A Scandal, a Secret, a BabyMarriage Scandal, Showbiz Baby!

by Sharon Kendrick

  ‘And now?’ he questioned. ‘What must I do to ensure that there will be no regrets in the future?’

  Be in love with me again, she thought. But you couldn’t ask for that. A precious gift like love could only be given, never demanded. ‘You think I have a magic formula?’

  Now he noticed the shadows which darkened her eyes and he wanted to kiss them away—but he had forfeited the right to tenderness a long time ago. ‘I am burdening you with too many questions. So sleep,’ he instructed grittily. ‘I will leave you in the peace and the silence and you will sleep.’

  And, miraculously, she did. For the first time since she had left Cannes—and maybe even before that—Jennifer slept as if someone had drugged her.

  * * *

  Sliding on a filmy white kaftan over her swimsuit, she left her hair loose beneath a wide-brimmed hat and went out into the bright sunshine to find Matteo.

  He was lying on a lounger by the pool, wearing wraparound shades and reading a film script. He had on nothing but a pair of swim-shorts, and Jennifer’s feet faltered as she grew closer, for the sight of his near-bare body was utterly spectacular. And, let’s face it, she thought, you haven’t seen it for a long time.

  His skin gleamed like olive satin, each muscle so carefully defined that he could quite easily have featured as an illustration in a medical student’s anatomy book. Dark hair curled crisply over his chest and arrowed down to a V over his hard, flat belly, darkening over the powerful shafts of his legs.

  She blamed the heat for the sudden drying of her mouth as Matteo slowly lifted his head. His eyes were unseen behind the shades, but Jennifer knew that he’d been aware of her watching him.

  ‘Enjoying the view?’ he questioned softly.

  She jerked her head to stare out at the sapphire stripe of distant sea. ‘It’s…exquisite.’

  He smiled. ‘Come and sit down over here. I’ll fetch you something to drink.’

  Her legs felt like cotton-wool, and inwardly she despaired. Wasn’t the whole point of being here to get herself fit and rested? If she started living on her nerves and constructing fantasies about her ex then she might as well have stayed in England and faced the press.

  He brought her something cool and fizzing which tasted of lemons, and she gulped it down.

  ‘Hungry?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘Am I going to have to force-feed you, Jenny?’

  ‘No. Just give me a little time to acclimatise. Anyway, I ate on the plane—and I’m not stupid.’ She sank into a lounger. ‘Ooh, that’s nice!’

  ‘Isn’t it?’ He gave her a hard smile as his eyes flickered over her kaftan. ‘Aren’t you going to get a little sun on your body?’

  What could she say? An excuse would sound feeble but the truth would sound far worse. That she felt suddenly and inexplicably shy about disrobing in front of him.

  But you’re having his baby, for God’s sake! And you were married to him!

  ‘Of course,’ she said lightly, and turned her back.

  Behind his dark glasses, a thoughtful look came into Matteo’s eyes. Shyness indicated that she was uncomfortable. Or was it something else? He leaned back against his lounger, affecting rest—but his body was tense as she turned around again and a sigh of something approaching wonder escaped from his lips.

  In the bikini, her pregnant shape was like a visual feast—with its brand-new curves and soft shadows. He saw the swell of her belly properly for the first time and was filled with a fierce and primitive pride. For—no matter what the circumstances of the conception—nothing changed the fact that beneath her heart, his child grew.

  His own heart pounded, and he swallowed down the sudden lump in his throat. His child.

  And Jenny was still his wife. By law they remained married, with all the rights that gave an individual—even in these days when marriages could be dissolved so easily. Was he really going to let that go so easily now, when there was a baby on the way?

  True, she might grow strong and well here on Pantelleria, and true, they might fabricate such a wonderful explanation about why she was pregnant with his baby that no one would ever bother them again. But even if this latter and extremely unlikely scenario occurred—where did that leave him?

  On the sidelines, that was where. While Jenny would go on to give birth and, sooner or later, another man would fall for her pale blonde beauty and her quirky character and her particular talents—and then what?

  He would be relegated to weekends, and then to less and less contact with the child. And why not? He would never have lived properly with its mother—so why should he expect the child to love him?

  An unbearable pain caught him unawares. It churned in his guts and twisted in his heart.

  At that moment he saw Jenny slide her leg up to bend her knee, and he knew that he still held a powerful weapon. Could he not work on her desire for him and tie her to him with that, even if that was as far as it went?

  He lifted the sunglasses from his eyes and put them on the ground as the sun glinted off the pale flesh of her thigh.

  ‘You’ll burn,’ he said thickly.

  She heard the note in his voice and knew what it meant. She knew that she had a choice. She could either thank him for his concern and go up to her room and cover herself from head to toe in Factor 20, or…

  She shut her eyes. ‘Do you want to cream me up?’ she murmured.

  Her words made him so aroused that for a moment he wondered if he had dreamt them. But the languid pose she was holding told him that she had said them and meant them.

  He noticed that she had her eyes closed, and that amused him as he moved slowly towards her. Was she trying to block out the sight of an erection which felt as hard as a rock against his belly?

  He kneeled down beside her and squeezed a dollop of cream into the palm of his hand.

  ‘Turn over,’ he commanded.

  She wriggled onto her stomach and, starting with her back, he loosened her inhibitions, unclipping her top and massaging the cool cream into her baking skin.

  ‘Now lie on your back,’ he instructed huskily.

  Jennifer tensed as he peeled down her bikini top, and she nearly passed out with pleasure as he began to circle the palm of his hand over one hard globe, marvelling at the new and intricate tracing of blue veins there.

  The cream felt deliciously cold, and Jennifer squirmed as her nipple peaked against his hand. ‘Oh!’

  But Matteo said nothing, for he sensed that words might shatter the highly charged atmosphere of erotic desire. He began to work on the other breast instead, hearing her gasp and seeing her squirm as he let his fingertips slowly glide down over the swell of her belly.

  It was like being on familiar territory but discovering a whole new landscape. Like finding that a lush orchard had grown on a piece of previously barren land.

  Wonder made him momentarily break his vow of silence. ‘Madre de Dio!’ he whispered, and pulled down her bikini bottoms, sliding his finger to her wet, warm heat and hearing her gasp again, only sharper this time.

  He began to kiss her until she moaned in an unspoken plea and he kicked off his shorts, carefully lowering himself on top of her so that they were properly naked at last. Her arms encircled his neck and Matteo buried his face in her soft neck and sighed. like a man who had come home.

  They stayed like that until he lifted his head at last, tracing her mouth with his fingertip. ‘I don’t how I’m supposed
to do it with a pregnant woman,’ he murmured.

  ‘You?’ Her voice was slumberous as she smiled. ‘Just do what you normally do.’

  ‘But I don’t want to hurt you. Or the baby.’

  Matt could hurt her in a million different ways, but never like this. ‘Just do it,’ she urged. ‘Let go.’

  He reached down to find that she was soaking wet, and with a sigh of exquisite relief he thrust inside her. He began to move, slowly at first, teasing her and teasing her and teasing her. Enjoying the luxury of a long coupling—but it was never going to be long enough. He could barely wait for her to orgasm, but somehow he managed it—and then he let his own happen, in glorious golden waves which just kept on rocking him.

  It seemed to take for ever to come back to earth, and when he did he lifted his head to look down at her, inordinately pleased at the dreamy smile of pleasure which curved her mouth.

  ‘Jenny?’ he whispered.

  Her eyelids fluttered open and she looked up at him. I love you, she thought. Is there any chance that one day you could love me, too? ‘What?’ she mumbled drowsily.

  ‘Can I sleep with you tonight?’

  The wind made music out of the chimes which hung in the trees, and the world seemed suspended as it waited for her answer.

  Jennifer closed her eyes and touched her lips to his neck. It was not what she had wanted to hear, but it would do. ‘Yes,’ she breathed. ‘Yes, you can.’

  * * *

  The days drifted into one another, like a river running into the sea, and Jennifer grew brown and slow and contented. She slept and ate good food and swam like a fish—sometimes in the pool and sometimes Matteo took her out in his boat to splash in the clear waters—and her hair grew pale and he told her she looked like a mermaid.

  And every night he slept with her, and made love to her in a hundred different ways, both in and out of bed.

  In fact, it was almost like a second honeymoon—except that honeymoons were held together with the glue of shared love, not the unreliable adhesive of an unplanned pregnancy.

  ‘What is it?’ he questioned softly one afternoon, when they had gone upstairs to lie beneath the cool, curved dome of the bedroom ceiling for their customary siesta.

  ‘I didn’t say anything.’

  ‘You didn’t have to. You were frowning.’ His fingers traced an imaginary line just above her nose.

  Jennifer closed her eyes, because the subject playing on her mind was one that she would rather keep hidden away. It was so like paradise here that she didn’t want to introduce the serpent of reality.

  And yet hadn’t their inability to communicate been one of the primary causes of their break-up? Geographical distance had been the reason for that—but you didn’t need to be thousands of miles apart from someone to fail to interact with them on an adult level. And they couldn’t keep pretending that there weren’t a million unresolved issues simmering beneath the surface of this extended holiday.

  ‘Well, we haven’t discussed how long we’re staying here, or what we’re going to do when we get back—in fact, we haven’t made any real plans at all. We’ve been burying our heads in the sand, and—whilst it has been lovely—I feel a bit as if I’m in limbo. As if the real world were a million miles away.’

  ‘Well, that was the intention in coming here.’

  ‘But it can’t continue indefinitely,’ observed Jennifer, smoothing her hand over her belly and watching as his black eyes followed the movement with fascination.

  She remembered the very first time she had slept with him. In the morning she had woken first and lain there feeling slightly dazed, thinking, I’m in bed with Matteo d’Arezzo! ‘Can it?’

  ‘No.’ The rumpled sheet lay tangled around his naked thighs as he moved over her, the powerful shafts straddling her, and for a moment Jennifer thought that he was going to drive his erection into her aching body. But his face was dark and full of tension. ‘Tell me what it is you want, Jenny.’

  She shook her head. ‘That isn’t fair. Are you too frightened to say what it is that you want?’

  And at that moment he did know fear—he who had been fearless for most of his life. But it was time to take a gamble. To lay down the guidelines for the only situation he could see working for the two of them. He just hoped that he had softened his prickly ex-wife enough for her to be agreeable.

  ‘I’m Italian—’ he began.

  ‘You were brought up in America,’ she pointed out. ‘And what’s that got to do with it?’

  ‘I believe in marriage,’ he breathed. ‘But especially a marriage which involves a family. I want us to try again, Jenny’ he said, and Jennifer heard the unmistakable ring of determination in his voice. ‘To be man and wife. To bring our baby up within a secure family unit. Don’t you want that, too?’

  She nodded, too choked for a moment to speak. Had she thought that he might threaten her with a legal battle if she did not accede to his will? Possibly. The very last thing she had expected was that heartfelt appeal, and it affected her more than was probably necessary. Or wise.

  ‘Of course I do,’ she said eventually. ‘It’s what every mother wants for her baby.’

  Not for herself, Matteo noted coldly, but he nodded and kept his face impassive.

  She wanted to say, And if there were no baby, would you still want me, even then? But she wasn’t strong enough for that. Because she might still be in love with Matteo but not so much that she would let it blind her. Because if there was no baby, then there wouldn’t be a relationship.

  ‘We need to do it properly this time around.’ He tilted her chin up and his black eyes were hard and glittering. ‘We will not lead separate lives again, cara. I don’t know how we’ll work it out, but we will.’

  ‘And I won’t listen to rumours…won’t allow jealousy to flourish.’

  ‘I won’t give you cause to feel jealous ever again,’ he grated.

  ‘You’re going to give up being a film star?’ she said, half joking.

  He smiled, his mind already working out their schedule. ‘Shall we fly to England and tell your mother together? And I’ll tell my office to answer any enquires with a short statement announcing that the divorce is off.’

  Jennifer recognised the light of triumph which burned at the back of his eyes as she nodded her head in agreement. This might be as good as it got, but she wasn’t going to knock it. She had tried living without him, and that was much, much worse.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  ‘I can’t believe it!’

  ‘Just say you’re happy for us, Mum!’ pleaded Jennifer.

  She and Matteo had driven straight from the airfield to her mother’s elegant cottage near Bath, knowing that as soon as they were back in England word would get out about the pregnancy, and wanting her to hear it from them first. But now, looking at her mother’s expression, she began to wonder why they’d bothered.

  Mrs Warren’s heavily made-up eyes flicked over her daughter and came to rest on Matteo again. She shook her head in disbelief. ‘But I’m too young to be a grandmother,’ she declared.

  Matteo’s expression didn’t flicker, and he did not risk glancing over at Jennifer. He squeezed her hand instead. ‘Of course you are,’ he said smoothly. ‘Everyone will believe that you are the baby’s aunt!’

  ‘Do you really think so?’ Mrs Warren looked slightly mollified as she automatically patted her faded blonde hair. ‘Does this mean the marriage is
back on?’

  This time he did risk it, and he read the understanding in Jenny’s eyes. ‘Si,’ he said slowly. ‘It is. We have settled our…differences.’

  Mrs Warren nodded. ‘Well, I suppose I’d better look on the bright side—I always got much better service on airlines when I mentioned that Matteo was my son-in-law!’

  Matteo’s mouth twitched. ‘Then that is a good enough reason for the marriage to continue, surely?’ he said gravely.

  ‘Mum, Matteo’s going up to London on business, and I thought that I might stay here with you for a day or two. We could have lunch, if you like.’

  Mrs Warren brightened. ‘In a restaurant, you mean?’

  Jennifer nodded. Her mother loved eating out with her famous daughter, and all the attendant fuss. ‘If you like.’

  Matteo’s eyes narrowed. ‘You’re sure?’

  She shrugged. ‘Why not? No good hiding away—we were spotted and snapped at the airport, after all.’

  ‘I’m sending two minders with you,’ he said grimly.

  ‘Ooh, goody!’ squealed Mrs Warren.

  In a pale restaurant overlooking the beautiful old city of Bath, they ate exotic seafood and salad, and Mrs Warren drank copious amounts of champagne ‘to celebrate, darling!’ while the minders sat a not-so-discreet distance away. Jennifer even posed for a photo with a little girl who was waiting outside the restaurant with her mother.

  Maybe I’ll have a little girl too, she thought as she crouched down and smiled. And she’ll have dark eyes, just like Matt’s, and gorgeous curly hair.

  But when they got back to her mother’s house there was a crowd of pressmen milling outside, and the minders had to barge their way through.

  ‘What the hell is going on?’ asked Jennifer, frowning. ‘How ridiculous! Surely one pregnant actress doesn’t merit this kind of interest?’

  The phone was ringing when they got inside, and Mrs Warren took the call, her face growing white as she listened. ‘Yes, she’s here—I’ll see if she’ll speak to you.’ She held the phone towards Jennifer. ‘It’s a reporter. Wants to speak to you.’