The Italian Billionaire's Pregnant Bride(32)

‘I think the baby’s coming!’ Kathy whispered shakily, white as the wall behind her. ‘But it’s too soon.’

Nola Ross, a sensible brown-eyed blonde in her thirties, pressed Kathy down into a chair. ‘Breathe in and out slowly. It may just be a Braxton-Hicks contraction.’

But the pains kept on coming and the two women decided that Kathy should go to the local hospital. There, Kathy insisted that Nola went back to the agency because she knew that the other woman had clients to meet. The doctor gave Kathy medication in an effort to stop the contractions and made arrangements to have her transferred to a facility with a neonatal unit. By that stage several hours had passed. As there was no bed free, she was kept on a trolley while she waited for the transportation to arrive.

Lying there, Kathy prayed and struggled to keep panic at bay. She was only thirty-five weeks pregnant and knew that her little girl would be at risk if she was born too early. The past seven months seemed to run on fast forward through Kathy’s mind. She had not worked as Nola’s domestic support for very long. No sooner had Nola had her own baby than her husband had taken off with another woman, plunging the Ross family into chaos. During that testing time, Nola and Kathy had become firm friends. By now Kathy had recovered from her early pregnancy sickness and helped out at the estate agency while Nola was briefly on maternity leave. She’d discovered that she was a whizz at selling houses! It was now three months since Nola had engaged a full-time nanny and hired Kathy as a saleswoman instead. In every way that mattered, Kathy’s move from London to a small market town in Devon had proved an unqualified success.

But now Kathy was fast sinking into a pit of dread and self-blame. Determined to establish a secure base for herself and her child, she had worked hard because a career with prospects was the best possible safety net for a single parent. But had she worked too hard? Stressed too much? Rested too little? Once those preliminary bouts of nausea had melted away, she had felt amazingly healthy. Slowly but surely, her unborn baby had become the most important element of her world. The discovery that she was having a little girl had simply intensified her feelings. It had never once occurred to Kathy that her own body might let her down.

‘Kathy…?’

As she recognised that unforgettable dark-timbred drawl shock flooded Kathy’s taut length. She turned her head on the thin pillow, her apple-green gaze alight with astonishment. Sergio Torrente was poised several feet away just staring at her with sombre dark-as-night eyes.

‘Are you okay?’ he breathed tautly.

‘No…’ She squeezed out the word and it got tangled up in her vocal cords, and the next thing she knew she was sobbing as though her heart would break. In recent months, rigid self-discipline had prevented her from giving way too often to unproductive thoughts. His actual presence, however, was much more challenging at a moment when her defences were down and her emotions were out of her control. ‘Go a-away!’ she told him chokily.

In answer, Sergio made an unexpected move that had all the hallmarks of spontaneity. He smoothed her tangled hair off her damp brow and gripped her trembling hand in his. ‘I can’t leave you alone. Don’t ask me to do that again.’

Kathy made use of the hanky he had produced for her use. ‘How did you find out I was here?’

‘Right now that’s not important. I’ve already talked to the doctor. No doubt the staff has done their best, but you are lying unattended on a trolley in a corridor,’ Sergio murmured in a wrathful undertone. ‘That is not an acceptable level of care.’

‘It’s a small hospital and there’s nothing more they can do for me at present,’ Kathy mumbled unsteadily.

His hold on her fingers tightened. ‘I have an air ambulance on its way and an obstetrician waiting to take charge. Please let me help.’

Kathy did not even have to think about how to respond to that offer, because in terms of treatment it was superior to anything else immediately available to her. Her spirits also received an immediate boost from the obvious fact that he placed as much importance on the safe birth of their child as she did. ‘All right.’

His lean, darkly handsome features were tense and he made no attempt to hide his surprise. ‘I thought you’d make me sweat through every possible argument.’

‘All I care about is what’s best for my baby,’ Kathy admitted tightly. ‘At this moment our differences don’t matter.’

Everything moved very quickly after that. Attended by paramedics, she was stretchered onto the air ambulance. For the first time in months, she found herself actually worrying about what she looked like and she couldn’t get over how silly and superficial she was being. How could she waste energy worrying that her eyelids and her nose might be pink and swollen? Or wondering if her large tummy equalled Mount Everest while she was lying flat? At best, she knew she had to look tired and tousled like most heavily pregnant women after a more than usually trying day. Even Sergio was a touch less perfect than usual, she reasoned in desperation. He had loosened his silk tie, dishevelled his black hair with impatient fingers and a blue-black shadow of stubble was beginning to define his stubborn jaw line and strong, sensual mouth. But he still looked totally amazing to her.