The Italian's Wedding Ultimatum Read online

  Hands wet, Sam spun around. "You don't tell my parents to leave!" she snapped. "The only person leaving here is you."

  "No, he's right, Sam. We should go. You have things to discuss."

  Sam stared at her father in amazement. "What happened to Promise me you'll never see this man again?" she demanded.

  "I didn't have the full facts," her father retorted. He nodded towards Alessandro and cleared his throat. "I might," he conceded, "have spoken out of turn."

  "You are a father. I would have reacted the same way in your place," Alessandro said, taking the hand that was extended towards him.

  Men... Sam, watching the man-to-man handshake, was feeling nauseous. "Sorry to interrupt this male bonding," she gritted between clenched teeth. "But actually you can all go!"

  "Really, Sam," her father reproved. "Under the circumstances I think it's about time that you started showing a little maturity." He turned to Alessandro. "I can rely on you to do the right thing?"

  Alessandro, looking pale but composed, nodded. "You can."

  Sam stood there in open-mouthed amazement as George guided his wife from the flat, pausing only to nod in a stomach-turning man-to-man way to Alessandro, who had apparently been transformed in his eyes from a defiler of innocence to a decent sort.

  "Enjoy the warm approval while it lasts," Sam suggested as the door closed. "He won't be so keen on you once he realises that you're not about to marry me."

  Alessandro opened his mouth, then stopped and appeared to change his mind about what he had been about to say. "When were you going to tell me?" His lips twisted as their eyes connected. "Or were you?"

  Sam felt a guilty flush over her fair skin. "Don't take that tone with me." she snapped, reinserting her hands up to the elbows into soapy water.

  Alessandro's narrowed eyes stayed on her slender back as she hunched over her diversionary chore. "Well, were you?"

  "Yes... No..." She drew a deep breath, "Eventually, I suppose. I really don't see why you're making such a big thing of this."

  "You don't...?"

  She flashed him an exasperated look over her shoulder and saw that his normally animated features were set in a stone-like mask. "It's not like I'm asking you to support me or anything," she pointed out reasonably. Maybe, she thought suddenly, he imagined she had ideas of using the baby to get her hands on some of his enormous fortune? Maybe, she speculated, going cold at the thought, it had crossed his mind that she'd got pregnant on purpose with that view in mind...?

  "By most people's standards I make a pretty good living - very good, actually. There's no way I'll need any help financially. If you like, I'll sign something."

  "Sign?"

  Wiping her dripping hands on the legs of her jeans, she turned around, her expression earnest. "To say I've got no claim whatsoever to your money just because of the baby. Honestly, I don't want a penny from you." Her reassuring smile wobbled in the face of the murderous glare she got in response.

  She found his response puzzling. He had a lot of money, by all accounts, but even very rich men, and it sometimes seemed to Sam even especially rich men, were notoriously reluctant to be parted from any of their cash. Maybe he hadn't understood what she was saying? She decided to spell it out.

  "I'm not looking for any financial hand-outs."

  "You will sign something?" A muscle in his jaw clenched as his eyes sealed with hers. "You are talking about money?"

  She nodded her head vigorously, to confirm the fact she had no avaricious expectations. "That's right. You really shouldn't bother your head about this - it'll work out fine." Sam wished that she was half as confident as she sounded. The truth was that, even putting to one side her concerns about the actual physical process of giving birth, the idea of having sole responsibility for another human being made her feel totally inadequate.

  "So you have everything sorted?"

  His tone made her flush. Did he think she didn't know that her life was about to change for ever?

  "I'm aware that I'll have to make some adjustments - of course I am. And obviously I've not worked out all the details yet," she admitted, skimming a defensive frown up at him. "But I've only known a few weeks."

  The inarticulate sound that emerged from between Alessandro's clenched teeth stopped her dead.

  "You have known a few weeks longer than I have."

  Observing for the first time the pallor that lent a grey tinge to his naturally vibrant skin tones, and the white line around his sensually sculpted lips, Sam's over-developed empathy sprang into painful life.

  "I'm so sorry," she said, her earnest tone filled with self-recrimination as she recalled the mind-numbing shock she had experienced when she had realised she was pregnant.

  Alessandro looked startled. "You are sorry?"

  Not understanding the odd inflection in his voice, she nodded. Even a man as pragmatic and in control as Alessandro had a right to fall apart at a time like this. And Alessandro probably was the most in control sort of guy she had ever met. Except in bed. He was not always in control in bed. Without meaning to, she thought of skin against skin-which was a mistake, because wave after wave of scalding heat spilled through her body while the muscles in her abdomen went into painful spasm.

  "Is something wrong?"

  Tilting her head up to his, she lied smoothly through her fixed smile. "I'm fine," she said, rubbing her goosebump-covered forearms.

  His narrowed eyes scanned her face. "Well, you don't look it."

  "I don't enjoy scenes."

  "Then perhaps," he counselled, "you should not invite dramas."

  Sam took a deep, wrathful breath. "Invite! I didn't invite anything, including you or my parents." Her lower lip quivered. "All I want is to be left alone."

  "Grow up, Sam."

  This piece of bracing advice brought a militant sparkle to her eyes. To be told twice in the space of an hour that she was being immature, and by men both times, was too much to take. "You're calling me childish!" she exclaimed. "And I suppose it was sophisticated and mature to strip off and come out of my bedroom that way?"

  "I did not appreciate being treated like an embarrassment."

  "You were never keen to broadcast the fact we were lovers before."

  "I only ever went along with what you wanted, which was my first mistake." he observed heavily.

  What she wanted? That was rich. "While you wanted to shout it from the rooftops, I suppose?"

  "Well, I did not want to creep around as though we were doing something to be ashamed of."

  "I wasn't ashamed. I knew you were-"

  "I was what?" he prompted.

  Sam shook her head. "It doesn't matter." Finding out he was going to be a father the way he had must, she realised with a fresh wave of empathy, have been like being hit over the head with a large blunt object.

  "You're probably in denial." The cat from next door jumped in at the open window and absently she reached out to stroke it.

  "Denial?" His eyes flickered down as the cat brushed against his legs before disappearing under the sofa.

  Her slender shoulders lifted. "I was," she admitted. But having your body change on an almost hourly basis was kind of hard to ignore even if you wanted to, and pretty quickly she had become fascinated with what was happening. How could she not? It was all a bit of a miracle... a scary miracle, maybe, but still a miracle.

  Alessandro's head jerked up. Sam found his expression unsettling, but then she found most things about Alessandro unsettling. And on the bright side he had stopped looking at her as though she was demented, though she suspected this situation was temporary.

  "When did you realise you were pregnant?"

  Unconsciously she pressed a hand to her stomach and admitted huskily, "I think I sort of knew straight off. When I couldn't put it off any longer I did a test - four tests, actually," she corrected, recollecting with a wry smile her inability to believe the proof of her own eyes. "This wasn't the way I intended to tell you. Not," she added with a rue
ful burst of honesty, "that I knew what I intended. I hadn't told anyone yet. My mother," she added, anticipating his protest, "guessed."

  "So I am not the last to know? I suppose that is something." he conceded heavily.

  "God." she said, pushing the wispy curls of copper-coloured hair from her brow with the crook of her elbow, "I could do with a cup of tea. Would you like one?" She motioned him to the sofa, and after a pause he lowered his tall, rangy frame onto the squashy cushions.

  "I do not want tea."

  "I don't have anything stronger - except the cooking sherry I bought for trifle. I don't suppose you-?"

  "No, I do not," he confirmed. "Why," he wondered as she began to dry the wet cups, "do the British act as if a cup of tea is the answer to everything?"

  "I presume the Italian way is to act as if sex is the answer to everything?" she countered crankily.

  "There is certainly more room for creativity in making love than there is in dropping a teabag in a mug. And," he added giving a wolfish grin, "it lasts longer than tea."

  "If you do it properly," she sniffed, feeling that familiar hot liquid quiver low in her belly.

  A dark brow angled as he searched her face. "Are you saying I don't?"

  The flush that she had so far kept at bay by sheer will-power spread up Sam's neck until her face was burning. "You do it better than properly," she admitted huskily, An image formed in her head and she added wistfully, "You do it perfectly." An impossible act to follow.

  Without waiting to see how he'd reacted to this ill-judged piece of honesty, she reached into the fridge for milk.

  "Leave that and come and talk to me."

  Sam straightened up. "There's nothing to talk about. I have everything sorted."

  "You can't seriously believe that?"

  "Would you prefer coffee?"

  "Sam!" His warning voice cut through her delaying tactics. Heaving a sigh, and displaying reluctance in every sinew of her body, she responded and took the window seat - now occupied by next door's opportunist cat.

  "Your parents-"

  "Oh, God," she interrupted, shaking her head. "You really shouldn't have said what you did to Dad. He can," she explained with a grimace, "take things a little literally."

  "What did I say that I should not have?"

  "That he can rely on you to do the right thing. Your idea of the right thing and my dad's are not going to be the same," she explained.

  "And what does Dr Maguire mean by the right thing?"

  "Marriage. I know," she inserted, before he had an opportunity to laugh or look horrified, "he does come over as a bit old-fashioned. But I'm his only daughter and - well, I suppose he is old-fashioned," she admitted.

  "I do not consider your father old-fashioned."

  She stared at him. "You don't?"

  Alessandro shook his head. "Your father feels that a man must take responsibility for his own actions. He believes that a child needs and deserves the security of two parents."

  "Well, obviously, in an ideal world."

  "The world," he cut in, his expression severe, "is what we make of it, We should not use society's imperfections as an excuse to shirk doing the right thing."

  "Perhaps you should marry my father," she joked with a thin smile. "You sound like a match made in heaven."

  "I think a successful relationship requires a little friction to keep it lively, and given the circumstances it would be more appropriate for me to marry your father's daughter."

  Sam, her expression wary but still totally confident he had misspoken, corrected him.

  "I'm my father's daughter."

  His eyes remained trained on her face, his expression aggravatingly enigmatic as he shrugged and said, "Your point being... ?"

  "My point being that even as tasteless jokes go, that one is more tasteless than most."

  "You think me proposing is a joke?"

  "You're not proposing," she told him.

  A muscle along his jaw clenched, and then clenched again harder as his eyes captured Sam's. "I would be interested to know what you think I am doing."

  Her mouth opened as she searched his face. "You want us to get married...sorry, you think we should get married." Clearly wanting did not enter into this.

  "There is no other option."

  "This is a knee-jerk reaction," she explained, thinking there could not be a worse time to leam that her lover had a very strongly developed sense of duty. "Understandably, you're not thinking straight right now. But fortunately for you I am. Tomorrow," she predicted, "you're going to realise that you had a narrow escape. Less scrupulous women would have said yes and got it in writing."

  "You are not scrupulous - you are an idiot!"

  "I would be if I married you. God, Alessandro, it would be a total disaster. People don't get married because they're pregnant."

  "They do, every day of the week."

  "Well, I don't. The only reason I'd get married is if I was in love with a man." She spread her hands, inviting him to see that she was right.

  His expression like granite, he locked his dark eyes onto hers. "And you don't love me?" His shrug suggested to Sam that he was indifferent to the fact. "Well, that may be so, but the man you love is not the father of your baby." A nerve clenched in his lean cheek as he added, "I am."

  It took several seconds before it clicked and Sam realised he was talking about Jonny. She opened her mouth to put him straight, then almost immediately realised that it might be easier to let him carry on thinking she still carried a torch for the younger man.

  "Yes, Alessandro, you're the father. But that doesn't alter the fact that we don't have a blessed thing in common. We weren't even going out; we were staying in. The only thing we had going for us was..." Her eyes slid from his as she swallowed and added hoarsely, "Sex. And now I'm pregnant we don't even have that!"

  A spasm of anxiety crossed his lean features as he rose impetuously to his feet. "Why? Is there a problem, medically speaking?"

  She shook her head. "No, I'm fine."

  "Your doctor has not advised you not to-?"

  "No, nothing like that," she inserted hastily. "Actually, I haven't seen the doctor yet. There's not much point-I'm only-"

  "Not seen a doctor?"

  Reading the shocked outrage in his taut features, Sam groaned. "There's no point, Alessandro. Not until..."

  "I think there is every point."

  "Fine. fine. Have it your way" On this she was willing to humour him. "I'll arrange something."

  "I will come with you."

  Sam shook her head. "That isn't going to happen."

  The flat pronouncement caused his eyes to darken. "I will not be delegated some peripheral role here."

  "Unless you want to give birth, you've not much option," she rebutted, with a calm she was far from feeling.

  Married to Alessandro. It was so tempting, but she knew that she couldn't agree, no matter how much she wanted to. She hadn't been able to cope with the stresses of a loveless affair. It stood to reason that a loveless marriage would be about amillion times worse!

  Concealing her true feelings had become next to impossible by the end, and Sam doubted she would be able to keep up the facade for five minutes if they were living together.

  Alessandro got to his feet and stalked towards her. Laying his hands on the sill at either side of her, he leaned forward. "You will marry me. My child will not be denied his father."

  She looked into his dark eyes. He was close enough for her to see the faint white line that ran along his temple. An image of him lying on the stretcher, with blood seeping from the gaping wound in his forehead, flashed into her head and she went pale.

  His hand came up to cup her face. "What's wrong?"

  "Nothing," she denied, jerking her chin from his grasp. "I'm not trying to deny the baby a father. You're the father, and nothing can change that," she admitted, rubbing a finger across the bridge of her nose and avoiding his eyes. "But I'm afraid that for once in your life, Ales
sandro, you have to accept that yours isn't the final word on this. Mine is."

  "That has been the case from the start."

  "What?" she said, utterly astounded at his angry, brooding claim.

  "You have laid down the rules and I," he observed grimly, "have meekly fallen in line. That is going to stop."

  She stopped rubbing her nose and gaped at him. Alessandro, Meek... ?

  "Is that a fact?"

  "You don't know what you are taking on. Being a single parent is not easy"

  If she could cope with loving a man who didn't love her back, Sam felt she could cope with almost anything. "And you would know all about that, I suppose?"

  "Katerina was eleven when I became her guardian."

  The reminder made Sam flush.

  "You know that what I'm saying makes sense," he added.

  Sam shook her head mutely. Sense didn't enter into it. She loved him, and that made no sense, but she could no more change the situation than she could her own fingerprints!

  "You will marry me," he said, fastening the buttons on his shirt. "When you see sense," he added, "You know where to find me." Striding to the door, his back stiff and unyielding, he didn't look back once.

  If he had, the tears spilling down her white face might have made him reconsider his exit.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The building had incredible views over the river, a startling glass frontage, and bore no identifying logo.

  Sam paid the cab driver and eyed the modern edifice with an uncertain frown. This is the Di Livio Building?"

  "It is, love," he promised. "For my money you can't beat Georgian architecture. But what do I know? This won all sorts of awards, apparently."

  Sam, her thoughts a long way from the merits of modern architecture, handed the man a tip and straightened her shoulders before approaching the building. She paused, briefly succumbing to panic, before she stepped into the revolving doors. Catching sight of her image in the large glass panels and realising she was dressed for going round the supermarket, she carried on walking and ended up where she'd started-outside looking in.

  This has to stop, she told herself. Alessandro isn't going to notice what you're wearing.