind of relationship was not for her? And how would he respond if she did? Would it be easy just to let her go?

He sighed and put his fork down, his news forgotten. ‘Do you want to tell me about it?' he questioned.

She stared at him. ‘Tell you about
what
?' she whispered hoarsely.

He noted her surprise, and its implication irritated him. ‘You think I don't know you well enough to know when something is wrong, Kate?' he demanded. ‘You think that all I notice is the way you are when I make love to you? That I am completely obtuse as a man?'

She shook her head. ‘Giovanni…' She couldn't say it; she couldn't.

‘
Matri di Diu!
' he swore as he saw the increased whitening of her face. ‘What is it, Kate? Tell me!'

There were only words now. Bald, bare words—because nothing could disguise or cushion the unpalatable fact she was about to tell him.

‘I'm pregnant,' she said flatly.

F
OR
a moment, Giovanni's world imploded. He thought he heard the loud beating of a clock, but there was no clock in Kate's dining room, so it must have been the thundering of his heart.

He stared across the table at her. ‘What did you just say?' he asked in a voice which was dangerously calm.

She had thought that she had seen his face in almost every guise. She had thought that she had seen his anger before, but the anger which darkened and hardened his features now was truly monumental. She tried to tell herself that he was shocked. Naturally, he was shocked.

She tried again. ‘I'm pregnant.'

There was a loud crash and at first Kate thought that it was the sound of his chair being scraped back, and of Giovanni rising menacingly to his feet. But the crash had been the glass of wine he had knocked over. The glass had not broken, but the wine had spilt out and seeped all over the white damask table-cloth like a puddle of blood, and neither of them made a move to stop it.

His heart was pounding in his ears. ‘It cannot be my baby,' he told her with cold emphasis. ‘Can it?'

The indignity and the implication made her cheeks sting. ‘Of course it's your baby!' she declared, and she trembled her way to her feet, facing him, her breath ragged, as if they
were two combatants in a boxing ring. ‘Whose could it be if not yours?'

‘I have always made absolutely sure that you could not become pregnant,' he said, still in that cold, deadly voice. ‘You know that!' He approached her round the table with all the dangerous stealth of a jungle cat, while a hot rage burned inside him. ‘Has there been someone else, Kate? Some man who wasn't quite so careful while I was away? You are a highly sexed and very responsive woman, we both know that. Tell me the truth, Kate, and I promise not to judge you.'

Judge
her? He might as well have torn her heart from her chest. There was a ringing smack as the flat of her hand connected with his cheek, but he did not flinch, merely raised his own hand in lightning-fast reaction to imprison her wrist and to haul her close to him. So close that she could feel his warm, angry breath—see the furious black glitter of his eyes.

‘Whose is it?' he demanded.

‘Yours! Yours! Yours!
Yours!
'

Her mouth taunted her victory at him. The oldest trick in the book. Damn her! Damn her! And his anger transmuted into something else—something which was about as earth-shattering as he could imagine. The realisation that something of him would now be carried on into the next generation. His own little piece of immortality. She was carrying his child! His!

‘Mine?' he questioned, but now there was a wondering note to his voice. ‘Mine,
cara
?'

‘Yes.'

With a dazed look in his eyes, he lowered his mouth irresistibly down on hers and began to kiss her in a kiss which was very close to tender.

But the kiss went the way of all their kisses, and the tenderness—was it real or imagined? wondered Kate heatedly—swiftly became desire, pure and sharp and undiluted.

She told herself not to respond, to push him away as he deserved to be pushed after the hideous accusations he had
made, but her body would not heed her. It was too finely tuned to his sensual mastery to be able to do anything other than to spring into instant and urgent life beneath his touch. This was the father of her child, she thought weakly—the man who had created this new life growing within her, who could create all life in her.

‘Giovanni!' The word came out in an exultant little whisper as he kissed her with a fervour which surpassed his normal kisses. And it was easy to forget the cruel things he had said to her when he kissed her like that.

Her thready little moan excited him even more, and without warning it was suddenly about much more than kissing. He was beyond thought, beyond reason, pursuing some blessed communion with her.

‘Giovanni,' Kate breathed in disbelief, because now his hands were rucking up her skirt, and his fingers were snapping at the delicate lace of her panties, so that they fell uselessly to the floor. And with his other hand he was unzipping himself. ‘Giovanni!' she whimpered, but the word sounded more like a plea than a protest, and it was. God, help her—it
was
!

He found himself driven on by a life-force so primeval that he could barely think, barely hear—all he could do was feel…feel
her
. He looked down at her mockingly as his fingers flicked enticingly against her molten heat. ‘You want me to stop,
cara
? I don't think you do, but tell me yes, and I will.'

‘Yes! Yes!
Oh
, no!' she sobbed as he touched her again, oh, so intimately, and she squirmed with excitement. ‘No, don't stop! Please, don't stop! Do it! Do it! Do it to me! Now!'

Her words incited him almost as much as the frantic movements of her hips and he pushed her against the wall and levered her legs up around his waist, gasping aloud as he entered her, thrusting into her again and again, losing himself in pursuit of that sweet destination.

This might be the very last time that the man she had grown to love might take pleasure in her arms, she realised.
Heartache ripped through her, but somehow he banished it with every insistent movement of his strong, virile body.

Briefly she opened her eyes to see what a decadent picture the pair of them made—his trousers at his ankles, her skirt pushed up to her waist. How could he ever respect a woman who let him do something like this? But then she began to dissolve in the familiar ecstasy, and her greedy body began to convulse about his. She heard his helpless moan as he spilled his seed into her, and then let his head fall against her shoulder, his lips against her neck.

Kate closed her eyes. What had she done? She had let him take her like that, after his sickening reaction to her momentous news. Had she no shame where this man was concerned? No pride?

She let her feet slide to the floor and pushed him away, tired now. And weary. Impossibly and hopelessly weary. She was aware of the irony of what had just happened. The first time that he had ever made love to her without using any protection. Though it was a little late in the day for protection now.

She stumbled from the dining room and collapsed on the sofa, praying that he would just go. Go away and leave her alone with her fate, and she need never see him again.

She didn't hear him come back into the room, the first time she became aware of his presence was when she found him standing in the doorway, studying her, his face shadowed. And grave. As if he had just received some very bad news, which, in a way, she supposed he had.

‘Are you all right?' he questioned, but he made no move towards her.

All right? How could he ask her a question like that at a time like this? ‘I'm fine,' she said, still with that flat, tired note in her voice. ‘Under the circumstances.'

‘Kate, we shouldn't have…' His voice tailed away, and it was the first time Kate had ever seen him look remotely uncomfortable.

‘Shouldn't have what, Giovanni?'

His eyes narrowed. ‘Made love like that, of course!'

‘That wasn't called making love,' she told him scornfully. ‘That was having wham-bam sex up against the wall!'

His mouth hardened. ‘Is that why you begged me to do it to you?'

Shuddering at the memory, Kate raked a hand to scoop the damp red hair which had fallen over her face. ‘It's irrelevant now, anyway. It's happened.' It's over, she thought, with a certainty which ached at her heart.

‘Yes.' He found himself staring down at her flat belly. ‘How far gone are you?'

She stared up at him as she considered his reasons for asking this. ‘I'm going to keep the baby!' she declared wildly. ‘You can't stop me from having it!'

For a moment the import of her words remained unclear to him, and when he understood their true meaning he stared at her with a look of furious distaste. ‘Do you really think I would try?' he asked.

Relief flooded through her, and she shook her head slowly. ‘No,' she said. ‘No, I don't.'

‘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. She 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.'

Her plea smote at his heart, and gently but swiftly he disengaged her fingers and went to the telephone, where he made a rapid call.

She lifted her head painfully. ‘What are you doing?'

‘Phoning the hospital.'

‘I don't need to go to hospital—'

‘Kate, yes, you
do
,' he denounced sternly. ‘And, what is more, you
will
go!' He began speaking and gave the address, looking round at her as he did so, wishing that he could obliterate that look of agony etched all over her delicate features. He replaced the receiver. ‘The ambulance is on its way. Do you want me to tell your sister?'