Happy Mother's Day! - By Sharon Kendrick Page 0,118

around to sit beside her on the sofa. ‘Your mother must really hate me.’

Her expression grim, Erin took his big hands between her small ones. ‘My mother rarely thinks of anyone but herself.’

‘But to say such a thing, it.’ For a moment Francesco relived his worst nightmare. Then he took a deep sigh and closed the door firmly on those terrible images. It was a place he never wanted to visit again.

‘You believe me?’

He looked indignant as he lifted her hands to his lips. ‘Of course I believe you.’

Joy exploded inside her.

‘If you thought I’d had an affair, did you not wonder even for a moment whether the baby …’ She lowered her hand to her stomach, carrying his hand with her. ‘Whether he was yours?’

Francesco curled his big hand protectively over her belly and smiled. ‘Not even for a moment!’

‘Well, it would be understandable if you had.’

He shook his head. ‘I knew that you would never try and pass off another man’s child as mine.’

His total confidence drew an emotional sob from her aching throat. ‘God, you’re so …’ She gave a teary sniff. ‘You’re a much nicer person than me.’

He levelled an amused grin at her face. ‘You are the only person who has ever called me nice—not even my own mother thinks I am nice.’ A frown contorted his face as he asked, ‘But if there was no other man, what is it that has been coming between us? You are not going to tell me that you have some stupid idea I only want you because of the baby.’ His face tightened with displeasure at the thought.

‘It did cross my mind, but, no, not now. It’s just I knew you didn’t love me when you married me.’

‘I didn’t love you?’

She shook her head.

‘You were in a terrible place after Rafe killed himself.’

Francesco flinched at the sound of his brother’s name. ‘I thought we had dealt with this idea before.’

‘Oh, I’m not saying you deliberately used me to ease the pain. But you were all over the place emotionally speaking … it was like, you know, turning up the radio to drown out the road drill.’

‘I didn’t turn to prescriptive drugs to dull the pain, I turned to you? Presumably you thought I would wake up one day fully healed and find you surplus to requirements.’

She nodded.

Succumbing to mirth, he threw back his head and laughed.

‘You thought I was having an affair,’ she pointed out when he had stopped.

‘Point taken,’ he conceded. ‘But, per amor di Dio, how could you think something so crazy? Rafe’s death had nothing to do with me marrying you! Except in the fact it made me appreciate that a man should grab happiness with both hands when he had it within his grasp … It is just a pity that my pride had made me lose sight of this for a while.

‘Pain is part of the grieving process. I felt pain when Rafe died and I still do. I suspect I always will. While I did not embrace that pain, cara, I never tried to escape it.

‘As for you being some sort of distraction, God knows,’ he said, tracing a finger down the sweet curve of her cheek with his thumb, ‘you are that, but it is total nonsense. I did think of Rafe when I saw you that first day, because I know that he would have recognised what you were immediately.’

‘And what is that?’

‘My soul mate, the one woman I was destined to spend the rest of my life with. My brother always was more intuitive and much better with words than me.

‘Me, I saw you standing there, the freckles on your nose, the hair like fire.’ He sighed and looped a strand around his finger. ‘I saw your belligerence, your bravery, your sheer bloody-minded stubbornness and I knew that I wanted to wake up every day looking at that face.’

The tears ran unchecked down Erin’s cheeks. She was so happy she felt as though she might never walk at ground level again, but always float six inches above the ground.

‘As for deceiving you—that was not deliberate, though I did perhaps seek to take advantage of your obvious affinity for cowboy boots.’ He laughed when the colour flew to her cheeks. ‘When we met I felt somehow that I was starting life afresh. I did not mention things because they did not seem important.’

By the time Francesco stopped talking there was a glazed look on Erin’s face. ‘I’ve been feeling