Happy Mother's Day!

‘I’m not lying, Francesco. I have no idea what you’re talking about. Please tell me what my mother told you.’

‘While you were in hospital she rang me and implied that after you left me … that you, that you met someone else.’

‘You think I had an affair?’ The sheer absurdity of the suggestion drew a laugh from her throat.

‘You don’t have to pretend, Erin …’

As her thoughts raced Erin’s eyes started to fill.

Seeing the sheen in the luminous depths, Francesco, misreading their cause, groaned. ‘We will work through this,’

‘Work through it?’ she echoed.

He had been thinking that she was suffering from a guilty conscience.

And he was prepared to forgive her!

If she had ever doubted the depth of his love she didn’t now. She could only imagine how hard forgiving such a lapse would be for someone with his pride.

It represented nobility of epic proportions!

‘You think I had an affair and you’re willing to take me back. You must love me very much?’ she said in rapturous wonder.

‘More than life,’ he confirmed, causing more tears to leak from her eyes.

‘That is so … oh, my God, Francesco, I don’t deserve you,’ she said in a choked voice. She took the tissue he handed her and blotted her face, smiling through the tears up at him. ‘My mother was stirring …'It would be a long time, she reflected, her expression momentarily hardening as she thought of her mother, before she would forgive her for this malicious meddling.

His dark glance sharpened and flickered questioningly across her face. ‘What are you telling me?’

‘I’m telling you she was lying. I had no affair.’ Please let him believe me. ‘I couldn’t,’ she told him simply.

‘You’re the only man I have ever been with. The only man I’ve wanted to be with. The idea of another man touching me the way you do makes my skin crawl,’ she revealed with a shudder. ‘Before you I even thought I was not very highly sexed … frigid, I suppose.’

There was a long silence while he searched her face. Erin returned his gaze, her eyes glowing with her love for him, a faint smile making her soft lips quiver.

‘My God … can this be true?’ He sighed, a feverish shudder running through his lean body. ‘I have been through such agonies,’ he revealed, dragging a shaking hand through his hair. To think of another man’s hands on her had made him sick to the stomach and filled him with a murderous rage the like of which he had never imagined he was capable of.

‘Oh, I think I do.’ Erin pulled herself into a sitting position and tucked her feet under her. ‘I’m fine now,’ she said quickly as Francesco opened his mouth to reproach her. ‘An imagination can be a terrible thing, can’t it?’ she added softly.

He nodded. ‘It is not something I would wish on my worst enemy. Thinking of you with … I wanted to kill him, but the worst part was the knowledge that it was my own stupid fault if you had turned to someone else. I knew how insecure your parents’ relationship had made you. I should have made allowances. My God,’ he breathed, coming around to sit beside her on the sofa. ‘Your mother must really hate me.’

&nbs

p; Her expression grim, Erin took his big hands between her small ones. ‘My mother rarely thinks of anyone but herself.’

‘But to say such a thing, it.’ For a moment Francesco relived his worst nightmare. Then he took a deep sigh and closed the door firmly on those terrible images. It was a place he never wanted to visit again.

‘You believe me?’

He looked indignant as he lifted her hands to his lips. ‘Of course I believe you.’

Joy exploded inside her.

‘If you thought I’d had an affair, did you not wonder even for a moment whether the baby …’ She lowered her hand to her stomach, carrying his hand with her. ‘Whether he was yours?’

Francesco curled his big hand protectively over her belly and smiled. ‘Not even for a moment!’

‘Well, it would be understandable if you had.’