The Vengeful Husband(63)

'She sleeps like the dead, Luca.'

'Where were my eyes?' he whispered in unconcealed wonder. 'She has my nose—'



'She got just about everything from you.' As she hovered there Darcy was feeling slightly abandoned, and, pessimist that she had been, she was unprepared for Luca's obvious excitement at the discovery that he was a father.



Excitement? No, she certainly hadn't expected that. But then nothing had gone remotely like any of her vague im­aginings of this scene. Luca had been shocked, but he had skipped the mortifying protest stage she had feared and gone straight into acceptance mode.



'She's really beautiful,' Luca commented with consid­erable pride.



'Yes, I think so too,' Darcy whispered rather forlornly.



'Per meraviglia...Vm a father. I'd better get on to my lawyer straight away—'



'I beg your pardon? Your lawyer?'



'If I was to drop dead tonight before I acknowledge her as my daughter, she could end up penniless!' Luca headed straight for the door. 'I'll call him right now.'



Drop dead, then, Luca. Darcy's eyes prickled and stung. She sniffed. Of course she didn't mean that. In fact just thinking of anything happening to Luca pierced her to the heart and terrified her, but it was hard to cope with feeling like the invisible woman.



'Aren't you coming?' Luca glanced back in at her again.



She sat in the library, watching him call his lawyer. Then he called his sister, and by the sound of the squeals of excitement Ilaria was delighted to receive such a stunning announcement.



'Zia is mine. Obviously it was meant to be,' Luca drawled, squaring his shoulders as he sank down into the armchair opposite her. 'Now I want to hear everything from the first minute you suspected you might be pregnant.'



'I was about five months gone before I worked that out.'



'Five months?'' Luca exclaimed.

'I didn't put on much weight, didn't have any morning sickness or anything. I was eating a lot, and I got a bit of a tummy, and then I got this really weird sort of little fluttery feeling...that's what made me go to the doctor. When he told me it was the baby moving I was shocked rigid!'



'I imagine you were.' Luca's spectacular dark eyes were brimming with tender amusement. Rising lithely from his chair, he settled down on the sofa beside her and reached for her hand to close it between his long fingers. 'So you weren't ill?'



'Healthy as a horse.'



'And how did your family react?'



'My father was pretty decent about it, but I think that was because he was hoping I'd have a boy,' Darcy admitted ruefully. 'He didn't give two hoots about the gossip, but Margo was ready to kill me. She went round letting every­one believe the baby was Richard's because, of course, that sounded rather better.'



'What did you tell your family about Zia's father?'



'More or less the truth...ships that pass...said I'd for­gotten your name,' Darcy admitted shamefacedly.



'How alone you must have felt,' Luca murmured heavily, his grip on her small hand tightening. 'But that night you gave me to understand that you were protected.'



'I honestly thought I was. I didn't realise that you had to take those wretched contraceptive pills continuously to be safe...and, of course, I'd tossed them in the bin the first morning I was in Venice!'



'If only you hadn't run away from the apartment—'



'You'd have stuck the police on me instead.'



'I wouldn't have. Had you stayed, your innocence would never have been in doubt. Why?' Luca emphasised, intent, dark golden eyes holding her more evasive gaze. 'Why did you run away?'



'It's pretty embarrassing waking up for the first time in a strange man's bed,' Darcy said bluntly. 'I felt like a real tart—'



'You don't know the first thing about being a tart, so don't use that word,' Luca censured with frowning reproof.
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But a split second later he was smiling that utterly char­ismatic smile of his, sending her heartbeat bumpety bumpety-bump as he asked all sorts of questions about Zia, demonstrating a degree of interest that was encyclopaedic in its detail. At the end of that session, he murmured with considerable assurance, 'Well...there'll be no divorce now, cara mia,'



Even though that development was what Darcy had hoped for from the instant she knew that she loved Luca, she didn't like the background against which he had formed that instant arrogant supposition. She tugged her hand free of his, her face frozen. 'Why? Do you know something I don't?'



Luca dealt her a startled, questioning look. 'We have a child. She needs both of us. I simply assumed—'



'I don't think you should be assuming anything in that line!' Darcy told him roundly. 'It may be important that Zia has a father, but I'm concerned about what I need too.'