‘You thought I would lie about something like this?’ she questioned wearily.

He lifted his dazed eyes to her face to study that, slowly and properly, and there he could see changes, too. For her skin was whiter than milk and there were dark shadows beneath her eyes. He knew that pregnant women were supposed to glow from within, yet her eyes were dull, with none of their customary inner fire.

‘Dio! What have you been doing to yourself, Jenny?’ His eyes narrowed. ‘Come through and sit down!’ he commanded. ‘At once.’

Jennifer laughed. After doing his utmost to wriggle out of coming to see her—how dared he? ‘It’s my home and I won’t stand for being bossed around by you!’

He sucked in a low breath. ‘I will forgive you your stubbornness because of your hormones. But I am telling you this—if you do not do as I say and go and lie down on the sofa, then I shall pick you up and carry you there myself!’

‘Isn’t that how we got ourselves into this whole mess to begin with?’ she questioned bitterly.

Matteo opened his mouth to ask the question which was uppermost in his mind, but something told him to wait until she was comfortable.

He went through to the kitchen to make coffee while she settled herself, clicking his lips with disapproval as he looked inside the fridge. He carried the tray through and poured her a cup—just the way she liked it—and watched with approval as she slowly sipped it. His own lay cooling. Suddenly he could wait no longer.

‘It is mine?’

She put the cup down quickly, before she dropped it. She had been expecting this, and had tried to tell herself that it was not an unreasonable question under the circumstances. But knowing something and feeling something were two entirely different things, and Jennifer felt as if he had driven a knife of accusation through her heart.

‘Yes.’

‘You are certain? There is no other candidate?’

Her mouth crumpled with hurt and scorn. ‘Candidate?’ she echoed. ‘You make it sound like a presidential election! No, there isn’t another “candidate”. I haven’t slept with anyone else since the day I first set eyes on you.’

He looked up. ‘You haven’t?’

She heard the macho pleasure in his voice and felt as if she’d been scalded. ‘No. Unlike you.’

His eyes narrowed. ‘But…how can this be, Jenny? How can it?’

She looked at him. ‘You’re thirty-three years old, Matteo—do you really need me to tell you?’

‘You took a chance like that when we were separated?’ he demanded incredulously. ‘You risked getting pregnant?’

Something inside her snapped. The weeks of waiting and wondering and worrying all came to a head. ‘How dare you make it sound as if it was something I planned?’ she exploded. ‘It happened in a lift, for God’s sake! A lift which you found! If anyone planned it, it must have been you!’

‘Oh, don’t be so ridiculous!’ he countered, and he saw her eyes darken in response. With a giant effort of will he drew a deep breath, trying to contain his emotions. But it wasn’t easy. Yet he knew that he had to make allowances for her condition. He had to. For Jenny held all the cards, and if he was not careful…

‘If you were unprotected then you should have told me, Jenny. And, yes, we were hot for each other—but there are other ways we could have pleasured each other without risking this type of consequence.’

Jennifer clapped her hand over her mouth as if she was going to be sick. ‘I’m having a baby!’ she choked. ‘And all you can think about is mutual masturbation!’

‘Jenny!’ he protested. ‘How can you say that? This is not like you!’

‘What isn’t? I don’t know what is like me any more! And what do you expect me to say in the face of your monstrous accusation? If you must know—I was still on the Pill—’

‘And why was that?’ he shot back immediately. ‘If, as you say, there was nobody else but me and we were divorcing?’

Jennifer’s hand fell from her mouth to lie protectively on her belly as his suspicions reinforced how hopeless it all was. ‘Because my periods are heavy—remember? My doctor thought it advisable. But it must have let me down.’ She gave him a crooked kind of smile. ‘Don’t they say that the only surefire form of contraception is abstinence?’

‘But you never got pregnant when we were married—when we were having sex every second of the day!’

‘Maybe I wasn’t taking it as fastidiously as I used to.’ Jennifer shrugged listlessly. ‘Blame it on me, if it makes you feel better.’

‘I don’t want to blame anyone!’ he grated. ‘Recriminations aren’t going to help us.’

Matteo was silent for a moment as for the first time in his life he felt authority slip from his fingers. He could not get his way here by coercion or charm. Jennifer was in the process of divorcing him. She no longer loved him. What happened now was her decision. She was in the driver’s seat, and suddenly he felt out of his depth. ‘What do you want to do?’ he questioned quietly.

‘I’m having the baby,’ she said flatly.

‘Of course you are!’ But a great warm wave of relief rolled over him and for the first time he smiled—a smile so wide that he felt it might split his face in two. ‘And look at you, Jenny—you are so big…it must be…’

She could see him doing mental arithmetic and the expression on his face was almost comical. Jennifer smiled too—realising how long it had been since she’d done that. ‘Nearly sixteen weeks.’

‘That long?’ he breathed. ‘My God. Jenny…this is a miracle.’

‘Yes,’ she said simply. And in that moment the divorce and the anger and the bitterness and the tearing apart of a shared life all seemed inconsequential when compared to the beginning of a brand-new life.

But her emotions were volatile, and hot on the heels of her heady exhilaration came the despair of the situation into which their baby would be born.

A shuddering sob was torn from her throat and Matteo sprang to his feet, going over to her side and taking her hand between his. ‘You are in pain?’ he demanded.

She shook her head. ‘No, I’m not in pain,’ she sobbed. ‘I’m just thinking how hopeless this all is.’

‘Shh.’ Now he lifted his hand to her wet cheeks and began to smooth the tears away, his heart contracting in genuine remorse as he saw the expression in her blurry eyes. ‘It is not hopeless,’ he said softly.

‘Yes, it is! We’re getting a divorce and you don’t love me!’

‘But, Jenny, I will always—’

‘No!’ She sat up, her face serious, the tears stopping as if by magic. ‘Never say it, Matteo,’ she urged. ‘Don’t say something to try and make it better, because if it isn’t true then it will only make it worse. I’m not a little girl who needs to be given a lolly because she’s hurt her knee. This isn’t about me, or the way I feel, or the mess we’ve made of our relationship. This is about someone far more important than both of us now…our baby.’

Matteo stared at her, his fingertips lingering for one last moment on her face. ‘You sound so strong,’ he breathed, in open admiration.

‘I have to be,’ she said simply. ‘I’m going to be a mother—maybe it comes with the job description.’

And he needed to be strong, too.

He needed to take control. But he must not do it in a high-handed way or she would rebel; he knew that. He must allow Jennifer to think that she was making all the decisions.

‘Have you thought about what you want to do?’

‘I’ve tried.’ There had been a fantasy version, about taking a time machine and fast-rewinding so that the episode in the lift had never happened. Or back further still, to a time when they’d still been in love and they could have conceived their baby out of that love, instead of out of lust and anger and passion.

But she was dealing with reality, not fantasy—and that posed all kinds of problems.

‘Oh, Matt—I just don’t know what to do for the best. If I stay around here—or even if I go back to the States—it’ll soon become obvious that I’m pregnant.’ She glanced down at the swell of her belly. ‘Though you can tell that even now, can’t you?’