„I‟m not asking you to walk away from anything!‟ Mattie protested desperately. „When the baby‟s born, you can come and visit whenever you want…‟

„When the baby‟s born, there will be no need for that because you will be living with me, under my roof, as my wife. I will not have any child of mine born illegitimate, and don‟t,‟

Dominic raised his hand in rejection of the stunned protest Mattie was about to make, „bother telling me that illegitimacy is the norm these days. Where I come from, babies are born into wedlock.‟

„ Happy wedlock,‟ Mattie contradicted in a shaking voice.

„Happy wedlock is successful wedlock and we have the ingredients to make it work.‟ He ticked them off one by one on his fingers. „One, we like one another. Two, we were great in bed.

Three, we are going to have a child and, like it or not, a child needs the support of both parents.

Both parents, on tap. Four, without love muddying the waters, our partnership stands an even greater chance of survival.‟

This, he knew, was the only way to persuade her. Reason. Cool, calm logic. No mention of his tortured nights when his imagination took flight and refused to come back down to earth.

He would deal with all that himself.

„And what when…the great in bed bit begins to wane? What then?‟

Dominic looked down briefly. Wane? This woman made him feel alive, sensationally so.

He seriously couldn‟t imagine a day when he wouldn‟t want her or want to be with her.

„Why cross bridges before we get to them?‟ he asked. „Now, who have you told

about…this? Your parents? Friends?‟

Mattie shuddered. Living in sin with Frankie might have scraped through her parents‟

moral net, but single and pregnant to a man they didn‟t know and who didn‟t feature as an ongoing part of her life was a different thing altogether.

„I‟ve only just found out myself!‟ she objected. „You‟re the only other person who knows, and I‟m beginning to wonder whether I shouldn‟t have just kept my mouth shut.‟

„I shouldn‟t if I were you.‟ Dominic‟s voice was grim.

„Shouldn‟t what?‟

„Go down the road of thinking what might have happened if you had kept this to yourself.

Because sooner or later I would have found out and then your life wouldn‟t have been worth living.‟

„If that is supposed to reassure me that marrying you is the best thing I could do, then you‟re way off target!‟

„Think about it, Mattie. How do you think I would react, how any normal man would react, if he discovered that he‟d fathered a child without knowing it? If he suddenly bounced into his ex walking hand in hand with a toddler who was his?‟

„A lot of so-called normal men would breathe a hearty sigh of relief that they hadn‟t been landed with the burden of bringing up a child they didn‟t ask for!‟ Mattie flashed back at him.

„We could argue about this till the cows came home. No point. When do you intend to tell your parents?‟

„Soon,‟ Mattie told him uncomfortably. She sneaked a glance at him and hated the way just looking at him could make her feel all hot and bothered and hideously aware of her vulnerability.

„And what do you think they‟re going to say about you living here, pregnant and alone?‟

Not a lot, Mattie thought miserably. They certainly wouldn‟t be clapping their hands with glee. More likely, they would go silent with disappointment and that would be all the harder to bear after their joy at her landing her job. And their relief, even though they had tried hard to hide it down the end of the phone, that she and Frankie were no longer an item.

„Especially when they find out that the father of your child proposed marriage.‟

That conjured up an even more disastrous scenario. „How would they find that out?‟

„Well, I would tell them, naturally.‟

„That would be emotional blackmail!‟

Dominic refrained from informing her that he would use anything to get her back into his life, where she belonged. Not even his pride, which reared up every time he thought about her sleeping with him then dismissing him with a flick of her head, could stop him from still wanting her back, needing her back.

„But of course,‟ he went on smoothly and relentlessly, like a bulldozer ploughing over rough ground, „that would be nothing compared to what our child will feel in the years to come when he or she understands that a family life would have been possible but for the pigheaded stubbornness of its mother…‟

Mattie‟s mouth fell open at this unexplored avenue.

„You wouldn‟t,‟ she gasped.

„I would. Now, let‟s get going.‟

Before she could leap off the bed he was moving swiftly towards the chest of drawers, where he began extracting her clothes, tossing them on the bed—in fact, on her.

The blankness in Mattie‟s head cleared and she scrambled up and began gathering the hurled items of clothing into her arms, while she demanded what he thought he was doing.

Dominic paused briefly to look at her. „Getting you out of here, of course. You‟re coming back with me.‟

„You put those things back! At once!‟

„You‟ll wake the neighbours if you carry on shouting like that. Where do you keep your suitcase?‟ He didn‟t give her time to answer. Just checked under the sofa, which was the only place it was likely to be, and sure enough he extracted it, flipped open the lid and began stuffing her clothes in.

„The rest will have to wait until tomorrow. George and I will come and collect it all. How did you get here anyway? Who helped you move?‟

„You can‟t do this! I‟m not going to marry you, Dominic Drecos!‟

„Tell me you didn‟t lug this stuff over in stages by yourself? In your condition?‟

„In my condition?‟ Mattie was momentarily distracted by the old-fashioned nature of the observation. „I‟m pregnant, not ill!‟

Dominic paused in what he was doing, which was surveying empty drawer number two with an expression of satisfaction. „Well, you won‟t be doing any lugging around of anything when you‟re with me. You need to be taking things easy.‟ He stood up, flexed his muscles and then strode towards the small kitchen while Mattie scrambled off the bed in hot pursuit.

„I told you, I‟m not—‟

„Good. You kept a couple of boxes. That‟ll do for starters.‟ He picked up one of the cardboard boxes that she had stuck under the kitchen table when she had moved and promptly forgotten about. „Sit down. I might as well get started here straight away. Less to pack tomorrow.‟