Proof of Their Sin(45)

He didn’t say anything. She looked at him and his stare held a strange light that was nearly frightening in its intensity. She interpreted it as a demand for an answer.

“Don’t think I’m not tempted.” Lauren looked at fingers that knotted themselves together. “But saying yes makes everything real. I’ll put that off as long as I can. It’s been hard enough telling you and bearing your reaction.” She couldn’t help the edge of rebuke in her tone.

A flinch of compunction flashed across his face, leaving his brows knotted.

“I dread telling Mom,” Lauren admitted. “Anyone else would be tickled to finally have a grandchild, but all she’ll see is the timing. I should have been thinking about her that night in Charleston, you know, not myself,” she said with a rasp of sarcasm. “She’ll threaten to disown me.”

In Charleston. Paolo’s head went back as the words seemed to slap him. Lauren’s bitter heartache was so uncouched and real. Helpless protectiveness ran through him. He didn’t want to be the cause of a rift between her and her mother. He didn’t want their child to be. It struck him that never once over the past few days had he felt fear of his family’s reaction to her pregnancy.

Lauren didn’t have that sense of acceptance. All her little asides about her mother culminated in a picture that showed Paolo how much having this baby was costing her. Involving him made her situation infinitely more complicated, her troubles greater, not easier to bear.

Lauren had come to him for one reason only. He was the father of her baby and her personal ethics demanded she let him know that. Shame swamped him that he had rejected her word and resisted accepting his child for even one moment. At the same time, the reality of impending fatherhood suffused him in a mist of shocked numbness. He barely heard Lauren as she untied her scarf and continued speaking.

“When I found out I was pregnant, I actually considered telling her it was Ryan’s. Pretend I went to a fertility clinic. She’d still hate me though.”

“No,” Paolo blurted out, appalled. He never should have left her vulnerable and coping alone for three months, nursing such desperate thoughts. He should have been with her from Charleston on.

“No, she wouldn’t actually hate me,” she agreed with a nervous glance at him for his vehemence. “But she’d act like she did. I can tell you right now, we could marry in her living room and she’d refuse to come to the wedding. She won’t condone it.”#p#分页标题#e#

“I mean, you can’t tell her the baby is Ryan’s.” He was driven forward to grasp her arms. “This baby is mine.”

His ferocity made her start a little and he unconsciously tightened his grip, staggered as the barriers he’d put up against accepting the baby fried into nothing. The truth was a surety in him. A terrifying excitement.

Lauren wore the same defenseless expression that probably contorted his own face. He hadn’t expected it to be like this. He wasn’t choosing to believe her. Certainty arrived with blunt force and it made him weak and invincible at the same time. He wasn’t acknowledging facts in gentle ripples. Giant tsunami waves of conviction buffeted him, shifting the axis of his life, forging a new potency in him as he took on the emotional load that children were for any caring parent.

His life would never be the same.

“We didn’t just make love that night. We made a baby.” He grappled to absorb that a part of him was growing inside this woman, connecting them forever.

“I know,” she returned, thick lashes blinking fast with shock over eyes that were growing shiny and tender. “I thought I told you that in New York.”

His laugh caught as he pulled her close. Something tore open inside him. No misgivings behind it. Just joy tempered with pent-up prayers for his child’s health and wellbeing. Tenderness for the woman in his arms, growing his child.

“I didn’t want to believe you. I didn’t want to be let down again,” he choked out, beyond moved. Dizzy.

“I wouldn’t do that to you.” She drew back to set a warm hand on his jaw, her touch sincere, her beauty beyond physical. It radiated from her inner being.

The desire he always felt for her took a sharp turn into a swifter current of deeper waters. Kissing her wasn’t a desire, it was a necessity. Gathering her into perfect alignment to his own body, he lowered his head to take her mouth with all the emotion flaring uncontrollably inside him.

Paolo’s kiss was so sweet. Lauren moaned into it, afraid she would cry with joy. This was the reaction she hadn’t dared dream of. He was kissing her like he loved her. She returned his ardor jubilantly, aware at the back of her mind that this could get out of hand fast, but that was okay. They were in complete accord now.