up at the back of her small head in a clasp, stray tendrils curling colourfully round her pale heart-shaped face. Her beautiful blue eyes were shadowed, the faint scattering of freckles across her nose starkly defined by her pallor, her soft mouth taut.
‘I’m hoping you’ll talk to me now that you’ve had a chance to think things over,’ he murmured softly.
A heady combination of self-loathing and regret attacked Vivi and her eyes prickled with tears, making her blink rapidly. What an awful mess she had made of her life! Raffaele di Mancini was the father of her unborn child and, not only did he not love her, he also didn’t care about her in the slightest. She was ashamed of that reality.
Two years ago, she had started out with a crush on Raffaele that had ended with her hating him. She wasn’t very good at dealing with losing people she cared about or rejection, she acknowledged sickly. She had missed the loving arms of her parents even though she had been too young to recall their actual faces once they had gone. There had also been foster homes that were great that she had been moved on from, leaving her wondering constantly if there was something bad about her that people didn’t like and hammering what little confidence she’d still retained.
Raffaele’s reappearance in her life had awakened all sorts of conflicting emotions because when he had turned his back on her after that scandal, he had hurt her. And Vivi always remembered pain more easily than pleasure. Her self-esteem had been destroyed once she’d realised that the man she was falling in love with had readily believed that she was a prostitute. Time and time again she had dissected her own behaviour with him, asking herself what she had done or said wrong to give him such a false impression of her.
‘Some breakfast, Vivi?’ Liz prompted.
‘No, thanks.’ The thought of food made Vivi feel nauseous while she tried to prevent herself from staring at Raffaele, all sleek and dark and sensationally handsome in a business suit that would have looked more at home in a fancy office than in her foster parents’ battered old kitchen. Her chest tightened, her ribcage striving to expand to draw in breath. Her mouth was dry as a bone. ‘I’ll make myself some tea,’ she said, desperate to occupy herself.
‘No, let me,’ Liz overruled, switching on the kettle. ‘Evidently you two have a lot to talk about.’
Yes, they did, Vivi acknowledged with a sinking sensation, thinking of the child she had conceived. Much as she might want to, she couldn’t conceal that from him. All sorts of complications had arisen from Winnie’s decision not to tell the father of her child that she was pregnant and Vivi was determined not to make the same mistake. Evading Raffaele’s questioning gaze, she grasped the mug of tea that Liz extended to her.
‘Let’s go out into the garden while it’s still sunny,’ she urged tautly.
‘I CAN’T BELIEVE you told Liz about the wedding,’ Vivi admitted, sinking down on the home-made seat below the flowering cherry tree where she had once spent her most peaceful hours.
‘I can’t believe that you didn’t,’ Raffaele traded. ‘Were you hoping it would all just go away if you vanished?’
Vivi flushed miserably and set her teeth squarely together. She wasn’t proud of her behaviour but the whole situation had simply become overwhelming. Finding herself trapped between her grandfather’s demands and Raffaele’s, not to mention the demands of her own conscience and her sisters’ expectations, she had buried her head in the sand about the potential consequences and fled.
‘All the arrangements are still in place,’ Raffaele informed her quietly.
‘I can’t believe that you would still want to go ahead after what you said to me the last time I saw you!’ Vivi countered tartly.
‘I’m guilty of creating this situation by not maintaining a more businesslike relationship with you,’ Raffaele breathed in a driven undertone, a faint edge of dark colour accentuating his exotic cheekbones. ‘I blurred the lines between us, brought down the boundaries. What I said to you was offensive and my only excuse is that I became angry at the idea of you being with another man.’
‘I broke things off with Jude that night,’ Vivi muttered wearily, letting her luminous blue eyes linger on his strong dark face to appreciate his classic bone structure. ‘I told him that I’d met someone else and even though he was generous about it, it was a very uncomfortable couple of hours.’
Raffaele stared down at her where she sat, slender thighs outlined by tight denim, delicate breasts defined by her stretchy top. On edge, conscious of the thrumming pulse kicking off at his groin, he lifted his gaze up only to linger on the ripe full curve of her mouth instead and his brain, which usually lacked imagination, suddenly flashed up a fantasy image that sent an unbearable stab of hunger coursing through his lean, powerful body. He swung away and walked over to the low hedge that divided the garden from the field beyond.
‘This isn’t a working farm any more, is it?’ he remarked tightly, wondering what it was about her that aroused him to feats of fantasy he had always believed lay far beyond the reaches of his logical mind.
‘No. Liz’s grandparents were the last generation of farmers. The land was sold off before she was born. Her husband, John, is a plumber and he set up a business here. It went well and then he had a stroke and everything fell apart until he had recovered enough to work again,’ she told him ruefully, thinking that that was where her foster parents’ problems had begun—with ill health and the subsequent reduction of their income. Through no fault of their own they had fallen behind with their mortgage.
Vivi heaved a sigh and stared stonily down at her clasped hands. Tell him, her inner voice urged, tell him and get it over with! But why wasn’t he giving her the opening she had expected? What about the doctor’s appointment that had never taken place? Wasn’t he still concerned about the risk of conception? Or were women more inclined to worry about such things? Or, more probably, was his omission a sign that he had never really expected anything to come from their unwise encounter? After all, hadn’t he already expressed his regrets on that score? Declaring that it never should have happened? That they should have maintained a businesslike relationship? Her mind boggled at that concept. Businesslike? Really?
‘How did you find out where I was?’ she asked baldly.
‘I dug it out of Zoe,’ Raffaele admitted. ‘But she only told me to get rid of me.’
‘I hope you didn’t upset her!’ Vivi snapped.
‘No. She asked me if I thought I could bring you home and admitted that she missed you.’
‘And what did you say?’ Vivi pressed.
‘That I intended to try...what else?’ Raffaele shrugged a broad shoulder in graceful dismissal.
Vivi swallowed hard, mentally searching for the right words with which to make her announcement until it dawned on her that there were no right words, no magical way of making what he couldn’t possibly want to hear more palatable. ‘I might as well tell you and get it over with,’ she framed stiffly. ‘I’m pregnant.’
Raffaele swung back to her, dark eyes, shaded to the colour of melted caramel, widening, a faint frown line etching between his ebony brows as if he wasn’t quite sure he had heard her correctly.
‘I’m pregnant,’ Vivi said again, shattering the sudden silence that had fallen. ‘I waited until today to do the test because I wanted to be absolutely sure of the result.’
‘There is no room for error?’ Raffaele’s spectacular bone structure had pulled taut below his bronzed skin, the smooth planes of his hard cheekbones prominent.
‘None whatsoever,’ she whispered, intimidated by his lack of comment.
A baby? Momentarily, Raffaele felt as though he had been gut-punched