She stared at the bed as if it was a ghost—and in a way it was. And imagine if the ghost of her honeymoon self were to look up and see what had become of her and Matteo. Separated—with only an unplanned baby holding them together. How heartbroken that madly-in-love Jennifer would have been.

‘Our baby should have been conceived in a bed like this,’ she whispered—as much to that ghost of her former self as to the man by her side. ‘Not in some seedy lift.’

‘So many should haves, Jenny,’ he said, and his deep voice was etched with pain, too. ‘We should have listened more. Trusted more. Talked more. We should not have been too proud to say what was on our minds.’

‘We should not have been parted so much,’ she ventured—because this was a game it was frighteningly easy to play. There was a whole list of things they had done wrong without meaning to. Had she and Matteo just got unlucky? Or had they simply been too bound up in selfish interests to cherish their marriage properly?

‘Do you think those problems happen with all couples—only some work out how to deal with them?’ she questioned.

‘I think we both struggled so hard to make it in our own careers that we forgot to put any work into the relationship,’ he said slowly. ‘And I think that once success arrived we felt that our lives were charmed and nothing bad could touch us.’

‘But we were wrong,’ she breathed.

‘Oh, yes.’

‘Oh, Matt,’ she said brokenly.

He wanted to take her in his arms and hold her tight against him, kiss away her cares, but she looked so tense—as if one touch would shatter her into a thousand pieces. In the dim light of the shuttered room he thought how pale her face looked.

‘And now?’ he questioned. ‘What must I do to ensure that there will be no regrets in the future?’

Be in love with me again, she thought. But you couldn’t ask for that. A precious gift like love could only be given, never demanded. ‘You think I have a magic formula?’

Now he noticed the shadows which darkened her eyes and he wanted to kiss them away—but he had forfeited the right to tenderness a long time ago. ‘I am burdening you with too many questions. So sleep,’ he instructed grittily. ‘I will leave you in the peace and the silence and you will sleep.’

And, miraculously, she did. For the first time since she had left Cannes—and maybe even before that—Jennifer slept as if someone had drugged her.

* * *

Sliding on a filmy white kaftan over her swimsuit, she left her hair loose beneath a wide-brimmed hat and went out into the bright sunshine to find Matteo.

He was lying on a lounger by the pool, wearing wraparound shades and reading a film script. He had on nothing but a pair of swim-shorts, and Jennifer’s feet faltered as she grew closer, for the sight of his near-bare body was utterly spectacular. And, let’s face it, she thought, you haven’t seen it for a long time.

His skin gleamed like olive satin, each muscle so carefully defined that he could quite easily have featured as an illustration in a medical student’s anatomy book. Dark hair curled crisply over his chest and arrowed down to a V over his hard, flat belly, darkening over the powerful shafts of his legs.

She blamed the heat for the sudden drying of her mouth as Matteo slowly lifted his head. His eyes were unseen behind the shades, but Jennifer knew that he’d been aware of her watching him.

‘Enjoying the view?’ he questioned softly.

She jerked her head to stare out at the sapphire stripe of distant sea. ‘It’s…exquisite.’

He smiled. ‘Come and sit down over here. I’ll fetch you something to drink.’

Her legs felt like cotton-wool, and inwardly she despaired. Wasn’t the whole point of being here to get herself fit and rested? If she started living on her nerves and constructing fantasies about her ex then she might as well have stayed in England and faced the press.

He brought her something cool and fizzing which tasted of lemons, and she gulped it down.

‘Hungry?’

‘Not really.’

‘Am I going to have to force-feed you, Jenny?’

‘No. Just give me a little time to acclimatise. Anyway, I ate on the plane—and I’m not stupid.’ She sank into a lounger. ‘Ooh, that’s nice!’

‘Isn’t it?’ He gave her a hard smile as his eyes flickered over her kaftan. ‘Aren’t you going to get a little sun on your body?’

What could she say? An excuse would sound feeble but the truth would sound far worse. That she felt suddenly and inexplicably shy about disrobing in front of him.

But you’re having his baby, for God’s sake! And you were married to him!

‘Of course,’ she said lightly, and turned her back.

Behind his dark glasses, a thoughtful look came into Matteo’s eyes. Shyness indicated that she was uncomfortable. Or was it something else? He leaned back against his lounger, affecting rest—but his body was tense as she turned around again and a sigh of something approaching wonder escaped from his lips.

In the bikini, her pregnant shape was like a visual feast—with its brand-new curves and soft shadows. He saw the swell of her belly properly for the first time and was filled with a fierce and primitive pride. For—no matter what the circumstances of the conception—nothing changed the fact that beneath her heart, his child grew.

His own heart pounded, and he swallowed down the sudden lump in his throat. His child.

And Jenny was still his wife. By law they remained married, with all the rights that gave an individual—even in these days when marriages could be dissolved so easily. Was he really going to let that go so easily now, when there was a baby on the way?

True, she might grow strong and well here on Pantelleria, and true, they might fabricate such a wonderful explanation about why she was pregnant with his baby that no one would ever bother them again. But even if this latter and extremely unlikely scenario occurred—where did that leave him?

On the sidelines, that was where. While Jenny would go on to give birth and, sooner or later, another man would fall for her pale blonde beauty and her quirky character and her particular talents—and then what?

He would be relegated to weekends, and then to less and less contact with the child. And why not? He would never have lived properly with its mother—so why should he expect the child to love him?

An unbearable pain caught him unawares. It churned in his guts and twisted in his heart.

At that moment he saw Jenny slide her leg up to bend her knee, and he knew that he still held a powerful weapon. Could he not work on her desire for him and tie her to him with that, even if that was as far as it went?

He lifted the sunglasses from his eyes and put them on the ground as the sun glinted off the pale flesh of her thigh.

‘You’ll burn,’ he said thickly.

She heard the note in his voice and knew what it meant. She knew that she had a choice. She could either thank him for his concern and go up to her room and cover herself from head to toe in Factor 20, or…

She shut her eyes. ‘Do you want to cream me up?’ she murmured.

Her words made him so aroused that for a moment he wondered if he had dreamt them. But the languid pose she was holding told him that she had said them and meant them.

He noticed that she had her eyes closed, and that amused him as he moved slowly towards her. Was she trying to block out the sight of an erection which felt as hard as a rock against his belly?

He kneeled down beside her and squeezed a dollop of cream into the palm of his hand.

‘Turn over,’ he commanded.

She wriggled onto her stomach and, starting with her back, he loosened her inhibitions, unclipping her top and massaging the cool cream into her baking skin.

‘Now lie on your back,’ he instructed huskily.

Jennifer tensed as he peeled down her bikini top, and she nearly passed out with pleasure as he began to circle the palm of his hand over one hard globe, marvelling at the new and intricate tracing of blue veins there.