that had been caught in the headlights of an oncoming car, he thought. And he hated the fact that it was fear that he read in her eyes. “Steven—”
“Take off the coat, Maria,” he repeated and softening his voice, he added, “Please.”
With a patience that belied the blood racing like wild-fire through his veins, Steven watched as she slowly unbuttoned the red coat. When the last button had been loosened, she pulled off the coat and tossed it aside. She lifted her head, angled her gaze up to his and stared at him out of eyes bright with defiance.
Steven lowered his gaze and stared at her protruding stomach. Emotions pummeled through him at breakneck speed—anger, joy, hurt. When he lifted his gaze to meet hers again, he read the regret in her eyes. And it was that regret that sent a knife plunging straight through his heart.
“Tell me something, Maria,” he said, taking care to keep his voice soft while rage and pain warred inside him.
“What?”
“Were you even planning to tell me that I was going to be a father?”
Two
For a moment, Maria couldn’t speak. In the time she’d known Steven, she’d discovered a man with many layers. The smart, ambitious businessman who’d made his first million before he’d turned twenty-five. The kind and caring man who loved his family as fiercely as she loved her own. The passionate and tender lover to whom she’d given her virginity and her heart. But never once, not even when she’d refused to take their relationship public or to discuss his offer of marriage, had she seen Steven like this—in a white-hot fury made all the more chilling because he kept it so tightly leashed.
Anger emanated from every pore of his being. It was there in the tight lines around his mouth, in the ticking of the muscle in his right cheek, in the hard set of his jaw. Despite her sweater and the heat of the fire, Maria shivered beneath his icy blue glare. Not because she feared Steven would harm her physically. She didn’t. She knew he would sooner cut off his arm than hurt any woman. But the contempt she read in his eyes struck her like a blow.
“It’s a simple question, Maria. I’d appreciate an answer.”
Maria’s head swam. Squeezing her eyes shut, she wrapped her arms around herself and fought to steady herself, searched for the right words to explain.
“Look at me, Maria,” he commanded in a voice so soft she had to strain to hear it. “Were you even planning to tell me about the baby? Or did you think I didn’t deserve to know I was going to be a father?”
She snapped her eyes open and forced herself to meet his gaze. “Of course you deserved to know,” she told him. “And I was going to tell you.”
“When?” he demanded. “After the baby was born? What were you going to do? Send me a birth announcement and tack on a note saying ‘By the way, congratulations, you’re a daddy’?”
Maria wanted to cringe beneath the contempt in his voice, but she forced herself to face his anger. After all, she reasoned, he was entitled to be furious with her. She’d had months to get used to the idea of becoming a parent while Steven…Steven had been blindsided by the news because she’d kept silent. “No. I was going to tell you before the baby was born. I swear I was,” she said, hoping he believed her. “I never intended to keep it from you, Steven. I’ve been wanting to tell you for months now—almost from the moment I found out that I was pregnant.”
“Then why didn’t you?” he asked, anguish in his voice, in his eyes. “Dammit, Maria! How could you lay in my arms, make love with me and tell me that you love me, and then keep something like this a secret?”
Maria ached for him. She ached for herself and for all the pain they had both suffered during the past few months. Lifting her hand, she touched his cheek. “I didn’t want to keep it a secret. I wanted to tell you. I just didn’t know how.”
Some of the fierceness in his expression eased at her words. He turned his mouth into her palm and kissed it. At the gentle touch of his lips, Maria’s heart swelled with love for him. Oh, how she loved him, she thought. She stared at his handsome face—the sharp angles of his jaw, the proud chin, the sweep of dark lashes that covered his too-serious blue eyes. In the firelight, his black hair gleamed like polished onyx and she had to quell the urge to brush back that errant strand that always fell across his forehead. Instead she somehow found her voice and said, “I’m sorry. I never meant for you to find out about the baby this way. I had hoped…I had planned—”
“Shh. It doesn’t matter now,” he said and reached for her other hand. His eyes never left hers as he brought her fingers to his lips and kissed them again. “All that matters is that we’re together now, and that we’re going to have a baby. A baby,” he repeated, his voice filled with awe. “I still can’t believe it. We’re actually going to have a baby.”
“Steven—”
He silenced her with a kiss. “Do you have any idea what I’ve been going through these past months? All the things that went through my head when you left that note and disappeared. I was so angry with your family. I was sure that they had found out about us and forced you to go away.”
“No, they didn’t,” she began. “It wasn’t them. It was me. It was all my idea.”
“Yeah. I figured that out after talking to Karen last week. But there was a part of me that didn’t want to believe you could do that—just up and leave me the way you did, not after what we’d shared.”
Guilt tugged at her. “It wasn’t easy. I…I didn’t know what else to do. I thought if I could get away, that if I had some time alone to think…”
“That’s what Karen said. But it didn’t stop me from worrying that maybe you’d had second thoughts about us, that you’d begun to believe the things your family had been saying about the Contis sabotaging Baronessa Gelati. I thought…I was afraid that you hated me. That you’d regretted what we’d shared.” He swallowed and continued, “I was afraid that you’d regretted loving me.”
“No,” she told him honestly, and unable to stop herself, she brought her palm to his cheek. When he once again turned his face and kissed her palm, she didn’t withdraw. Regret loving him? No, she thought. It would have been easier for her to not take her next breath than to ever regret falling in love with him. Growing up with both her grandparents and parents as examples of what real love was all about, she knew what she felt for Steven was real. In fact, she doubted that she’d even had a choice when it came to loving him. She simply did—had almost from the moment they’d first met. And while she regretted the problems and the heartache their love would cause their families, she couldn’t ever regret the love they’d found with each other. How could she when the child growing inside was a result of that love? Their baby was a beautiful miracle, a gift she would always cherish, just as she would always cherish having been loved by Steven. “I’ve never regretted loving you. Never. Not even for a minute.”
“Thank God,” he said, and as though her reply had opened some floodgate of emotion inside him, he pulled her into his arms.
After so many months without him, Maria reveled in the feel of Steven’s arms around her again. This time when he lowered his head to kiss her, she made no attempt to deny him or herself.
His mouth closed over her own. Steven kissed her—tenderly, passionately, hungrily. When his tongue tested the seam of her
