Happy Mother's Day! - By Sharon Kendrick Page 0,86
first time that it was possible, ‘it was only a matter of time before you did cheat.’
There was a moment’s silence.
‘Now that was a very revealing comment. Don’t you think so, cara?’
Hating the feeling of exposure, of emotional vulnerability, Erin shook her head mutely.
‘So you left in anticipation of my cheating on you just as your father cheated on your mother.’
‘This isn’t about my parents!’
‘I know that, but do you? Let me be clear, Erin. What you are basically saying is that you never expected me to be faithful. You never expected our marriage to last. Does the term self-fulfilling prophesy mean anything to you?’
‘You’ve been telling me half-truths from the moment you met me.’ She heard the defensive note in her voice and bit her lip.
He hit her with his trump card then and watched the guilt wash over her face. ‘And your conscience is totally clear on the truth, whole truth and nothing but the truth front, is it?’ He watched the stricken look of guilt spread across her face and was surprised to find it did not afford him the satisfaction he had anticipated.
Erin studied the toe of her shoe with deep interest as she tried to force the words from her dry throat. ‘Francesco, I’m …’
‘You’re pregnant.’
Her head came up with a jerk. Her wide, shocked eyes meshed with his implacable dark, accusing stare. The air between them vibrated with a static electricity that was almost visible.
‘What did you say?’ Her lips moved, but did the words come out? Erin wasn’t sure—the blood was pounding so hard in her ears that it drowned out everything else. She gave her head a tiny shake to clear her confused, chaotic thoughts. How could he know?
‘You heard me, Erin: pregnant. You are with child … my child.’ His voice dropped a note with each addition and every syllable contained the same fury that was etched in the strong bones of his lean, patrician face.
She shook her head in bewilderment. ‘I don’t understand … how?’
‘How?’ Francesco echoed, in a thickly accented voice that was so hard she barely recognised it. ‘This is how.’
Erin stared blankly at the mobile phone he flung onto the chair. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘The hospital left a message concerning your antenatal appointment.’
Still wearing a shell-shocked expression, she picked up the phone. ‘I must have given my old number. You really shouldn’t have been listening to my private messages, Francesco.’ She realised even before Francesco swore forcibly in his own tongue that it had been a stupid thing to say.
‘I do apologise for violating your privacy,’ he drawled, sounding anything but and looking. Her eyes skimmed his face and her heart dropped like a stone—angry didn’t really cover the explosive fury that was oozing from every perfect, rampantly male pore. Francesco was incandescent!
‘However, I think, cara, that my transgression pales into insignificance compared to your own. I did not try and rob you of your child, Erin.’
Horrified by his interpretation, she lifted her face in shaky protest. ‘That wasn’t what I was doing! I was going to tell you. I really was …’
There was no softening in his harsh, condemnatory attitude as she spread her hands towards him in a gesture of appeal. If anything it seemed to Erin that her silent entreaty had fed the flames of his fury.
He angled a dark brow sardonically and wondered with blighting sarcasm, ‘When exactly? Or were you going to send me an e-mail after you gave birth?’
‘Does it matter?’ Erin’s shoulders slumped, because clearly what she said didn’t matter. Nothing she said or did was ever going to excuse her silence in Francesco’s eyes.
‘It matters to me, it matters to me that my wife thought it unnecessary to inform me she is carrying my child. It matters to me that she has deliberately tried to conceal her condition from me, though,’ he added, shaking his dark head slowly from side to side, ‘how you thought that was going to work I can’t even begin to imagine. You seem to have lost your grip on reality. What were you planning to do—change your name and flee the country?’
Face screwed up in anguish, she shook her head violently from side to side. ‘You make it sound as though I was deliberately trying to deceive you!’ she protested.
‘And you weren’t?’
Erin literally wrung her hands as she struggled to convince him of her sincerity. ‘I can see how it might seem that way to you, but, no—no, it wasn’t like that at all.’