‘In that moment, when I realised you could have died having my child when I wasn’t even there, I recognised something I had never really thought existed: I love you quite desperately.’
‘So you didn’t love me when we married,’ she murmured sadly to herself, but Gianfranco heard.
‘I didn’t know what love was,’ Gianfranco said urgently and, grasping her slender shoulders, he made her face him. ‘You want the truth?’ His dark eyes blazed with a determined light. ‘You shall have it. I met you, a bright, beautiful girl, and I wanted you. Then, because of a stupid masquerade about my name, I lost you. In my pride, my arrogance, I vowed I would not chase after you when you stood me up. So I did not. I saw other women, but it was no good, I suffered torment through months of celibacy.’ He glanced at her. ‘It had never happened to me before.’
Kelly amazed herself by smiling at his arrogance. ‘Poor you.’ But his words gave her the first glimmer of hope.
‘Yes, well.’ He grimaced with a wry twist of his lips. ‘Even when I discovered you were pregnant and searched for you I still never thought of marriage. But the minute I saw you again I heard myself proposing marriage. I was as astounded as you were then; I justified it by telling myself it was the sensible thing to do. My mother was hinting I should marry and provide an heir, so why not?’
‘I don’t think I want to know this,’ Kelly cut in
‘You wanted the truth and you are getting it,’ Gianfranco prompted bluntly, his mouth twisted and hard. ‘It crossed my mind you might be a gold-digger, and Olivia certainly thought so, but I didn’t care. Perhaps I loved you then but could not admit it, or didn’t need to…’ he offered with unconscious masculine conceit. ‘All I knew was that I wanted you and the baby. I moved you into my home and my bed, and my life went on much the same as before.’
He shrugged as though he was ashamed of his lack of insight. ‘I can remember wondering why my married male friends complained about the confines of married life. I felt no such constraint. I did not alter my lifestyle one iota, and I had the added bonus of having you in my bed at night. Then you complained about Olivia and I was hit by divided loyalties.’
‘Was she your lover?’ Kelly asked painfully. He had said he loved her, but not until after she had given birth to Annalou, and she did not know how that made her feel.
‘No, never.’ His hands tightened on her shoulders. ‘You have to understand about Olivia. I was sailing with Alfredo the day of the accident. He died and I was saved, and I have carried the guilt with me ever since. I always thought it should have been the other way around.’
Her response was a long sigh. ‘Oh, no.’
‘Yes,’ he admitted, his expression bleak. ‘With hindsight I know I over-compensated. I dismissed your fears about Olivia because of my own feelings of guilt and because, if I am honest, it made for an easier life to blame your hormones. Hell, what did I know about pregnant women? When I should have supported you I failed miserably. I put up with more from that woman than you can imagine. But the last day, when you said you saw us in each other’s arms plotting against you, I swear on our daughter’s life it was not like that.’
Kelly drew in a sharp breath—to vow on Annalou’s life, he had to be telling the truth. ‘Then what was it like?’ Kelly pressed him. She needed to know before she could let the tiny flame of hope in her heart blaze free.
‘She knew you had gone to the doctor’s, she knew I was planning to take you on holiday, and she flung herself at me ranting about how much she loved me, and when we could marry. I was horrified—I had never, ever thought of her in that way. It was then I finally realised she was very ill. I tried to calm her down, but she declared we would have to wait until you produced a boy before we could marry. I guess what you saw was me restraining her by the arms, after having told her she was talking rubbish and I was certainly having no more children.’
Kelly opened her mouth to speak, but Gianfranco went on in a harsh voice, ‘She was back in the mental hospital two weeks after you left. She recovered, and the man she’s married is a widower with three children. She got what she wanted. But it was too late for me; because of my own blind insensitivity and pride I had lost you and our child. Which brings me back to the present.’ As if compelled, he bent his dark head and kissed her, hard and brief, before rearing back slightly, a dull red flush staining his high cheekbones. ‘I love you too much, Kelly,’ he grated in a tortured voice. ‘I cannot let you take the risk of having another child. I couldn’t live without you.’
She stared at him, and what she saw in his dark eyes, the love, the torment, made her heart expand in her chest until she thought it would burst with incredulous joy. There was no doubting his sincerity: Gianfranco did love her.
Suddenly the world was a marvellous place to Kelly, and hope and happiness surged through her. Blue eyes glowing, she said, ‘I love you too, but you are crazy, Gianfranco.’
‘Crazy!’ he exclaimed and, pulling her onto his lap, he added, ‘Crazy in love. But as your husband I have to protect you from yourself,’ he said seriously. ‘No more children.’
Kelly curled up on his lap and linked one arm around his broad shoulders. She knew he needed to be convinced his very real fear was groundless. ‘You can’t stop me.’ She lifted her finger and put it over his lips for a moment as he would have objected. ‘And you’re wrong; there is no risk, or none that every pregnant woman in the world does not face.’ Her hand dropped from his face and she grasped his arm to emphasise her point. ‘I am not my mother—she died from complications and, to be blunt, because, although she was forty-two and considered at risk, she insisted on having the child at home. The baby was delivered with the cord around his neck, dead. The midwife did her best, but when my mother haemorrhaged it was another two hours before she made it to the hospital.’
‘Your father must have been mad to let her stay at home,’ Gianfranco commented in typical autocratic macho fashion.
‘That was exactly what Tom said.’ Kelly felt the tension in his broad frame at the mention of Tom. ‘Tom was a lifelong friend of my mother’s—they were in the orphanage together, and were lovers in their youth. Tom went to sea, and when he came back my mother had married my dad. Tom was like an uncle to me, a friend of the family; he appeared now and then with hosts of gifts. But after my mother’s death he had a furious fight with my father—he blamed him for Mum’s death—and we never saw him again. But I always had his address.’
A dawning realisation made Gianfranco’s dark eyes gleam with relief. ‘No wonder my detective could not find you. No relation, and no contact since you were a child.’ He shook his dark head and looked down into her lovely face, wrapping his arm more firmly around her waist, pressing her closer to the warmth of his body. ‘You took a big chance searching him out,’ he said seriously, an oddly speculative expression in his black eyes. ‘He could have been an axe-murderer, anything.’
‘You really are a worrier,’ Kelly teased with a grin. ‘Anyway, I knew no one else,’ she said simply. ‘And you haven’t needed to use protection, because he was never my lover,’ she added for good measure. It still hurt that Gianfranco had assumed the worst about her. ‘I never had a lover, which is just as well, the speed at which I seem to get pregnant,’ she added with dry humour.
His incredible dark eyes closed for a moment, and then he opened them and his voice was hard, quivering with emotion he no longer tried to hide. ‘Dio grazie.’
‘Tom was a good man; he loved Annalou and I, and I miss him,’ Kelly said softly.
Gianfranco drew in a deep breath and looked into her expressive sapphire eyes. He was going to tell her the truth, to exonerate his own behaviour, but the sadness he saw stopped him. His investigators had discovered Tom had never been a sailor, but he had travelled abroad—and spent quite a lot of time in jail for fraud. Gianfranco knew what went on in some jails, and he had genuinely feared for Kelly’s health. The relief of knowing she had never slept with the man, or any other, was overwhelming, and he smiled gently down into her beautiful face. It was no wonder Tom had been able to keep Kelly hidden so successfully. The guy had been a master of the art.
He put his hand under her chin and tilted her face up. ‘I’m sure he was, Kelly. He kept you and Annalou safe and he gave you both back to me. For that I will always be grateful.’
He brought his head down to cover her mouth with his own. She felt the rapid thumping of his heart against her breast as he eased her against him and her lips parted willingly, warmly, to the thrusting demand of his tongue. He kissed her with a hungry, desperate need until, lifting his head slightly, his lips moved against her smooth cheek. ‘I loved you and longed for you for three years; I still do, and always will, Kelly.’ His words vibrated against her skin, and echoed to her heart’s core.
Kelly looked deep into his eyes, searching for the truth, and she shivered at the raw emotion she saw there. ‘And the baby?’ she had to ask.
He jerked his head back and looked straight at her. ‘We will have the best medical care on the planet, and if it is a boy we will call him Tom.’