The doorbell rang.
‘Sugar!’ she exclaimed, and, hauling herself up off the sofa, moved slowly to the door. It was probably Margaret. Since the house next door had been sold while Kelly had been in Italy, her new neighbour—a middle-aged spinster with an elderly mother who suffered from Alzheimer’s and a bachelor brother, Jim, to look after—had taken to calling on Kelly. She hadn’t the heart to turn the woman away.
‘Just coming,’ Kelly called as the doorbell rang again, longer and louder. ‘Where’s the fire?’ she muttered under her breath, and opened the front door.
‘Do you usually open the door without first enquiring who it is?’ Gianfranco queried with a frown of grim disapproval creasing his broad brow.
In the first second of recognition her blue eyes widened, her heart leaping with joy, but instantly reality intruded. She’d tried to tell herself she was over him, had put him out of her mind and her heart. But seeing him before her, looking as rakishly handsome as ever, with a camel cashmere overcoat worn over a perfectly tailored dark business suit, his black hair rumpled by the winter wind, she knew she was not.
‘What’s it to you?’ she snapped, angry at her own weakness where this man was concerned. At the same time she wished she were wearing something more glamorous.
Gianfranco’s dark eyes swept over her face, taking in the tumbled mass of fine blonde hair, the slight blue shadows beneath her magnificent sapphire eyes, the beauty of her face not withstanding her belligerent expression. S
he did not look delighted to see him, and, lowering his gaze to where her breasts pressed firm against the soft blue wool of her sweater, and lower still to where the garment stretched over the soft mound of her stomach, he knew why. So it was true… He took a deep steadying breath.
‘Your protection is everything to me—you are the mother of my baby,’ Gianfranco declared firmly as he stepped into the hall and closed the door behind him.
What little colour she had drained from Kelly’s face, and her blue eyes widened to their fullest extent as she gazed up in pure shock at the man towering over her. Gianfranco here, in her home, and he knew she was having his baby… ‘But…how…?’ She swayed, suddenly feeling faint, and could not get the sentence out, a host of different emotions tangling her tongue.
‘Come, let’s sit down.’ Gianfranco grabbed her arm. ‘It can’t be good for you standing in a cold hall in your condition.’ He unerringly led her into the sitting room of her own home.
‘Now wait a minute,’ she finally managed, shakily finding her voice.
‘I think we have waited rather too many minutes—months, in fact,’ he teased, his dark eyes roaming pointedly down to her stomach and back to her face as he led her to the sofa and eased her down into it, lowering his long length beside her and taking her hand in one of his.
The closeness of his large male body, the familiar male scent that was uniquely Gianfranco, all conspired to make her heart race. A dull red flush suffused her cheeks. It wasn’t fair; he only had to touch her and, even fat and pregnant, she still felt the same instant sensual response, every hair on her body standing on end.
‘How did you find me—and how did you know I was pregnant?’ Kelly asked the question she should have asked the minute he walked in the door, looking somewhere over his left shoulder, unwilling to meet his knowing brown eyes. The fact he had accepted the baby she was carrying was his, without her having to say a word, had totally stunned her.
Gianfranco was not the sort of man to do anything without a reason, and she could think of no valid reason for his being here. He had made his opinion of unwanted pregnancy abundantly clear the one time they had made love. In her secret dreams she had sometimes thought of him turning up on her doorstep and declaring his undying love. But harsh reality told her he was much more likely to take one look at her, perhaps give her a cheque and definitely run.
‘I was at a New Year’s Eve party in Rome. Judy Bertoni was there and naturally I asked after you. She took great delight in telling me you had succumbed to the charms of some local man in Desenzano and that you are pregnant,’ he told her simply. He saw no need to elaborate on the bare facts.
‘You didn’t tell her it was you?’ Kelly asked hastily. The fewer people who knew what an idiot she had been the better, was her reasoning.
One dark brow arched sardonically. ‘I am not a complete fool, Kelly, I knew I had to check with you first. But it took all my considerable will-power not to ask her for your address,’ Gianfranco said with a grim smile. ‘Instead I hired a private detective to discover where you lived.’ He gave a very Latin shrug of his shoulders. ‘And here I am.’ He squeezed her hand in his.
Kelly’s blue eyes involuntarily followed the movement of his broad shoulders, and swallowed hard. He really was a magnificent male animal, and very much here… Not for her, she tried to tell herself, but her raging hormones thought otherwise.
‘You tracked me down?’ She latched on to the detective bit, amazed at the nerve of the man. ‘Do you do that with all your dates?’ she demanded curtly, not sure she liked the idea but helplessly flustered by the sensual warmth of his hand holding hers. Was it only she who felt the electric tension in the air? she wondered, chewing nervously on her bottom lip. Though, on second thoughts, she couldn’t help feeling flattered that he had hired a detective to find her, but she was also wary—she didn’t trust him an inch.
‘So why are you here?’ she demanded bravely, tilting her head to look up at him, and the gleam of triumph in his dark eyes sent a shiver down her spine. Suddenly she had a horrible suspicion she knew the answer to her own question, and she immediately voiced her fear. ‘If you think I am going to have an abortion, forget it!’ she declared, her blue eyes flashing flames. ‘This is my child, my responsibility, and you can get lost.’
‘Dio! Jumping to conclusions as usual.’ Gianfranco leapt to his feet and stormed across the small living room. Tearing off his topcoat, he flung it on a chair and flipped open his jacket; he was boiling with rage. He had been ever since, after months of fighting his desire for Kelly, he had succumbed to the temptation to seek out Judy Bertoni and ask after her. With relish Judy had told him Kelly was pregnant by some local Italian youth. Of course, he had known immediately he was the father, and when he had got over the initial shock he had been furious that Kelly had not told him herself.
‘How dare you say that to me?’ he demanded arrogantly. She saw the naked anger flare in his eyes, and something more she did not recognise. ‘To suggest I would wish to kill my own child? What kind of monster do you take me for? What did I ever do to you to give you such a low opinion of me?’
‘Pretend to be someone else,’ Kelly slipped in snidely.
He stilled in the middle of the floor, his broad shoulders tensing, and said, ‘So I am to pay for that one silly mistake for the rest of my life. Is that why you never saw fit to inform me you were having my child?’ he asked hardly, his hooded eyes half-closed, masking his expression. ‘Is that why you never turned up for our date on the Friday evening?’ With each question he moved a step closer. ‘Is that why you now accuse me of wanting to murder my child?’ Gianfranco asked bitterly, his dark eyes flaring with contempt. ‘Pay-back time on your part? My God, I thought better of you than that, Kelly.’
‘You actually kept our date?’ She was staggered by his revelation, her brief burst of anger draining away as she accepted the thought; it pleased her enormously, and restored some of her battered pride. She had spent the last few months in abject misery because of this man. At the lowest point, when her pregnancy had been confirmed, she had been tempted to call him, but she only had to recall his horror the one time they had made love and he’d discovered she was not protected to know it would be a waste of time. But he was obviously not the complete bastard she had thought him.
Gianfranco focused on her seated figure with a blistering fury that seemed to increase with each word he spoke. ‘Kept it? I waited all night and drank myself into oblivion. And where were you? Marta the housekeeper told me the next day. Back home in England after refusing a free holiday. That’s how much you cared.’
As the meaning of his outburst hit her Kelly could only stare at him open-mouthed. He actually had cared about her. The notion was as startling as it was seductive.
‘Nothing to say? I am not surprised,’ Gianfranco drawled with savage derision. ‘You used me, got yourself pregnant and came scurrying back to England without the least intention of ever telling me.’