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, hugging her belly, the urge to protect her little seed already strong, even if only from her tears.
The real unvarnished truth would destroy every single one of them, Matteo included.
Better to take it on the chin and have the world, including her own parents, think her a slut than for that to happen. She could hardly bear to think of the disdain and disappointment in their eyes when they learned she was pregnant and that Pieta wasn’t the father.
Marrying Pieta was the only thing she’d done in her twenty-five years that had pleased them. It had given them the opportunity to brag to the world that the great Pieta Pellegrini was their son-in-law and it was an opportunity they never let pass by.
Natasha dried her eyes and blew out a long breath.
All the tears in the world wouldn’t change things. She was going to be a mother and that meant she had to be strong for her child’s sake.
And all the tears in the world didn’t change the fact that it was better for the world to think her a slut than for everyone to know that Matteo was the only candidate for father of her baby.
The world could never know that she had been a virgin until the night she’d buried her husband.
* * *
The clinic Matteo had booked them into was tucked away in a beautiful medieval building in the heart of Florence. To the unwitting passer-by it could be home to any of the numerous museums and galleries the city was famed for.
The interior was a total contrast. No one entering could doubt they were in a state-of-the-art medical facility.
The cool receptionist made a call and moments later Julianna, the clinic’s director, stepped out of a door to greet them.
Matteo had met Julianna, a tall, rangy woman in her midforties, a number of times at conferences. They welcomed each other like old friends, exchanging kisses along with their greetings.
Then he introduced her to Natasha and they were taken through to the pristine scanning room where everything was set up for them.
‘Are you happy for Dr Manaserro to stay in the room while we do this?’ Julianna asked Natasha in English.
Her eyes darted to him with an inflection of surprise before she shrugged her slim shoulders. He doubted she’d ever heard him addressed by that title before.
‘You will be a little exposed,’ Julianna warned.
Another shrug. ‘He can stay if he wants,’ she answered tonelessly.
Matteo experienced a pang of guilt that was as unwelcome as it was unexpected.
Today was the first time he’d seen Natasha in two weeks. In the intervening period, other than arranging this scan, he’d done his best to forget her and the pregnancy.
The chances of him being the father were extremely slim, he’d reasoned. Even if the scan confirmed that he could be, he still knew it wasn’t likely. They’d only been intimate the once whereas Natasha and Pieta must have...
His guts twisted violently as he thought of all the times they must have been together over the years. Pieta and Natasha had been actively trying for a baby. Pieta had told him that the last time he’d seen him.
And she was happy to be pregnant. She’d called it a miracle. Was that because of her longing for a child or because she was happy that a part of Pieta might be living inside her? Surely she must have felt some affection for her husband, whatever her actions the night of his funeral?
Surely she wouldn’t have reacted like that if she’d thought there was any chance he might be the father?
Dio, he shouldn’t be thinking like this. It felt too rancid inside him.
Since she’d accepted Pieta’s proposal hours after their one kiss, he’d pushed Natasha out of his mind, never thinking of her, never thinking of her and Pieta together. Only when he’d been in her presence had his loathing of her come out of the compartment in his head he’d put her in, and on those occasions he’d learned to hide it by ignoring her wherever possible. He’d moved on very quickly and in any case Pieta was too good a friend and too close a cousin for Matteo to let a woman come between them.
Pieta hadn’t known Matteo and Natasha had been building a long-distance closeness which, looking back, had been strange as he and Pieta had often swapped stories about women. At the time it had felt too...special to be spoken of, which with hindsight had been comical. He must have been caught in a bout of sentimentality and had made sure never to have such ludicrous thoughts again.
If it was indeed Pieta’s child then he too would celebrate to know a part of his best friend lived on, even if the mother the child had to live on through was a deceitful bitch.
It had to be Pieta’s. The alternative...
It would destroy everything.
So he’d left her alone and fought the urge to call every five minutes and make sure she was eating and sleeping properly.
Looking at her now, he didn’t think she’d had a square meal since he’d last seen her.
‘Okay, Natasha, you are looking at this as a dating scan, I believe?’ Julianna said.
She nodded.
‘Have you seen a doctor or a midwife yet?’
She shook her head.
‘Are you thinking of having the child here or in England?’
Her eyes darted to him again.
Julianna smiled reassuringly. ‘It’s okay, there are no right or wrong answers.’
‘I haven’t thought that far ahead,’ she whispered.
‘You have plenty of time to decide but you should be monitored. The obstetrician we employ here is the best in Florence or I can recommend a female for you if that would suit you better?’
Matteo, feeling perspiration break out on his back, had to bite his tongue to stop himself from cutting in. Now they were here, the ultrasound screen switched on, he wanted to get this over with.
But that appeared to be the end of the questioning.
‘Are you ready to do this?’
‘Yes.’ It was the most animation he’d heard in Natasha’s voice since she’d opened the door to him earlier.
‘Lie down and lift your top and lower your skirt to your hips so your stomach is exposed.’
Matteo trained his eyes on the screen.
When Natasha was ready, Julianna tucked tissue around her lowered skirt and took her seat.
> Even though he wasn’t looking directly at her, he saw Natasha flinch when the cold gel was applied to her stomach.
Julianna then picked up the probe and pressed it over the gel. As she worked, all three of their gazes were fixed on the screen.
‘There it is!’ she said in delight. ‘See, Natasha? There is your baby.’
Natasha craned her neck forward, trying hard to see what was there. ‘Where?’
‘There.’ Julianna put a finger to the screen. ‘See?’
Natasha really didn’t know what she’d been expecting to see—a fully formed miniature baby this soon into the pregnancy was too wild even for her imagination—but had hoped it would be more than a blob. But then Julianna pressed some keys on the keyboard on her desk and the blob came into sharper focus. It was still a blob but there was something more defined about it that got her already racing heart ready to burst out of her.
‘Do you want to hear the heartbeat?’
A moment later the most beautiful sound she’d ever heard echoed through the room.
She didn’t dare look at Matteo. If there was anything other than joy on his face it would taint this special moment for ever.
So she continued to look at her little walnut now frozen on the screen and listen to its healthy heart beating while Julianna did whatever she was doing on her computer until her eyes blurred and the beats were no longer distinguishable.
Eventually Julianna pushed her chair back and wiped Natasha’s belly clean with another, softer tissue.
‘I would say that so far everything is looking good and healthy.’
‘So far?’
The older woman smiled. ‘I am a medical practitioner. We never talk in absolutes. What I can say with all honesty is that right now your child is developing well and you should be happy with that. As for when it’s due...’ She gave a date at the end of June.
Natasha closed her eyes. When she had searched the internet and put in the date of conception, every site she had visited had given this same due date within its narrow parameters.
From the way Matteo shifted in his seat, he had done the same maths.
He knew the due date made it impossible for Pieta to be the father. The date of conception was firmly after his death.
He knew the baby was his.
CHAPTER FOUR
NATASHA HAD TO wait until they were back in his car before she had an inkling of what Matteo was thinking.
‘This changes everything,’ he said after a long period of silence.
‘Not really,’ she refuted quietly. ‘You already knew it could be yours.’
‘I know, I was praying that it wasn’t,’ he spat.
She dug her nails into the palms of her hands. She’d had two weeks to prepare for this moment, researching everything she could about pregnancy whilst hiding any nausea or backache from her steady stream of visitors.
If she hadn’t been in such shock at the test coming up positive—who could expect to fall pregnant on their very first time of making love?—she would have been able think much more quickly on her feet and not put Matteo through the turmoil he must have been in over the past fortnight. When he’d asked when she’d last been intimate with Pieta her brain had been too frazzled to think of a straight-up lie. How badly she’d wanted to tell him the truth and spare him all the uncertainty.
The truth would shatter him. The truth would shatter everyone.
It had to be this way. As hard and as painful as it was, it was the lesser of two evils.
If there was a hell she would surely be sent to it for all the lies of omission she’d had to tell and would continue having to tell.
‘Do you have any idea of the nightmare you’ve pulled me into?’ he said scathingly, driving them out of the city and into the Tuscan hills.
‘The nightmare I’ve pulled you into?’ she retorted, raising her voice. ‘As far as I recall, you were there too. I accept I behaved badly but you behaved badly too so don’t you dare place all the blame on me.’
He changed gear with so much force she thought the gearstick would snap.
His jaw clenched, he drove them on in silence.
As a rule, Natasha loved Tuscany. She loved the glimpses of vineyards and olive groves, the old hidden monasteries that would suddenly spring into view, some old and decrepit, others renovated, beautiful whatever their states. Today the scenery passed her by without notice. Not until they entered a town they hadn’t travelled through on their way to Florence did she realise he was taking a different route back.
Her heart sinking, she knew where he was taking her.
Sure enough, soon she caught her first view of Castello Miniato, centrepiece of the Pellegrini estate Pieta had inherited in its entirety when his father had died just weeks after their wedding. The estate he’d married her for.
Matteo pulled the car to a stop outside the fortressed wall surrounding the castello.
‘What do you see?’ he asked her roughly.
‘Is this a trick question?’
‘No.’
‘The castello.’
She’d married Pieta in these grounds—thankfully not in the castello’s chapel as that would have made their marriage even more of a mockery—with a heart that had felt dead. She’d seen the expectation on her mother’s face and the silent nod of encouragement to put her best foot forward. She’d felt the pressure of her father’s fingers digging into her upper arm, had thought of the vast amounts of money Pieta had given her parents during their long engagement and had dragged her feet towards him.
Pieta had been waiting under the floral arch. His expression had been neutral. It could have been anyone walking towards him.
She wished she’d had the courage to turn on her heel and run.
The castello she’d adored for so long, the castle that had fired her young imagination with thoughts of knights and maidens, had been the main reason Pieta had married her. They’d spent only a handful of nights there but she had grown to detest it, a manifestation of the trapped desperation she’d found herself in.
‘Why are we here?’
‘To remind you of what you married into. The inheritance of this estate is on hold until there is no longer any possibility you’re carrying Pieta’s child. But it’s more than that—they’re all waiting to see if you’re carrying a part of him in you. They’re all hoping for it, Vanessa, Daniele and Francesca, and now you are pregnant but it is medically impossible for it to be his, so I am going to ask you this one more time and I want you to think very carefully before giving me your answer. How many other men did you sleep with in the days before and after you and I slept together?’
Blood heating with loathing and humiliation, Natasha forced herself to meet his baleful glare. ‘None.’
‘You are sure about that? There was no one three days either side of when we were together? This is important, Natasha.’
‘I know very well how important it is and I am telling you there was no one. You’re the father.’
A low sigh escaped from him as he bowed his head over the steering wheel.
The hard reality of their situation crystallised in him. For two weeks Matteo had been able to tell himself it was too remote a chance for him to be the father. Natasha’s vehement denial of there being anyone else held the ring of truth in it.
‘I’m going to want a DNA test done when the child’s born,’ he muttered, thinking aloud, ‘if only for my own peace of mind.’
She laughed derisively.
The anger he’d been holding onto spilled over. ‘Do you have any idea of the destruction this is going to cause? This isn’t just your life, it’s mine too. Vanessa took me in when I was thirteen years old and treated me as if I were her own son rather than her husband’s nephew. Daniele and Francesca treated me like a brother. This is going to cost me my family so you can be damned sure I want concrete certainty about the paternity if I’m going to lose everyone I love because of it.’
‘Stop this right now,’ she said tightly
. ‘I know how much you love them—I love them too, but you are the father and no amount of burying your head in the sand can change that.’
His lungs had closed so tightly he had to force air into them.
His phone vibrated. Taking advantage of the distraction, he pulled it from his jacket pocket.
It was an email from Julianna. Attached was a picture of the scan and a brief message asking him to forward it to Natasha.
He opened the attachment and, staring at the tiny life so small the resolution of the attachment struggled to distinguish it in any great detail, he felt a little of his anger deflate.
All the arguing and recriminations in the world didn’t change the one undisputable fact that Natasha was pregnant and...
And he was the father.
Something flickered inside him, a bloom that expanded into his chest, up his throat, seeping into his brain, filling him with an emotion he’d never felt before because the emotion had never existed in him before.
He was going to be a father.
How could he deny it?
He couldn’t.
Dio, he was going to be a father.
It was his child growing in her belly, no one else’s.
It was time to accept responsibility for this because the other undisputable fact was that their child was innocent and deserved all the protection it could get from both its parents and also because Natasha was right. Burying his head would cause more pain to Vanessa and his cousins in the long term.
‘We won’t be able to keep this a secret for long,’ he said, thinking aloud. ‘The pregnancy is going to be noticeable soon. People—Vanessa and the family—will assume it’s Pieta’s. Their hopes will be raised.’
‘They’re going to be so hurt.’ He heard the catch in her voice. ‘They’re going to hate me.’
‘They’re going to hate us both, but we can protect them from the worst of it.’
‘How?’
‘Come to Miami with me. I’m flying to Caballeros with Daniele tomorrow. We should only be there for a couple of days. When I get back I’ll take you home with me. We can say you need a break from everything. In a month or so we can tell them you’re pregnant with my child. It’ll be easier for them to accept we turned to each other for comfort and that a relationship grew naturally than to accept the truth of the child’s conception.’
Claiming His One-Night Baby Page 4
