took hold; her hands clenched, her heart felt heavy and cold like ice in her chest. If he dared suggest she get rid of the baby…
‘What will you do? Stay with your parents?’
‘Dad died when I was ten, Mum died last year.’
‘I’m sorry.’
There was caution in her expression as she searched his face. His sympathy seemed genuine. His mouth distracted her as it always did. She felt a stab of guilt and tore her eyes away. Staring that way when he couldn’t see felt like an intrusion. She was invading his privacy like some sort of voyeur.
She gave a little noncommittal grunt and added, ‘It wasn’t totally unexpected—she’d lived with illness for years. She’d been in remission before and beat it when it came back, but last time…’ emotion clogged in her throat as she struggled to keep her voice level ‘…she didn’t.’
The prosaic little sniff made something tighten in Cesare’s chest. He could not see her face but he knew she was frowning, terrified that he would think she was courting his sympathy.
How did he know that?
‘Are your parents alive?’
‘Very much so.’
‘I suppose you’re worried about what they will think about the baby.’
‘They are busy with their own lives.’ His father had discovered the joys of parenthood the previous year when he turned sixty. His new wife was twenty-two. His mother’s attention was focused on his teenage half-sisters and keeping herself youthful looking for her husband—she had never admitted to the cosmetic surgery but the lines kept magically disappearing.
‘Will you tell them?’ As Sam asked the question she wondered whether he was thinking there would be no need if he persuaded her to terminate the pregnancy.
Cesare smoothly steered away from the subject of his family. ‘So what are your plans, then?’
‘Look for a new job.’ She glared at him and thought, And keep my baby. ‘I need to pay the rent. You never know, my experience as a cleaner might be useful. I might come to you for a reference.’
She watched his lips curl into a smile and knew he was going to say something that she wouldn’t like—or maybe like too much? Her problem was her reactions to Cesare were so incompatible with the common sense everyone said she possessed.
His voice dropped an octave as he observed smokily, ‘The talents I could verify might not get you the sort of job you’re after, cara.’
She knew he was trying to insult her, not seduce her, so the thrill of excitement that made her stomach muscles quiver was all the more inexplicable.
‘If all you can do is make snide, sarky comments like that you might as well leave—you might as well leave anyway!’ she yelled. ‘Unless you have any better suggestions.’ She blew her nose and tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear as she fixed him with a suspicious stare.
‘I do actually.’
Sam tensed. ‘I’m listening…’
‘Did you mean it yesterday?’
She eyed him warily. ‘Mean what?’
‘Mean me being blind had nothing to do with you knocking back my proposal.’
‘Yes, it didn’t.’ He was probably relieved today that she had refused.
‘Prove it.’
The challenge brought a furrow to her brow. ‘How?’
‘Say yes now.’
CHAPTER SEVEN
SAM jerked back in her seat as though someone had struck her.
‘You still want me to marry you?’ She gasped hoarsely.
Cesare gave a fluid shrug. ‘Why not? You are carrying my child, Samantha. Nothing has changed except your ability to support yourself.’ He angled an enquiring brow and tilted his head to one side in a listening attitude.
Sam would have given anything to tell him it didn’t matter, that losing her job made no difference—but it did.
She glanced down at the hand laid against her still-flat belly. ‘Do you think I don’t know that?’ She chewed absently on her lower lip and sighed. ‘It’s ironic, really—I thought for a second you might have been here to suggest…’
Sam stopped, very conscious that he was alert to every nuance in her voice. He seemed to possess the disturbing ability to hear not only what a person said, but also what they didn’t say.
‘You thought I was going to suggest what?’
The admission came out in a defiant rush. ‘I thought you might not want me to go ahead with the pregnancy.’
He looked blank for a moment. ‘Not…’ Then he froze.
Sam watched the dark colour run up under his skin, deepening his naturally dark complexion and then receding, leaving him deadly pale.
With unwilling fascination she watched his chest lift as he struggled to contain the outrage that was written into every hard line of his expressive face.
When he finally spoke his low voice vibrated with the strength of his feelings. ‘Dio Mio, you thought that I would ask you to terminate the pregnancy?’ He broke off and slid into a flood of extremely angry-sounding Italian.
Sam stubbornly struggled to cling to the shreds of her defiance in face of his display of incandescent rage. ‘I can see how it would seem like a solution to you.’ She winced, thinking that she sounded like a sulky, petulant child. Why, she despaired, did she always end up feeling as though she was at fault where he was concerned?
Cesare’s nostrils flared as he sucked in a deep breath. It was nice to know what a high opinion she had of him. ‘You see nothing, cara!’ he ground from between clenched teeth. ‘Except what you wish to see! I am the bad man in your story, but this is not a story and if it was it would not belong to you alone.’
‘Very cryptic. Are you trying to make a point?’ she challenged.
He inclined his dark head in a jerky motion. ‘This is our story…our child. And a child needs two parents.’
‘They generally have two. It isn’t optional, unlike marriage.’ She jumped to her feet to put some distance between them and began to pace the room angrily.
‘There is no need to bounce around in that emotional way.’
‘I’ll be as emotional as I like,’ she retorted.
‘This marriage will be a paper arrangement…’
She cut across him shrilly. ‘You’re talking as if it is inevitable and, anyway, what are you talking about…paper arrangement?’
‘Marriages do not have to be for ever.’
His own parents’ marriage had not been. His father—a serial adulterer—had walked out on Cesare’s tenth birthday and the contact with his absent parent during the rest of his childhood had been limited to Christmas cards and the odd birthday present—usually a month or so late.
Cesare was determined that his own son would never be the little boy inventing the marvellous trips his father had taken him on to friends who had full-time fathers. His mother had done her best, but once she had remarried her new family—including three younger half-sisters—had obviously been the main focus of her attention.
Cesare had never quite belonged.
Sam stopped within a foot of his chair and said wistfully, ‘I’d rather thought my marriage would last the test of time. Of course a man who is willing to take on another man’s child might not be so easy to find.’