Happy Mother's Day! (9 page)

In the end it seemed easier to do nothing. To let the baby grow inside her while she existed in the curiously detached state of well-being which seemed to have descended upon her, like a comforting cloud. It was as if she’d been given an important project to work on—and, being Aisling, she threw herself into it wholeheartedly.

As the weeks slid inexorably into months, she read every book on pregnancy which her local store had to offer. Her diet had always been healthy, but she went for it in a big way—and discovered a deep love of spinach. Once the morning sickness had passed, she found she had an amazing amount of energy, and so she swam at her gym before work, the gentle exercise calming her for the day ahead. It was as though she were living in her own little private bubble of a world—where outside forces had no place.

Only Suzy acted as the voice of her conscience. ‘Aisling—this is crazy. You’re ballooning by the day. You’ve
got
to tell him!’

‘And I will.’

‘When?’

‘I don’t know. When it’s the right time.’

‘But time’s running out!’ cried Suzy, eying the bump with a mixture of fascination and alarm. ‘You’ll be thinking about giving up work soon.’

Aisling stared down at her stomach as if it belonged to someone else and then gripped the desk with her hands, as if to steady herself. Not only had her body taken on a life of its own, but so had her emotions, and as the weeks passed they grew stronger and stronger. Night after night, she lay in bed while the face of her baby’s father swam into her mind’s eye and some deep yearning filled her with an inexplicable kind of sadness. ‘Some women work until they go into labour,’ she said hoarsely.

‘But it isn’t mandatory,’ said Suzy. ‘Anyway—that’s something we ought to talk about, too. How long you’re going to take as maternity leave—or whether you’re planning to give up work altogether.’

And that was what freaked Aisling out and brought her crashing to her senses. The sudden dawning that her life was about to change irrevocably—that everything she had strived for could be lost by this unplanned pregnancy. And that she hadn’t got into this predicament on her own.

The feeling which had been building and building inside finally burst out and she knew an overwhelming need to tell Gianluca. To connect. To let him know the momentous thing which was about to happen—no matter what had gone on between the two of them.

She looked at the calendar which hung by the little window in her kitchen and stared at the date ringed on it as if someone had crept in while she’d been sleeping and
drawn it there. It couldn’t really be August, could it? She couldn’t really be due to give birth in a fortnight? What if the baby came early—before she had told him?

With a sudden sense of urgency, she lifted the phone and punched out the number of his office in Rome—although she had to speak to three different people before she got through to the great man himself.

‘Aisling,’ he murmured. ‘This
is
a surprise.’

But his voice sounded remote. Wary. As if he was trying to second-guess why she was ringing him—something which he had clearly not been expecting and definitely hadn’t wanted, by the sound of it. They both knew there were no outstanding contracts to be discussed—maybe he thought she was contacting him in a transparent attempt to get him into bed again? Aisling shuddered.

‘I’d like to see you, Gianluca.’

‘Really? Want to tell me why?’

‘There’s something I need to discuss with you.’

‘Go ahead—I’m free now.’

Aisling flinched. He couldn’t have made it more plain that he was no longer interested in her. She was past tense and he wanted her to understand that. But a sense of duty and of indignation and some biological imperative to share this with her baby’s father drove her on. ‘I’d rather not talk about it on the phone.’

‘Now I’m intrigued.’

Aisling ignored that. ‘Are you coming over to England at all?’

‘Regrettably not,’ he purred. ‘I’m pretty tied up here at the moment. Perhaps you’ve read that I’ve just bought a football stadium and it’s keeping me pretty busy?’

‘Yes,’ said Aisling tightly. Who could have forgotten her appalled shock when she’d seen the photograph in the international section of her business paper which had shown Gianluca laughingly surrounded by a posse of scantily clad cheerleaders?

In his office, Gianluca looked out onto the monument of Vittorio Emanuele as it gleamed brilliantly white in the sun, remembering Aisling staring out at it and him inviting her to his vineyard, that first night he’d slept with her. Yet there had only been two nights—and both times it had been the most fantastic sex. She was an interesting woman, there was no denying that. She hadn’t pestered him for more—she had kept to their pact, and, undeniably, his opinion of her had gone up as a consequence.

So did this phone call mean that she was hungering for a little more of the pleasure they’d shared?

And wasn’t he?

‘You miss me?’ he questioned.

If the situation hadn’t been so deadly serious, Aisling might almost have laughed at his arrogance. ‘That’s not why I’m ringing.’

‘Then just why
are
you ringing?’ he questioned coolly.

It was not something she had planned to say over the telephone—but what choice did she have?

‘I’m pregnant, Gianluca. With your child.’

There was a silence so long, that for a moment Aisling thought that the connection might have been broken, but as soon as she heard his harsh, cold voice she knew she had been wrong.

‘What’s your address?’ he demanded.

‘W-why?’

‘Why do you think?’ he demanded furiously. ‘I’m on my way!’

G
IANLUCA
was angry when the plane touched down at the private airfield outside London and even angrier when his car became snarled in a jam outside the capital.

‘Can’t you hurry it up?’ he demanded.

The chauffeur shot a quick glance in his mirror. ‘I can try, sir.’

To give the man his credit, he did. They passed the river and then row upon row of narrow streets, crammed with houses which looked tiny to Gianluca’s eyes.

‘We’re here, sir.’

‘Pull up a little way back,’ Gianluca instructed—because instinct made him want to see her before she saw him. As the car pulled to a halt in front of a tall house, not far from the tube station, Gianluca sat there—brooding and waiting.

How things could change, he thought—and how quickly.

Earlier that day, he had risen from his bed and showered, slid into one of his immaculate suits and drunk some coffee. He had been excited about a new merger—but even more excited about setting up a school sports programme which was to be affiliated with the new football stadium.

Before his breakfast had even been completed he had
arranged to buy a new helicopter and refused the opportunity to take part in a forthcoming television series about successful tycoons. Overall, his feeling as he had been driven to work had been one of a quietly underlying sense of satisfaction. The world according to Gianluca.

And then had come Aisling’s phone call.

Apparently he was going to be a father!

Cancelling all his meetings, he had made a few calls before immediately arranging a plane to take him to England. During the flight and the drive from the airport, his thoughts had spun round and round in an unchanging circle as he tried to work out the approximate date of the last time he’d slept with her. Because if she was telling the truth and he was the father of her child as she had implied—then
the baby must be due any time soon!

He stared out at the tree-lined road. It was the most beautiful English summer’s evening—with the intense green leaves of the trees almost blocking out the bright blue of the sky above. Sunlight dappled through the available space, making bright, unmoving patterns on the dusty pavement—for there was not a trace of wind.

But Gianluca found himself looking at it with a highly critical eye. This place was pleasant enough, yes—but it was surrounded by the rest of the city with its noise and crowds and potential dangers. Was this where she planned to bring up the baby? In a culture so alien to his own? And was she intending to give him any say in the matter?

And then he saw a woman walking down the road, walking slowly and rather awkwardly as if the weight of the bags she carried and the heat of the late afternoon were proving too much.

His eyes narrowed and for a moment he didn’t recognise her, even though the jacket of her pale summer suit had been cut cleverly in an attempt to conceal her pregnancy. But there was no tailor in the world—no matter how talented—who could disguise the tell-tale signs of impending birth and Gianluca stared at her incredulously as she grew closer.

Madonna mia
—but this could not be Aisling!

Narrowing his eyes, he realised he hadn’t thought of the baby in real terms—his head had known the facts, but his heart had refused to accept them. He must have slept with her last … last November. He knew that. But time passed and you barely noticed it. That was how lives went by.

Yet this.

He swallowed.

This was a physical manifestation of time passing—because Aisling looked as if she could give birth at any moment!

For a moment, a dark tide of fury washed over him as he acknowledged that she had kept him out of the loop right until the very end. How dared she? How
dared
she?

His heart was pounding but he sucked in a deep breath because instinct told him that he must tread very carefully. That he needed to know what her game was. If ever there was a time when he needed his ability to think logically, it was now.

He let her walk right past.

She didn’t notice the car. Didn’t stop to glance at the shadowed figure sitting statue-still in the back seat. He could see the faint beads of sweat on her pale forehead and watched while she walked up to her front door and put the
carrier bags down, briefly searching around inside her handbag before pulling out a set of keys.

He waited until the front door had shut behind her. Like a tiger who forced himself to linger despite knowing that his prey lay waiting, Gianluca made himself stay in the car for a full five minutes. And then he stepped out.

‘Wait here,’ he told the driver.

‘Any idea how long you might be, sir?’

‘None,’ Gianluca clipped out and walked up to the door.

It was clearly an apartment—for there were several bells—and he jammed his thumb on the one which said ‘A. Armstrong'. And then he remembered her telling him that she lived in a
one-bedded
apartment!

Her voice—sounding disembodied—floated out from the intercom. ‘Hello?’

‘Hello, Aisling,’ he said silkily.

In her stuffy apartment, Aisling’s knees went weak and she slumped against the wall, and that was just pure physical reaction to the sound of his deeply sonorous voice. She had known he would come, yes—of course she had—and yet the reality of his impending presence was like a fierce body-blow.

‘Gianluca?’ she said uncertainly.

‘Just open the door, Aisling.’

At least his quietly furious voice gave her some clue what to expect. Weakly, she lifted her hand to buzz him in, when that horrible tight sensation in her back which had been plaguing her since yesterday caught her off guard, and she hesitated.

‘Open the door!’

Sucking in a deep breath to try to ease the spasm, she
pressed the entry button and then went to stand beside the French windows she’d just opened—as if trying to put as much space between them as possible.

Stay calm, she told herself.
Just stay calm.

But that was easier said than done. Her heart was pounding so rapidly and so loudly that she was worried about the baby. The
baby.
She felt the hot shudder of her breath as the tightening in her back increased. Why the hell was she getting
back pain
at a time like this? Hearing the sound of his approaching footsteps, she turned to look out at the garden, not wanting to see his face. Not daring to.

Why, Aisling? Frightened you’ll give yourself away—let him know that you can’t get him out of your head, and now he’s embedded his seed in your body, too.

Shutting the door with a click which sounded like a gun hammer being cocked, Gianluca stopped and stared at her for one long moment. From the back she looked no different. Just a tall, slim woman in a linen skirt and silk shirt, her dark hair caught up in a chignon—though, unusually, a couple of strands of it had escaped and were clinging damply to the back of her long neck.

‘Turn around,’ he said, and then when she didn’t he spoke again. ‘I said, turn around and look at me, Aisling.’

Slowly, she complied and Gianluca sucked in a disbelieving breath as he stared at the ripe swell of the unborn child. Even out on the pavement it hadn’t seemed quite real. She could have been one of the many passers-by who played their walk-on parts in everyday life—but up here there was no denying it. The evidence was here—as large as life itself.

‘What the hell have you
done?’

In a way his livid eyes and furious voice helped. At least it told her what she had suspected—that Gianluca would want nothing to do with this baby. Yet Aisling had been too independent for too long not to bristle at the unfairness of his accusation. And wasn’t justifiable anger a stronger emotion for
her
to hide behind? Wouldn’t that prevent her from doing something regrettable like sinking to the floor and begging him to take care of them both?

‘What have
I
done?’ she demanded. ‘Shouldn’t that be what have
we
done? Surely you know that it takes two to make a baby!’

‘But
which
two?’ he lashed out.

Aisling blinked at him uncomprehendingly. ‘I’m sorry?’

‘There must have been others! Other men? How many others, Aisling?’ The white-hot heat of fury that he was going to be a father and that
she hadn’t told him
now manifested itself in angry accusation. ‘How do I know it’s mine?’ he demanded.

Did he really think so little of her that she could pretend about something as monumental as
that?
Well, she certainly wasn’t going to grovel in order to try to prove herself. ‘Do you imagine that I would attempt to foist a false paternity claim on you? What would be the point of that?’ she iced back. ‘Take a damned DNA test if you don’t believe me!’

He stared her out, believing her—her defiance telling him that she spoke the truth. She was a strong woman, yes, but no woman would have been able to maintain such a huge lie about something like this—not in the face of his formidable line of questioning.

‘You told me you were protected,’ he said quietly.

How
humiliating
it felt to discuss it so cold-bloodedly.
Like picking over the debris after a wild party when everyone else had gone home. ‘And I was.’ ‘So what happened?’

‘I had taken antibiotics and they reacted against the pill. I didn’t realise. It was an accident, Gianluca.’ ‘I see. How convenient.’

‘Really?’ Her head jerked up. ‘Convenient for whom? What are you suggesting—that I became pregnant in order to trap you?’

He didn’t answer that, just continued to fix her in the ebony spotlight of his eyes, because at the moment he needed facts before reasons. ‘When is it due?’

Aisling swallowed down the bitter taste of fear in her mouth. ‘Any day now,’ she whispered, and the answering light of comprehension which flashed in his black eyes made him look oddly vulnerable and she felt her heart twist with sudden longing. And you stop that right now, she told herself fiercely. He’s about as vulnerable as a steel trap.

Any day now.
Any day now and his child would be born. Gianluca shook his head as he took in the enormity of this news. She was glaring at him like an adversary, and her attitude made him want to …

He let out a heavy sigh. To what? He didn’t know. But he could see that her skin was paler than perhaps it should have been—the beads of sweat about more than a stuffy summer’s day—and he was stricken with a momentary guilt.

‘Hadn’t we better sit down?’ he suggested. ‘You in particular.’

Proudly, Aisling drew her shoulders back, then winced as the nagging pain in her back began to grow more intense. ‘I don’t remember inviting you to stay.’

‘Sit down!’ he urged urgently.

Aisling did as he said, suddenly realising just how tense she was and as her hand fluttered instinctively over her bump she saw his eyes drawn to it with an expression of horrified fascination.

‘You need a drink,’ he said grimly. And so did he.

Pointing wordlessly towards the kitchen, she didn’t contradict him. She needed something. Anything. She felt faint. Sick—and she didn’t want to harm the baby.

It wasn’t a huge apartment and the doors along the corridor on the way to the kitchen had been left open. All bar one. He passed a gleaming white bathroom and, right beside it, a closed door.

He knew he shouldn’t open it. That this was her place and itwasn’t his right to do so. Yet what Gianluca had learnt had turned his whole world upside down. Did she have the monopoly on secrets? Did she control all the information which flowed in and out of his life? Like hell she did!

Quietly, he turned the door handle and just stood there, as if he had been carved from rock. For this was Aisling’s bedroom, yes—with its big bed and its neat counterpane. And off the bedroom was what must have once been a dressing room and which she was now clearly intending to act as a nursery. Silently, he walked towards it and it was as alien to his life as if a meteor had crashed in through the ceiling and embedded itself on the soft, primrose-coloured carpet.

She must have spent years wanting and waiting for this baby, he thought—because the tiny room was furnished with loving care and precision to detail. Yellow seemed to be the main colour. Did that mean she didn’t yet know the sex—or was that something
else
she was withholding from him?

There was an old-fashioned crib draped with gauzy material, which had some kind of gold thread running through it—making it look like a canopy of sunshine. There was a mobile hanging over it, composed of different animals—both wild and domestic—and Gianluca’s mouth curved as his fingers drifted over the sleek body of a tiger.

Quietly, he shut the door and his eyes were hooded when he returned to the sitting room a couple of minutes later, with a beaker of iced water for her and a glass of wine for himself. She took the tumbler from him with shaking fingers and gulped some down, spilling a little as she did—so that drops of it splashed over the material which strained over her bump.

But he didn’t sit down, he just drank off half a glass of wine with a speed he’d never used before and stood staring down at her. ‘Why didn’t you tell me sooner?’ he demanded.

Why, indeed? Because she was frightened of his reaction? And hadn’t she been right to be—judging by the thunderous look on his face? ‘There never seemed to be a right time,’ she said.

‘So you wait until now—when it is almost over,’ he said bitterly.

She looked at him. ‘Over? It hasn’t even begun, Gianluca.’

‘Madre di Dio!’
he exclaimed, in a strangled voice as the monumental significance of what had happened really hit home and he half wanted to turn his back and to walk away from her—to erase her and this unplanned baby from his life. Yet there was part of him which wanted to go over to her, to take away her hand and to lie his own over her belly—perhaps to feel the infant kick beneath him.

He took another swallow of his wine and looked away.
He must keep focussed and deal with the facts, he reminded himself. Then, and only then, would he be able to decide what action to take.