Happy Mother's Day! - By Sharon Kendrick Page 0,111

told him in a voice that shook with the strength of her feelings. ‘It …’ she swallowed and expelled a long shaky sigh ‘.it was painful,’ she explained with admirable understatement. ‘If I had to do it again I’d … I simply don’t think I could bear it.’

Francesco’s expression was stunned as Erin absently dabbed the back of her hand to her cheek to blot a tear running down her face. ‘You won’t need to. We will make it work,’ he promised thickly.

She expelled a deep gusty sigh. ‘We don’t really have much choice, do we?’ she said, struggling to sound pragmatic.

‘Did you ever consider raising the baby alone?’

The question drew a shaky laugh from her.

‘What,’ he asked, looking considerably taken aback by her response, ‘is so funny?’

‘I suppose the big worry for some women in my situation might have been whether the father would want to know, or if he would question the baby was his. That was never my problem. Don’t you think, Francesco, that I haven’t always known that there was no way you’d allow your child … a Romanelli … to be brought up without his father?’

‘But of course a child should be brought up with two parents within the safety of—’

Shaking her head, Erin cut across him. ‘Any child would be a hell of a lot better brought up in a single-parent situation than in a home where the parents have a relationship based on lies and deceit. Believe me, I know … oh, God.’ She covered her mouth with both hands. ‘My parents’ marriage has really messed me up, hasn’t it?’

‘Was it very bad?’

Erin looked at him, gave a twisted little smile that just about broke his heart, and then with a faraway look in her eyes began to recount a story.

‘I was walking to school one day and I saw my father, which was strange because he had promised me the night before that he would bring me back a nice present from his trip to York. Anyway, there he was standing on the doorstep of a house not half a mile from ours kissing a blonde. Half my class saw him, too—kids are not kind,’ she said with massive understatement.

Francesco growled a violent epithet in his own tongue.

‘How old were you?’

‘About six or seven, I should think.’

He shook his head, his face creased in a grimace of disgust. ‘Dio! Did you tell your mother?’

‘I did. She got hysterical; my father was there. There was a lot of shouting and he packed a bag and walked out. Mum turned to me and screamed, “Look what you’ve done!”

‘I thought it was my fault. I didn’t realise until much later that she already knew. She always had known; she had chosen to turn a blind eye.’

Francesco would have done anything in that moment to assuage the pain he saw in her eyes. He would also have liked to throttle the selfish couple who had used her like a bit-part player in the long-running soap that was their marriage.

He might have to tolerate them because he was married to their daughter, but he was determined that he would let them know his feelings on the subject. And let them know also that he would no longer tolerate the situation.

‘I suppose you could say that I was conditioned from an early age to expect men to cheat.’

‘People make mistakes.’

Puzzled by the odd intensity of his gaze, she nodded. ‘Sure they do; it’s part of being human.’

‘If they are genuinely sorry and regret that mistake, should they not be given a second chance?’

The colour seeped from her face. ‘Was that a confession?’ she asked.

‘I have nothing to confess to.’

Shocked by the discovery that she believed him Erin expelled a long, shaky sigh.

‘I know.’ The relief of being freed from all those doubts was incredible. If Francesco ever cheated he would tell her. He just wasn’t a sneak-around sort of guy.

‘What did you say?’

‘I said that I believe you.’

Francesco searched her face. What he saw there caused his shoulder to relax. Their eyes clung until finally he nodded.

‘Thank you,’ she said, heaving a sigh of relief. ‘God, you must think I’m a real head case.’

When he finally spoke his voice was pitched seductively low and his accent was more strongly defined than usual. ‘No, I don’t think that. I think you are a perfect fit. I would call you a perfect fit.’

Erin drew a shuddery breath as images conjured by his throaty words floated through her head of sweat-coated