by Lynne Graham
‘Sorry, I have to go…’ Pippa breathed flatly. ‘I’ll call you later.’
CHAPTER NINE
‘I ASSUMED you were still in bed. I lifted the hall phone to call Marco. Is it true?’ Andreo demanded.
Pippa was very pale but reluctant to accept that he knew her secret. ‘Is what true?’
Andreo dealt her a raw look of derision. ‘Is it true that you’re pregnant?’
Pippa breathed in slow and deep to steady herself and laced her hands together in a nervous motion. ‘Yes…’
‘And is the baby mine?’
She reddened. ‘How can you ask me a question like that?’
‘Easily. This is not how I expected to hear that kind of news from you. Since it’s clear you’re not the very honest woman I thought you were, what else might I have got wrong?’ Andreo fielded harshly, lean, strong face rigid with the same tension that was holding her taut.
‘Not that anyway…the baby is yours,’ she stated in driven reproach.
Stunning golden eyes veiling, Andreo swung away from her so that she could not see how he had taken that blunt confirmation of his paternity.
Had he had some wild hope that he might not be the male responsible for impregnating her? Pippa wondered in dismay. She felt demeaned by that suspicion but could not avoid thinking along such lines. He had taken her to bed. At no time had he talked of a future that lay further away than the next day. Those were the facts. Facts that were bare of the taint of her hopes and dreams. Naturally Andreo would have been relieved to hear that the responsibility for the baby she carried was not his.
‘This is not the way I wanted you to find out about my…er…condition,’ Pippa muttered uncomfortably, shying away from that word, ‘baby’, lest it increase his shock.
‘Don’t try to fool me. You had no plans to tell me at all. Why else would you have remained silent this long? Do you think I haven’t worked that out for myself?’ It was a low, bitter response that sliced through the tense atmosphere like a knife blade.
‘I don’t know what you’re trying to say…’ Pippa could hardly think straight because she felt wretched. Last night and every night since her arrival at his idyllic home in the Dordogne she had slept in his arms, but now he was poised on the far side of the room surveying her with grim, shuttered eyes as though she were his mortal enemy. ‘Of course I was going to tell you…OK, so I wasn’t in a hurry to do it, but I hardly think that’s a crime!’
‘Per meraviglia…I think you were more concerned that I might try to interfere in how you chose to deal with what you no doubt saw as a colossal problem,’ Andreo framed in a raw undertone. ‘That’s why you left London but you weren’t prepared to admit that. If I hadn’t heard you talking to Christien’s wife, I would never have found out that I’d got you pregnant. You intended to keep that fact from me. Why won’t you admit that?’
Pippa stared back at him in consternation. ‘Because it’s not true and I wouldn’t behave like that. You’ve got it all wrong—’
‘I don’t think so.’ Hard dark eyes assailed hers with fierce distrust.
Andreo was playing judge, jury and executioner all at one and the same time and very much in his element, Pippa decided in furious frustration. ‘You aren’t listening to what I’m saying—’
‘Why would I?’ Andreo vented a derisive laugh. ‘Why would I listen to a woman who has so little regard for either me or our relationship that she leaves the country without even leaving me a note?’
‘You know why that happened!’ Pippa protested, alarmed by that condemnation being recycled. ‘I saw you with Lili Richards and assumed the worst—’
‘As you chose not to confront me on that score, I only have your word for that. In point of fact, you just vanished—’
‘My departure from London had nothing to do with me being pregnant because I only found out that I had fallen pregnant the day after you arrived in France!’ Pippa argued vehemently, her bright blue eyes pinned to his lean chiselled features with a concern she could not hide. ‘I was planning to tell you, I was—’
‘I don’t think so. Your behaviour speaks for itself—’
‘And what’s that supposed to mean?’
Implacable golden eyes raked over her with stubborn force. ‘I think that the moment you discovered that you were rather more fertile than you wanted to be, you decided to walk out on me and go for an abortion. Perhaps you came to France first in an effort to ensure that you shook me off.’
Pippa’s back was so rigid her spine was protesting her stance, but her pallor was now illuminated by angry colour. ‘You have no right to talk as if you can get inside my head and somehow know what I was planning to do—’
Andreo sent her a fierce look of derision. ‘I don’t need a fortune-teller, do I? You don’t like children—’
‘That is untrue and what is more I never said any such thing.’
His wide sensual mouth compressed into an even more intransigent line. ‘You don’t want children—’
‘What would you know about what I want?’ Pippa flung at him hotly. ‘Maybe I started to feel differently when I realised I was already carrying a baby.’
Andreo’s keen gaze narrowed and glittered. His strong bone structure bearing a little less resemblance to a stone wall, he took a sudden fluid step closer. ‘Did you?’
‘That’s none of your business! You should have asked how I felt…nicely, not gone straight into attack!’ she snapped back at him.
‘Don’t tell me it’s none of my business when you have my baby inside you!’ Andreo thundered back at her.
‘When you talk like that you sound like a fourteenth-century man,’ she told him with a scornfully curled lip.
His sense of humour nowhere in evidence, Andreo jerked a powerful shoulder in dismissal. ‘It’s my baby too and I made it clear that I would take full responsibility if this happened.’
‘Always supposing I wanted you to take responsibility,’ Pippa slotted in, if anything more angry than ever that he should dare to imply that she needed him to take care of her and the baby she carried.
‘Any decisions you make should be discussed with me,’ Andreo delivered grimly.
‘All right.’ Pippa forced out a facetious laugh. ‘Are you any good at changing nappies?’
Andreo gave her an arrested look.
Pippa released an exaggerated sigh of disappointment. ‘Obviously you’ve no experience whatsoever in that line. What about feeds and crying bouts in the middle of the night?’
His level black brows pleated in a bemused frown. ‘We’d have a nanny.’
‘Oh, would we?’
‘Of course…’ But for once Andreo was out of his depth and it was showing in the intensity with which he was watching her while he tried to guess what the right answers might be on her terms. He had half a dozen nephews and nieces but he had had precious little to do with them as babies.
‘So while you are convinced that you should be involved in any decisions I make, you’re not actually willing to do any hands-on parenting—’
‘What is this conversation? Are you saying that you are prepared to have this baby if I get involved?’ Andreo demanded tautly.
‘If you had ever taken the time to ask me, I would have told you up front that I had already decided that I was going to have this child.’ Pippa was breathing in slowly and carefully because the sheer stress of their confrontation was making her head swim. ‘But I don’t need you or your money to manage and if a nanny is all you have to offer, I think we might just be better off on our own.’
‘That’s not all I’m prepared to offer,’ Andreo breathed with savage clarity, brilliant eyes shimmering over her. ‘I’ll marry you…obviously.’
Pippa almost flinched from the demeaning form that that proposal took and a great hollowness entered her then, for it hurt her a great deal that he could even think that she would consider allowing him to marry her. Marriage was for people who couldn’t bear to live apart and who wanted to m
ake a proper commitment to each other. Occasionally people did enter marriage for more prosaic reasons, but she had too much intelligence and way too much pride to become part of such an unequal union: he didn’t love her and that was that. Therefore there was nothing to discuss. As far as she was concerned, how much she loved him did not enter the equation. Nobody knew better than she how disastrous such a marriage could be.
‘You need me in bed and out of it, cara mia,’ Andreo asserted with ferocious assurance. ‘I want you and I want our child as well.’
Hot tears prickled at the back of Pippa’s eyes but she held them back. She would not look at him because she could not bear to betray the utter turmoil of her emotions. Brushing past him before he could even guess her intention, she headed downstairs and reached for the phone book.
‘I’m going to call a cab. What’s the address here?’ she asked Andreo where he lowered like a dark, threatening storm at the foot of the stone staircase.
‘You can’t leave—’
‘Watch me!’ But her defiant glance in his direction fell short for his image was blurring because she was feeling horribly giddy.
‘I asked you to marry me,’ Andreo ground out with chilling hauteur.
‘Gosh, did you?’ Pippa sniped back in response, fighting off the dizziness assailing her with all her might. ‘How did I miss that? I heard you tell me with great condescension that you would marry me and that I needed you. Well, listen well, I don’t need anybody but myself!’
With feverish haste, she headed back upstairs but on the first step a hand came down over hers where it rested on the balustrade and effectively arrested her progress. ‘This is incredibly childish,’ Andreo asserted.
‘You said it…’ Pippa was desperate to make her escape before she broke down and cried her eyes out.
‘I will not chase round France after you,’ Andreo breathed in a warning growl.
‘I don’t want you to chase after me.’ Her skin felt horribly clammy and her tummy was rolling with nausea. With a supreme effort, she dragged her hand free of his restraint and blindly mounted another step.
‘I think that you do but this time it’s not going to happen. You’ve done everything you can to undermine our relationship and if the proposal didn’t come up to scratch, you’ve only got yourself to thank for it,’ Andreo delivered with harsh emphasis. ‘You tell me you don’t need anyone. At least admit the truth…you’re too much of a coward to give me or what we have a chance!’
For a bare instant, Pippa considered that frightening condemnation but her mind was in a state of flux and by that point she was so giddy that she was swaying where she stood. Still struggling to triumph over her light head, she was sucked down a long, suffocating tunnel into the darkness of unconsciousness.
When she surfaced from her faint she was lying down and no sooner had she attempted to lift her head than the nausea returned with cruel strength. Handling that bout of sickness with infuriating efficiency, Andreo carried her back to the bed and told her not to move while he was downstairs.
He reappeared a few minutes later.
Enraged by her own demeaning bodily weakness, Pippa bit out grittily, ‘I’m still leaving.’
‘If the doctor agrees…’ Andreo murmured in the mildest of tones.
‘What doctor?’
‘The one I’ve called out. You were very sick.’
‘That was just that stupid morning sickness on my stupid empty stomach!’ she hissed at him. ‘And until you started arguing with me, I was getting over that!’
Andreo continued to survey her with immense calm and cool.
‘Stop looking at me like that!’ Pippa launched at him wildly. ‘Like I’m a kid having a shocking temper tantrum!’
His glorious golden eyes took immediate cover below the dense flourish of his lush black lashes. He said nothing, nothing at all, and while the silence stretched Pippa squirmed on a torture rack of her own making. He had been exceedingly kind and he had not bolted from a situation that the average male avoided like the plague. He might be drop dead gorgeous but he was also amazingly practical. He very probably could handle the less rewarding aspects of baby care, she reflected guiltily. Feeling far too emotional and utterly raging at the maddening tears that came to her eyes all too readily, she flipped over on her side and hid under her bright tumbled hair.
‘I don’t want you to be upset like this,’ Andreo murmured levelly from the foot of the bed, resisting a very powerful urge to offer more physical comfort.
‘I’m not upset,’ she mumbled.
‘I was lying when I said I wouldn’t chase round France after you, carissima,’ Andreo imparted silkily.
‘Oh…?’ Low though she felt it would be to reach for a proffered olive branch, she discovered that she was eager to mend the breach between them.
‘I won’t let you go free to get lost again,’ he spelt out with the lethally quiet diction of a very confident personality. ‘You seem to think that there’s something wrong with needing me…but all of us need someone and you don’t appear to have anyone else.’
At that unexpected speech, Pippa tried and failed to swallow the thickness in her throat. She felt as though she had hit her lowest ebb: he had taken pity on her. What he was doing for her now, he would have done for any woman carrying his child. Essentially he was an honourable guy. Exactly the sort who could be depended on to accept responsibility for an accidental pregnancy. Hence the marriage proposal. She had been right not to listen and to throw that offer back in his face, she told herself wretchedly.
The middle-aged doctor advised her that pregnant ladies required more rest and that keeping the late hours that were presumably responsible for her shadowed eyes was not to be recommended either. It was all common sense stuff. When he had gone, Andreo brought her a delicious lunch on a tray. Her own keen appetite amazed her: she cleared the plate.
‘I didn’t hear Berthe’s car. She really is a fantastic cook.’
‘She hasn’t arrived yet. I made it…’
Surprise made Pippa exclaim, ‘You…did?’
‘Why not? I once lived here alone for six months. Either I learned to look after myself or I went hungry,’ Andreo said dryly.
She was feeling incredibly tired and she rested her head down on the pillow. Studying his darkly handsome classic profile, she felt the magnetic pull of his charismatic attraction with every sense she possessed and she could have wept over her own susceptibility. ‘Was that when you were eighteen? What were you doing here then?’
‘Rebelling, what else?’ Andreo rested riveting dark golden eyes on her and vented a rueful laugh. ‘I fell in love with a model. Her name was Fia and she was five years older. My father was incapable of waiting for the affair to run its course. He demanded that I give her up and he threatened me with disinheritance in time-honoured style. Fia and I came to France to set up home together. But…before I could buy the priory, she accepted a lucrative cash offer from my father to ditch me instead.’
Pippa winced and learned that even though she was inexcusably jealous of any woman he had ever been involved with she still could not bear the idea of him being hurt. And she could well imagine how open and trusting he had been as a teenager.
‘I stayed on here to lick my wounds. I wasn’t destitute. I had a trust fund from my grandparents. It might not have been sufficient to tempt Fia but it was enough to live on.’ His handsome mouth quirked.
He was making light of the hurt he had suffered but she knew him well enough to guess how devastated he would have been by that betrayal. In those days he had been a romantic ready to make sacrifices to be with the woman he loved. The cruellest blow of all for a male of his pride and intelligence must have been the reality that the object of his affections should have proved to be so unworthy, not to mention being fonder of money than she was of him.
‘Andreo…’ she began, feeling ridiculously tearful again.
‘Get some sleep.’ Six feet five inches of lean muscular masculinity, he
vaulted upright.
‘You don’t have to marry me just because I’m pregnant.’
‘I do…you may be very clever but you haven’t the survival instincts of a flea,’ Andreo informed her equably.
Any desire to be tearful evaporated. Colour flying into her cheeks, Pippa thrust herself up against the pillows. ‘How can you justify saying that?’
‘You turn down a job that’s yours and abandon a promising career. You run out on a good relationship,’ he enumerated without hesitation. ‘You’re so stubborn you won’t even sit down when you’re on the brink of fainting. I think that last says it all, amore. You may think you can go it alone, but I’m not impressed.’
‘When I get up, I’ll be feeling well enough to leave,’ Pippa asserted tightly, refusing to listen to him. ‘I’d be grateful if you’d book a taxi to pick me up here at three.’
Andreo had gone very still. ‘No.’
‘I intend to have this baby. Right now, that is all you need to know. If I need your help in any way, I’ll contact you.’ Turning her head away, Pippa hunched under the sheet.
Leaving was the right thing to do, she reminded herself with stubborn determination. If he wanted to take an interest in their baby after the birth, she would allow him to do so. He did not know how lucky he was that she had turned him down. She might have been a gold-digger willing to marry him just to take advantage of his wealth! He was gorgeous, wonderful company and fantastic in bed. Whether he appreciated it or not, her refusal to be impressed by his attack of gallantry was evidence of just how much she loved him. If only they had had another few days together before he had found out that she was pregnant, she reflected miserably.
Andreo tossed something on the bed and her eyes flew open and lodged on her fluffy pink diary. ‘I haven’t read a word of it,’ he assured her.
