Prognosis Baby Daddy - Amy Andrews Page 0,60

of his life. Worse than finding his brother making love to his fiancée, worse than the news of Mario’s death.

Worse than watching her walk out the door.

Because he’d realised in that moment, with an empty space in the bed beside him, that he loved her. That he’d fallen in love with her the night they had first made love. He’d just been too stubborn to see it.

And from then on, he’d just been plain mad. The first time he’d risked his heart in a decade and it was being ripped to shreds all over again. It was déjà vu and he’d be damned if he would take that sitting down this time. Last time running had been his way of coping.

This time he would fight.

But he wouldn’t fight for Katya. Yet again it had been proved to him that women only brought heartache. Obviously if she could just walk away from him, she didn’t return his feelings. Had only sought him out in Italy when she’d been convinced she couldn’t raise the baby herself.

To use him.

But he would fight for his child. He’d gone from potentially being a sole parent to no baby at all, and if she thought he’d take that without a fight, like he’d taken Mario and Bianca, then she was wrong. He would play a role in this child’s life and she either agreed to that or he would make it his life’s purpose to seek it through any means at his disposal.

He just wished there was a way to make her love him. That he could take her to court and have a judge order her to love him. But he knew it didn’t work like that. That love was either there or it wasn’t.

And it obviously wasn’t for her. Something he was going to have to deal with for the next however many years.

It would be exquisite torture loving her and not being able to tell her. Watching her give birth to their baby. Breast-feeding him. Laughing and talking in Russian to him. Maybe having to put up with another man in her life. In his son’s life.

It would all be unbearable — but he’d do what he had to do to be a father to his son.

Ben gripped a fork absently, concentrating on his anger. He’d need it to harden his heart. She mustn’t know the power she had over him. One woman with the power to crush his heart had been more than enough in his life. And he wouldn’t give it to another, not when his child was in the middle.

Because that had to be his focus now. Their child. Their son. This was what being in London was about. To convince her to return to Italy. To hash out a mutually satisfying parental agreement. And if she didn’t agree?

He’d find a judge who’d force her to.

Katya sat on the back seat of the black cab, watching the lights of London flash by. The taxi pulled up outside the Ritz.

‘No, I’m sorry, there must be a mistake.’ She stared at the opulent building. ‘I said 150 Piccadilly.’

The taxi driver nodded. ‘The Ritz. One-fifty Piccadilly.’

Katya felt her shoulders slump. Of course. The Ritz. Where else? She paid him and alighted from the vehicle. It was a chilly night and she hoped she was dressed well enough for such a swanky restaurant.

The doorman opened the heavy gold and glass door for her and Katya stepped inside with trepidation as she silently cursed Ben. He knew she didn’t feel comfortable in places like this. If he’d wanted to put her on the back foot, he had certainly achieved it!

Ben wasn’t anywhere in the foyer and she peered into the elegant French-influenced surroundings to see if he was waiting for her further along the vaulted gallery that ran the length of the building.

‘Miss Petrova?’

Katya turned to find a concierge in a dark suit with gold braid on his epaulettes addressing her. ‘Yes?’

‘Count Medici is waiting for you in the dining room,’ he said, gesturing down to the end of the gallery.

‘Oh, right...Thank you,’ she said peering in the direction he’d indicated. It seemed like a very long walk.

‘May I take your coat’ he asked.

‘Ah...yes.’ Katya shrugged out of the dark wool. The temperature inside was toasty compared to the chilly night air outside.

Her hands shook and she buried them in her pockets as she walked on equally shaky legs towards the dining room. She passed the elegant Palm Court on her left, where glasses tinkled,