The Vengeful Husband (The Husband Hunters 2)

"That means...but that means that I would've been your first...impossible—' Luca broke off and compressed his lips, studying her with shaken dark eyes.

Darcy reddened. 'I didn't want you to guess that night. You said virgins were deeply unexciting,' she reminded him accusingly.

'We both said and did several foolish things that night...but fortunately making Zia was not one of them.' With a roughened laugh that betrayed the emotions he was struggling to contain, Luca closed his hands on hers to draw her closer while he gazed endlessly down at Zia, and then back at Darcy, as if he was being torn in two different directions. 'Per amor di Dio... the truth has been staring me in the face from the start,' he groaned.

'The fact that nobody knew who the father of your child was. You wouldn't say because you couldn't say...you didn't even know my name!' Her anxious eyes were vulnerably wide.

Slowly Luca shook his glossy dark head. 'I saw that photo of Carlton, and he's dark as well. I assumed he was her father and that you still loved him enough to protect him. Then, when you said he wasn't, it still didn't occur to me that she could be my child!'

'You didn't know Zia was born prematurely. She arrived more than six weeks early.'

'I want to wake her up to look at her properly,' Luca confided a little breathlessly as he suddenly released Darcy to look down at his daughter. 'But that's the first lesson she taught me. Don't disturb her when she's asleep!'

'She sleeps like the dead, Luca.'

'Where were my eyes?' he whispered in unconcealed wonder. 'She has my nose—'

'She got just about everything from you.' As she hovered there Darcy was feeling slightly abandoned, and, pessimist that she had been, she was unprepared for Luca's obvious excitement at the discovery that he was a father.

Excitement? No, she certainly hadn't expected that. But then nothing had gone remotely like any of her vague im¬aginings of this scene. Luca had been shocked, but he had skipped the mortifying protest stage she had feared and gone straight into acceptance mode.

'She's really beautiful,' Luca commented with consid¬erable pride.

'Yes, I think so too,' Darcy whispered rather forlornly.

'Per meraviglia...Vm a father. I'd better get on to my lawyer straight away—'

'I beg your pardon? Your lawyer?'

'If I was to drop dead tonight before I acknowledge her as my daughter, she could end up penniless!' Luca headed straight for the door. 'I'll call him right now.'

Drop dead, then, Luca. Darcy's eyes prickled and stung. She sniffed. Of course she didn't mean that. In fact just thinking of anything happening to Luca pierced her to the heart and terrified her, but it was hard to cope with feeling like the invisible woman.

'Aren't you coming?' Luca glanced back in at her again.

She sat in the library, watching him call his lawyer. Then he called his sister, and by the sound of the squeals of excitement Ilaria was delighted to receive such a stunning announcement.

'Zia is mine. Obviously it was meant to be,' Luca drawled, squaring his shoulders as he sank down into the armchair opposite her. 'Now I want to hear everything from the first minute you suspected you might be pregnant.'

'I was about five months gone before I worked that out.'

'Five months?'' Luca exclaimed.

'I didn't put on much weight, didn't have any morning sickness or anything. I was eating a lot, and I got a bit of a tummy, and then I got this really weird sort of little fluttery feeling...that's what made me go to the doctor. When he told me it was the baby moving I was shocked rigid!'

'I imagine you were.' Luca's spectacular dark eyes were brimming with tender amusement. Rising lithely from his chair, he settled down on the sofa beside her and reached for her hand to close it between his long fingers. 'So you weren't ill?'

'Healthy as a horse.'

'And how did your family react?'

'My father was pretty decent about it, but I think that was because he was hoping I'd have a boy,' Darcy admitted ruefully. 'He didn't give two hoots about the gossip, but Margo was ready to kill me. She went round letting every¬one believe the baby was Richard's because, of course, that sounded rather better.'

'What did you tell your family about Zia's father?'

'More or less the truth...ships that pass...said I'd for¬gotten your name,' Darcy admitted shamefacedly.

'How alone you must have felt,' Luca murmured heavily, his grip on her small hand tightening. 'But that night you gave me to understand that you were protected.'

'I honestly thought I was. I didn't realise that you had to take those wretched contraceptive pills continuously to be safe...and, of course, I'd tossed them in the bin the first morning I was in Venice!'

'If only you hadn't run away from the apartment—'

'You'd have stuck the police on me instead.'

'I wouldn't have. Had you stayed, your innocence would never have been in doubt. Why?' Luca emphasised, intent, dark golden eyes holding her more evasive gaze. 'Why did you run away?'