Happy Mother’s Day!: Accidentally Pregnant, Conveniently Wed / Claiming His Pregnant Wife / Meant-To-Be Mother
she had implied—then the baby must be due any time soon!
He stared out at the tree-lined road. It was the most beautiful English summer’s evening—with the intense green leaves of the trees almost blocking out the bright blue of the sky above. Sunlight dappled through the available space, making bright, unmoving patterns on the dusty pavement—for there was not a trace of wind.
But Gianluca found himself looking at it with a highly critical eye. This place was pleasant enough, yes—but it was surrounded by the rest of the city with its noise and crowds and potential dangers. Was this where she planned to bring up the baby? In a culture so alien to his own? And was she intending to give him any say in the matter?
And then he saw a woman walking down the road, walking slowly and rather awkwardly as if the weight of the bags she carried and the heat of the late afternoon were proving too much.
His eyes narrowed and for a moment he didn’t recognise her, even though the jacket of her pale summer suit had been cut cleverly in an attempt to conceal her pregnancy. But there was no tailor in the world—no matter how talented—who could disguise the tell-tale signs of impending birth and Gianluca stared at her incredulously as she grew closer.
Madonna mia—but this could not be Aisling!
Narrowing his eyes, he realised he hadn’t thought of the baby in real terms—his head had known the facts, but his heart had refused to accept them. He must have slept with her last … last November. He knew that. But time passed and you barely noticed it. That was how lives went by.
Yet this.
He swallowed.
This was a physical manifestation of time passing—because Aisling looked as if she could give birth at any moment!
For a moment, a dark tide of fury washed over him as he acknowledged that she had kept him out of the loop right until the very end. How dared she? How dared she?
His heart was pounding but he sucked in a deep breath because instinct told him that he must tread very carefully. That he needed to know what her game was. If ever there was a time when he needed his ability to think logically, it was now.
He let her walk right past.
She didn’t notice the car. Didn’t stop to glance at the shadowed figure sitting statue-still in the back seat. He could see the faint beads of sweat on her pale forehead and watched while she walked up to her front door and put the carrier bags down, briefly searching around inside her handbag before pulling out a set of keys.
He waited until the front door had shut behind her. Like a tiger who forced himself to linger despite knowing that his prey lay waiting, Gianluca made himself stay in the car for a full five minutes. And then he stepped out.
‘Wait here,’ he told the driver.
‘Any idea how long you might be, sir?’
‘None,’ Gianluca clipped out and walked up to the door.
It was clearly an apartment—for there were several bells—and he jammed his thumb on the one which said ‘A. Armstrong'. And then he remembered her telling him that she lived in a one-bedded apartment!
Her voice—sounding disembodied—floated out from the intercom. ‘Hello?’
‘Hello, Aisling,’ he said silkily.
In her stuffy apartment, Aisling’s knees went weak and she slumped against the wall, and that was just pure physical reaction to the sound of his deeply sonorous voice. She had known he would come, yes—of course she had—and yet the reality of his impending presence was like a fierce body-blow.
‘Gianluca?’ she said uncertainly.
‘Just open the door, Aisling.’
At least his quietly furious voice gave her some clue what to expect. Weakly, she lifted her hand to buzz him in, when that horrible tight sensation in her back which had been plaguing her since yesterday caught her off guard, and she hesitated.
‘Open the door!’
Sucking in a deep breath to try to ease the spasm, she pressed the entry button and then went to stand beside the French windows she’d just opened—as if trying to put as much space between them as possible.
Stay calm, she told herself. Just stay calm.
But that was easier said than done. Her heart was pounding so rapidly and so loudly that she was worried about the baby. The baby. She felt the hot shudder of her breath as the tightening in her back increased. Why the hell was she getting back pain at a time like this? Hearing the sound of his approaching footsteps, she turned to look out at the garden, not wanting to see his face. Not daring to.
Why, Aisling? Frightened you’ll give yourself away—let him know that you can’t get him out of your head, and now he’s embedded his seed in your body, too.
Shutting the door with a click which sounded like a gun hammer being cocked, Gianluca stopped and stared at her for one long moment. From the back she looked no different. Just a tall, slim woman in a linen skirt and silk shirt, her dark hair caught up in a chignon—though, unusually, a couple of strands of it had escaped and were clinging damply to the back of her long neck.
‘Turn around,’ he said, and then when she didn’t he spoke again. ‘I said, turn around and look at me, Aisling.’
Slowly, she complied and Gianluca sucked in a disbelieving breath as he stared at the ripe swell of the unborn child. Even out on the pavement it hadn’t seemed quite real. She could have been one of the many passers-by who played their walk-on parts in everyday life—but up here there was no denying it. The evidence was here—as large as life itself.
‘What the hell have you done?’
In a way his livid eyes and furious voice helped. At least it told her what she had suspected—that Gianluca would want nothing to do with this baby. Yet Aisling had been too independent for too long not to bristle at the unfairness of his accusation. And wasn’t justifiable anger a stronger emotion for her to hide behind? Wouldn’t that prevent her from doing something regrettable like sinking to the floor and begging him to take care of them both?
‘What have I done?’ she demanded. ‘Shouldn’t that be what have we done? Surely you know that it takes two to make a baby!’
‘But which two?’ he lashed out.
Aisling blinked at him uncomprehendingly. ‘I’m sorry?’
‘There must have been others! Other men? How many others, Aisling?’ The white-hot heat of fury that he was going to be a father and that she hadn’t told him now manifested itself in angry accusation. ‘How do I know it’s mine?’ he demanded.
Did he really think so little of her that she could pretend about something as monumental as that? Well, she certainly wasn’t going to grovel in order to try to prove herself. ‘Do you imagine that I would attempt to foist a false paternity claim on you? What would be the point of that?’ she iced back. ‘Take a damned DNA test if you don’t believe me!’
He stared her out, believing her—her defiance telling him that she spoke the truth. She was a strong woman, yes, but no woman would have been able to maintain such a huge lie about something like this—not in the face of his formidable line of questioning.
‘You told me you were protected,’ he said quietly.
How humiliating it felt to discuss it so cold-bloodedly. Like picking over the debris after a wild party when everyone else had gone home. ‘And I was.’ ‘So what happened?’
‘I had taken antibiotics and they reacted against the pill. I didn’t realise. It was an accident, Gianluca.’ ‘I see. How convenient.’
‘Really?’ Her head jerked up. ‘Convenient for whom? What are you suggesting—that I became pregnant in order to trap you?’