But fighting the anger. She could tell from the way his jaw clenched. He was forcibly biting back what he wanted to say. Her mind played with the pleasing fantasy of how peaceful life would have been if she had really just run away. At least for a few years. Then she remembered the stress that had been eating away at her.
‘There’s no point laying into me, Angelo,’ she said quietly. ‘Now that you know, I shall try and include you in our child’s life. I understand that you might want to help support him, or her, financially, but I just want you to know upfront that I won’t accept any money from you for myself.’
Angelo gave an incredulous laugh and moved to one of the chairs, where he promptly sat down, crossing his long legs. ‘That’s very generous of you, Francesca. Sadly, it falls somewhat short of what I had in mind.’
‘What did you have in mind?’ Francesca asked faintly. She unconsciously placed one hand protectively on her stomach.
‘Something a little more…shall we say, involved?’
‘What do you mean by that?’ Visions of him showing up every afternoon on her doorstep flooded her mind. In the space of a few seconds she had a blinding vision of him always being around, a stranger with whom she had once shared a fleeting past, a stranger she would continually struggle to fall out of love with. It would never work.
‘I mean,’ Angelo explained patiently but ruthlessly, ‘I don’t intend to be sidelined into visitor mode. I didn’t ask to be catapulted into fatherhood but, now that that’s the reality, I intend to deal with it.’
‘Deal with it?’ Francesca didn’t like the sound of that. ‘It’s not a knotty work problem, Angelo!’
‘No,’ he agreed smoothly. ‘But, like every other situation in life, there is a solution and the solution I have in mind will be a permanent one.’
‘I won’t let you take this baby away from me!’ She stood up, trembling with a mixture of apprehension and anger and immediately sat back down. ‘You may have a lot of money but there’s no court in this land that would tear a mother apart from her child because of that!’
‘Nor should there be. Do you really think that I would be monstrous enough to suggest such a thing? I was raised in a very secure family environment, both parents very active on the upbringing front. I would never contemplate splitting a mother from her child to pursue fatherhood on my own.’
‘What then?’
‘We will be married.’
Four words dropped into the silence like time bombs. Time, for a few seconds, seemed to stand completely still and the colour drained from her face. She shook her head slowly, in a daze.
This time, Angelo thought, sensing the sour whiff of refusal, there would be no running out on him. He would marry her for the sake of his child if he had to haul her up the aisle kicking and screaming. It should have made him feel enraged and impotent at the situation thrust upon him, but he found himself contentedly watching her squirm. Why was that? He skirted over the business of trying to work that one out and maintained his silence.
‘That’s a crazy suggestion.’ Francesca tried a laugh which stalled in her throat. ‘People don’t just get married because of a pregnancy. Not in this day and age.’
‘Maybe that’s what’s wrong with the world.’ Angelo shrugged. ‘However, I’m not one of those people. I don’t walk away from my responsibilities in the hope that someone else will come along and pick up the pieces.’
‘I wasn’t asking you to run away from your responsibilities!’ Francesca cried. ‘I already told you that you can have as much input as you like into what goes on!’ Already she could see the huge complications that would arise from that, but none of those complications would rival the ones raised by her marrying him.
‘Not good enough,’ Angelo pointed out patiently. ‘What happens when you find another man? Do I resign myself to sitting back in the shadows while my child calls another man Daddy?’
‘This is ludicrous! I haven’t even had the baby yet and you’re talking about what might or might not happen in the years to come!’