Happy Mother's Day!

‘You are angry because you know I am right,’ he observed with unforgivable accuracy. ‘However, I did not come here to discuss your mother.’ I came here to hear you tell me you are carrying my child. ‘There are things we need to discuss.’

As Erin met his dark eyes her secret had never felt more of a burden. She gave an indifferent sniff.

‘You’re miserable?’ He looked as though the idea did not displease him. ‘Well, if you are it’s your own doing. You are the author of your own misery, Erin.’ And mine.

The claim made her stare. ‘Me …!’ She loosed an incredulous laugh.

He bared his teeth in a white humourless smile. ‘Yes, you!’ he flung back, dragging a shapely hand through his dark hair. ‘From the outset you did not trust me. Every absence you expected me to account for, every woman I spoke to you regarded with suspicion.’ Breathing hard, Francesco fought to contain his escalating resentment and anger.

‘You weren’t talking to that woman, you were kissing her!’ The knife-cut of jealousy and betrayal was just as painful now as it had been on that night.

‘Erin, she had been drinking champagne—she kissed me.’

His dismissive shrug made Erin see red. Breathing hard, she pinned him with an angry glare. She doubted he would dismiss it so readily if the situation had been reversed!

Of course he’d managed to make the entire situation seem perfectly innocent, but how many times had she seen her father offer a totally plausible explanation for his serial philandering? He had been so convincing that half the time her mother had ended up apologising for doubting him! She was never ever going to fall into that trap.

‘So you’re the innocent victim?’ she suggested bitterly.

Francesco dragged an angry hand through his hair. ‘What was I meant to do … scream?’ he suggested derisively. ‘Have her arrested? Tell her my wife will think we’re in love?’

His biting sarcasm brought a fresh flush of anger to her cheeks. ‘What you were not meant to do was kiss her back,’ she retorted.

‘Grow up, Erin!’

The weary recommendation drew a sharp gasp of anger from her throat.

‘And don’t blame me for your self-esteem issues.’

‘Don’t try and make it out to be about my problem.’

But didn’t he have a point? Hadn’t part of the problem been that deep down she had never really been able to believe that a man like Francesco could really want somebody like her? She had turned a deaf ear to her doubts because she had wanted him so much, but had she ever really expected it to last?

Francesco’s dark lashes lifted from his chiselled cheekbones that were lent extra prominence at that moment by the two bands of febrile colour along the sharp angles. His eyes were smouldering with an anger he was barely suppressing. ‘You haven’t the faintest idea what is typical of me, Erin, or you would not treat me this way.’

‘Is that a threat?’

He folded his arms across his chest and gave a slow, dangerous smile that made her heart beat a little faster. ‘It is a simple statement of fact—’

The response dragged a dry laugh that bordered on hysteria from her aching throat … nothing about Francesco was simple. Her life had become impossibly complicated from the moment they had met!

Every time he looked at her the sheer enormity of her betrayal in concealing her pregnancy hit Francesco afresh.

Part of him wanted to demand the truth from her. He might have done just that had the situation not been further complicated by the fact he couldn’t look at her without experiencing an even stronger compulsion to pull her into his arms and fill his nostrils with her warm feminine scent.

His bleak eyes stilled on her angry face. ‘What happened to the woman I married?’

The unexpected question sent a stab of pain through Erin. The expression in his eyes told her that whatever feelings he had had for the woman he spoke of were dead. The realisation hurt a lot more than it ought to have.

‘The woman who was warm and spontaneous …’

Erin tossed her head and shrugged. The weak quiver in her voice spoiled her tough pose as she claimed belligerently, ‘She w-wised up.’

‘Your father cheats therefore all men cheat?’

Erin’s eyes fell from his uncomfortably perceptive gaze. Francesco had touched on a subject that had been in her thoughts frequently during the last few weeks, and common sense told her he had a point.

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