Her head spinning at the medical knowledge that meant he had a much better understanding of how her body worked than she did, she didn’t understand what he meant. ‘What?’
‘Don’t pretend you don’t know what I mean. Who else have you had sex with in the past month?’
She recoiled. ‘That’s offensive.’
His laughter crackled between them like a bullet. ‘Don’t get me wrong, you’re playing the grieving widow admirably but you were like a dog on heat with me so it stands to reason there have been others.’
A dog on heat?
She covered her ears, digging her nails into her skull.
A dog on heat?
How had he not known? And him a doctor?
There had been a moment, when he’d first entered her, that he’d stilled, but it had only been a moment, and then she had kissed him again, as desperate for him to continue what they’d started as she had been terrified he would figure out the truth.
‘I’m waiting for an answer.’ His curt voice cut through her thoughts. ‘How many others?’
She remembered a time so long ago when his rich voice, the Italian accent faint behind the impeccable English, had always softened around her. She guessed that’s what happened when you created a business reputed to be worth billions out of nothing, your basic humanity was thrown in the gutter along with your principles.
‘No one.’ She raised her head to look him square in the eye. ‘There has been no one else.’
He stared back for the longest time before nodding and getting to his feet. ‘A scan will pinpoint the date of conception to a degree of accuracy so we can use that to determine who the likely father is.’
His cutting tone sliced through her.
Then the thought of a scan, of seeing the little one growing inside her...
Suddenly it hit her that she was pregnant.
She was going to be a mother.
Placing a hand to her belly, she blurred out Matteo’s bitter face and imagined the life growing inside her.
Hello, my little one, she said silently to it, overwhelming joy spreading through every part of her.
She’d wanted a child for so long. After everything that had gone on with Pieta she had thought it would be a long and torturous road to get there if it ever happened and if she’d ever decided to take the road he’d wanted to conceive one. But it had happened as if by magic.
She was going to have a baby.
‘How can you be smiling at such a time?’ Matteo said acidly. ‘Is this amusing to you?’
The smile she hadn’t even known she was wearing fell but as it fell her spine straightened.
Whatever the future held for her, even if it was only humiliation, she had her little seed to think about. She couldn’t fall into despair. She would be strong. She would be a mother.
‘I’m pregnant,’ she said, eyeballing him. ‘You cannot know how long I have wanted this so, yes, I will smile and rejoice at my child’s conception because it is a miracle.’
His jaw clenched, Matteo eyed her back with mirrored loathing. ‘You intend to keep it, then?’
Of all the stuff he’d thrown at her, this was by far the cruellest. ‘How can you ask such a thing?’
He breached the distance between them and placed a hand round the nape of her neck. Bringing his face close to hers as if examining her, he said with icy quiet, ‘Because I know you, Natasha. You’re selfish. You think only of yourself and what advances you.’
Stunned into silence at his closeness, at the warmth of his skin on hers, the fingers almost absently stroking her neck, memories of their one time together crashing through her, Natasha had to blink to get her brain back in gear. Breathing heavily, not taking her eyes from his, she raised her arm to find the hand laid so casually on her and dug her nails in as hard as she could as she shoved it away.
Raising herself to her full height, which was almost a foot shorter than his six-feet-plus frame, she said as icily as she could through the tremors in her voice, ‘You don’t know me at all. If you did you wouldn’t have to ask if I wanted to keep it. I will do more than keep it. I will raise it and I will love it.’
Once she had longed for this.
If her eighteen-year-old self had been told that in seven years she would be carrying Matteo’s child she would have danced for miles with joy.
But she couldn’t tell him that. He wouldn’t believe her if she did.
He rubbed the flesh of his hand where she’d stabbed him with her nails.
‘I hope for your child’s sake that your words aren’t as worthless as they usually are but time will tell on that. I’ve a friend who runs a clinic near mine in Florence with the newest, most accurate scans. I’ll take you there. She’ll be able to pinpoint the date of conception to at least determine if I’m in the frame as father. Her discretion will be guaranteed and I think one thing we can be in agreement on is the need for discretion.’
Natasha forced herself to breathe.
Everything was happening so quickly. She couldn’t let him railroad her but likewise she had to do what was best for her and her baby and until she’d decided what she was going to do, she needed all the discretion she could get.
Oh, God, the implications were too awful to think about.
How many lives were going to be ruined when the truth came out?
The worst of it was she would never be able to tell the full truth. No one could know.
Like Matteo couldn’t know that she already knew of an excellent clinic, this one in Paris, where discretion was also guaranteed.
And he couldn’t know that he was the only man in the frame for the father of her baby.
Fighting back another bout of dizziness, she nodded sharply. She had to keep it together. ‘When?’
‘In a fortnight. The baby’s heartbeat should be detectable by then.’
‘So soon?’ She’d known for twenty minutes that she was pregnant and he was saying her baby’s heart was already forming? That was just mind-blowing.
He nodded grimly. ‘Pregnancy is taken from the date of your last period so in a fortnight you will be classed as six weeks pregnant. Only the scan will be able to give us a reasonably accurate conception date.’
‘And I’ll be able to hear the heartbeat?’
‘We both will.’ His face a tight mask, he headed for the door. ‘I’ll be in touch.’
Only when she heard the door close did she sink onto the sofa and hang her head between her knees.
Soon she would be hanging it in shame.
All the people who were going to be hurt, Vanessa, Francesca... Ever since she’d married Pieta she would catch them looking at her belly, knew they were searching for the signs of swelling, the signs of life growing inside her. Since he’d died the stares had become more obvious. She knew how badly they wished she was carrying Pieta’s child. Francesca was already suspicious.
She sat back and rubbed her temples.
She didn’t have a clue how to handle this. Whatever she did, everyone would be hurt. Hopes were going to be raised then not just dashed but crushed. Then there was the Pellegrini estate itself...
This was too much.
Overwhelmed by the jumble of thoughts raging through her head, Natasha burst into tears.
It had to be like this, she told herself,