He blew her a kiss and all but made her legs turn to water….
Awake long before the dawn, Luca had restlessly paced his bedroom and then the high-ceilinged rooms of the drawing room and kitchen as he tried to come to terms with the great frustration that gnawed away at him because Katherine had not slept in his bed.
One would think that once he had made love to her again his body would be satisfied, but no. All it had done was remind him of what he had been missing and indeed craving all these months without her! Now, instead of feeling refreshed and renewed from a good night’s sleep, Luca felt bad-tempered and impatient—and his mood was not helped by the idea that Katherine might not keep her word about ringing him…that she might indeed decide at the last minute not to accompany him to Milan after all.
Why had he let her go back home so easily ? Why had he not insisted he stay the night and waited for her to pack the next morning?
Thinking about the coming baby, and what any new desertion would mean to him, Luca swore softly but vehemently under his breath. He was not acting like a man who wasn’t sure that his lover’s baby was his at all. On the contrary… He was behaving as if there was no question that he was the father of Katherine’s child!
Thinking of her passionate, uninhibited response to his lovemaking, Luca suddenly didn’t doubt it. Something deeply intuitive, some strong inner sixth sense, finally convinced him that she was telling him the truth. Consequently he told himself it was only natural that he should feel so fiercely possessive about the child, and be beyond furious at the thought of her keeping it from him. But then there was this…this addiction he had developed for Katherine herself. He could neither easily explain it nor want to! In fact it was probably a good thing that they were at least compatible in that area, Luca concluded broodingly. It would certainly make things a lot more simple when he put to her the idea that had slowly been taking shape in his mind in the early hours when he could not sleep!
Several hours later, as he put down the phone at the end of a call to his office, his gaze morosely followed his chauffeur Brian as he carried Luca’s luggage outside, to store in the back of the waiting Rolls-Royce. Glancing down again at the time on his watch, he vented his impatience out loud.
‘Dio! What does she think she is playing at?’
What was making him even more on edge was the fact that he had rung Katherine’s number three times already but there had been no reply. Not allowing his mind to descend into worryingly negative assumptions about the reason for her absence, or her delay in ringing him, Luca made up his mind to take action.
About to follow Brian out to the car and instruct him to drive to Katherine’s flat, he heard the telephone on the hall table ring. Luca pounced on it, his heart hammering hard in his chest.
‘De Rossi!’ he snapped.
‘Luca?’
‘Katherine! Why have you not rung me? Where have you been? I have been ringing you all morning!’
‘I’m in the hospital,’ she returned, her voice definitely sounding a little shaky.
‘The hospital? What is wrong? What has happened?’ Feeling his blood turn to ice, Luca gripped the receiver hard, his knuckles turning white.
‘I’ll tell you when I get back home,’ she replied, sounding a little more in charge than before. ‘I’ve got a taxi waiting to take me, so I’ll see you there.’
‘Katherine!’
But the disconnect signal sounded in Luca’s ear before he could get a response….
CHAPTER SEVEN
AS SOON as Kate saw the familiar Rolls-Royce parked outside the building where she lived, with its uniformed chauffeur in the front, all her limbs seemed to turn as insubstantial as cobwebs. As her footsteps slowed helplessly, her anxious gaze fell upon Luca’s tall, arresting figure in a black cashmere coat, impatiently standing on the concrete steps that led up to Kate’s front door.
As soon as he saw her approach the tension she sensed in him began to reach out and envelop her. Sucking in a deep breath for courage, and feeling a little light-headed, she made herself walk forward.
‘Hi!’ she called out, absently fingering the keys in her pocket and shivering as a blast of cold March air suddenly whipped her hair across her face. ‘I’m sorry if I worried you when I wasn’t here to answer your phone calls.’
His long legs making short work of the flight of steps, Luca planted himself in front of Kate with such a look of fear and apprehension in his eyes that for a moment it took her aback.
‘Why were you at the hospital, Katherine?’ he demanded, hands curving possessively round the tops of her arms in the thin navy raincoat she wore. ‘I have been going out of my mind ever since you rang!’