‘I did intend to tell you, Angelo, but, if you recall, you weren’t exactly receptive when we last met!’
‘And you didn’t think that the information was important enough to make a stand!’
‘I didn’t think that it would do any good telling you!’
Angelo stared at her as though she had taken leave of her senses, stared at her until a soft pink glow invaded her cheeks. ‘Run that by me again,’ he said with silky threat. ‘I’m struggling to understand how having my child and keeping it a secret would benefit me.’
‘Look at your life, Angelo! You know where you’re going. You like to be in control. What happened was my fault. I got swept away that first time we…Well, anyway, I wasn’t using any protection on that one occasion, I lied to you when I said I was, and now I’m pregnant. I didn’t think it was right for you to spend the rest of your life paying for the mistake.’
‘And it didn’t occur to you that I should have been given the choice?’
‘Yes, of course it did! Which is why I went to see you, to tell you, but you wanted me out and I realised that leaving was probably the best way.’
‘Handy conclusion, wasn’t it? Any time you had a struggle with your conscience you could always remind yourself that you had tried, after all, given it your best shot.’ He moved to stand in front of her, his towering anger sheathing his body like a steel glove.
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.’