An Innocent, a Seduction, a Secret

The doctor left the room and Sebastio moved over to the bed. Edie forced herself to look at him. For a second there was something raw in his expression, but then he masked it. Her silly heart fell.

‘Edie... I owe you an apology. I’m sorry I didn’t believe you. If I had, then I would have insisted on you seeing a specialist and this wouldn’t have happened.’

He looked tortured, and in spite of herself she felt her heart ache. She shook her head. ‘This had nothing to do with you believing me or not believing me. Everything is fine. You do not get to blame yourself for this.’

The fact that Sebastio obviously acknowledged the baby was his felt almost irrelevant right now. Edie knew that the one thing she would not be able to deal with was Sebastio’s pity. Because now he would have to admit that he might have been wrong about accusing her of manipulating their whole relationship, and then he would realise she’d meant it when she’d said she loved him...

She wouldn’t be able to bear that.

She’d actually prefer his disdain and distrust. She was too vulnerable to take his pity on board.

He opened his mouth to speak but she said, ‘No. I don’t want to hear it, Sebastio. Your note made things perfectly clear. We can discuss what happens next when I’m discharged. But until then I don’t want to see you.’

Maybe by then she would have recovered her composure enough to discuss things without falling apart.

‘Edie...’

She turned her face away and closed her eyes. ‘I’m quite tired. I don’t want to talk about it. Please, just go.’

* * *

For a long moment Sebastio stood there, but he knew it would be futile to try and talk to her now, no matter how much he wanted to. Or needed to.

He left the private room and stood at the window, seeing how Edie had curled up on her side, away from him. She was so slender, fragile. And yet he knew the core of steel within her now.

He had a flashback of her marching into his study in Richmond and saying, ‘I want you to make love to me.’ The fiercely determined look on her face had been mixed with something much more vulnerable. And then he thought of how she’d so expertly called him out on his deeply embedded guilt complex. She’d known him better than he’d known himself.

He’d got it so wrong. And he’d started to realise that last night, in the middle of a glittering function in Paris. In the kind of milieu he’d avoided for so long by playing rugby, before tragedy and family legacy had forced him back into that world.

He’d seen a vision of himself in the future, still alone amongst the same social piranhas. Clinging on to his rigid beliefs. His toxic cynicism. The full enormity of the fact that Edie was pregnant with his child had hit him, finally sinking in, and an indescribable feeling of joy had bubbled up inside him, breaking apart the protective shell he’d worn for so long.

He’d changed his plans to come back to London as soon as possible, suddenly filled with a sense of dread that it might be too late. And then Matteo had called. And when Sebastio had seen Edie curled up on the couch looking so pale and vulnerable he’d alm

ost lost it. She’d been far too reminiscent of another pregnant woman he hadn’t been able to protect.

He hadn’t been able to stop the insidious spreading of guilt, which had been compounded as the consultant had confirmed that of course Edie had been telling the truth about her cancer.

And then she’d cut him off. Told him to leave.

What had he expected? For a moment a sense of bleakness pervaded Sebastio as he looked at Edie’s slight form under the bed covers. It couldn’t be too late. Surely if she’d meant what she’d said...?

It was bitterly ironic, but for a man like Sebastio who had never admitted to feelings as wishy-washy as hope and optimism, suddenly they were the only things he had to cling to...

CHAPTER TEN

WHEN EDIE WOKE again Matteo was in the room. And for the next few days Matteo was her constant companion. When she asked about Sebastio he just said something vague about him having returned to Argentina on business.

He wasn’t even in the country. Edie felt acutely disappointed, in spite of her brave words to him to leave her alone.

When she was discharged with a clean bill of health it was Matteo who took her back to the apartment and who cared for her. She hadn’t wanted to worry her parents, who were only just back from their cruise. Not after everything they’d been through before. She planned on going up to visit once she’d passed the three-month mark.

Sebastio rang intermittently, but their conversations were clipped and impersonal. He asked how she was and she said fine. He told her he would be in Argentina for another week or so and they would talk when he got back.

Edie dreaded the prospect as much as she welcomed it. But in the meantime, because she was going crazy, she was going to do everything she could to start feeling in control of her life again.

A week later

Sebastio stood across the street and took in the scene. Edie was in one of the main Marrotts windows, working on a new display. He was vaguely aware that it looked like a display for bed linen, complete with bedroom furniture. She was dressed much as he’d first seen her, in black trousers and a grey sleeveless top, a white shirt.